Talk:Healing Surges (3.5e Variant Rule)

Items that duplicate healing spells

Should one be able to gain healing surges from these? Why/why not? --Ghostwheel 02:43, 26 August 2009 (MDT)

Yes. First: They work well as a mechanic in 4e. Increasing the number of encounters and decreasing rest time per day. Second: They allow healers to save more spells and use what spells they have more efficiently. Clerics can reduce the number of buff spells they must convert to heal spells in battle. Third: Every person can now take care of themselves a little better. That means less deaths and less money spent on rez. However: If enemy units do gain the ability to use healing surges at some point, then can your party do enough pressure damage to kill them quickly? I'm taking about the big bad-guys that already regenerate or heal naturally not little 1 hp minions. --Jay Freedman 10:56, 26 August 2009 (MDT)

The point of this though was to make it viable for clerics to cast curing spells mid-combat. If any item can do so, then there's no point in casting Cure Moderate/Light wounds when you can zap someone with a wand. The one exception I'm thinking of having is potions, since those take a little longer to use.

And enemies don't matter. If the DM wants the enemies to heal, he can just give them the ability, "Heal for X HP Y/encounter" or w/e. This would be primarily (and almost certainly only) for PCs. --Ghostwheel 18:56, 26 August 2009 (MDT)

Second Wind

As I have come to understand it, 4e has a "Second Wind" ability that allows players to once per encounter (for a standard action?) use their Second Wind and take a healing surge. That seems to me to be the greatest advantage of the 4e Healing Surge system. Thoughts on including that in this variant rule? --Badger 10:46, 5 September 2009 (MDT)

3.x balances differently, and for the most part this variant was designed to make healing spells worthwhile rather than useless as they are currently, apart from at level 1 where CLW can heal you to full health and when you get Heal/Mass Heal. A DM familiar with second winds can make them usable in his game, but they don't fit as well in 3rd edition. --Ghostwheel 11:04, 5 September 2009 (MDT)