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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 5799230" data-attributes="member: 9053">So my gaming group was talking about this issue, and we expect that it will not have the surges. The thought was that the surges system is an example of putting too much of the rules system out in the open for people to see, and also simplifying it to a large extent.D&D has always had healing surges, but they weren't tracked as a simple resource out in the open for everyone to see. A 4E character knows how much healing they have to work with, and how many encounters they can go through in most cases. I play a rogue in 4E LFR, and I have 7 surges. As a result, I know very directly how I have to approach the adventuring day, and how much healing I can expect to be able to use.In every other edition, that same value exists, and it should (hopefully) be talked about by the designers when they put together the spell system. The expectation of how many healing resources characters will have available to them can vary tremendously by class composition and party resources, but it's a lot harder to form a baseline for how much healing a group will have. That's extremely important for a designer when they put together an adventure, and even moreso for a DM who has to balance that adventure for their group.What we're likely to get back to is a situation where tracking those resources is more difficult, and requires a higher level of system mastery. What do I mean by that?Well, in 3X I played in a multi-year campaign as a cleric, so I was put in charge of the party's healing resources. It started out as buying wands of cure light wounds, but when the vigor spell came out, I immediately adapted to it. I kept track of the cost in GP per HP healed, and managed how many wands we'd need for the adventure. We had a "group share" for treasure that I had to keep track of and work with. I'd balance that "out of combat" healing with what we'd need in emergency situations, and as combat healing. I had a collection of interrupt spells when that option came out, so that characters who were taken down out of turn could get healed. I had to manage the DPR that the GM seemed to be throwing at us in a way to maximize the healing economy.The funniest thing is that the anti healing surge crowd is upset at how everything resets after a night's rest. For a well-planned group (and ours was pretty well-planned) would simply mark of remaining spells, make healing checks, and then mark of the charges on the wands, so we'd ALWAYS be fully healed each morning.I think that 4E would have had a lot better reception if they'd simply added a tax for wands/healing herbs/potions that would have to be paid after each extended rest and then handwaved the results. But that's over with now, I suppose.But make no mistake: there will be a form of healing surges in 5E, they're just likely to be hidden behind the spell and magic item system, and baked into the game's economy. I expect that a lot of the controversial aspects of the game will be handled that way: if we're lucky, the designers will put considerable thought into these "behind the curtain" decisions, and we'll never be the wiser. If not, it will be on the players to develop system mastery to the point where they can reverse engineer what the right numbers are.</blockquote>

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