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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6292361" data-attributes="member: 42582">No. In 4e it is 1d10 per 10' fallen.The "narrative logic" of healing surges is dramatic pacing. Rather than having a series of combat whose sole function is attrition, then the real fight at the end, every fight is its own dramatic story, with an opening (in which the monsters/NPCs are in the lead, due to their greater default damage output), a middle (in which the PCs come back as they unlock their surges, unleash their action points and other limited-use abilities, etc) and then an end (as, in the typical case at least, the PCs triumph due to their overall greater depth of capabilities relative to the monsters/NPCs).This may not be a narrative that you enjoy. It may not even be a narrative that you achieved, for instance if you use the pre-MM3 damage values above mid-heroic tier, or if you use only on-level encounters, or if you allow the players unfettered control over extended rests. But it is a narrative that I have experienced, repeatedly and consistently since I first started GMing 4e. When I read the rulebooks, it was what the game seemed to promise. And in my play of the game it has amply delivered. (For me, the marked contrast is with Moldvay Basic which in its foreward promises a dramatic game of liberating the kingdom from the dragon tyrant, but in its scenario design and action resolution rules supports only dungeon exploration and combat as focuses of play.)    [MENTION=87792]Neonchameleon[/MENTION] has made the case for "simulationionist" logic in his discussion of boxing. I don't know much about boxing and defer to his experience. For me, the justification of healing surges as a mechanic (in the sense of a source of resilience that is only available when "unlocked" via tactical choices in play) is that it produces dramatic pacing redolent of (for instance) the battle scenes in Tolkien or REH, rather than attrition based play where there is no reliable drama other than the lucky swings of high or low attack and damage rolls.To me, at least, this is quite telling as to difference in preferences. Randomness is important in classic D&D because there is no other reliable source of drama. But it is not the only way to inject drama, nor unexpectedness. I'm hesitant to use a sporting analogy, but you can introduce randomness into a football game by playing in the rain (the players slip, the ball becomes hard to handle etc). But games played in the rain are not the only dramatic ones, nor the only ones in which unexpected things happen.4e has a lot of tools to help the GM in designing encounters that will be surprising without randomness. And the players have a lot of resources to enable them to do surprising things non-randomly (eg the very many synergies between the different members of a typical party).The encounter, in 4e, is not just a baseline for balance. It is a baseline for play. In this respect 4e resembles HeroWars/Quest, Burning Wheel, Marvel Heroic RP, and most other modern/"indie" RPGs. Hence the reduced (not eliminated) emphasis on resource-management (including long-term healing), because too much emphasis on these things shifts the focus of play away from the encounter (situation, scene, challenge) and on to accounting, list-keeping and a focus on the "continuous" passage of ingame time. Which, in turn - at least in my experience - is the enemy of dramatic pacing and dramatic framing, because it requires GM fudging or railroading (by overriding the scene-spanning elements of action resolution) to declare this situation "over" and the next situation "begun". 4e radically reduces scene-spanning elements of action resolution; this is a deliberate design decision, and the short rest mechanic is one element of it.The second wind mechanic in 4e is limited in two ways: for most characters it is an encounter power requiring a standard action, and it also requires expending a healing surge. This second limit also means that it is tied to longer rests.This is contentious, of course. I don't think this is how Gygax viewed D&D, for instance. Playing White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors, or the G-series for that matter, isn't about "telling a story". It's about beating the dungeon via clever (and lucky) play.And now we get that standard stuff about 4e really being a tactical skirmish game and/or a board game. Which is just nonsense.The main distinction between an RPG and a boardgame is that, in an RPG, the flavour text matters to resolution. Hence the number of player "moves" is effectively unlimited, because there is no quantifiable limit to the variety of ways the players might decide to have their PCs interact with the stipulated elements of the gameworld. For instance, in a boardgame set in a dungeon you can't burrow through the dungeon walls unless your piece has a "burrowing" special ability. In an RPG you can have your PC buy a spade and try.This feature of an RPG also has nothing to do with storytelling. It is crucial to WPM, ToH or the G-series, for instance: in WPM you have to think of non-standard "moves" that engage the fiction to win (eg breaking the walls to flood the inverted ziggurat chamber; surfing doors down the frictionless corridor over the pits of super-tetanus); in ToH you have to come up with ways to cross through the various deathtrap areas, based on manipulating the imagined dungeon environment; in G1 you can try and set fire to things (the steading is wood, not stone), and in G2 you can try and defeat creatures by having them slip and fall over the edge of the rift. But none of those is a story-oriented adventure.Conversely, you can do all the collective story-telling you want without playing an RPG if you have no action resolution mechanics ie no agreed-upon procedures for regulating the introduction of new material into the shared fiction.Nothing in 4e mandates the telling of stories, although personally I think that is probably the sort of play to which it is best suited. But nothing in 4e is an obstacle to the telling of stories: the game comes with a rich default background into which PCs become embedded via build choices like race, class, theme, paragon path and epic destiny, as well as the actual events of play; and the game comes with good advice on using its mechanical resources in encounter design (and Worlds & Monsters also provides advice on using its story resources to the same end). Healing surges aren't an obstacle to any of that. And they facilitate some of it. Nor are they an obstacle to drawing upon the fiction for action resolution. (Eg because hit point loss is primarily about morale/momentum, Intimidate checks in the right circumstances can inflict hit point loss. That is not an impediment to story; it's a facilitator of it.)I don't think hit points are remotely necessary. Nor is "health tracking" necessary: for instance, a combat resolution system can treat wounds as discrete debuffs with no need to track an overall health status. (Rolemaster and Burning Wheel are both quite close to this.)For systems that do track health, the MHRP system is an interesting one I've used fairly recently: effects are measure in sizes from "4" to "12" (this size is determined by the size of the die used to deliver the effect). When an effect is suffered, the result for the victim is Stress at a rating equal to the size of the effect (if the victim's current Stress is less than that) or is equal to the victim's current Stress + 1 step (if the victim's current Stress is equal to or greater than the size of the effect suffered). When an opponent takes an action against a Stressed target, s/he gets to add a bonus die into his/her pool equal to the extent of the victim's Stress.A wide range of superpowers involve reducing stress by spending metagame tokens or transferring a bonus die of the same size to the GM; or, alternatively, stepping up Stress in exchange for a buff (eg The Hulk can step up Emotional Stress in order to buff himself in a contest of strength).This is an elegant health tracking system that - because of its correlation to the dice sizes used in action resolution - lends itself well to buffing, debuffing and other forms of dice pool manipulation. And it neither looks like nor plays like hit points.And that's just one example from a non-D&D game that I happen to have played fairly recently.</blockquote>

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