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What is the essence of 4E?
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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7451690" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>As I interpreted it, you were expected to heal up to full between encounters, and healing surges limited how many encounters you could go through in a day. Generally speaking, you wouldn't keep going, if you were low an HP <em>and</em> you had no surges left.</p><p></p><p>Whether they didn't want you to run easy encounters because it would have been a waste of time at the table in exchange for very little attrition, or because they would be boring from a narrative perspective and they wanted you to focus on the "important" parts, doesn't seem all that important of a distinction. In practice, they would tend to reinforce each other.</p><p>Maybe it's just because I was coming out of AD&D, where healing and magic items were practically non-existent, but we never hit upon the "magic wand" solution. When I first saw it in action, many years later, it seemed more like an exploit than anything that was ever intended; especially given that the game worked perfectly fine - arguably even better - when we <em>didn't</em> heal to full after every fight. After all, it meant we could have serious battles against weaker enemies, which became meaningful because of the attrition involved.</p><p></p><p>I'm willing to buy that healing surges were their solution to prevent that exploit, but it seems like a stretch to ever assume that easy healing was the intent of third edition. Honestly, at least half of the emergent play in third edition seems unintended.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7451690, member: 6775031"] As I interpreted it, you were expected to heal up to full between encounters, and healing surges limited how many encounters you could go through in a day. Generally speaking, you wouldn't keep going, if you were low an HP [I]and[/I] you had no surges left. Whether they didn't want you to run easy encounters because it would have been a waste of time at the table in exchange for very little attrition, or because they would be boring from a narrative perspective and they wanted you to focus on the "important" parts, doesn't seem all that important of a distinction. In practice, they would tend to reinforce each other. Maybe it's just because I was coming out of AD&D, where healing and magic items were practically non-existent, but we never hit upon the "magic wand" solution. When I first saw it in action, many years later, it seemed more like an exploit than anything that was ever intended; especially given that the game worked perfectly fine - arguably even better - when we [I]didn't[/I] heal to full after every fight. After all, it meant we could have serious battles against weaker enemies, which became meaningful because of the attrition involved. I'm willing to buy that healing surges were their solution to prevent that exploit, but it seems like a stretch to ever assume that easy healing was the intent of third edition. Honestly, at least half of the emergent play in third edition seems unintended. [/QUOTE]
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