...but right now you're fighting through the pain and weariness to survive and that plus the fact that you've trained to do this allows you to ignore the minor injuries and pain. It's sorta like the same way a professional football player has to ignore minor injuries and still play at or close to the top of his game. It's only when you've been whittled down to your limit with minor injuries or suffer a major injury that you fall and can't go on.
But this is the exact opposite of what many folks upthread have considered hit points. They aren't treating hit points as minor injury, pain and fatigue, they're treating them as actual, describable, bleeding wounds. Imaro, you're actually pointing out a way of looking at hit points that allow Healing Surges to actually WORK (and how those of us on the HS side look at it.) Minor pain, fatigue, and slight injuries are all things that can be fought through via adrenaline or psychological gearing up, or whatnot. All the things that healing surges (especially the Warlord/Bard 'shout them okay' type) represent.
Imaro said:See, IMO, this is already cinematic combat and is why HS seem, IMO, to push characters towards the superheroic scale. They don't just fight through injuries and pain anymore... now they can shake off (heal) major wounds, unconsciousness and even being on the brink of death... without magic or help... and give them 5 mins to catch their breath and they are in tip top shape for the next battle.
As I said above... you're absolutely right about the 'three strikes and you're dead' problem. It's the one place where we have to accept the breakdown of how someone can be on the brink of death but still be able to will themselves healthy after 5 minutes of rest. But if we are willing to accept that the game requires us to have a way to actually die (because it's a game trope that's been in existence forever that Death is the end of a character's career) ... we have to accept that the methods to achieve that death aren't going to be in any way realistic unless we build a much more intricate combat system like The Riddle Of Steel or something. And if we accept that the entire system doesn't make any lick of real sense... why is the healing surge game mechanic the one that makes you say 'nuh uh!'?
THAT'S what makes me wonder why folks get so bent out of shape about the concept. It's picking and choosing one stupid game convention out of an entire bucketful of stupid game conventions.