Does a trauma dampener affect your spellcasting while projecting?

Oddly enough it does, since any damage (and thus healing) that occurs to your meatbod automatically carries over to your astral form and vice-versa. It's not as effective, though, since the Drain is still Physical... so it just shifts a box over to Stun instead of eliminating it altogether.

So you only cast spells with Light Drain!

...and you still suffer a +1 wound modifier!

So since it shifts one box to stun do I resist the stun and physical seperately?

No, the conversion takes place after you resisted damage.

ahh so that makes trauma dampener for projecting mages kinda screwy.

Well, trauma dampeners are a double-edged sword for mages. On the one hand, it really helps if you can just ignore light drain - now you can summon watchers all day long and don't feel fatigued at all, or cast all those low-drain spells without saving pool dice for drain resistance.

On the other hand, once a mage gains a little experience, the benefits become a disadvantage. A mage in my group even had his trauma dampener removed, because he wanted his drain to be purely physical instead of stun. He was really quick with those healing spells - stun damage takes longer to heal than physical damage if you've got a decent health spell.

Of course, this tactic was absolutely crazy, nothing I'd ever try. But it worked fine for him, masochist that he was.

The thing is, IIRC, you can't magically heal drain damage...

Related question, if a projecting mage is hit with a stim patch or activates his pain editor before projecting, will it effect his astral form?

Edit: For clarification, the stim patch is applied to the meat body after the mage has projected.

Whoa, you're right, physical drain damage can't be healed! This is great news... It's kinda embarassing that one slipped by me though. Was that rule around in the previous editions?

And yes, the stimpack slapped on the meatbod will influence the astral form. Pain editor should work too.