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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5706024" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Well, first of all, some context of my statement has been excised from when you quoted me. I was speaking in very specific terms: 4e narrows down narrative possibilities in regards to healing damage. I just underline it since it seems to have been missed, so I want it clear. I think certain restrictions in a system (or focus, separately) can really open up narrative opportunities. I've found that limiting long range teleportation (and plane shifting, without tight restrictions) really opens up narrative options in the game, not restricts them (so, in this respect, 3.X was terrible for my wants).I like that the game could support those options. You could have an all melee party, or a non-healing party, or an all-healer party, or the like, and the narrative changed dramatically based on the party make-up. With sufficient player and GM buy-in, a non-healing party (only healed naturally) will meet challenges as appropriate (so, less challenging encounters while recovering). This isn't optimal for me, but the system can easily support the different narratives out of the box, which I desire in a system. This option is eliminated with the addition of the healing surge and extended rest mechanics, which is suboptimal for my wants. My concern for healing surges isn't that they're bad at what they're trying to do, it's that they're doing something that I don't want done.As I said, this can be done in 4e as well. However, I really don't agree with you about shaping the genre. Subgenre, maybe. That might sound particularly semantic, but it's not to me. In a fantasy game, I want the option of playing gritty swords and sorcery or cinematic high fantasy to be options within the rules. Personally, I want the system to support both, and my preferred method is to separate it by level. That is, if I want high fantasy, I just scale up the level base, and if I want gritty, I embrace lower levels (that, and my game has rules to adjust it to be less gritty).Yes, I understand that the game can dramatically turn on a single die roll, which is why I said that 4e includes this option. However, I want the rules to inherently support drastic narrative changes that stem from the entire genre, not just a popular subgenre. Low magic and similar settings have been popular as long as D&D has; there's no reason to neglect it.Again, just my reasons. I don't think the cinematic high fantasy subgenere should be neglected. In fact, I think it should be well supported. However, I want the rules to support gritty, low magic settings, and the like as well. And healing surges, as currently implemented, don't fulfill the narratives there as I'd like to see them fulfilled. But, 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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