One of the players in my group was critically damaged by our psyker exploding. (Bloody psykers, right?) Her toughness was halved, which sucks for a guardswoman. The damage is the level 7 body effect for energy: "The intense power of the energy attack cooks the target's organs, burning his lungs and heart with intense heat. The target is Stunned for 2d10 Rounds and reduces his Toughness by half (round down)."

Is there any way to remove this halved toughness? Say, with bionic lungs? There don't seem to be any rules on the subject. For the blinded effects it seems pretty obvious that a cybernetic eye removes the condition, but there aren't specific rules for that either. However, this attack says it cooks organs, plural... which concerns me.

There's no rules in the books explicitly covering this situation that I know of, no. But in my game, I would definitely allow the stat to be returned to normal once bionic replacements have been installed for both the heart and lungs. It's only fair and, as you pointed out, there's precedent for other negatives inflicted from grounds to be negated with bionic replacements.

From the Core Rulebook, under 'Characteristic Damage' on page 200: "Unless otherwise specified, Characteristic Damage is never permanent and you recover lost points at a rate of one each hour".

The effect you quoted mentions nothing about the characteristic damage being permanent, so...

I guess the halved Toughness is there to represent the fact that the character's body might die from something else, being unable to defend itself normally (i.e, Blood Loss, etc...) until it can be healed

Burning Heretic said:

Awesome, this is exactly what I was looking for. Many MANY thanks!