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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6603922" data-attributes="member: 42582">My experience with 4e matches what Tequila Sunrise says here. Namely, there can be tension even when a character is at or near full hit points, and that part of the design point of healing surges is to allow that tension to be part of the combat mechanics: PCs have fewer hp than comparable monsters, and tend to hit less hard until they draw on their rationed attack resources.It's not uncommon for a PC in my game to be bloodied in the first round of combat; in our last session the fighter (highest hp in the party) took attacks from an elite and a solo and was knocked below zero in the first round. He used his recovery abilities (this being an epic-level game, he has a ring which lets him return to life) to come back on  his next turn. The invoker/wizard was reduced to zero in the next round, having thrown himself into harm's way in order to dominate the two enemies; the ranger-cleric had to revive him with a Healing Word.I think that this is the sort of tension that Tequila Sunrise is talking about.I discovered this interesting edit to your post upthread.I'm not sure what the "shoehorning" is that you have in mind. Yes, 4e has D&D tropes (to hit + damage; hit points + healing; classes + levels), but these aren't per se a problem for me. As I see it, 4e puts these tropes to work in a way that realises the best that is inherent in them:* The combat system combines the non-abstract movement and positioning of 3E (contrast the abstract nature of AD&D positioning in its 1 minute rounds) with the abstraction of to-hit and damage rolls advocated by Gygax, plus a condition-infliction system that creates a parallel element of tactics and tension in combat to straight hit point attrition (similar to the old SoD aspects of the game that [MENTION=40398]Tequila Sunrise[/MENTION] mentioned) but (i) they are not confined to magic-uses and (ii) they are no longer SoD in a literal sense; * The hit points and healing fully embrace the "mojo" conception of hit points set out by Gygax in his AD&D rulebooks: psychic damage, inspirational healing, taking permanent afflictions out of the hp system altogether, etc; * The XP system and the levelling system are turned from a way of granting power in a competitive gaming context (which is Ggaxian skilled play) into a way of pacing the growth of the game and the gameworld in line with the "story of D&D", from heroic but "ordinary" characters who save villages from goblins, to epic near-gods who battle demon lords in orer to determine the fate of the cosmos.These aren't things I'm having to "put up with". These are reasons for playing the game.That's not to say that 4e is the only game for me. I used to post that, when my 4e game finished, I wanted to start a Burning Wheel game. That game <a href="http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?736425-Burning-Wheel-First-Burning-Wheel-session" target="_blank">started around 6 months ago</a>, due to quorum issues with a few 4e sessions, and hopefully will keep going more regularly once the 4e game comes to its conclusion (at a guess, some time this year).But 4e offers things that BW doesn't (monster-slaying, cosmological fantasy) just as BW offers things that 4e doesn't (much more personally-oriented, political/social fantasy). The things that 4e offers are the things that I've always looked for from D&D, so for me it's not about shedding legacy tropes so much as realising legacy aspirations.</blockquote>

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