Hello,

the Apothecary can choose the special ability "Enhanced Healing" at the start of his career path. This "restore 1d5 additonal Wounds with any successful Medicae Test for First Aid" (p. 69).

Now the questions: Does this although function for critial Damage (p. 102)?

Interpretation 1:

No. First Aid - Enhanced Healing - only heals wounds. Cricital damage are no wounds, but damage (critical damage). Therefore Frist Aid can only heal one critical damage, but Enhanced Healing no additonal critical damage.

Interpretation 2:

Yes, First Aid -Enhanced Healing- heals damage. On page 102 (Medicae) they only talke about damage, not about wounds.

I prefere Interpretation 1 (I am GM). It´s a lilttel bit harder, but if you leg is blown off you are near death, even as a space marine. I fear that with Interpreation 2 the characters might get multiple critical damage (every time healed up to above 0) and keep going while there body is falling appart around them. :-)

What do you think?

First some corrections.

Critical damage (the stuff which cannot be healed by fate points etc.) is the damage effects of the crit level. Such as fatigue, blood loss, limb loss, knock-down, etc. Critical wounds (essentially negative wounds) are similar to normal wounds for healing (except for damage levels: light, heavy, critical). You can heal critical wounds with first aid and healing effects, but critical damage requires more specialized treatment (such as surgery to reattach a body part etc.).

Currently in DW you use first aid once to attempt to heal all damage, any wounds you didn't heal remains lost until they can be healed naturally. If heavily or critically wounded this can be bad. 1 test and you go from -5 wounds to -4. This is where netharciums and other talents come into play. When using a netharcium to treat space marines the threshold for considering the patient as lightly wounds goes to 3 times TB (instead of 2x). so a TB 10 character with 22 wounds is still "lightly" wounded to a netharcium up to -8 wounds. If an apothecary treated him and healed 12 wounds from -8 the character would now have 4 wounds, still lightly damaged for the space marine's natural healing (2 wounds is his normal heavy threshold), but the only way he can get back the remaining 18 wounds is through natural healing.

So for your question: enhanced healing is applied to the medical tests even if healing critical wounds, but all the normal conditions apply. If not considered lightly wounded the character still only heals 1 even with enhanced healing but the actual damage effects from critical damage are not healed (just the negative wounds).

According to page 250, wound serve as a threshold. As soon as his damage is higher than this threshold be gets critical damage. "Each time a character suffers critical damage, he also suffers one or more critical effects."

Therefore I would argue, that in the example above (TB10; use of netharcium; 22 Wounds) the character is considered lighty damage up to 0 wounds, but starting at -1 he has critical damage (and in addition critical effect of the damage).

This would put him with 30 damage at -4 (22 Wounds; 8 Critical damage halved by True Grit). Now the apothecary is healing him for 1 point to -3 (and the Question: also +1d5 more for Enhanced Healing???)

To make it easier 2nd example:

22 Wounds; TB6; netharcium; 30 Damage

=> -12 Wounds; halfed by true grit to -6 Wounds

This character is not lightly damage (would be for +2 Wounds).

He would be heavily damage for 0-2 Wounds (Healing 1 point by first aid +1d5 from enhanced healing)

For -x damage he is critical damaged (Healing 1 point by first aid and the Question: also +1d5 more for Enhanced Healing???)

No the +1d5 does not come into account unless the person is lightly damaged.

Crit Damage is healed 1 point at a time, period, if they are not being counted as lightly wounded.

Unless the person damaged has Hardy or the 3x TB rule has them counting as being lightly wounded, in which case yes the +1d5 comes into effect.

And if a Marine with TB 10 has 22 wounds he can take 30 points of damage and still be counted as lightly wounded for the purposes of being healed by a Medic with his Netharcium.

If the Marine has Hardy then he is always lightly wounded period, no matter what amount of damage he has sustained for the purposes of healing, meaning if he is at -5 crit damage and a Medic heals him the Medic heals what ever he rolls on his test +1d5 from his Medic special ability.

Sounds good.

I think I will try it that way.

Thanks

No the +1d5 does not come into account unless the person is lightly damaged.

Crit Damage is healed 1 point at a time, period, if they are not being counted as lightly wounded.

Unless the person damaged has Hardy or the 3x TB rule has them counting as being lightly wounded, in which case yes the +1d5 comes into effect.

And if a Marine with TB 10 has 22 wounds he can take 30 points of damage and still be counted as lightly wounded for the purposes of being healed by a Medic with his Netharcium.

If the Marine has Hardy then he is always lightly wounded period, no matter what amount of damage he has sustained for the purposes of healing, meaning if he is at -5 crit damage and a Medic heals him the Medic heals what ever he rolls on his test +1d5 from his Medic special ability.

Hey, thanks Balenorn for the excellent and concise sumary. I might have confused the OP by describing the entire process. Your explanation cut to the heart of his continuing confusion. Well done.