There seems to be a bugaboo in the rules when it comes to studying when wounded. The Activities While Injured section on pg 178 has 3 catigories:
Wound Penalty -6 or greater: The character can talk, eat, move himself short distances given time and assistance. Productive activities (including study, Hermetic Lab work, and craft work) are impossible.
Wound Penalty -3 to -5: The character can walk, provided he is allowed to go slowly and take frequent rests. All long distance travel rates are halved. The character may study, but his Study Total is halved if he is at this level of penalty for one month or more of the season. Hermetic lab work and craft work are impossible.
Wound Penalty -1 or -2: The character can travel and study normally, but cannot undertake strenuous activities, including spells that cost Fatigue. Hermetic Lab work and craft work can be undertaken as normal.
Under the light of this thread, I see some questions I'd like to put to the community.
The mid level of injured says that if a character is this injured for ONE MONTH of the season he cannot do lab work at all, and is at half for studying. The actual Wound Penalty doesn't seem to be applied, instead this much larger penalty is applied. Maybe this is because the Wound Penalties are ment to apply to short actions, and a larger penalty is required for long drawn out actions. This seems to be a balancing situation, since it is so much harder to get large injuries in under this system. That is, under 4th you could take 4 Light wounds and be Incapacitated. Given what he has said, I suspect Ryce's mage would have be at that level at least under the old system. I also assume the worst level of wounds has the same caveat, or worse.
1] So is this a reasonable rule? It is the intention to balance the new nature of injuries (ie, that they don't stack up as badly)?
In Ryce's case, as the rules are written, he is actually injured half the season each season, much worse than just a month per season.
Even if it's ruled he isn't, Erik's suggestion that he might get a lab penalty along the lines of -1 for not sleeping well is a good one, but perhaps should be much higher.
2] The spell level to heal a Medium wound isn't tiny, about level 35, but is that the problem? Is there a higher level effect that would allow this half day healed solution?
3]The lowest level of injuries above says a mage so wounded studies "as normal", would this include the normal wound penalties as all actions get them?