Normally it’s up for debate, with people on both sides arguing the effectiveness of the surge. Allow me to step in and slice the rope, thereby ending this tug-of-war. The surge is in fact, working.
I’m speaking of healing surges of course.
I’ve liked healing surges from the outset, but after several months of running a game, and spending a weekend at a gaming convention getting the chance to sit on the other side of the screen, I can confidently say that healing surges work great for keeping the momentum of a game going. Not only do they allow for players to not have to run back and forth to ye olde temple –always a bit of a pain –they provide players with a sense of where they stand for future encounters. It could be hard to gauge correctly how ready you were for that next encounter in previous editions of D&D. It was therefore quite easy to blunder into a TPK. You can look at your healing surges and know how much bounce back and how much of a cushion you are going to have to fight that dragon. It might be the time to take an extended rest, or if you decide to push forward, you are going into a tough situation knowingly. Sometimes in the course of a story you’ll have to push –the villain is enacting his plan right now and extended rest means failure.
This is the next benefit of the healing surge…drama. I recently ran my players through a gauntlet. Wraiths were attacking the village they were protecting, and they chased the clusters of undead around the city, fighting constantly all night. Most of the encounters were fairly easy, but chained together one after the other, with healing surge draining skill challenges from one point to the next. Over the course of two sessions the wraiths slowly chipped at the PC’s overall endurance. When over a hundred wraiths were chasing them down right at the pitch of dawn (when they would retreat) the table was filled with tension. The PCs at this point had used their dailies, used up all their healing surges…they were spent but they had to keep going, pushing themselves past their limits to save the days. Isn’t that part of what heroism is about?
It’s not to say that simulating fatigue is impossible in other game systems, or even previous versions of D&D. But healing surges are an elegant, cooked in way to simulate this. The mechanics of healing surges signify endurance and sustainability. If you want characters to feel fatigued, you don’t take hit points or assign major penalties to stats. You take healing surges away and you generate that effect intrinsically. You can also reduce the effects of healing surges to simulate exhaustion or weakness. Conversely, if you want characters to feel invigorated, give healing surges back to them, or make their healing surges more efficient than normal.
Healing surges rock because they can make the game go and they can make it stop. As a GM it’s your job to know how to use them to control the flow and tenor of your game.
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
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I have to agree. In my campaign’s setting, bad weather is a constant threat. The PCs have to make Endurance checks occasionally, and when they fail them, they lose a healing surge. The checks get much harder at night, when the weather worsens.
I think this consequence has done more to make the players panicky about being out after dark than a hundred undead could have. (Though the undead certainly didn’t hurt.)
Hi Swordgleam! Welcome to the site! Healing Surges can are indeed a great tool for shaping the direction of your story. I like your example of using the bad weather. Healing Surge loss as a consequence for failling physical skill challenges (like climbing a cliff) also adds tension.
That’s an interesting idea. I’d normally just have them take falling damage. I wonder if it would strain credulity to have them lose a healing surge if they fail a stealth roll by too much, because they’re investing all their energy in keeping quiet, and it’s draining?
I don’t always feel like throwing a random encounter at them when they fail at sneaking, since it can mess up the pacing. But at the same time, I feel like there should be some kind of consequence.