I do now remember a big discussion on the WOTC forums about voluntary heroic accepting of an affliction for some immediate benefit...
Although I also recall the concept of the wound that never heals and tends to reopen on you as part of your character which is sort of a mythic idea alah Lancelot.
There would be a surgery Martial Practice level 4 for removing lesser afflictions caused by weapon attacks ... and mayhaps a ritual for doing ones caused by spell effects LOL
Although it one has the time one should be able to let it fade by disease track
I would say that using such a thing would mean you get to use your MP/Ritual in place of the victim's usual recovery check. So, you basically cure them of one level of affliction. They may not be ENTIRELY recovered, but they'll be better off. You could also rule that instead of being in place of the usual check that it is an EXTRA check, so it would possibly speed their cure a whole bunch.
That could keep the wound a more serious concept and less of an easy throw money at it.... depending on how long between the application of surgery or ritual you had to wait to help further.
Yeah, you could have less serious wounds have shorter check intervals and lesser penalties. So a 'broken toe' might be a fairly modest thing, with 2 points in its track. One that is initial, where you're say slowed, and another where you just get -1 to speed. You start with the worse of the two, and a heal check can cut you back to the first one (IE you splinted the damned thing and put some padding in your boot, now you just limp a bit). A 'remove affliction' could then push that to the 'cured' state, or you can wait a day and use heal again (maybe you ice it up and get the swelling down and its essentially better).
A more severe wound "foot crushed" might have week or even month interval recovery rolls, and much more severe penalties, and 3 sections on its track. A ritual that cuts that down by one severity level would be pretty NICE!
I am still envisioning pretty abstracted LOL
I think the advantage of using disease mechanics is you really can make it pretty detailed if you want. Where ordinary conditions are just binary, and in 4e normally very ephemeral, afflictions are (potentially) durable and can exist in various states, so you can add a little depth to the experience.
I think if something is pretty trivial, then it should be a condition. If its just going to be 'slowed because your toe is sore' for the rest of the fight, well, that isn't really much of a wound! I guess that could be the most mild sort of 'payment'.
Speaking of injuries and on going effect what i just described is a injury that the hero is forcing themselves to ignore most of the time not necessarily so for NPCs
It seems that martial powers would be even more suited to be demi-perminant impairment against non-heroic adversaries... ie Let the hamstring or hobbling attack cause slowing till the injury is removed for those higher level "martial controller" powers...