As I've seen a lot of people here, just as I myself, have been very confused about critical damage and healing, I took a while and read through the core book a bit more thorough. Here goes..

On the subject of Damage (p. 250) , in the last section it states "As long a Character's total Damage is equal to or less than his Wounds, his body still functions normaly. If a character's Damage ever exceeds his Wounds, he begins to take Critical Damage ."

On the Medicae skill (p. 102) , under the First Aid section, it states first aid can be applied once and will heal your Intelligence bonus on Lightly injured characters but only ONE point on Heavily or Critically injured characters.

The Enhanced Healing special ability (p. 69) states an Apothecary may restore an additional 1d5 wounds with any successful Medicae Test for First Aid.

While the Narthecium (p. 173) states that it "raises the threshold for which the patient is considered Lightly Damaged to 3 times his Toughness Bonus and doubles the amount of damage healed by first aid", the Damage section already states that once you exceed your wounds you take critical damage and aren't working properly. Hence this is just for characters with low toughness or many wounds.

Detailed Summary:

So, no matter your toughness bonus, how many wounds you have or anything else, once you exceed your wounds you take Critical Damage. You are Critically damaged and your natural healing doesn't apply anymore. Also the Apothecary must, despite any tools he is using, heal you as though Critically Damaged.

Now, how much is that? Normally 1, but with a Narthecium it's double that meaning 2. The Enhanced healing states you may restore an additional 1d5 wounds with any successful Medicae test for First Aid which means you roll Medicae, succeed = Heal 1. You're using a Narthecium so it's double that for 2 points healed. Then you add your special ability which states "an additional 1d5" and roll that for a total of 3-7 points healed.

Short Summary:

Critical is ALWAYS critical.

With enhanced healing and narthecium you heal 2+1d5 critical damage.

On another note, remember that resting a full day while lightly damaged heals your full toughness bonus. A full week while heavily damaged also heals your full toughness bonus.

Also note that Extended Care heals Critical Injuries by 2 points PLUS one for each degree of Success each week. This really removes a lot of "downtime" on a good roll. Enjoy

You, good sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.

Critical damage doesn't always mean 'critically damaged'. If you chose to play it that way that's fine, it's just not my interpretation. There are two talents that I know of, Hardy and Autosanguine, that say when healing the character is considered lightly damaged (they even go so far as to say always considered lightly damaged).

If the talents above don't help when taking critical damage as you suggest their value is greatly diminished. Unless I missed a change somewhere these two talents allow characters to sidestep the 'critically damaged' threshold altogether. While still taking critical damage they can be patched up remarkably fast (which can, will, and does save their lives).

Next to True Grit which reduces critical damage Hardy and Autosanguine are two of the most valuable talents for keeping combat characters up (assuming you have competent medics on hand).

Marine bob just got his arm blown off (7crit) while he is down after passing his check and not dieing out right the medic patches him up and sends him back into the fight. Hardy and Autosanguine let you do this.

Critically Damaged (p. 262): " A character is Criticaly Damaged whenever he has taken Damage in excess of his Wounds ." So, yeah, actually once you take critical damage you are critically damaged.

Also note that " Critical Damage does not heal on its own ".

Auto-Sanguine (p.113): … "these miniscule machines repair minor injuries and speed healing. When applying healing the character is always considered Lightly Damaged and heals at an increased rate, removing 2 points of Damage per day."

Considering it states it repairs minor injuries it's quite clear this doesn't involve critical hits. Also note that there is a difference betwen healing and first aid (and even extended care).

Auto-sanguine allows you to heal at 2 points a day, even when normally heavily damaged (which should be 1/week) so it is indeed a good skill. One might argue that it should also have added another modifier or simply doubled toughness bonus for a days rest as well, but it doesn't say anything about that. As for criticals, since you are not healing anything while critically damaged, this talent isn't helping.

Also note that an Apothecary not using a narthecium would NOT treat a heavily damaged space marine as lightly damaged, since this trait only covers healing (which could be described as natural healing for easier understanding).

Hardy (p. 119): …"When undergoing medical treatment or healing from injuries, the Character recovers Damage as if Lightly Damaged".

Hardy on the other hand allows an apothecary to apply First aid as if the patient was Lightly Damaged.

He would also heal 1/day despite being heavily damaged, but not while critically damaged as the "natural healing" is removed in those cases.

However, interestingly enough, since Extended care should count as a medical treatment, I believe that you could probably heal such a patient with extended care, as if he was lightly injured despite having critical damaged. I'm pretty sure it's not intended like that, but rule wise it suggests this is the case.

This would mean a patient with the Hardy talent would be healed as if lightly injured if treated for a full day, despite being critically injured. If, of course, the full days rest is ensured AND the Medicae roll is made successfully.

I disagree with Enhanced Healing. Damage in the Critical levels is not Wounds. Everything from maximum Wounds to zero Wounds is "Wounds," everything below is not. I am fine with allowing 2 crit to be healed with proper Talents and gear, but I feel like allowing up to 7 crit to be healed that way is inappropriate and removes the actual threat of Critical Damage, while also not being consistent with the rules on Wounds.

Kshatriya said:

Well, you don't heal the chopped arm, or levels of fatigue. Just the Wounds lost. The way first aid is done now, going that far into crit is going to mean you won't get very far up your wound tally when healed with first aid.

As for Netharcium, I'm going to say it does indeed allow the apothecary to heal critical wounds as if lightly damaged. It is a super-advanced diagnostic and medical treatment device in use by a super-intelligent highly trained healer on a soldier with a gene-enhanced super-human physiology. Going from 5 crit to 8 wounds (out of 20-22 for a starting marine) isn't really doing that much of a favor to the marine, the first big thing that sneezes his way is gonna put him right back into crit. Not to mention any affects from the crit result still apply even if his wounds are healed (fatigue, armor damage, lost limbs, half-actions, etc.).

If you can treat a heavily damaged patient as lightly damaged then you can treat a critically damaged patient as lightly damaged as well, the rules for both heavy and critical and how they work with first aid are in the same sentance and function identically (page 102). In other words if you can't treat critical wounds as light wounds then you can't treat heavy wounds as light wounds either, and all those talents and wargear to that effect have no function in the game.

Thats not to say a character in critical wounds isn't really, just a character with certain tools or talents (like a netharcium) treats his wounds as light if they meet the criteria.

The basic rules for medicae and first aid are just that, basic rules. These are the rules you follow if you simply meet or fulfill the basic requirements. Lounging around for natural healing, applying first aid if you have the skill, etc. Once you start bringing in advanced tools or talents you are modifying the basic rules, so now the skill works in a different way. Similar to a character with counter-attack: normally you can't attack an enemy back after parrying, but if you got that talent you can.

herichimo said:

Marines heal Fatigue fast, stim-loaded armor aside.

Getting back from 5 crit to 8 Wounds…okay, then spend 2 Fate and you're at full Wounds, and you get those Fate back next game session.

Way too easy. And Lightly/Heavily Wounded is all non-crit damage, so if you want the Narthe to treat a Critically-damaged Marine as if Lightly Wounded, as if Critical Damage numbers are, in effect, also Wounds for the purposes of Light.Heavy damage threshholds…well, ok, but realize that that's not an application of the game RAW, that's a house rule, as Heavily Wounded ends the moment you're in crits and the critically Wounded rules start to apply.

Not RAW?

Even when the items rules specifically state a marine is considered lightly wounded up to 3 times his toughness bonus, its still not RAW?

Sounds pretty RAW to me.

(Ma-haan! Tough Luck to you guys with high toughness bonuses, you get nothing while those low TB guys get a nice break!)

And what are critical numbers if not negative wounds? If critical damage ?numbers? aren't wounds then first aid rules don't apply, and the whole point is moot. As an apothecary has just got to heal each crit number (which isn't a wound?) until the marine has 0 crit 'numbers' and is no longer critically damaged then use normal first aid. Vooderbahr! If crit damage numbers aren't wounds then this is what would be RAW.

For the doubters:
Errata states first aid can be used to heal any number of 'untreated wounds' all with one test. Main rulebook states First Aid "removes Damage… …or 1 Damage from heavily or critically damaged characters." The last statement mentions nothing about Wounds, check it on page 102.
IF Critical damage (?numbers?) are actually not wounds, then the errata method of first aid (i.e. treating any number of 'untreated wounds' in one go and you're left with whats left) as, by RAW, only works on "wounds". THEN, since the First Aid ability states a successful medicae tests removes 1 critical damage (assuming its not 'wounds') you may take as many First Aid tests as you wish until you reach 0 wounds.

Perhaps you should re-address what the terms "game session" means. We have determined it means a specific mission, unless there is sufficient down-time mid-mission to warrant fate point return (as well as healing). Or perhaps you should scale up the encounters a bit (not rediculously so - not EVERY one of the "20 ork nobs in that 100 ork mob" is going to have BOTH a power claw AND a big choppa). But, I would also be remiss if I didn't mention the fate point thing is an ability a space marine has, as is his crazy enhanced biology.

On the issue of measuring game sessions that herichimo raises, calling it as one mission either gimps abilities, solo modes, and talents that say "once per session" or buffs those same things that say "once per mission". A game session per the rules is every time we play: 7:30 Sunday nights. So if a mission only takes one Sunday night session, then you only get one load of fate points and one use of those abilities that say once per session. If a mission takes four Sundays, then you get four loads of fate points and four uses of those abilities- one set per session, only usable during that session.

Gaire said:

And thats all up to you and your GM on how to figure what it means. If your one game session is only 20 minutes of game time (for whaterver reasons) your GM might, quite understandably, decide you don't get your fate points back in the next session. In an RPG, many things are relative - they don't follow "per the rules" or "RAW" as other parts of the game, which is why there is a storyteller to dtermine how those things work.

Okay, fair point.

I don't think the question is really where the thresholds are, it's whether the 1d5 bonus healing applies…personally I'm going to continue with my interpretation that it does not apply at Critical Damage, because IMO it makes things far too easy and makes critical damage as a dangerous number laughably impotent, questions of dismemberment aside.

I think in common parlance "game session" means "the interval of time wherein a group of people is physically gathered together to play a game." Granted a lot of gaming occurs online these days, but the baseline conceit is a given face-to-face evening at the table is a "session." THough this definition works better for Fate being an "oh crap" button in DH where you have 3 at best at chargen, versus Deathwatch where you can start with 5 and have a conditional "bonus one per mission" with the right armor history.

Autosanguine also makes you "always Lightly Wounded," and I don't the intent of that low-level Talent is to make Apothecaries and (Throne fordbid) Techmarines even more unkillable by allowing normal healing rules to remove critical damage..

the 1d5 should apply as it states on any successful First Aid. Since you can roll a first aid to remove critical damage (though without bonuses or anything you will only remove 1 point) the +1d5, according to rules, should apply.

As for "always Lightly Damaged" when looking at Auto-Sanguine, it says that counts for Healing. Healing and First aid treatment is not the same thing. Unless you have a magical priest with magical healing divine powers, healing is simply the amount you regenerate normally. Auto-Sanguine states you heal faster than normal, and count as lightly damaged. This is because a heavily damaged person heals 1/week, while a lightly damaged person heals 1/day. With auto-sanguine you count as lightly damaged instead of heavily damaged and heal at an increased rate of 2 points a day instead of just one. The description also mentions healing minor injuries and critical injuries are obviously not minor injuries.

This is not some kind of Regeneration, it's just a better daily healing.

As for lightly wounded up to three times your toughness bonus, that's not what it says. It says it increases the Threshold, which Yes, in a way could mean that lightly wounded is up to three times your toughness bonus, but as critical damage states that once you are above your wound threshold you are criticaly injured and thus you will heal like you are critically injured.

Basically, everyone needs to remember that you cannot simply remove two or three words out of a sentence and apply it at all times like it's a core rule law. By the same definition I could state that True Grit halves all damage if I just don't continue reading it.

Healing rules in this game are wide spread and kinda badly written, making it unclear unless you read all parts (who are spread out all around the book) but once you do it is pretty clear.

Interesting points.

I still think healing up to 7 Crit in one swoop is broken as all hell.

Well, that's a whole other story but since it's based around d10's it's either a d5, a d10 or intelligence bonus healed so not many other options for it. It still won't bring back limbs and such, and it's just 20% chance they heal 7. Also remember that once you have been treated with First Aid the rest of the damage is "Treated" and you can't make another First aid check on it so, if the battle isn't over and you're still in enemy territory, or similar, you will most likely not be able to remove the rest of the damage without weeks of rest.

To remove just one point of critical damage after the first aid test would require a full week of Extended Care , which means sit around doing nothing straining, no combat or anything. Ambush on day 4 = start over, if you survived the combat starting with 1 or more criticals.

And even IF you manage to, with the First Aid roll, end up removing all critical damage, the rest of the damage will count as treated and only heal by itself. This means, at most your Toughness Bonus for a full days rest (even with Hardy OR Auto-Sanguine). Do you have a full day to rest in this particular area or do you need to move? If you have to move, then it's just 1/day (or two for Auto-Sanguine).

Unless of course you count as Heavily damaged in which the case would be your Toughness bonus for a full weeks rest, or 1/week if you need to be on the move.

More than once I've lost more or less my full amount of wounds in one strike, so starting one of those battles already damaged would've brought me back to critical in seconds, if I even would have survived…

So, healing isn't all that powerful, unless you let it be

Anyone with any Critical Damage is indeed "Critically Damaged." I personally hold this to override the Narthecium's ability (I was the team Apothecary when we were playing and that is how I used it). However, Critical Damage (but not effects of injuries) I held to essentially be negative wounds. You healed them like wounds with First Aid etc (expect of course you were capped by the limits for healing Critical Damage). Hardy and Autosanguine did override the Critical Damage status for this purpose (which makes them good talents… otherwise they are not that interesting, at least to Space Marines, and certainly to Space Marines with an Narthecium). I personally feel that fits with the healing rules as read in Dark Heresy (which is the rulebook I have read the most… but I will admit I had never noticed the "do not recover without medical attention" bit, not that that changes any of how I have actually played the game).

Actually reading it carefully you do not take "wounds." You take damage. It just has a different status as you have damage over certain levels of your wound total. Damage over your wound total is "Critical Damage." You also remove damage, not heal wounds. However, there is confusion on the whole "every wound is only can be healed once thing". Personally I hold it to be "If you are healed to a certain level, that is the maximum you can be healed to by first aid if you are damaged again", and I think the approach seems to supported by a number of game elements, but it could mean you keep track of every wound (ie discrete amount suffered in a single attack), but that would make good healing a bit busted.

The "healing damage" point seems to have been missed with FFG, due to the way they errated "Fate Point Healing" - ie, you continue to suffer Critical Damage, but you gain a number of Wounds back, leaving at a slightly odd position on the "health track", if you like. Not that is surprising as Dark Heresy refers to Fate Points recovering wounds, when, if it was to remain consistent with the healing and Medicae rules, it should have said "removes 1d5 damage."

Looking at the description of the Narthecium I realise I may have been wrong. Strictly speaking it raises the threshold at which you are considered "Lightly Damaged." This could be intepreted to mean include into the "Critically damaged" zone. Not that I would. I don't have a problem with the whole thing of healing up to 7 critical damage in one Medicae check, or using Fate Points to then make yourself not Critically Damaged again (or with Hardy and Autosanguine applying to Critical Damage), but I do feel that would reduce Critcal Damage to next to nothing. And its not like the ruleset has been very tightly written in the first place.

113, you're forgetting that if you're healed from Crit to 0 Wounds or above using the Narthecium, you can then spend as many Fate as you want to heal those Wounds back to full. There's no limit on how many Fate you can spend to heal Wounds, as the rule of "1 First Aid treatment per damage incident" does not apply to the Fate-healing rule.

So, um…

Am I the only one that thinks that this thread has totally failed to end confusion re: Healing?

.113 said:

Autosanguine says the character is considered lightly damaged, and Hardy says as if lightly damaged. Both talents accomplish the same feat though worded differently…ignoring the character's damage state and substituting lightly damaged in its place when applying healing or receiving medical treatment (this should be read as medical attention since 'treatment' isn't defined).

One's natural 'healing' (removal of damage) can be sped up by rest, medical attention, and a few psychic powers. First aid qualifies as medical attention as do some psychic powers. Furthermore, medical attention can either speed up or provide a means for immediate recovery (first aid does this).

How does it work?

'Critical' damage (read as damage and not effects) is damage, and is removed the same as any other damage to lightly damaged characters. The thresholds define how quickly damage is removed not the damage itself.

As to the point of overlapping damage states, lightly damaged/heavily damaged/critically damaged. I would use the following:

critically damaged > heavily damaged < lightly damaged

What does it means?

When damage exceeds wounds one is considered critically damaged even if they would otherwise fall under another state, unless explicitly stated otherwise (autosanguine and hardy). A character is heavily damaged when one is neither lightly damaged nor critically damaged. A character is lightly damaged if they have taken two times their toughness bonus or less in damage (Narthecium increases this threshold to three times).

It is possible for one to never be heavily damaged (high TB/low wounds and/or Narthecium). One would move instead directly into the critically damaged state from being lightly damaged.

Well, I'm not out for house ruling but more to get a clear idea of what is the real rules. With some luck I'll get an official reply from FFG as I now asked them about this, as I'm sure it'll be a problem/affect other games as well. It would be nice to have clear rules as to what is supposed to happen and what isn't. I agree this didn't end the discussion, I can only read and quote the book and if people still interpret the rules differently there's just not much more to be said. Most arguments are just a few words torn from sentences so they don't really work as proper argument in my eyes, but some are valid points and despite this it won't change anything until we get an official clarification.

cheers