[SR 4] Is Bloodsucking Only For Suckers?

[sabs]

pg 297 SR4A
magical damage from weapon foci, combat spells, critter/adept powers, or other magic may not be healed through Regeneration.

Certainly Drain counts as other magic.

[Stahlseele]

But now we need to know wether or not this counts for STUN or PHYSICAL Damage too . .
Because Regeneration is Magic. And MAGIC IS DUMB. Magic does not care HOW EXACTLY your Body got hurt. It knows THAT your body got hurt and does something about it . .

[Korwin]

pg 297 SR4A
magical damage from weapon foci, combat spells, critter/adept powers, or other magic may not be healed through Regeneration.

Certainly Drain counts as other magic.

Regernation is a 'Critter' Power.

[sabs]

That's part of the description OF Regeneration.

So Regeneration says it can't heal critter powers damage.

[Stahlseele]

Yes, but Regeneration does not deal any damage, which is what this sentence says.
If you had taken Damage through Regeneration, Regeneration would not be able to heal it.

[Korwin]

Sorry, dont know why I postet that...

But I too, remember Magic Drain damage as not healable from Regeneration.

I think we need the description of Drain Damage.
(Dont have my books with me.)

[Stahlseele]

Everybody has a brainfart now and then. Shows that there is a brain which can fart at least *snickers* ^^

[sabs]

The effort of manipulating mana can exhaust or even injure a magician. As mana is a form of energy, channeling greater quantities of that energy may strain the body and mind.

Most people would agree that Strain is Magical Damage.

[Stahlseele]

Drain:
The effort of manipulating mana can exhaust
or even injure a magician. As mana is a form of energy,
channeling greater quantities of that energy may
strain the body and mind. The effect of this strain
is referred to as Drain. Magical actions that cause
Drain have a Drain Value, much like a weapon’s
Damage Value.
All magicians use Willpower plus another
mental attribute appropriate to their tradition to
resist Drain. For example, most hermetic mages use
Willpower + Logic to resist all Drain while shamans
use Willpower + Charisma.
**
Salamander has just cast a manabolt and
must now resist the Drain (Drain Code 3). He’s a
hermetic mage, so he uses his Logic 5 in addition
to Willpower 3 to resist Drain. Rolling 8 dice, he
gets only 2 hits, so he suffers 1 box of Stun damage
from Drain.
**
The base Drain Value for Spellcasting is listed in
the spell’s description (see p. 195.) For Summoning
and Binding spirits, the Drain Value is twice the
number of hits (not net hits) generated by the spirit
during the Opposed Test.
Each hit on the Drain Resistance Test reduces
the Drain Value by one. Any remaining Drain is suffered
by the magician. Drain is usually Stun damage,
though there are situations in which it can be
transformed into Physical damage (see the Sorcery
and Conjuring sections).

Edit: and this was completely useless . .

[Username17]

The short answer is that the Regeneration rules aren't well thought out in SR4. See it used to be that Regeneration took you from dead to fine every 3 seconds and the only check on it was a 1 in 6 chance that your wounds were too horrible and you stayed down. That was the most horrendously powerful thing in the game and was batshit nutso, so various things got tried over the years to bring it into line. Of which far and away the most successful was changing it from your whole condition track to a die roll and some boxes every turn. But it accumulated a bunch of weird kludgy text, including that bullshit 1 in 6 roll from 1st edition.

So for SR4, whoever was porting it in got their dick stuck in the copypasta and moved over the Immunity to Normal Weapons restriction to Regeneration. Which doesn't really make a lot of sense, and in any case is almost impossible to figure out.

The bottom line of course is that Vampires should regenerate Drain damage and Vampires should be completely off fucking limits to player characters. No exceptions.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

At least as long stuff like Thrown Rocks do not count as Elemental(Earth) Damage.
Or Fire as Elemental(Fire) Damage.
Or Laser-Weapons as Elemental(Light).

[Fucks]

Most people would agree that Strain is Magical Damage.

What? No way.

[Stahlseele]

Straining a limb is not magical Damage.

[sabs]

Heh that was supposed to read: Most people would agree that Drain is Magical Damage

[Stahlseele]

Well, the cause may be magical at least, but the Damage is Stun or Physical . . This is a bit more complicated than it seems at first, i guess . .

[sabs]

Well, but all damage is stun or physical.

If I hit you with a Stun Bolt, That's stun damage, but you're not going to say it's not MAGICAL.

[Username17]

Well, but all damage is stun or physical.

If I hit you with a Stun Bolt, That's stun damage, but you're not going to say it's not MAGICAL.

Yeah, but Drain are wounds, not damage. Drain is "resisted", it is not soaked.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Thus the confusion. It's probably meant as a balancing thing, because Regenerating Drain Damage is hellishly overpowered, especially if you need to be overcasting for it to work.
On the other hand, this would make Magic intelligent and thus change the entire magical paradigm of the rules . .

[Fucks]

The consensus is: Drain Damage can be healed via spells and/ or natural healing, but not via Regeneration?

[Username17]

The consensus is: Drain Damage can be healed via spells and/ or natural healing, but not via Regeneration?

No. The consensus is that Drain cannot be healed by spells but that Regeneration is not deliberately or cogently enough written to determine whether it can or cannot be used to clean up Drain.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Under SR3 it was easy enough and simply worked . .

[Fucks]

The consensus is: Drain Damage can be healed via spells and/ or natural healing, but not via Regeneration?

No. The consensus is that Drain cannot be healed by spells but that Regeneration is not deliberately or cogently enough written to determine whether it can or cannot be used to clean up Drain.

I see.

The consensus is that Drain cannot be healed by spells

Does anyone have a page reference for this?

[Username17]

Under SR3 it was easy enough and simply worked . .

Until the regeneration rewrites started coming in. Critters and the Companion had their own incompatible writeup of the power, and at the end of the day (and the edition), no one knew what the fuck.

Does anyone have a page reference for this?

Sure:

Normally Drain cannot be healed by magical means, only by complete rest or mundane medical attention.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

In our 2E/3E campaign way, way back we used called shots to deal with regenerating critters. Blast it with lead until it went down, then the next PC one up would blow the critter's brains out. We usually didn't even roll for the 1 in 6 chance that the critter was already dead since after an unfortuante incident with a regenrating critter that played possum we left no enemy behind that had not gotten the "headshot treatment".

[Fucks]

Does anyone have a page reference for this?

Sure:

Normally Drain cannot be healed by magical means, only by complete rest or mundane medical attention.

-Username17