Recovering from a Consequence

In order to regain the use of a consequence slot, you have to recover from the consequence . That requires two things—succeeding at an action that allows you to justify recovery, and then waiting an appropriate amount of game time for that recovery to take place. The action in question is an overcome action; the obstacle is the consequence that you took. If it’s a physical injury, then the action is some kind of medical treatment or first aid. For mental consequences, the action may involve therapy, counseling, or simply a night out with friends. The difficulty for this obstacle is based on the shift value of the consequence . Mild is Fair (+2), moderate is Great (+4), and severe is Fantastic (+6). If you are trying to perform the recovery action on yourself, increase the difficulty by two steps on the ladder.
Keep in mind that the circumstances have to be appropriately free of distraction and tension for you to make this roll in the first place—you’re not going to clean and bandage a nasty cut while ogres are tromping through the caves looking for you. GMs, you’ve got the final judgment call. If you succeed at the recovery action, or someone else succeeds on a recovery action for you, you get to rename the consequence aspect to show that it’s in recovery. So, for example, Broken Leg could become Stuck in a Cast, Scandalized could become Damage Control, and so on. This doesn’t free up the consequence slot, but it serves as an indicator that you’re recover ng, and it changes the ways the aspect’s going to be used while it remains. Whether you change the consequence's name or not—and sometimes it might not make sense to do so—mark it with a star so that everyone remembers that recovery has started.
Then, you just have to wait the time. • For a mild consequence , you only have to wait one whole scene after the recovery action, and then you can remove the aspect and clear the slot. • For a moderate consequence , you have to wait one whole session after the recovery action (which means if you do the recovery action in the middle of a session, you should recover sometime in the middle of next session). • For a severe consequence , you have to wait one whole scenario after the recovery action.

What Skill Do I Use For Recovery?

In Hearts of Steel, physical recovery can only happen through the use of a Lore stunt , which Zird the Arcane has taken. This makes physical fights dangerous and suggests that actual medical training is quite rare. For mental recovery, we use the Empathy skill. If you want it to be easier to help people recover physically, you could add it as a default action to a skill. Lore is a good default option, but we could see it as a function of Crafts, too. It might even be important enough in your game to add a Medic or Survival skill. Likewise, if you want to re strict access to mental recovery, make it an Empathy or Rapport stunt , rather than having it built in to a skill.
Cynere ended up with the severe consequence Nearly Gutted as the result of the fight. Back at the inn, Zird attempts to bandage up the cut. He has a stunt called, “Scholar, Healer” which allows him to use his Lore skill for recovery obstacles. He makes his Lore roll at a difficulty of Fantastic (+6) and succeeds.
This allows Cynere’s Nearly Gutted aspect to be renamed Bandaged and start the recovery process. After the next whole scenario, she’ll be able to erase that aspect from her sheet and use her severe consequence again in a subsequent conflict.