NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Boots" data-source="post: 5704863" data-attributes="member: 92239">So I'm answering why I dislike healing surges in the context of 4th edition and I'm not going to read any of the previous 31 pages.  If I repeat anything, forgive me.1. Hit points by any other name are still just hit points.Once you have hit points you don't need another mechanic, called something else, that grants you more hit points.  It's by definition redundant no matter what you call it or no matter what the cool game mechanic supposedly is.2. The game isn't hurting for ways to heal people.A party can have healing skills, potions, cure spells, disease removal, reincarnation and resurrection.  In the cases where a character doesn't have a healing specific ability or abiiity to create such, give that class more hit points as a balance to design.3. There are other D20 properties from the same company that simulate the same effect using other mechanisms with cinematic and elegant results.  Subtitled: if you're going to have different categories of hit points, call them that and explain fully what they are used for.  Star Wars revised had Vitality and Wounds.  I think D20 modern had the same.  4. I hate combat grind.  Something feels broken.In my experience core game mechanics are very rarely broken in concept.  I think the idea of surges as a mechanic is redundant but ok.  The problems arise in application of the game mechanic and the general usefulness of any effects triggered by it.I believe that it's not the surge mechanic but some combination of the following: how many points given back, how often they can be triggered, how many are available and the general damage math.  a. If I need to roll for damage then it stands to reason that any surge mechanic might benefit from a random outcome.b. Has the math been done such that surge value is balanced as you obtain higher levels?  Should a surge heal you for more than one or two rounds of an enemy's average damage output at equivalent challenge level? (hypothetical question)c. Lastly - and this is just a personal thing.  Sometimes I want to be an adversary to my players and I just don't like it when I roll three crits in a single round and my players respond with "I blow a surge".  This more than anything I feel is the crunchy core of the "I dislike surges' camp.</blockquote>

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