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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tomtill" data-source="post: 4399252" data-attributes="member: 37444">Monsters and NPCs get 1 healing surge per tier, and very few ways to use them. They also typically have more hit points than a PC of the same level. The point is that the number of healing surges you get is an intricate part of the hit point system. A limited number per day is meant to represent the accumulation of ongoing damage/exhaustion that requires a good nights rest to recover enough to continue. Effects that represent damage that cannot be healed by a nights rest are represented by loss of healing surges (among other specific effects, depending on the cause). It is a tool the DM can use to represent a long term loss of combat effectiveness.Specifically, healing surges are used to represent the accumulated effect of multiple battles, and damage taken outside of combat through the ongoing effects of disease, drowning/suffocating, starvation, extreme environment, exhaustion (no sleep in 24 hours) and other failed endurance rolls (minor injuries like a twisted ankle etc.)They are, like hit points, an abstraction, in this case representing damage that cannot be healed by a simple short rest or healing potion. An exhausted character with only one healing surge remaining is nearing the end of his abilities.Remove the mechanic completely and you are back to the hit point system. You lost a lot of the drama and the need for a leader class which is simply replaced by the CLW wand.Effectively bumping up healing surges per day by auto-healing on short rest still preserves the mechanic in battle, so an exhausted PC with one remaining healing surge is still affected: even with potions and a leader he can still only get 125% of his hit points for that battle, and 100% for the next. However, now you have a surplus of healing surges. Your hit point total per day has been inflated to be essentially infinite. You still have a limit on the amount of hit points you can generate during battle, but that is a very large number with a lot of swing during play. For example with 10 healing surges per day that you only have to use during combat that's what, 6 standard encounters (1 healing surge used for each) 2 hard encounters (2 healing surges used for each) and an infinite number of easy encounters (no surge required, since you will auto-heal). Or maybe just 5 hard encounters (inflated to be the new standard)? If you still want to keep the effects of damage outside of battle meaningful, you have to inflate the healing surges lost due to ... For me, I like the cap. The reminder that you are fragile. That you have limits. That's what makes it challenging. That's what makes it fun for me. If I want the feeling of juggernauting through a dungeon, I just make most of the encounters easy ones with the hard ones thrown in for drama. More often, with limited time for play, I like to have most of the adventure being exploring and figuring stuff out and roleplaying, with the hard battles thrown in for drama and punctuation. In my games, the gaming day lasts the whole day. The pacing seems right. If it seems wrong to you, one option is to change the mechanics as mentioned before, just remember to account for healing surge penalties as out of combat damage mechanics. Alternatively, if you want the juggernaut feel, alter the adventures to include more easy encounters that drain healing surges less (or alter player tactics to rely on them less). After all, if every encounter is hard, how is it special.Or, for less hack and slash, include more exploring/problem solving and less encounters.</blockquote>

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