Surges put a limit on healing. Without them HP really do go up and down like a yo-yo. You can have basically infinite healing due to wands and potions (as long as you've got enough brains to spend your gold on such things). With surges, once they're gone, you're done. You're not getting healed without sleep.
D&D 5E Should 5E have Healing Surges?
- Thread starter Oni
- Start date
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
Setting the game mechanics aside for a minute...
Healing surges seem to be one of the most contentious things about 4th Edition: the people who love them really love them, and the people who hate them really hate them. Few people are indifferent, judging from the number of comments in this thread and the attached poll.
Clearly, healing surges are one of the things that the gaming community is divided over. And if the goal of 5E is to re-unite the fragmented gaming community, healing surges would interfere with that. This is why I think healing surges should be left out of the 5E core rules and put into a separate, optional book or supplement. Even if I liked healing surges, I would arrive at the same conclusion.
Psionics, dragonborn, healing surges, grid-based combat...keep them out of the core, but make them available for those who want them. Everybody wins.
Healing surges seem to be one of the most contentious things about 4th Edition: the people who love them really love them, and the people who hate them really hate them. Few people are indifferent, judging from the number of comments in this thread and the attached poll.
Clearly, healing surges are one of the things that the gaming community is divided over. And if the goal of 5E is to re-unite the fragmented gaming community, healing surges would interfere with that. This is why I think healing surges should be left out of the 5E core rules and put into a separate, optional book or supplement. Even if I liked healing surges, I would arrive at the same conclusion.
Psionics, dragonborn, healing surges, grid-based combat...keep them out of the core, but make them available for those who want them. Everybody wins.
nightwalker450
First Post
That doesn't sound like Everybody wins, that sounds like you win. There are lots of people who love healing surges, and lots of people that hate them... So the only fair decision is to leave them out?
Personally I do not want to go back to characters survival based on a sack of wands/potions. I want my CHARACTER to be the hero, not his sack of magical life giving Nick-knacks (Though this is a great concept for a Frankenstein hero). I want the enemy to think he has won, as I use the last of my strength (second wind/death save) to pull myself to my feet and charge him.
I want to push characters to the limit of their endurance (surges) not the limit of their credit rating. I want the fighters to take their beating (as they do EVERY time), and be able to fight the next fight (being within 24 hours... not 3 weeks). I want the wizard to take a beating and be more careful in further fights because he can't take it. I don't want the fighter to take the beating and have to down a few kegs of potions to recover, while the wizard takes the beating and is fine only drinking 1 or 2.
4e's surges have done the best at recreating heroic adventurer endurance. All they need to do is add on an additional module for crippling wounds.
How come D&D DAMAGE never causes INJURIES or BLEEDING?
(unless your i) hit by a special magic weapon or ii) hovering at death's door)
I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how catching your "second wind" after being run through with a sword is any sillier than running around at full-tilt after being fireballed down to 1 HP (wouldn't those severe burns all over the PCs body at least sting a little? Lower their movement rate a smidge? Something?)
There's just no logic in this. Only preference. Which is fine. So long as folks don't try to back those preferences up with "logic".
CleverNickName
Limit Break Dancing (He/They)
Leave them out of the core rules, yes...not omit them from the game entirely. I don't see why they can't be optional.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
You're telling me that a PC doesn't know when he's so exhausted that he can't rally himself anymore? This is ridiculous.
Kingreaper
Adventurer
Again, Surges don't, innately, have to be restored every day.
The fact that everything is restored daily in 4e is a fact about 4e, not a fact about surges.
Surges can easily be implemented such that they take time to heal.
nightwalker450
First Post
I think they should move forward with what their doing, it wasn't perfect, but it worked very well. Instead of saying that since it was slightly off, we should default to something that made less sense, was less about the characters, and was actually an ANTI-combat rule.
Yeah, a rule that says you can't fight for 3 weeks, because you were in a fight, is an anti-combat rule. Just out of curiosity how many people that dislike healing surges played Wizards? Because really the old way was another screw the fighter rule. You stand in front and get hit, while I nuke, you need 3 weeks to heal, I'll be fine tomorrow (once I get my nuke back). Even if I do take damage, I'll be fine in a few days (fewer hit points, takes less healing). That's right, the guy who was trained at fighting, couldn't handle a fight.
Neither is too silly, IMO, unless it has no lasting consequences.
A second wind that lets you push through the rest of the encounter, but then collapse afterwards would be cool. A mechanical example would be refluffing the Barbarian's rage from 3e, possibly without the Strength bonus.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, you don't get hit upside the head with a Longsword in sports.
Tell you what, you stand there while I smack you in the head with a Longsword and then you tell me how plausible it is for you to get that extra effort and stand back up.
Nonsense. Go read some actual accounts of actual people fighting in actual fights. This is utterly preposterous. People get up, shake it off, and go on all the time. Often with serious and debilitating injuries, which in the heat of the moment they ignore. This is how organisms survive. When the chips are down the tough just plain DO IT. Pain, save it for later. Got a busted leg, run anyway.
Heck, I saw a 90-something year old guy that had been in a wheelchair for 20 years get up, climb onto a power line, RUN ACROSS THE LINE LIKE IT WAS A HIGHWIRE, and shim down the pole that was 80' away to get out of a fire. Don't even pretend you can tell me what people can and cannot do.
So, yeah, nothing in my mind is more plausible than when you're lying on the ground with your bell wrung hovering on the edge of consciousness that some little voice inside says "get up or die" and HEROES get up. Wimps die. Second Wind FTW.
Likewise you can't just do that all day and it sure helps if you have someone helping and it REALLY helps if you have some of that magic juice that sets your reserves loose.
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