I have a question concerning Critical Wounds and their healing.

If I am attacked and told to take 5 Wounds and 2 Critical Wounds, I mark down 5 wounds and I am given 2 Critical Wound Cards. When I heal those Critical Wounds, I am told to convert them into normal Wounds, thus my 5 Wounds just became 7 Wounds.

Are we doing it right? Or is this just a mistake made since I keep track of my Wounds on paper and not on the cards themselves.

That is indeed a mistake caused by using paper instead of cards for normal wounds. If using cards for everything, you would have received 5 wound cards, 2 of which were face up and 3 of which were face down. If you later healed one of the crits, it would mean one of the two face-up cards should be turned face down. Your total number of wounds remains the same (5), all that changes is their status as critical or normal.

+ Critical wounds in my game are additive. I would give 5 wound cards and 2 wound cards flipped to the crit side.

jh

That's how we rule it as well Emirikol. It *does* actually read against the rules to view it that way however. Strictly according to the rules, "+1 crit (or 2 etc)" only modifies the *potential* of actual crits, not the number of wounds generated. (according to the PH at least)

SJM, Crits are still wounds, just wounds with extra rules and longer healing times. For example. If your character has a wound threshold of say 15, you can never heal back up to 15 while you still have critical wounds, only 15 - the number of crits you have. Severe Injuries even reduce your total wound threshold once they become permanent, plus, the rest of the messy stuff that goes along with them.

This raises a side question though that I would like to field to the Ref's here. Do you allow people to use stance dice when healing?

No stance dice when healing in my games. But someone performing First aid and/or Medicine could use stance dice obviously.

How many do you allow in passive checks?

I've told my players I'll accept any reasonable argument (or, preferably, actual roleplaying) for why they should be one step into red or green on any given roll outside of a full-blown encounter. That said, recovery checks are probably the hardest type of roll to justify being a step into a stance. How do you sleep recklessly or conservatively? It's hard to conceptualize, and therefore rarely (possibly has never been?) allowed at my table.

Tangent: The long-term care rules (the qualifications for which are so vaguely worded that it's pretty much GM fiat as to whether or not you qualify) are one of very few situations where going deep into red (if allowed) is truly worth it. On most rolls (attacks, skill checks, etc) 10 successes means scoring the triple-success line and wasting 7 successes; you get no benefit from the bonus hammers and your eagle-to-skull ratio suffers as you up the red die count. In long-term care, 10 successes actually means 10 wounds healed. In practice, that probably means going deep into red would really only help on the first day of long-term care. After that your normal wound count is probably low enough for extra successes to become redundant again.

Oops, just remembered a situation where I did let a player use Reckless dice on a recovery check!

They went to a Barber-Surgeon, and had Leeches applied to rebalance their humours. This caused 2 wounds during the bleeding, and then allowed them to go into maximum Reckless stance for their recovery check the next morning. Not smart if what you're trying to do is recover from normal wounds, but actually pretty helpful if you're trying to overcome a crit or disease with a high severity.