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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7214642" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Absolutely.  And again, as I posted upthread, the dials and toggles for 4e to ramp up the difficulty (or outright lethality) are overt, intuitive, and well-integrated into the system as a whole.  Things don't go utterly wobbly with overwhelming 2nd and 3rd order interactions when you flip them/turn them.  The results are predictable.  Increase encounter budgets by x, up-level foes by y, and z happens.  This is interesting to me.  I think Healing being commons is likely the product of larger than average tables.  Personally (and again, this is just personally...plenty of others have anecdotes on here of the opposite), I would never run 4e with 6 or more players.  I've only ever run it with 3 players (2 campaigns 1-30), three short games (spanning about 7 levels) of 2 players, and a pair of solo adventures (5-6 levels).In all of those levels of play, with all of those characters, I've seen Heal taken as a Skill one time...and that was for a Skill Power primarily.  In the hierarchy of Skills in 4e, it is pretty bloody awful.  Its application is extraordinarily narrow in Skill Challenges, it isn't Group Check relevant, and really has no use in combat Stunting, no use in overcoming Traps/Hazards, or combat generally.  That leaves the activation of a few solid Skill Powers, a few relevant Rituals (CD, RD, RA), and the Disease Track.  Conversely, I've had plenty of folks take Endurance as a Skill because it has a myriad of applications in Skill Challenges, has multiple solid Skill Powers, is extremely Group Check relevant, is a classic Countermeasure for a large number of Traps/Hazards.Consequently, virtually every Disease/Condition Track that PCs have been afflicted with in my games have involved Endurance rather than Heal.  The only time I can recall Heal being deployed was when a non-trained, high level Druid (huge Wisdom obviously) with a + Heal item treated a middling Con (maybe 14ish) Rogue that didn't have Endurance trained.I've had 5 Ritual Casters in all of those characters/levels.  None of them had Heal trained (so no CD, RD, or RA).</blockquote>

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