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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LostSoul" data-source="post: 5706977" data-attributes="member: 386">First of all, that post I made last night was after a long game of D&D and didn't make the point I wanted.A 3-CON Wizard is going to heal up a greater percentage of max HP a night's rest than a 20-CON Barbarian.  I think that's a head-scratcher, the same way that a Warlord's Inspiring Word can somehow make unconscious characters get back on their feet.  There's probably a way that you can make either case work in the game's fiction, but I don't think it's controversial to say that both pre-4E HP and 4E Healing Surges put stress on coming up with a coherent narrative.Which gets me thinking - maybe all this talk about realism and narrative consistency is missing the point.Lately I've been thinking of RPGs in terms of choices that the players make.  What kind of choices do we make when we play?  What kinds of choices do we want to make?  That's what the game is about.  It's my belief - biased by personal preference, I'm sure - that RPGs are more engaging when those choices are grounded in "fictional positioning".  That is, when you make your decisions, they are based on the details of the game world.  Mechanics provide value to those choices (and different games, being about different choices, give different values to choices).So anyway, HP and Surges.  If we look at the difference between them in terms of choices the players make - how HP support one set of choices and Surges another - what do we get?I don't know what the answer to that is, but I'd bet that there is a fundamental difference in the kinds of choices a player can make.  The value that Healing Surges put on different player choices (making some choices more important, other choices less) are probably what accounts for the dislike that some people have.*My 4E Hack has some rules for "maiming" characters.  They're not perfect but so far they've worked.  It goes like this:If your action would result in a permanent injury to your target, the target of your attack is Bloodied, and the target has no way to avoid the damage, the target takes a permanent injury.The obvious problem is that characters with more HP have a larger Bloodied range, and therefore are more susceptible to permanent injury.A simple example in game: A PC was hanging onto a wall from one hand.  On top of the wall were some goblins; they hacked at his hand and brought him below Bloodied.  Since he had no way to avoid the attack, his hand was chopped off.That means I need to determine how fast you can heal such wounds, so I did:[code]HealingType of Wound                Healing RequiredCuts, bruises, sprains, pulled muscles    Rest, bandages, sucking it upBroken bones, torn ligaments        Lots of rest (1d4 weeks), any magicNerve damage, minor organ damage    Any magic that brings your HP total                     above BloodiedSevered limbs/appendages, missing     Remove Afflictionorgans    [/code]Interesting that I don't describe what type of healing a Healing Surge provides...</blockquote>

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