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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4733568" data-attributes="member: 40961">I don't think you can plausibly have every fight offer a genuine chance of death, if you're assuming as part of your judgment the ability of intelligent player characters to react properly and save allies in danger.  I mean, I guess you could have a genuine chance of death, but if you want a genuine chance of death after you've figured in the responses of intelligent, capable players, then what you're really asking for is combat that, even if you play intelligently and capably, WILL occasionally kill a PC.   Its probably better to go for the impression of danger, which is best analyzed before figuring in healing abilities.  If the fighter goes down, but the cleric has the tools to rescue him and the intelligence to use them well, then you won't lose a PC.  You also won't have "truly" dangerous combat.  But you probably WILL have the IMPRESSION of truly dangerous combat, because the players will remember that the fighter went to the ground and failed a death save but the cleric rescued him in time. 4e is built to create "almost" moments.  The fighter "almost" got killed by the orc.  The rogue "almost" got eaten by a grue.  But then someone else rescued them, or, if your party isn't very well coordinated, someone could have rescued them but didn't.  If you don't think this counts as a valid sense of danger, then its unlikely that 4e will satisfy you. Most likely, if that's how you feel, only two things will actually satisfy you.  Either 1. Regular character deaths, or2. Regularly encountering situations where, in spite of the player's best efforts, die rolls occur which entirely determine the life or death of a character.  And of course math dictates that this will lead to regular character deaths.This is why most people who don't like disposable PCs tend to go in for either a sense of "almost" like 4e creates, or they go in for non-pc-death related win/loss conditions. Anyways, this is a long way of getting to the fact that your game may not actually have a problem.  Your PCs have created a sort of healing nova.  Alright.  And they rest in between fights because there's no reason not to.  Alright.  And you don't want to force them not to rest between fights.  Alright again.   If you're all happy with this, then just increase the number of monsters in your fights and have fun playing the game.  The simple fact is that in any system where you can perform an action to recharge your character's strength, and there's no reason NOT to do it, the players will do it.  If you don't want to provide a reason, then adjust your expectations and move on.  You can still have fun and you can still have a feeling of threat, as long as that feeling of threat isn't intrinsically related to being down to your last healing surge.  Because your characters will never get there, because you're letting them recharge their healing surges at will.</blockquote>

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