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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5601029" data-attributes="member: 61155">It's a good point, that the presence of these elements doesn't 'override' all else in order to ensure a game is D&D. But, again, that isn't really what Mearls is looking at.  Mearls never says, "Anything with these elements is D&D". He is explicitly trying to find elements that, if they are missing, make a game feel less like D&D, and/or elements that, when they are present in other games, make you think of D&D.   The problem is, at this point we're getting into much more subjective areas. For me, Healing Surges work fine... because they build on the already simulation-breaking coincept of hitpoints, which took me years to come to terms with. Those elements have always been abstracted (I hate the term 'disassociated', which has largely lost any real meaning in these discussions).  I think it is also an area where many of the fundamental objections are not what is actually put forward. Healing Surges as a concept is really just a new way of formatting hitpoints. Connecting them to magical healing might jar some folks because it is a new method, but is certainly not anti-simulationism. Instead, I think the real objection is the fact that all healing surges are restored each day - characters 'healing to full' with one night's rest.  And that might be an issue worth debating - but it also isn't tied to healing surges at all. It would be just as jarring, for the same folks, if you healed to full in 2nd Edition, without only hitpoints in play.   This, again, is getting back to the argument about 'core elements'. D&D isn't, at its heart, about any one specific world. If it was, campaign settings just wouldn't exist. There may be a specific default setting you prefer - such as low fantasy - but there is a big difference between claiming it as a preference, and insisting everyone else who likes a different setting simply isn't playing D&D.   I'm not sure it really counts as undermining the 'fantasy toolkit' just because the default has more high fantasy elements - after all, you can always take them out and run a low fantasy campaign, just as you can do the reverse in a game that starts from a low fantasy default. Still, I do get your point about presenting both as options. And, apparently, so does WotC - have you checked out Essentials? We've got two books of player's options. Book #1 gives us humans, dwarves and elves, along with the cleric, fighter, thief and wizard. Book #2 gives us tieflings, dragonborn, and drow, and the warlock, druid, ranger and paladin.  One for the classics, one for the more fantastic elements, making it relatively easy for a DM to tell players to only go with one or the other. Though I don't think the spiked chain got specifically targeted as 'high fantasy' for that purpose... and, honestly, I can't find it any more absurd myself than many of the other weapons D&D has seen over the years.  One of the reason why I think some of the 'flavor elements' can't really define D&D - they are far too tied to personal preference.</blockquote>

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