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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BryonD" data-source="post: 5712662" data-attributes="member: 957">Looks like I picked a bad week to be swamped at work and not get in to ENWorld.And, no, I haven't tried to catch up on a seven page thread, so my apologies if this has already been covered.But having read the OP and the first few replies it seems completely obvious that the OP doesn't understand the issue of objection with surges and has substituted a different point that is not relevant.It is certainly true that the mechanics and narration, collectively, are completely divorced from real world expectations.  But to say that this makes those elements divorced from each other is simply wrong.Forget games for a minute and look at TV shows and movies.  The Die Hard / Jack Bauer point has been beat to death multiple times.  But we don;t need that here.  It is a highly common TV show cliche that a member of "the team" will get shot, car-bombed, run-over, what ever.  You then have the dramatic pause that can be anywhere from a commercial break to a season finale cliffhanger.  But by the end of that episode or the following episode, that character is sitting in a hospital bed laughing with friends.  The episode after that they MIGHT wear a bandage or something, but it will have no impact whatsoever on their performance.  The next episode the bandage is gone and all is back to exactly the way it used to be.  And this happens routinely.  It is so common place that it is not even given a second thought.  But nobody get hung up on whether or not it is realistic.  Everyone, quite happily, accepts that the event and the story (aka the narration) are divorced from real world expectations.But it would be stupid to claim that the events and the narration were divorced.  The events are: (1) Damage occurs (2) External medical care is needed (3) External medical care is provided (4) Character returns to full strength with no long term consequences.The narration is (1) Character is car bombed (2) Character receives wounds which require hospitalization (3) Character spends time in hospital and then (maybe) has a little post treatment recovery time (4) Character is at full heath.The fact that anything remotely resembling an accurate mechanical description of the hospital treatment, or a remotely realistic recovery process, is completely absent, is completely meaningless to the narrative quality or the success of these types of events as popular entertainment.  And because that mechanical description is both completely unneeded and has been discarded, the actual details may as well be miracles which match the outcome they produced.  The hospital is narratively no different than the cleric or wand of cures.In 3E the broken bones, shot, stabbed, blown-up up conditions are all healed by hand-waved it worked by magic in exactly the same way as those conditions are healed by vastly larger than life medical heroics in tv shows.The connection is the same in 3E as it is in those shows (and movies and books).  Now, honestly, if you want to insist that they are divorce in those media, then fine.  I don't care.  Whatever works for you.  But, the point remains that 3E works the same way as popular fiction.4E does not.If a 4E character got car bombed, he would NOT be in need of medical care.  Every 4E character there is can surge away any and every wound.  No 4E character ever goes to step (2) of the mechanical or narrative path above.  Yes, you may choose to describe broken bones or other terrible wounds.  But if you do you become obligated to describe a fighter not ignoring the wound but completely and fully surging it away.  The broken bone mends then and there for no narrative reason.Or you can choose to NEVER describe a serious wound.  And, I do agree that a serious wound to Bryon is different than a serious wound to an action TV character.  You do have *some* narrative space to work with.  But you absolutely have less space because you MAY NOT describe any wound which requires outside medical treatment.And, really, no one is claiming that the 3E system is perfect.  I'm all for improving it.  But "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" doesn't do this situation justice.  You are throwing out the baby because the clean tap water was not Perrier.Also, it is interesting that the focus of the OP is to "defend" 4E by trying to make everyone focus their attention on something other than 4E.</blockquote>

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