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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7748520" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Not really, no. I mean, partially, but even with healing surges, it was still much better to have a healer in the party. What healing surges biggest impact on the game was, was that they allowed adventure designers to know that each PC would start each encounter at X hit points, had a total of between 2.5X and 3.5X HP over the course of the adventuring day, and any healing they received would not change either value, because it drew from that daily total and couldn’t bring their currently accessible HP above X. This made combat MUCH easier to balance, both on a per-encounter basis and on a per-day basis. It also allowed designers to include effects that taxed characters’ HP allotment for the day, without affecting their current HP, by making them lose healing surges. Hit dice can’t do any of this, because the amount each hit die heals is randomized so adventure designers can’t count on a PC with X hit dice to have Y HP throughout the day, you only regain half on a long rest, so designers can’t rely on the PCs having a consistent number of them on a day-to-day basis. 5e’s adventuring day guidelines have PCs taking a short rest roughly every other encounter instead of every encounter, so designers can’t count on PCs starting encounters with a consistent amount of HP. Magical healing doesn’t cost the recipient hit dice, so the number of hit dice a character has doesn’t give any indication of how much damage they can take in a day. And the number of hit dice a character has increases as that character levels, so any useful encounter building guidelines a designer does manage to squeeze out of them will change from level to level.In short, hit dice resemble healing surges in none of the ways that matter. Just like everything else on in 5e that looks a bit like 4e to the casual observer.</blockquote>

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