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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4180130" data-attributes="member: 32164">ThirdWizard, I think you and I are in agreement as to how 4E will/does play. I agree with you that constantly having to drop PCs and have them pop back up is annoying. However, I also agree with Kamikaze Midget that having PCs go down and then come surging back to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat is cool. As such, simply tripling (or quadrupling, or whatever) the pool of hit points, as some have suggested, doesn't provide that sense of characters that are frequently on the "edge of defeat," or "in danger of dying."Caveat: I have not playtested 4e. However, I'm reasonably certain that it will provide that exciting surge back to victory often enough without it becoming so routine as to become tedious. Similarly, I believe that the mechanics for negative hit points and healing surge recovery, which I realize some people dislike as "unrealistic," allows one to make each encounter satisfyingly "risky" without leading to the "single encounter adventuring day."The alternative of simply making the "pool of hit points" larger instead leads to attrition-based adventuring, where the only encounter with a real hint of dramatic tension is the one where you're actually low on hit points. Since many players tend to stop before they get there, DMs instead make every encounter more dangerous, thus creating the "15-minute adventuring day" problem.That's a very real problem that I believe 4e has solved. In the process of finding that solution, they also came up with a rationale for hit points that made a non-magical healing class viable in the game. Hence, we have the Warlord. Personally, I believe this is a substantial improvment on many levels.(See how I tied that in and made this post actually on-topic? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> )</blockquote>

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