Why are healing surges limited?

[jeffh]

It's not possible to run out of healing surges?

Unless you're losing them in some other way than just using them in the standard manner, I don't see how it's mathematically possible (for the overwhelming majority of the 4E characters I've seen) to need them all to recover from your first fight of the day without being dead.

 

[MrMyth]

I think my original point got muddied a bit. Actually, I don't think it was very clear to begin with. I've got two seperate issues here, one of which is a subset of the other:

1: a theoretical question about the worth of limiting healing surges, the original intent of this post.

2: a mechanical question about making balancing extended and short rests so that it's not necessarily always best to take an extended rest when the opportunity presents itself, which I've foolishly let myself derail this post into.

Ok, my apologies - I think I understand a bit more what you are getting at with the concepts laid out in that fashion.

Actually, that's not the only way to deal with it. I still think I had a good idea originally, about not starting them off with an action point but giving them action points for every fight after that. Thus they can keep going and further fights are made easier by the action points, or they can rest to regain their dailies. I guess, in essence, it means trading in an action point pre-emptively to restore your daily abilities (and healing surges, as the case may be).

Not saying it's perfect as is, but I think the concept has merit and it's just a matter of figuring out what sort of incentive to dangle in front of them which is just lucrative enough to make them want to keep going.

Yeah, I will agree that you can play around with the exact ratio of incentive to keep moving forward, and that the suggested change with Action Points to be probably a smooth way to go about. I don't suspect it will be needed for most campaigns - but the ease with which 4E can be customized from one group to another seems to be one of its strong points, so it is definitely worth playing around with if you find your players are feeling too much expectation to constantly stay rested.