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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ValhallaGH" data-source="post: 4580410" data-attributes="member: 41187">And if your DM ever lets you acquire them.I've literally had a character progress for eight levels (3 to 10) without ever seeing a healing potion or curative wand.  In a 3.5 game.  The only reasons he wasn't killed was because a) he was tough and surrounded by a good party, b) the DM usually adjusts damage and monster hp mid-fight to not kill characters he likes (and he liked mine).That's far from the only game this has happened in, just the most extreme example.Not quite correct, sir.  Healing Surges are a mechanic designed to limit your endurance.  The whole point is to make it so that your characters can't have unlimited healing; that they must eventually rest; that they can't fight for 365 hours, with nothing more than five minute rests between fights.Healing surges don't prevent you from healing, they just cut you off for the day when you've had enough.Healing Surges are the bar tenders of healing.They provide you with healing until you've reached your limit.  Then they tell you to go sleep it off before coming back.With the encounter-based class healing abilities, second winds, and five minute rests, it is possible for a skillful party to fight 947 encounters without taking an extended rest.  To literally adventure for a week (24/7) without taking a break.  This (presumably) violated the designers' suspension of disbelief and was generally seen as inappropriate, so they inserted a limiting mechanic.  Healing Surges.This mechanic does two things.  First, it provides a convenient and consistent amount of healing to an individual character for a given healing usage.  Second, it provides a per diem limitation upon the character's ability to heal, without limiting the healer's ability to provide healing (or do other cool things, as per the 3e and 3.5e Cleric); eventually, this forces the character to rest.Now, if this design goal bothers you then you can change the resulting mechanics.  For example, give all characters an unlimited number of healing surges, and watch parties adventure for days.  The only changes I foresee are that you cannot then use drained healing surges as a penalty (such as for skill challenges), and that monsters that rely upon removing healing surges are less scary.  Those monsters should receive some other effect that has a similar impact on the combat as removing a healing surge did.</blockquote>

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