Minimum Difficulty for Mother's Touch?

Question

Mother's touch has a sliding difficulty, which uses the current rage, as shown here:

The player spends one Gnosis point and rolls Intelligence + Empathy (difficulty is the target’s current Rage, or 5 for those with no Rage). Each success heals one level of lethal, bashing, or aggravated damage. ¹

Now, let's assume the pack's healer picks up the totally de-raged Ahroun after the battle (or in the battle) for a heal. The current rage of the Ahroun is 0, but he has a Rage-stat. Because there is a Rage-stat it is most definitely not against a difficulty of 5, which is for healing someone without like a Coyote or Kinfolk. But there can't be a 0 difficulty... so what is the difficulty now?!

A similar problem would be 1 Rage left because 1 is still the automatic failure/cancel a success number on a d10 under the system.

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1. W20 Core, p. 164

Answer 1

For a being that possesses Rage, the minimum is 2.

A difficulty number is always from 2 to 10 (and usually between 3 and 9).¹

Combining this with the gift specific rule, which states that the difficulty is the current rage, this solves the "1/0 Rage left" problem:

Mother's Touch is rolled against 2 or the current Rage, whichever is higher, as long as the being has Rage to begin with. Only for beings that have no Rage to begin with, it is 5.

Why not difficulty 5 for 0 temporary Rage?

This is based on the somewhat awkward wording of the gift itself:

5 for those with no Rage

That part is a little tricky: You could read it as "anyone with 0 current Rage", but that is not what is written in that sentence. But please reread what the two types of Rage are:

Rage is recorded in two forms on the character sheet. The dots indicate the character’s Rage rating — her permanent Rage. The second is the Rage pool, shown by the squares underneath. ²

The sentence in question uses not the "temporary Rage" (or its synonym "Rage pool") that was asked for in the previous half of the question - it just says "no Rage". Without the word temporary or pool, it is the Rage rating. Which is also called the permanent Rage, or just Rage in all other rules. Just compare it to the "Beast Within" rule:

For every point of Rage a character has above her Willpower rating, she loses one die on all social-interaction rolls. ³

As a result, only a being that doesn't have a Rage attribute (like Humans or Nuwisha) is meant by this.

This is reinforced by how the books describe capital-R-Rage as always being there, even on the best days and burning in the Garou without end - even when the temporary stat is 0.

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1. W20 Core, p. 234
2. W20 Core, p. 144
3. W20 Core, p. 145

Answer 2

You roll against their current Rage, not their permanent Rage.

On W20 Corebook p. 234, it says the following:

A difficulty number is always from 2 to 10 (and usually between 3 and 9).

The explicit text of the ability reads as follows, as you quoted it:

(difficulty is the target’s current Rage, or 5 for those with no Rage)

Since White Wolf uses natural language in the writing of its rules, this should be read as the following, using the usual rules of English grammar:

(difficulty is the target’s current Rage, or 5 for those with no [current] Rage)

The Gift specifies that you roll against the target character's current Rage, not their permanent Rage. That means that the relevant number is the number of unspent points of Rage. If your Ahroun has spent all of their points of Rage, then you roll against Difficulty 5; if they have 1 left, you roll against Difficulty 2 (the minimum).