Retrospective: 3.x stuff I'm glad I left behind

[Imban]

What exactly is the point of controlling healing accessibility so tightly? The 4e healing surge mechanic seems more towards allowing non-clerics to boast that they too can heal on their own without having to rely on clerics, but I just find it irritating when the party defender runs out of surges after the 2nd or 3rd fight and the whole party has to stop, even though the controller still has all of his.

While many others felt differently, "Now in 4e you don't need a Cleric..."

"...he can be a Warlord! *ba-dum ching*" is exactly how that came across, especially since having a "Leader"-type was never particularly necessary in my 3e groups, whereas it sure is in 4e.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

How hard is it to add in healing surges to 3e?

Second wind and healing surges per day for out of combat nonmagical healing are easy to add and "Bam, done" CLW wands replaced for out of combat healing.

Its what I'm trying in my new campaign and I don't anticipate any problems or hiccups.

Not that hard, going from 4E to 3E or 3.5, now that you know about the mechanic and how it was designed in 4E, and know what problem it was trying to solve.

It's also not that hard in other systems, if you have a mechanical mindset. I did something similar for a Fantasy Hero campaign, circa 1998. In fact, something like surges are the obvious solution as soon as you pin down the real issue. The only "difficult" thing is stating the core of the problem in the first place (or noticing that you need to do so).

Note that I didn't say that healing surges mechanics were difficult. They aren't. But reflavoring surges is something that plenty of people would come up with on their own, given time, even pre-internet. It's mindblowingly easy.

 

[Fifth Element]

How hard is it to add in healing surges to 3e?

Second wind and healing surges per day for out of combat nonmagical healing are easy to add and "Bam, done" CLW wands replaced for out of combat healing.

Its what I'm trying in my new campaign and I don't anticipate any problems or hiccups.

It's not difficult at all. I did it for my current 3.5 campaign, which has been running over a year now and it works great.