Tweaking Surges: Wounds

[Kingreaper]

I really love the mechanic of Healing Surges. But I get that a lot of people don't like them.

The thing is, a lot of the arguments against them are more based on the flavour than on the basic mechanic.

So here's an idea I was thinking about on how to tweak them:

For each 25% of your max HP you lose in any given encounter, you gain a wound. You have a limited number of wounds you can take before you're debilitated (can't be granted HP normally, and can't fight, pretty much crawling/being carried) based on your class and/or constitution.

The rate at which wounds recover is an explicitly variable thing. You can have them recover daily, or take weeks to fully heal.

Outside of combat you can rest up and restore your HP, but the wounds stay constant.

Most healing does nothing to wounds, so a Warlord would restore your HP, your will to fight, but do nothing for your wounds.

Some exceptions are obvious: Cure Light Wounds heals you 25% of your HP, and heals a wound. Cure Moderate Wounds heals 2 wounds, and 50% of HP. Etc.
However, as in 4e, Cure X Wounds would be a significant resource.
Healing a wound under this system is equivalent to surgeless healing in 4th edition.

How does this differ from Healing Surges? Primarily in the fact that you take wounds IMMEDIATELY from the damage, rather than using HS to restore yourself after the damage.

More importantly, the FEEL of the mechanic is different. By calling them "wounds" you make it obvious that HP are not wounds, per se, and by having them be permanent you show that a warlord isn't HEALING, but rather INSPIRING.

Crossposted from the WotC forums

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm not a huge fan of healing surges, but I apreciate the way the mechanic worked to make healing less of a 'burden.' And, I think more could be done with them. Maybe as a more generally usefule 'heroic surge' that works like a healing surge, action point, and/or heroic effort (1 to an encounter). Heck, other features could use a surge. For instance, a warlord might be able to let you take an extra action out of turn (as if you'd spent an action point) at the cost of an heroic surge. Or a barbarian might spend a surge to go into a rage, or a wizard might spend a surge to cast a particularly potent spell.

 

[Kingreaper]

The idea of Heroic Surges is an interesting one. The main possible problem with them is that, if you can spend them on lots of different things, it might be possible to run out in a single encounter, leading to 15 minute days.