In the last scenario I GMed, one of the players took a hit from a firebolt, and had his Strength, Agility and Toughness reduced by half due to his tissues melting from the heat. Another player then used Seal Wounds to heal his damage. The question I was faced with then was; Does the Seal Wounds make you regain those lost Characteristic scores?

I judged it to be so, based on the description of what Seal Wounds do (make tissues regrow etc.). But looking from it from a rule-lawyers perpective, as one of my players always do. It says nothing to that effect. Only that it reduce Critical Damage and restore lost Wounds.

So I decided I would bring the question up here. What do you think about it? does Seal Wound restore lost characteristic scores? What is the "spirit" in which the power was intended to be used? In a way I can see that it support the premise (rules-wise) since it says it remove Critical Damage. And the lost characteristic scores are the sub-effects of that critical damage. However, the power does not explicitly say it restore lost characteristic damage.

If the character lost the attribute points due to a crit and the power prevents the crit it would imho prevent the reductions. Remove the Cause and you have no Effect in essence.

That and if you're GM, you make the call on it, sod the rules lawyer player You're God for that game, not him so it's down to you.

If itwere me i'd say "well, the power prevents the crit from really taking effect so the stat points are not lost" or just lose them for a day where the shock of having stuff regrow affects the character psychologically.

Personally, I think characters permanently losing things they paid experience for is no fun (when it's the effect of a bad guy, not the tradeoff for some other advantage they're getting) for everyone involved, and I would use *any* excuse to get rid of the effect.

The negatives that your player took were due to his damaged flesh, which Seal Wounds would have healed.

However, as the GM, you may or may not want to enforce 'phantom' pains that remain for 1d5 rounds as the bodies nerves remember the damage that was delt. This would be more of a house rule and subject to everyone being okay with having lingering effects. This would also mean that a player couldn't just negate negatives to stats instantly, but also wouldn't actually lose the stats permanently.

Personally, I have a house rule dealing with Seal Wounds that came about after an interesting session where a psyker ran headlong into a firefight, heedless of her own safety, to heal a downed Deathwatch marine. Her power roll was 10, 10, 10, 9 (which turned out to be winds... lifting her off the floor and whipping her white robes about) she then rolled a 10 for the healing effect. On a whim, since her power roll was rather impressive and there is no ruling on righteous furys for healing damage.. only dealing it, we decided to treat the effect as 'pious fury'. We had the player roll % using willpower, resulting in a 01, proving that she was indeed blessed by the touch of the Emperor. After a number of 10's later, in a wash of golden light, the psyker managed to not only to fully heal the downed marine, but to heal just about everyone in range. Let's just say she is well on her way to sainthood... and a new house rule was born.

I might be going against the flow here, but the way I view Seal Wounds is it simply accelerates the healing of a body (to an ungodly level) but can not make it heal what it naturally wouldn't -after all, Seal Wounds can not regrow limbs. Of course, I've also ruled that if someone doesn't set a bone before Seal Wounds or Healer is used on the individual, the broken bones can mend back together in a twisted fashion, just as if the break had healed over without being properly set before hand. So take my interpritation as you will... I tend to be a touch heavy handed with wounds, damage, and the general unpleasantness of deadly situations. As such, I would have ruled that if the stat points would have healed over time, then yes, Seal Wounds would have healed them. If, no matter how long the character languished in a hospital bed, the body could never recover that lose, then I would say no, Seal Wounds wouldn't heal them.

seal wounds =repair damaged flesh (temporary attributedamage)
regenrate=repair destroyed flesh and bones(permant damage)

the new question is the would a biomancer be able to regenrate the damage from corpus conversion?

Sarius: Seal Wounds regenerate burned tissues, mend broken bones and seal torn flesh. So it does heal that. Regenerate on the other hand is a personal effect for the psyker that is ongoing (Sustained), and continue to remove all fatigue and heal 1d5 wounds (including Critical Damage) per round. And I think it is already stated in the Errata that the Toughness Damage caused by Corpus Conversion is permament and can not be healed by any means. Personally I use the original version of the Corpus Conversion talent, but have ruled that the damage (2 Wounds to gain your WP bonus to the power manifestation roll) can not be healed by psychic powers. That keeps biomancers from using regenerate and then corpus conversion to do extreme deeds. Which was why the errata changed how it works.

To the others answering my post. Thank you for your feedback. I will continue to allow Seal Wounds to remove the Effects of Critical Damage as long as the Critical Damage is removed.

aethel said:

I agree 100% with you on this. I would never make something un-healable that happend to a character.