I can see the reasoning there, definitely. And a GM is of course free to run his game how he likes it; every play group enjoys slightly different takes on the same rules, and I'm pretty sure every gaming group that's ever played has used house rules, whether consciously or not! But as I said earlier, I don't think this "alternate reading" is at all a valid interpretation of the rules.

In narrative terms, a character can "tend to" another's wounds whenever he wishes in whatever manner he wishes. What is, however, suggested by one reasonable reading of the rules is that (under normal circumstances) a week must pass before this can have the mechanical effect of actually eliminating the wounds.

I think this may be getting a little too pedantic for me. I will quote chapter 6 and say, that it's "enough [for me] to know that actions may take a few minutes, hours, days, or weeks (or any other amount of time)," and that dice results very often are meant to play an integral part in determining that timing process. The time required for the check to be resolved in whole is part and parcel of the "mechanical effect." It's not like you roll a skill check and then everything is wrapped up in the narrative instantaneously. The narrative should involve interpretation of the dice results in a sensible way, including how much time a task takes to perform.

For example, a character could suffer, say, the "Crippled" critical injury resulting in increased difficulty of all checks involving the affected limb until the injury is healed. A medic is free to describe himself as "tending to" the wound as soon as he wishes in whatever fashion he wishes.

However, as you just suggested, this does not always mean that any mechanical result would immediately follow. Indeed, the rules arguably imply that the medic can't actually do anything to eliminate the aforementioned penalty to checks involving the limb until at least a week has passed. i.e. He has to wait that long before he can mechanically (and not just narratively) attempt to heal the injury. Everything he does in the interim is only "fluff". And when he eventually does make the check, you can then describe it as representing the culmination of a week of effort to mend a serious injury that required significant recovery time.

I think it's kind of reaching to say that this is what was meant by the phrase "per week" in the rules for healing Critical Injuries. It's pretty apocryphal, and IMO not conducive to enjoyable roleplaying.

Further, such a divorce between the "narrative" and the "mechanical" is not well supported by this rules system. Indeed, it's a very simple system with no clear delineation between what, exactly, is narrative and what is mechanical. The simplicity is thus: when you wish to perform a given task,

1) You assemble and roll a dice pool, and

2) You interpret the dice results.

Interpreting the results includes how much time and resources it takes to perform a given task, which could be a very long time (again, page 197 EotE, second paragraph under Narrative and Structured Gameplay gives us some insight). This is especially valid in this instance, since certain dice results could feasibly reduce or prolong the time it takes to perform the medicine check.

And if a character must wait a week to perform the Medicine check because it would take a week to perform the task, and then Threat shows up and the GM says it takes 2 more days, then you're gonna have a weird situation where, once again, no mechanical effect can take place for 2 more days even though you've rolled the dice, but there aren't going to be any more dice rolled for that skill check because technically the outcome has already been decided. And at that point, the question could be asked, "Why the hell couldn't I have just rolled the dice at the beginning of the narrative week and then we played it out the way the dice said? If we have to wait two more days to resolve the thing anyway?" It kinda strains the suspension of disbelief.*

Finally, I will refer to my earlier post addressing what I think is the most reasonable reading of the rules, and not make those arguments again

*Either that, or you could attribute it to a rift in the space-time continuum; but frankly, I just don't think that is a very Star Warsy concept

Can't take the rule lawyering and sentence parsing anymore, just went ahead and submitted a question to put a stake through the heart of this thread.

caption: Darth Maul running Qui-Gon through with his lightsaber.

Aww, c'mon man...

Sorry, this thread is as bad as that recent one about soak, just can't take it.....

In my own game I've been limiting it to a single crit healed per week even with medicine checks, so that they have to take some more down time and eat through more of their supplies.

I like this...contributes to a bit more of a gritty setting. I dunno if I would have the cheek to try it out on my players, since I am pretty heavy-handed with damage...but I think it could work well as a house rule at the start of a campaign. It's a good way to tell your players, "If you get in a lot of fights, there's a good chance that you will die sooner rather than later."

I require crits be healed in order of severity with most severe first to simulate triage. If the check fails no more attempts can be made to simulate while someone is suffering a cardiac issue you don't operate on a compound fracture. I also require the medicine skill for heal checks on criticals and not just high intellect to simulate you may be a phd in 18th century Russian literature but you aren't doing an emergency trach on me....

Got Sam's answer. You can roll to heal crits immediately and again in a week. Ill post the full reaponse to kaosoe for the pinned thread when I'm done with comicon.

Got Sam's answer. You can roll to heal crits immediately and again ib a week. Ill post the full reaponse to kaosoe for the pinned thread when I'm done with comicon.

Thanks for taking the time, 2P.