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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5828296" data-attributes="member: 32164">Just a random thought here...Is it possible that in an effort to provide "balanced" encounters where death was a real risk, the designers changed the parameters of the system? In other words, each encounter was assumed to use such and such a percentage of your resources (including hit points). What that means is that there is no real risk of death until you get to that last encounter. That's consistent - old D&D was a little swingy at the low levels, but after you got past those, you were't really at risk until you'd gotten through a few combats.3e started down the path to 4th by making wands of cure light wounds an available option. Suddenly, we could have people dropping to 0 hp in each and every encounter. Of course, you had to have serious magical healing available in order to play that way, but whatever. Thus originated the notion of someone who HAD to play the cleric (or the need to have "healing sticks").Then Fourth Edition came along and "hit points" became entirely a per encounter resource. Which meant that you can now offer a real risk of dropping to 0 hp (and possible death!) in every single encounter. In other words, you've ratcheted up the tension of the game by raising the risk factor. The downside is that "hit points" have to come back much more quickly or you can't keep this high tension factor. Which means you have to either rely on magical healing, or make hit points even more "fatigue, luck and combat skill" than they have ever been before. And of course, coming back from 0 is even more problematic with that sort of system.However, to keep some aspect of the traditional attrition-based side of adventuring alive, WotC came up with the concept of each character having a limited number of daily "healing surges."Basically, I'm suggesting that the treatment of hit points has changed over the last two editions in order to raise the tension factor of the game. But the designers never actually decided what "dropping to 0" really means in the context of the new system that has evolved.Thoughts?</blockquote>

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