To pregen playtesters of the paladin, did you ever run out of surges?

[Stalker0]

Something I just thought of thinking back to my playtest sessions. Even when the paladin used his lay on hands a lot and the party had been through a grueling day of adventuring, not once did he run out of healing surges. Always the party wound up resting to give another person a chance to get their surges back.

Now, on the one hand, my party had 2 magic items, and the Paladin boosted his AC by 2, I'm sure that made a big difference. Further, they did have a cleric, which made healing surges heal a LOT more than normal.

So I'm curious what other people's experiences have been.

 

[kennew142]

In neither of the two playtests my group ran did the paladin run out of healing surges.

 

[Mr. Teapot]

In our playtest (the Burning Plague adventure, I think), my paladin never ran out. But we never hit the climactic final encounter, and the rest of the party was doing pretty well the whole time. I and the dwarf fighter spent more Surges than the rest of the party combined, though.

My big worry wasn't running out of Surges but running out of Lay on Hands, and so having to spend a Standard action to heal myself. Or even not having any Surges available to me in the middle of battle.

 

[KPCMammon]

In my group's playtest the paladin ran out of surges first, at which point the party decided to make camp.

It was the first time I had ever seen a D&D party stop for the day because a meleer was tired.

We didn't have a fighter, though, so that might have made a difference.

 

[dervish]

I think how fast a character runs out of healing surges depends largely on tactical choices. And not only from the players, but also from the DM. If the DM constant chooses to ignore marks and really push towards attacking the weaker characters, the paladin will most likely have no problem with healing surges.

In my game melee characters tend to run out of surges first. Perhaps I should take that as a pointer?

 

[Olfactatron]

My girlfriend was playing a tiefling paladin in our playtest and she came really close to running out. By the end of the last fight she was using a lay on hands every round to stay in the fight. The rest of the group consisted of a halfing rogue and an eladrin warlock. The game ran surprisingly smooth with only three characters.

 

[drjones]

Ours used all his up but there was no fighter and he forgot to use his halfling reroll power. Now that I think of it I rolled 3 20s in a row on him and got in a crit on a sneak attack from Meepo so in general he was a punching bag and kept yo-yoing up and down every round in almost every fight.