I'm with you on that one. it makes a lot of sense. What dosent is the fact you're exhausted, your local warlord screams at you to go back fighting. You get physical and ruined once more, your local warlord screams at you not to lower your guard and to keep fighting, you keep it up, reassured. Then after getting violently massacred(mentally) you tire out but your friend pulls an incredible stunt making you wish you were him and actually motivating you to keep on fighting(again) then you ultimately finally get hit and crash down, then again, in your dreams your friend is still there telling you he's not given you the permission to give up, so you step on your feet and keep on rollin'. Now thats dull.
On the other hand I can perfectly see cleric healing you repeatedly and it's still gonna work tomorrow.
This is realistic in that, not knowing how magic works [since it doesn't exist] whatever we are told it does can be believed as realistic. However, knowing at least something of how non-magical things work, it seems unrealistic for people to just shrug off exhaustion. Although, there are instances where people do that, all that time. Doing it multiple times per day is something that really only happens in action movies/horror movies, etc.
Of course, heroic tier NPCs all have only a single surge. Only PCs have more surges, and that is because as fantasy heroes they are better than the rest [cue theme from Karate Kid]. So, they are a bit superhuman in their ability to withstand punishment. If they weren't, they PROBABLY wouldn't have went into the adventuring business in the first place, and went with a safer profession.
And, the healing surge ultimately limits you. The warlord can only push you so far before you can't go on without something extra. At that point, the paladin can infuse you with some of his own vitality, the cleric can use one of his divine powers, but ultimately, even with your health restored, you know you can't take much more punishment, and so you should rest soon.
Your healing surges are much more like the old fashioned HP. Very little can actually give you "free" healing surges, and I'm not sure many are non-magical [temp HPs has some non magical ones, but even then those aren't tricks you pull off with regularity].
It is a fantasy game. The characters are tougher and more resilient than in a realistic world ... is it really a deal breaker that they are tough enough to gut things out longer.
If it is really that harder, consider the healing surges and HP as a whole. Your current HP represents your "death from massive damage" threshold. If you don't tap into your healing surges, you can be killed, despite having HP [in the form of surges] to spare. You are limited by the ammount of HP you can gain in an encounter as nearly any power that gives you HP has a daily or encounter limit, and even with potions, you have a limited number of surges. So it's possible to be killed in a single encounter with surges remaining. It is also possible to be killed over the course of the day because you've run out of surges and you get killed during the "last" encounter. Based on previous encounters, you shouldn't have been killed by that much damage in a single encounter, but because of the "fatigue" from draining surges earlier, you didn't have as much left in the tank.
Great... I though I left my quantum physics Ph.D at school. Oh right, I figured it's momentum so precisely it's actually a little bit of everywhere now.
Not everything done out of game is known to the characters in game. Until someone dies, they don't know if they are dying, stabilized but unconcious, under some sort of effect [unconcious, knocked prone and stunned]. Now, they might guess something is wrong because, the warlord is likely constantly asking everyone how they are doing, keeping his eye on the battle, looking for openings and where he's needed, keeping up morale, and most importantly, knowing that people are alive. Sure, the warlock likes to tease the warlord by constantly annoucing he's "over here now" as he teleports around the battlefield, and the rogue sometimes doesn't answer, but he knows that's because the rogue is being quite to better pounce on his prey. However, when someone drops to the ground, the warlord knows that person may be down for the count, so he knows to throw out a few words of encouragement to try to talk him away from the light. If he got a good look at the guy, he might have went with a melee touch ranged power to fix him up, but he's in the middle of the fight, and the best thing for that guy is to get a few of these monsters into the ground so the group can take a breather, but for now, a few words will have to do. Maybe when he gets back up he'll think about taking a breather before going back in swinging.
Each time you roll the die for a death save you are determining whether the character is going to die or not. [actually, that's only the case when you are on the last death save]. So, the die ultimately decides whether or not the character dies [unless someone else intervenes]. The narrative universe these characters live in doesn't just follow cause and effect, but constantly has randomness determining the outcome. In this case, after collapsing the first time, he could be dead in 18 seconds, or he could spring back up in 6 seconds seeming invigorated [he's human, so there is a 10% chance of it happening] or he could lay there the rest of the fight and die at any moment [after 18 seconds]. The severity of the wound is really only determined by the outcome of the rolls, and thus can't be known before hand. OR, the death save rolls represent a metaphysical struggle, basically swimming against the tide of the River Styx, or trying to move away from the light and find the door back to the waking world. In the latter case, the warlord is the hand that reaches down into this limbo state between life and death and pulls you back into the here and now where your allies are in trouble and need your help. "You can die on your own time" he gruffly announces as you pull yourself up and go back to busting heads.
