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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5697292" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I, personally, dislike healing surges. I don't like that healing surges because they make hit points exactly as you describe them: a compilation of physical toughness, skill at reducing blows taken, luck, fate, and anything else you want to cram in there. I hate that idea in a fantasy genre game. Maybe in a superhero game, but in fantasy it just rubs me the wrong way. So, subjectively, that's what's wrong with them (to me, of course).I separated hit points into two categories: regular hit points (how tough you are, how much damage you can take, skill at turning blows into less serious blows, etc.), and temporary hit points (how quickly you regain your stamina, how skilled you are at completely sidestepping attacks, etc.). THP is consumed before HP is taken away (unless the effect bypasses THP, such as falling damage or being on fire).Now, you have a straight separation of those two types of hit points. HP takes a long time to regenerate naturally, while THP completely recovers within a matter of rounds (the higher Con you have, the faster it comes back). You have your hit points that take a long time to heal naturally, and you hit points that come back quickly.I have a feat that lets you take a move action to regain THP. That makes sense to me (taken a moment to stop and catch your breath). However, you shouldn't be healing actual, physical wounds like that, and that's where the Healing Surges failed to me. They forced hit points to represent everything but grievous wounds most of the time. You also run into hiccups where someone was "hit" on an attack roll, takes 3 damage (out of their 120 hit points), but is poisoned because the attack was "poison, injury". This force that is supposed to be fate, luck, skill at dodging, whatever is somehow always bad when someone uses poison. If anyone uses poison and is skilled enough to land a blow on you, Luck and Fate abandon you just as fast as your skill at dodging does. And that bugs me.Thus with my solution, if the attack only does THP, it didn't hit. That poison does nothing. If it gets past your THP, it hit, and you take a physical wound (and are poisoned). This cuts your "pool" of HP abstractions into two separate, smaller areas, and adds a lot to my game. For others? No idea. Probably good for some, probably terrible to many others. That's fine, to me. I just really didn't like what healing surges forced hit points to represent, and the inconsistencies that came with it (injury poison, falling damage, etc.).But that's just me. They're not a bad mechanic, and I allow something similar with my THP solution. I think a lot more people would be okay with it if the "pools of abstraction" were separated. It's another complication to the system, though, so I don't know how popular it'd be. However, I think a lot of people who had the same issues I did would be happier.Anyways, sorry for rambling on. Hopefully that gives some perspective to my view on things (and that of my group). As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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