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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Dude" data-source="post: 4154560" data-attributes="member: 30511">Healing Surges are a new resource in 4e and they seem to be just as important as Hit Points.  After all, natural and magical healing seems to key off of them and certain negative-energy-style attacks seem to drain healing surges.If you factor the slow drain of Healing Surges into the analysis of a combatant's physical ability over the course of an adventuring day, the combatant is not fully healed at all even when at full hit points.  All the hit points represent is how much damage the combatant can take in the course of an encounter before dying, not the sum total of damage the combatant can accept throughout the day.  In other words, a combatant is more likely to survive a lot of damage spread throughout the day than he/she would suffering the same amount of damage in a very short period of time.  When the combatant uses a Healing Surge, he/she is not mending wounds but is instead shaking off the effects of the wound- losing a Healing Surge in exchange for regaining short-term durability in combat.  A decrease in Healing Surges represents a diminishment of health as much as a decrease in Hit Points (if not more so).Of course, this only applies to the use of Healing Surges to "heal" throughout the day.  The complete refreshment of both Hit Points and Healing Surges over the course of an Extended Rest is not so easily explained.  I can understand how that would bother some folks, prompting a houserule (if you intend to play 4e).  However, it doesn't bother me- it fits in with movie-style action enough and streamlines bookkeeping enough to justify the rule's existence.  Yes, action-movie-healing can be modeled under the old hit point system, but it can also be modeled under this system and can be done so with greater ease.As for absurd examples of falling off of cliffs or whatnot, all past versions of D&D allowed ridiculous survival where reason would otherwise prohibit it.  I suggest that the next time a PC falls off of a cliff, no matter what system you use, give the PC a saving throw.  If the PC succeeds, they are severely crippled (as in immobilized & dazed) until medical/magical attention cures them of that state; if they fail, they die.  The end.  Hit points from any version of D&D are useless for modeling such corner cases so don't try- use your head and come up with something else instead.</blockquote>

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