So I am going through the rules in anticipation of introducing a few friends to the game and I am puzzled by the healing rules.  The rules say:

Healing works exactly opposite of harm: if someone rolls an ability check to get rid of your harm (First Aid and Counsel could do this, for example), it removes the harm you have corresponding to their success level, or the highest harm you have if their success level is higher. If all your harm is of a higher level than their success level, nothing is healed. The harm does not shake out afterwards and one character can only attempt to heal your character once in a scene.

Yeah, it's intentional. Not that healing during BDtP would be that smart anyway, considering how you'd only be removing one level of Harm, which can be easily resuffered next turn.

Thanks for the quick answer.  guess it makes sense now that you put it that way.

Healing in BDtP ist best done from your own Pools; at best at lower harm levels to ensure the benefits of harm shake out.

„Uuuh, it looked bad; but it's just a flesh wound.”

Also Secrets, the click-n-lock of fantasy gaming:

Secret of Combat Medic
The character may use an unrelated action to heal another character in BDtP, using his own Pools to pay in the manner of natural healing. The character also needs a level of success in an appropriate Ability per level of Harm healed (so a simple success is enough for healing just one level at once, two levels for two and so on).

Combine that with

Secret of Wolverine: the regeneration
The character is a hardy son-of-a-bitch, like Wolverine. The player may roll an appropriate Ability (Endure for the most part) as discount for any natural healing expenditures. Cost: 1 Vigor per roll.

and you're cookin', as far as being a combat healer is concerned. Of course, I fail to understand why anybody would want to be a combat medic when they could get:

Secret of Wolverine: the claws
The character has snicker-snack claws of adamantium growing out of his hands. Secret of Imbuement may be applied to them.

and

Secret of Wolverine: the hairdo
The character has Wolverine's hairdo, lines and accent. Requirement: Nobody else in the campaign has this Secret.

(Yes, we should have a Secret free-association game on the forums, thanks for asking.)

After reading the original post again, it occurred to me that you might also be misinterpreting slightly: the harm shaking thing in the text does not refer specifically to in-combat healing, it just means that merely healing somebody does not shake harm down, from up above the healed level. Doing healing in combat does not affect the post-combat shakedown in any way (which is a minor benefit of doing combat healing).

This may be less pertinent to you TSOY 2nd edition folks, where Harm does complex things like "shake out", but I should point out that we've had a homebrew Secret for a while where we've applied Secret of Imbuement to healing equipment and items, effectively providing a "weapon" which deals additional healing (a healer's kit, an herbalist's garden, a special salve, etc etc.). In TSOY 1st ed, this has meant that you effectively heal an additional point of damage for everyone, as healing checks were always about removing a number of points of Harm equal to the SL of the check. Like any imbuement, you could apply a +2 for more specific healing (i.e. only healing ratkin, only healing women), and a +3 for highly specific healing (only healing the wounds of Philipe the Dawn-Breaker).

Not being super clear on how damage is applied in TSOY 2nd ed, you might find something like that useful, or it might end up being overpowered by comparison to its 1st edition usage, which makes it fairly versatile, balanced, and a nice thing to have if you're the character who's all about First-Aid, or Counsel, or what have you.

-shadowcourt (aka josh)