Healing Word (and the abuse thereof)

[Nail]

Now if they reached the last fights of the adventuring day each with 3 surges, it would be much less exiting.

Not at all.

Healing surges is only one limit out of many. In the groups I've played in, the far more important controls on the "adventuring day" is other stuff, like your Dailies, your Action Points, your Magic Item uses, and whether there's a Timed Plot Device(tm).

Besides, "exciting combats" aren't determined by how many Healing Surges the PCs have. It's determined by the DM. If you need extra convincing, read this.

 

[Morgan_Scott82]

Not at all.

Healing surges is only one limit out of many. In the groups I've played in, the far more important controls on the "adventuring day" is other stuff, like your Dailies, your Action Points, your Magic Item uses, and whether there's a Timed Plot Device(tm).

I find exactly the opposite. My players only decide to rest when they've exhausted their supply of healing surges, this often comes before they've exhausted their supply of daily powers, usually 4-8 encounters into the adventuring day.

I've been trying to impress upon my players the ideas that they shouldn't hold back their dailies so much, its not at all uncommon for the Defender and several of the strikers to be completely out of surges but the party has 70% of their dailies still in reserve. Same thing with action points, there was a time in a recent session where I had to point out that a character still had their original one action point from the start of the day and had accumulated two more, so he should probably use one.

 

[jedrious]

I find exactly the opposite. My players only decide to rest when they've exhausted their supply of healing surges, this often comes before they've exhausted their supply of daily powers, usually 4-8 encounters into the adventuring day.

I've been trying to impress upon my players the ideas that they shouldn't hold back their dailies so much, its not at all uncommon for the Defender and several of the strikers to be completely out of surges but the party has 70% of their dailies still in reserve. Same thing with action points, there was a time in a recent session where I had to point out that a character still had their original one action point from the start of the day and had accumulated two more, so he should probably use one.

Wanna trade groups?

I just had an encounter yesterday, first round of combat, first character in initiative
Roll Initiative Free Action: Battle Awareness
Move Action: move up to enemy
Standard Action: Villian's Menace
Minor Action: Rain of Steel
Action Point: Reckless Strike
Triggered Free Action: Jackal Strike
Bravura Presence Free Action: Melee Basic Attack
Triggered Free Action: Shield Slam (chose to push 0)
Immediate Reaction on next initiative count, triggered when minotaur got free attack upon rain of steel killing them: Shrewed Repositioning

 

[Nail]

Iits not at all uncommon for the Defender and several of the strikers to be completely out of surges but the party has 70% of their dailies still in reserve.

As I'm sure you know, there's a correlation here.

If you don't use yer Dailies & Action Points, you'll use more Healing Surges....since you won't be killing the enemies as fast. That's a pretty straight-forward trade-off. If your players haven't grasped the strategy, you could gently point it out, using their experiences as Exhibit "A".

 

[Ds Da Man]

We tend to hang onto our dailies also, since alot of them require hits and sure as sh*t we'll miss everytime. At higher levels my cleric has really just started taking powers which allow more healing.