Healing
Characters need time to heal once they’ve been beaten
to a pulp. Some supernatural creatures have other ways to
heal, but human characters rely on time and medical care to
set broken bones and heal bullet wounds.
A character heals her rightmost Health box at the rate
indicated below. The healing time is enough for the wound to
fully recover; lethal damage doesn’t downgrade into bashing.
Normally, a character can heal without medical attention,
though use of the Medicine Skill helps her recover (see below)
The only exception is if a character has all her Health
boxes full of lethal damage — she’s bleeding out. She can’t
recover from that without urgent medical attention and
emergency surgery.
Wounds recover at the following rates:
- Bashing: One point per 15 minutes
- Lethal: One point per two days
- Aggravated: One point per week
Medical Care
The Medicine Skill can be used to speed up healing.
Medical care is an extended action, requiring successes equal to
the total number of points of damage suffered by the patient. In
the field or ER, the dice pool is Dexterity + Medicine, and the
interval is one minute. In long-term hospital care, the pool is
Intelligence + Medicine, and the interval is one hour. Usually,
any Conditions from a failure afflict the patient rather than
the caregiver, but this is at Storyteller discretion.
Achieving sufficient successes restores one Health point
lost to bashing damage, in addition to any healing that the
character already does under his own power.
Round-the-clock, intensive care diminishes a patient’s
injuries, downgrading the nature of wounds by one degree.
Thus, a lethal wound can be downgraded to bashing, and
an aggravated wound can be downgraded to lethal. Such
treatment can occur only in a hospital or other intensive-care
facility. An extended Intelligence + Medicine roll is made.
The number of successes required is five for a lethal wound
and 10 for an aggravated one. Each roll requires an hour.
This kind of treatment always focuses on the worst of
the patient’s injuries first. Thus, an aggravated wound is
downgraded to lethal before a lethal wound is downgraded
to bashing. No more than one wound can be downgraded
per day of treatment.
Note that this treatment does not eliminate wounds. It
simply minimizes them. A patient must heal downgraded
injuries completely by himself or receive other treatment to
eliminate them.