Page 242.

Healing stun damage is a body + willpower extended test, with a duration of 1 hour. I assume this is against no threshhold, the way it is worded. This means that an average person will end up being able to fully recover their stun in about 5 hours, which I am fine with.

What I do not agree with (or perhaps simply do not understand), is that the same thing occurs with physical damage. It is a body x 2 extended with a duration of 1 day. Again, it specifies no threshhold. By my estimation, someone who has been shot to the brink of death can fully recover after just 5 days of bedrest, with no medical attention.

My personal feeling is to make the threshhold on the physical damage test against the number of boxes they have. This would cause minor injury to go away easily and quickly, but heavy damage would require medical attention to see any improvement at all.

Let me know if there's an authoritive answer to this question.

I also think that wound penalties apply. For example, a Troll will recover faster than a human, if they are both average.

So 7 Body for the Troll (14 dice) versus 3 Body for the Human (6 dice.)

If both took a hit of 10 boxes, the Troll will be rolling 10 dice (14-4) while the Human will be rolling 2 dice (6-4).

THat's an estimated 5 days if you are in a Sterilized medical facility, with proper medicine being used, are not a mage and have no implants. See page 244 for all the modifiers.

You have read the rules right. The threshold is equal to the amount of boxes and the interval is 1 day. Wich means all people regenerate in SR4 . I envision someone with decent Body laying on a bed saying "k, time for some healing... hmpphhffffff. hmmm henhnnnnphf... There, all done" and then rising from the bed having healed a small calibre slug to the gut in 24 hours.

It´s a simple system and I like that it is. But it wont fit my campain that the maximum time a person with 12 boxes in the condition monitor will stay in bed from almost getting killed is less than 2 weeks. (because modifiers or not, it´s likely you get one hit each test with a decent attribute, especially with medical care and help from a doctor.)


The house rule that first comes to mind is to have every 3 boxes inflicted in a single blow cause more nasty wounds that you can discribe and write down. Say that you have 4 boxes of damage already, then you get 6 more in a single blow. You will have 10 boxes filled out, and your wound modifier would be -3. But you would also note a "level 2 nasty wound" or whatever you call them. For wound modifier purpouses it would be imbeded in the damage you´ve taken, but you would define what it is, like for instance a broken leg. This damage would then be harder to heal, so you would not be able to fast heal the last 6 boxes in your monitor. How long it would take to heal the nasty wound could be discussed.

Jackal-
My problem with that system is that most characters will be unable to heal even one box of damage naturally, unless they are using a medkit or something.
The rules do not say to use the healing table unless you are using first aid or medicine, they don't apply to natural healing tests (from what I can tell).

Autarkis -- I think it would make more sense to use the extended rules 'threshhold' ruling as opposed to removing dice, since it's available.
The result is the same -- high body has more dice, and therefore can score more hits to heal.

mintcar -- I'm not really sure what you are suggesting.


Addendum: I'm inclined to think Jackal's interpretation of the rules are the most accurate to the intended rules. However, I did like the idea that the more damaged you were, the harder it was to heal. This view of the rules throws that out and says whether you have one box or 10 boxes of damage, it's just as easy to mend..

If you get hit for 3, 6 or 9 damage respectively in one single blow, this will cause a level 1, 2 or 3 critical injury (or something). If you get one of these you simply note it on your character sheet. For flavour your GM will say what kind of injury it is. A level 1 injury could be something that´s broken or a possible infection, a level 2 injury could be something like a worse fracture or a punctured lung, a level 3 injury could be something even worse that would kill a normal man (showing how tough the troll really is, he can walk around with a broken skull without falling over). These will then stay even if the rest of the damage is healed. They require special attention and should take a long time to treat unless healed magicly or with advanced medical care.

mintcar: Not a bad idea for a house ruling. Would add some fun flavor as you say, for sure.
I still wish to know how Fanpro intended this to be played out though.

Propably fast and easy. It´s good rules for a no worries gamestyle. I don´t mind house ruling this from such a solid base.

My interpretation I recognize now is somewhat messy.

Assuming someone has 10 boxes of damage, extended test against threshhold 10 (1 day intervals). Let's assume it takes them 5 days to get enough hits to finally heal a box.
They drop to 9 boxes of damage now. Do we restart the threshhold counter? I don't know. Bleh.

While this would complete the goal of putting someone out for a few weeks, it becomes very confusing / convoluted.

I would guess that you restart the thresthold counter each time.

So healing from 10 boxes rolling 6 dice would take:

10 5 days
9 5 days
8 4 days
7 4 days
6 3 days
5 3 days
4 2 days
3 2 days
2 1 day
1 1 day

or about 30 days in total

Of course, the body 9 troll bounces back from that in 14 days...

Crusher: That's what I was thinking.
I think it makes a rough amount of sense. I may stick with that.

And I´m going to go with mine. So we´re all happy now, how nice

Yep, pretty neat.

I like that idea! Nice.

-Spider

The way the rules reads it clearly has no initial threshhold, it just heals a box for each Hit. That i'm not crazy about that at all. Better than SR3 IMO for gaming. But it has gone to the other extreme for speed....though you'd need a lot of effort, Body, or luck to heal a previously untreated handgun wound (DV5+? ) in a single interval.

A possibility is to increase the interval to something like 3 to 4 days. But the lack of granularity is kinda crappy.

The idea of the current boxes as the Threshhold to heal one box has some merits. It makes it easier to allow someone to try heal a box or two mid-assignment. But at very high Bodies you are looking at as much as mid-teens for the walking wounded.

If you were going to the trouble of house ruling that anyway i'd make it heal up to 3 boxes each time you reached the Threshhold to make it worth while taking the time mid-assignment. Or maybe 2 boxes. That's still pretty stiff for a Body (3) in a hospital paying for private care of a professional (extra two or four dice per roll) recovering from the brink of 10 boxes. That's 6 + 3ish - 3, the better part of the week to heal down to 7 boxes. This would also help keep the rolling down a bit.

EDIT: That is also assuming a non-awakened, non-techno, with no 'ware. Unlikely for sure, but then i'm not sure how common Body as low as (3) is going to be either for PCs.

To totally heal up it would take them close to 2 weeks (ok week and a half). Short by current medical standards? Ya, current medical standards are a lot better than 50 years ago too.

I know it always sucked to have a player off at the end of the table reenacting Waterloo with Napolean as the cheezy puffs and the gummi bears as Wellington because their PC is in the hospital for a month while the rest of the team was busy doing stuff.

heh. the rules are almost as bad as SR3. my adept (no healing powers) once completely recovered from S+3 damage in about 36 hours. crazy.

this was several years ago, but as i recall, it was a beta-grade facility with magical care.

Why is this so bad? There are modifiers you can apply.

In SR3, I've seen a decker who completely recovered from at-home brain surgery in a day...in SR4 it would take much longer.


And then on the other side of things there's Ars Magica (in one of the older editions, you got one attempt to heal for every 3 months of complete bedrest - whee! fun! ).

It´s not so bad for most situations, IMO. I only want there to be a much worse worst case scenario, so that getting hurt isn´t trivial.

Worst case is still the fact that you left your DNA/ritual link all over the crime scene - same as it's always been.

It's not like you're going to heal from anything more than stun or a very light wound before the opposition can track you down (assuming they bother).

...until Street Magic comes out some time next year. They didn't manage to fit that bit of MitS into the SR4 BBB, but i'd be more than surprised if it didn't show up in Street Magic as extra Ritual Magic option. Or perhaps as a meta magic.

EDIT: Er, actually i correct myself. For mundane purposes as well you'll not want to be spanking the monkey on someoen's doorstep. That part is in the BBB, but primarily only if you have a SIN or are worried about some point in the future having your DNA sampled and having that incident traced back to you. If you wonder why the SINner quality gets you bonus BP, wonder no more......

Thus why I said DNA as well as ritual link (though I hadn't read the magic system in enough detail to notice that the link was removed...wasn't expecting that)

Well, we are tempted to house rule that the physical healing is with proper medical attention. It is, after all, the Fraging Future.

While SR doctors are thankfully far away from the magic salt shaker of startrek, they do have advance medicine.

You do want PC to recover in a reasonalbe time. If every injury resulted in 6 to 10 months of recovery and physical therapy it would slow games down. But as it sounds, injuries will hang around for a while, (which makes sence) but not force players to esentualy retire charictors after one good hit.

wagnern: My main concern is just finding a way to slow natural and unaided healing..

Ah. Sometimes people on these forums are a bit over the top for realistic and gritty.

Maybe...

But then again, healing 10 box of damage (a death wound for most of the human) in less than a week is really far from gritty and realistic. They should have been a little more carefull about the rules.

-SPider

10 boxes doesn't kill even gimp metahumans, although Body (1) and (2) are at that point unconciousness, or in a more general sense incapacited beyond being able to precieve or act since the abstract nature of game damage doesn't always translate well.

Being that messed up today usually means a sizable hospital/bed stay, depending on the situation. Crushed pelvis for example would likely be someone at the edge of death. But as already mentioned the medical advances in just the last couple decades have drastically reduced healing times. Terrel Owens, whatever your opinion of him, was able to have his busted angle bolted back together and operate at an elite (although arguable reduced for him) level. It wasn't that long ago that he not only wouldn't have made it back for that game, he would have been fortunate to EVER made it back.

Now imagine what kind of things are going on in the typical trama and recovery medical facility when other branches of medicine are routinely implanting foriegn custom modified organs and tissue, cybernetic replacements and aids, who knows what with nanites in the 5 years since SOTA 64/65.

Plus there is the idea is that Orcs/Trolls are bad ass healers, above and beyond the highest human standards that we are used to.

EDIT: A bit low overall in times? Perhaps, but not amazingly so. I'd much rather an error on the side of NOT having a player sitting herself and PC out for a month of game time because something went sideways.

P.S. Remember that when healing you can Glitch and slow down the healing a fair amount, or Critical Glitch and if at the edge just flat out die.

Just reading the "using medecine section" on page 242 of the rulebook, that's a test your doctor should made to heal you... interesting if your street doc score let's say 4 hit on his roll. You got +4 on every healing test afterward (for that set of wound) so the good old 6 body troll roll something like 18 dices - modifiers for healing his wounds and one hit heal one box.

Even 11 boxes of damage won't hold him that long in the hospital. He'll get out of coma, and start running. That section of the book as a dragonball feeling on it.
-Spider

And that's a problem why? I agree with blakkie. I hated having to artificially advance the timeline of my games by a month every time someone took a round to the chest -- especially if you were running a game concurrent to major metaplot involvement and didn't have an easily flexible timeframe. And I hate having someone make a new character to play during the month that their "main" character is healing.

Call it a liberal amount of drugs, call it nanite healers that knit wounds back together, call it cybernetic replacement parts that are removed or dissolve similar to stitches do today, call it whatever you like, but I see no probably with somoene getting the crap beat out of them and then getting up after a week or so of healing and starting to work again.

You want gritty realism, then make sure those damage boxes aren't just damage boxes. Someone gets hit in the arm -- make the arm not work. Sure, the physical damage heals up in a week, but what about the nerve damage or the damage to tendons causing stiffness and pain for the rest of the character's life. Get shot for 7+ boxes in one hit? Maybe that blows your arm clean off, or takes your leg and mangles it. You might heal up the physical damage (after some surgery and a cyberleg) in a week but now they're stuck with a cyberleg.

Yes, abstract damage is not gritty nor is it terribly realistic. But, I have a somewhat hard time understanding why so many people have a problem with realism in a game that sports elves, dwarves, trolls, orks, magic, dragons, spirits, paracritters, etc.

Edit: sorry, ranted there a bit. didn't mean to be so confrontational.

Yes, the wonders of modern medicine and an incredibly fit body! They get to use all sorts of bleeding edge kewlio drugs and gadgets on your Troll buddy too because he doesn't have any cyber/bio to get in the way or awakened or techno skills to worry about damaging.

I suppose that's grit.

Realism is more like: "Hey, we live in a three-dimensional world - so realistic combat should be based on vectors. That would allow us to incorporate magic seamlessly - using complex vectors. Everything less is just dumbed down."

Ah. So grit is the pain in the ass for the PC. Realism is the pain in the ass for the players.

EDIT: This new found clarity is bringing back some baaaad AD&D memories. I remember having our 2nd level characters get into a fight with some kobolds in a tight cave. The whole session was a mass of 3D trig of the DM trying to figure out who could shot arrows at whom. The 3 hour session ended before the battle. I missed the next week's game, but apparently not much, because the same damn kobold battle was still running when i got back the week after! Of course our PCs being weak were pretty beat up after having faced a pack of kobolds that were apparently paying a lot better attention in Grade 9 Math than me.

The area where we were had multiple entrances that we didn't feel we could secure. So we left the cave entrance to regroup and heal in relative safety. Next session we came back and the same cave entrance was full up again of the same damn kobolds.

At that point i went on sabatical till the next GM rotated in, but apparently it went downhill from there judging both from what other players grumbled and from the fact that this suppositily 2 to 3 session mini-adventure turned into a 6 month campaign with a working title of The Kobold Cave That Made Baby Jesus Claw His Eyes Out.

P.S. This was not with my current group, and none of the current group was the GM in question.

The point of my complaint wasn't the healing times where doctors were involved, honestly. I've got a house ruling now that I'm using that I'm satisfied with.

My concern was that there was no reason whatsoever to ever visit a doctor. You healed ultra-fast on your own. I just wanted it so that people who got shot up would have to fork over some money in order to get the speedy recovery. It is the natural healing I'm concerned with, not the doctor healing.

Well, I apply wound modifiers as normal (one for every 3 boxes of damage), as well as cyberware and location penalties from the healing table, to the natural healing roll. Minimum of 1 die.

Also, if they lose all of their boxes of health and are at overdamage, they get only one die to roll.

It gives enough encouragement to see a doctor or use an autodoc, who can easily get them patched up in 4-5 days, since they don't want to risk taking extra damage on rolling a 1, which would be an automatic critical glitch.

Ok, so after reading the Healing a First Aid rules on page 242 I realized that there were several things I didn't like about the. With a little search-fu I found the perfect thread as I see many others didn't like the rules either.

So here are some specific complaints and ideas:

Complaint 1:
Willpower + Body for Stun
Body x 2 for Physical

Ok, aside from the very obvious huge bennefit for Trolls I have a problem with this because it leaves out something that the devs specifically put in to describe a person overal health and "holistic wellbeing" -- Essence.

Essence represents spiritual well-being, not physical. While this or that religion will tell you that it's your soul that heals your flesh, Shadowrun says that it's your physique (Body) and your ability to endure pain (Willpower) that gets you back on your feet faster.

Metaphysics takes a backseat role to biology in that for every 2 points of Essence lost, you lose 1 die on your healing test. So you already have your wish in that Essence directly affects how quickly you recover. It's just a 2:1 ratio of effectiveness compared to your Body attribute.

Don't sweat having trolls with tremendous bounceback capacity; it's their job to be tough. If it makes you feel better, think of them as D&D trolls with massively toned-down regeneration.

Long-standing SR convention equates Essence with a person's spirit, soul, lifeforce, or whatever else you want to call your metaphysical "self." I won't disagree that SR4 has changed some conventions from the previous editions.

Let me ask you this, though: Why distinguish between Body and Essence at all, per your definitions?

And feel free to come up with whatever house rules or (re)interpretations you want. I'm trying to speak within the RAW (present and past).

Oh, on trolls:

Each point of Body someone gets equates to .5 more Physical boxes they can withstand before dropping. Also, each point of Body someone gets equates to .66 more Physical boxes they can, on average, heal per day.

My point there is that it takes only slightly less time for a troll to fully recover from a filled Physical meter as it does an equivalent human. The troll has a much greater capacity to withstand damage, but really his healing rate isn't comparatively accelerated on a percentage basis.

Ironically enough, under SR4, First Aid and magical healing are proportionately less effective on a troll than anyone else. Proportionately.

Huh. And here I thought it was a terrific idea to use Bod+Ess for physical healing and Will+Ess for Stun healing:

-It solves the problem of trolls rolling 18-24 dice for healing outside a hospital, but the high-Bod trolls still have a distinct advantage over ordinary humans.
-It integrates Essence into the actual healing test itself rather than adding it in after the fact.
-It makes Essence more important to healing, which I always thought it should be.

I really do hate to get all metaphysical and crap, because afterward noone believes that I'm a chemist, but even today there is documented proof that things like prayer really do increase the chances of someone surviving major illnesses and surgery. I'm not sure that all of those effects can be simply linked to willpower; maybe Essence has something to do with it?