Healing
Healing ministrations are applied to a wound’s severity. When a wound’s severity is reduced to zero, it is completely healed, and its corresponding Wound Penalty goes away.
The First Aid Ability does not heal wounds, but temporarily reduces a character’s Wound Penalty. True healing requires a medic, certain powers (i.e., heal), or advanced technology.
Lacking these expedients, wounds heal naturally at the rate of 1 point of severity per week of complete rest (i.e., no activity beyond eating, sleeping, and moaning in pain).
| Example |
|---|
| Klar gets into trouble later—he suffers 2 wounds at the hands of the cultists: the first is severity 3 and the second is severity 2; his Wound Penalty is –2 (for having 2 wounds). He gets some First Aid from a 3rd-level comrade, and his state improves to WP –1 for 3 hours (after which the ministrations wear off and he’s back to WP –2). After the adventure, he visits a healer (a 2nd-level Medic), whose Ditch Medicine restores 2 points of wound severity on each wound (2 points for a 2nd-level medic). The first wound is reduced from severity 3 to severity 1—not enough to heal it completely, so it still counts against his Wound Penalty. However, the second wound is reduced to severity 0, meaning that it’s healed, and that it no longer contributes to his Wound Penalty. As a result, Klar has a single wound (severity 1) for WP –1. A week of complete bed rest will heal that remaining point of severity, thus healing the wound and negating his Wound Penalty completely. |
