Our party has a character with the Hardy talent. We're trying to figure out the benefits of it.

Does Hardy provide any benefit during First Aid, or just natural healing? Since First Aid doesn't distinguish healing rates based upon Light/Heavy/Critical damage, it doesn't seem to give a benefit. Should it? Should the character be treated as if he were lightly damaged for the purposes of First Aid tests, and thus make it easier to heal?

Thanks for the help!

Only Lightly Damaged patients have no penalty to be healed with First Aid; Heavily Damaged ones have a -10 to be healed, while Critically Damaged patients have -10 per point of Critical Damage. So that's at least one instance where Hardy may be useful, if you're set up to be the party tank capable of drawing attention and shrugging off blasts to little effect. Additionally, if you're on some sort of endurance mission then only being Lightly Damaged (regardless of actual wounds) allows you to use natural healing without needing bed rest.

Still, you've hit upon the issue that most of the time (not all the time!) a sufficiently good medic will solve all problems of healing. And I'd also argue that any medic worth their salt will be taking Superior Chirurgeon, which basically makes Hardy obsolete (by mostly removing the above penalties) in addition to granting a flat +20 to Medicae tests. (The medic in my current group - a Mad Dok - took it at chargen.)

Pretty much what NFK said. Hardy removes the penalties to the first aid test making it much easier to be treated when critically damaged. Since it effects natural healing it means you will also heal much faster when receiving extended care as well and will always gradually heal some each day regardless of how active you are.
If your team has a medic with superior chirurgeon then it can be somewhat redundant although the medic himself should have it in case he is incapacitated so another party member or an NPC doctor who might not have superior chirurgeon can treat them more easily. Hardy is also useful if your party has no medic at all and is relying on NPC doctors or if they split up a lot so the team doctor isn't always nearby to help.

Keep in mind, you can only receive first aid once every 24 hours and only if you don't use extended care. That said, extended care is rather lackluster, but I doubt GMs will just let you roll first aid repeatedly instead of actually having to take bed rest after taking significant damage.

As a minor point, the medic character might be killed at some point during the campaign (or the player behind the character temporary or permanently removes himself from the campaign because of rl events), so you're more self sufficient with Hardy.

Even if the medicae is alive and well, it's hardly inconceivable that members of the group might be separated for days, weeks, or longer.

It is also super nice in groups without a dedicated Medicae, as my group happens to be.

Skarsnik, can you explain why it removes the penalties for first aid? The talent doesn't say it does...

Skarsnik, can you explain why it removes the penalties for first aid? The talent doesn't say it does...

Skarsnik, can you explain why it removes the penalties for first aid? The talent doesn't say it does...

A character with hardy always counts as lightly wounded when receiving medical treatment so they never count as heavily or critically wounded and so do not cause those penalties to the medic. The exact wording is a little weak as they changed first aid to no longer heal different amounts based on damage level and instead made it a penalty but didn't rewrite hardy as well as they could have but I believe it is the intended function. "when undergoing medical treatment or healing from injuries he always recovers damage as if Lightly Damaged", when receiving first aid healing the amount recovered is based off degrees of success and also requires the test to pass in the first place so that implies that they are treated as lightly wounded for purposes of the medicae test penalties otherwise why mention medical treatment in the Hardy talent at all.

I think I follow what you're saying.

Because they just copy pasted Hardy from previous editions, without thinking about how they changed First Aid, it doesn't make a lot of sense, since everyone recovers wounds from First Aid in the same fashion.

So you advocate we should interpret "recovers damage as if Lightly Damaged " as make the test to administer First Aid easier?

I think I follow what you're saying.

Because they just copy pasted Hardy from previous editions, without thinking about how they changed First Aid, it doesn't make a lot of sense, since everyone recovers wounds from First Aid in the same fashion.

So you advocate we should interpret "recovers damage as if Lightly Damaged " as make the test to administer First Aid easier?

Pretty much. Since it specifically references medical treatment I interpret "recovers damage as if lightly Damaged" to mean receives medical treatment as if lightly damaged.

As Skarnsnik38 said, it is not AS useful as it was in prior editions due to the medica changes but I would argue it is still one of the most useful talents to have. With hardy, your natural healing counts as always being lightly wounded, so what may normally take almost two weeks of bed rest is turned into two or three days. If you hard heavily damaged or critically damaged, you no longer suffer those massive medicae penalties; Critcal damage -4? A penalty of -40 to your medicae test (not including any other modifiers).

I would say it is still pretty darn useful.

As an dabbler in Medicae, the talent really helps float the teammates who need it. The guy sitting at -5 crits doesn't love to hear that he's beyond help, but a character without the Fieldcraft aptitude isn't going to get a roll much better than Int+Medkit-50.

If you have True Grit, it becomes pretty likely for you to sit between -1 and -5 after a rough combat.