[WitFondle]

This is my first time GMing, and I'm just going through the First Run book for now. We've just finished the big shootout with the Cyberzombie and now I have a conundrum. Hopefully someone with a better familiarity of the rules can give me a hand.

I've got a character who has 1 point of High Pain Tolerance and 2 boxes of Overflow Damage from Will to Live. He recently sustained 10 boxes of physical wound in a firefight. Now, Will to Live states that the extra boxes are just to prevent the character from dying, not to prevent the character becoming incapacitated if they otherwise would. But with the pain tolerance combination, I allowed him to keep standing until the battle was done. After all, he hasn't died and does feel like he's just taken a Serious wound. Now it's time for recovery. Do I treat it as a Deadly wound, meaning he has to get to a hospital? He also happens to be an Adept, so his lack of Cybertechnology would allow him to be healed for a pretty low TN by the Mage. Does she take Deadly Drain or just Serious? And once the healing's over, does he need hospitalization regardless, having technically taken a Deadly wound? Can he be healed by a spell, even? Does he potentially take magic loss? I don't really know how to treat this.

[Charybdis]

No worries, here's a simple guideline:

Healing takes place based on the wounds themselves (not how much they affect the PC).
- For example, a PC with an activated Pain Editor wouldn't feel any damage at all from his spleen hanging out the side, but the mage is going to be very concerned at the effort involved in healing that wound)

A) The PC has taken Deadly damage (just not died from it), therefore the Mage when healing has to resist drain for the Deadly wound category
B) Pain tolerance has no effect on the healing of the actual wound...as per the Pain Editor example above.
C) The Will to Live shouldn't have actually kept the PC conscious IMHO, but as a GM call it's not an unreasonable action to take, especially if it was fun for all concerned

In an uber-munchkin game from many moons ago, a mage in our group had damage compensators at R9, so didn't take any modifiers from any Physical/Stun damage until he dropped unconscious/dying. Basically, he operated at full efficiency until his body collapsed from damage/exhaustion. Ahhh, fun days....

[WitFondle]

Nice. I didn't realize Damage Compensators were so cheap. Obviously in terms of Bio Index, not Nuyen. Definitely keeps the death spiral at bay.

Thanks for the advice. I'll see how my group wants to deal with this one.

EDIT: I do have a follow-up. I've read in a few places that if a Heal spell is used, Biotech can't be used afterward to further heal, but I haven't read anything that says that one can't be healed by Biotech, then by a Heal spell. Are they mutually exclusive, or is it just that a Heal spell is the final type of healing?

[Charybdis]

EDIT: I do have a follow-up. I've read in a few places that if a Heal spell is used, Biotech can't be used afterward to further heal, but I haven't read anything that says that one can't be healed by Biotech, then by a Heal spell. Are they mutually exclusive, or is it just that a Heal spell is the final type of healing?

I do recall that Heal CANNOT be followed by Biotech.... not sure about Vice Versa 

I remember something about 'Only one type of healing can be applied to any set of wounds', but can't remember if that was a house rule or not 

Hopefully someone with their SR3 sourcebooks handy will hear the query and respond with a canon answer... all I've got is a fuzzy memory

[Loki]

In an uber-munchkin game from many moons ago, a mage in our group had damage compensators at R9, so didn't take any modifiers from any Physical/Stun damage until he dropped unconscious/dying. Basically, he operated at full efficiency until his body collapsed from damage/exhaustion. Ahhh, fun days....

  Shame on them for that. I don't know of anyone who'd be so terrible. <<looks nervous>> I'll be going now.

[savaze]

A) The PC has taken Deadly damage (just not died from it), therefore the Mage when healing has to resist drain for the Deadly wound category

I also don't have my books handy, but we always played it that a mage could cast a lesser heal to benefit from lower drain (e.g. only healing up to a serious wound instead of a deadly - I don't remember the drains).

I do recall that Heal CANNOT be followed by Biotech.... not sure about Vice Versa 

I remember something about 'Only one type of healing can be applied to any set of wounds', but can't remember if that was a house rule or not 

Hopefully someone with their SR3 sourcebooks handy will hear the query and respond with a canon answer... all I've got is a fuzzy memory

Due to the deadliness of SR3 and how long it took to 'roll up' new characters we house ruled that multiple types of healing could be used, but only if the magical version was used last, since it knitted the wound closed and all, but there was some discontent from our rules lawyers (their argument - healing order: surgical/topical, magical, chemical).

[WitFondle]

I also don't have my books handy, but we always played it that a mage could cast a lesser heal to benefit from lower drain (e.g. only healing up to a serious wound instead of a deadly - I don't remember the drains).

Because of the nature of a Heal spell, I don't know how you would pull that off. You're already limited to successes equal to the Force of the spell, and any additional successes are used to reduce the time to make the spell permanent. I guess if you were willing to forfeit the ability to reduce time, maybe you could use any given two successes to stage the Drain down, as a house rule kind of thing. In fact, I do like the sound of that.

Due to the deadliness of SR3 and how long it took to 'roll up' new characters we house ruled that multiple types of healing could be used, but only if the magical version was used last, since it knitted the wound closed and all, but there was some discontent from our rules lawyers (their argument - healing order: surgical/topical, magical, chemical).

Yeah, I decided I would basically just allow the same thing. Of course that means my Adept was healed from a Deadly wound down to a Light with a combination of Biotech and a Heal spell, but I guess that's what the Healing Mage is there for. Besides, the cost in time and ¥ for hospitalization would have been far beyond what any of my starting characters can afford. Thanks for the input. I'm looking forward to trying to kill my party again this weekend...

[Charybdis]

In an uber-munchkin game from many moons ago, a mage in our group had damage compensators at R9, so didn't take any modifiers from any Physical/Stun damage until he dropped unconscious/dying. Basically, he operated at full efficiency until his body collapsed from damage/exhaustion. Ahhh, fun days....

  Shame on them for that. I don't know of anyone who'd be so terrible. <<looks nervous>> I'll be going now.

*laughs* It was expensive....but worth it