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<blockquote data-quote="Kinneus" data-source="post: 4629248" data-attributes="member: 48215">Last Saturday, I DMed my first game of D&amp;D 4e. Everyone was new to the rules, especially me. One of the first questions to come up was healing and healing word. The exact wording is:&quot;The target can spend a healng surge and regain an additional 1d6 hit points&quot;.The players asked me if they could choose not to use the healing surge, and still gain the additional 1d6 hit points (+ some extra from Healer's Lore). Not really thinking (and wishing to take it easy on my friends during our first game), I ruled that they could. Looking at it again, I think it's pretty clear that this was wrong; the additional hit points are reliant on the target using that healing surge, I believe.But that wasn't the real problem. No, the real problem was when I told them that, outside of combat, they could use an encounter power every five minutes. Healing Word is an at-will power you can use twice per encounter; in other words it's basically a power you can use twice every five minutes, right?Anyway, due to my foolish ruling that the target could opt not to use a healing surge, every combat ended with the party standing around for ten to twenty IC minutes while the cleric topped everyone off, all without using up any healing surges. Even if I hadn't made that earlier ruling, it still didn't quite feel right to me... everybody's healing surge value is basically doubled outside of combat just because they're standing in the same room with a cleric?Needless to say, my group pretty much breezed right through my first dungeon.How can you deter groups from using Healing Word like this outside of combat? Have a patrol of goblins walk by if they stand around for more than five minutes? Just not allow them to use Healing Word outside of combat? Or simply make your encounters harder, to factor in the extra healing they'll get from their cleric when and if they survive?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Kinneus, post: 4629248, member: 48215"] Last Saturday, I DMed my first game of D&D 4e. Everyone was new to the rules, especially me. One of the first questions to come up was healing and healing word. The exact wording is: "The target can spend a healng surge and regain an additional 1d6 hit points". The players asked me if they could choose [I]not[/I] to use the healing surge, and still gain the additional 1d6 hit points (+ some extra from Healer's Lore). Not really thinking (and wishing to take it easy on my friends during our first game), I ruled that they could. Looking at it again, I think it's pretty clear that this was wrong; the additional hit points are reliant on the target using that healing surge, I believe. But that wasn't the real problem. No, the real problem was when I told them that, outside of combat, they could use an encounter power every five minutes. Healing Word is an at-will power you can use twice per encounter; in other words it's basically a power you can use twice every five minutes, right? Anyway, due to my foolish ruling that the target could opt not to use a healing surge, every combat ended with the party standing around for ten to twenty IC minutes while the cleric topped everyone off, all without using up any healing surges. Even if I hadn't made that earlier ruling, it still didn't quite feel right to me... everybody's healing surge value is basically doubled outside of combat just because they're standing in the same room with a cleric? Needless to say, my group pretty much breezed right through my first dungeon. How can you deter groups from using Healing Word like this outside of combat? Have a patrol of goblins walk by if they stand around for more than five minutes? Just not allow them to use Healing Word outside of combat? Or simply make your encounters harder, to factor in the extra healing they'll get from their cleric when and if they survive? [/QUOTE]

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