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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4180247" data-attributes="member: 32164">Umm...I think you misunderstand how it works. Second Wind represents your ability to use a healing surge mid-combat. It doesn't matter if it's the first combat of the day, the second, or the eighth. Similarly, healing word uses up one of your surges (although the cleric also adds some extra oomph to its effectiveness).As an example, a fighter could be reduced to bloodied, use his second wind, and then later in the same combat, fall to 0 hp. He runs a risk of dying if this situation takes place. This can happen in the first combat of the day. Assuming he doesn't die, when the combat is over, he can use his other healing surges to return to full health. Three or four would probably do it.You're taking the assumption that each encounter is a 3e style encounter that nickel and dimes the players down, requiring them to use surges to recover to full hit points, but doesn't actually put them in threat of death.Again, you're assuming that in all the earlier battles, the character never gets near 0 hit points. If you want to play that way, that's fine, and you are correct that the problem has only been postponed. But that's not the only way to play with the 4e rules.In a 3e-style attrition adventure, where only every fourth fight is actually dangerous, you are correct that all you've done is created a situation where the PC has 3-4 times as many hit points.  However, that's not how Fourth Edition adventures are intended to work.With Fourth Edition, the PCs can face 3-4 battles that are as exciting as that climactic encounter in 3e before they have to rest. Or, for a little variety, you can have two of those set-piece battles interspersed with 4 other attrition-style encounters to mix things up. The difference here is that if you simply triple the number of hit points, the only encounter that has an actual risk of death or loss is the last one. Which means you've made the others as meaningless as they were when you had 1/3 of the hit points.Do you see the difference?</blockquote>

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