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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 4101680" data-attributes="member: 32164">Well, that sorta depends what you mean by "healed."I know that sounds a little bit like arguing about the definition of "is," but hear me out.When you are "hit" by a blow, the effort it takes to turn that lethal hit into a nonlethal one almost certainly causes you fatigue. It also might rattle your teeth or make you twist an ankle, pull a hamstring, bruise your knuckles, open a blister, bruise your ribs (or somewhere else) or even, potentially, cut you.All of those things contribute to "lost" hit points. But is a character with a cut on his hand really "hurt?" How about a shallow scratch on his chest? Sure, it stings...and it can get infected, but once it's "healing nicely," it hardly counts as an injury. Sure it might bother mere mortals like us, but is it really a big deal to a big tough hero?That's what those healing surges represent. They're what happens when you have time to let those wounds stop bleeding (they scab over and/or get bandaged), or the pain of that twisted ankle to fade, or to recover after a blow to the ribs has knocked the wind out of you. You might still be bruised, or sporting a number of small cuts and pulled muscle, but it's nothing a hero like you can't tough out. So, for all practical purposes, you're "healed." Even if you still look battered, bruised, and probably a little grimy.I kinda thought this through when I started playing with Reserve Points, á la Iron Heroes and Unearthed Arcana. It was a bit jarring at first, but once you accept that hit points are abstract, most things in the game make a whole lot more sense.This may sound retarded, but I think it's called "Second Wind" because it's something you can do to yourself (catching your "second wind") and (barring some exceptional abilities) you can only do it once per combat. It's your natural, readily available "reserve."In other words, Second Wind is the inborn ability a character has to trigger a "healing surge" in himself, in combat. In addition, you also get +2 to all your defenses, to represent that "will to win."Healing surges, on the other hand, are a way of strictly limiting the amount of punishment a character can take in a day. Technically, in 3e, there's no limit to the amount of hit points you can recover in a day. So with the proper resources (most likely potions or wands), a party of martial types can literally keep adventuring forever.In Fourth Edition, by contrast, an individual character's healing surges are instead triggered by the various healing abilities, be they his own Second Wind, skill-based healing, or clerical prayers. Outside of combat, he can trigger them freely, but he can still only recover so many hit points in a day (because he only has so many healing surges). That puts a strict limit on the number of challenges he can face before he just HAS to call it a day. That's a nod to realism, to some degree.So to sum up, I think that's why there are two terms.</blockquote>

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