Hit Points, Healing Surges and Second Wind

So, one of the players expressed some concern/frustration with the second wind ability last night. I think part of the confusion comes from what exactly hit points, healing surges and the second wind ability represent.

Hit points indicate a character's hardiness, health and moxie. When a character loses hit points the character has not necessarily taken any wounds. Look at lost hit points as fatigue, minor wounds, missed footing, and other impediments to combat performance.

When a character loses half of his/her hit points s/he becomes bloodied and has taken some significant wound or suffered a major injury. At this point losing more hit points indicates loss of blood from previous wounds, more fatigue and a general deterioration of abilities.

At zero hit points a character is unconscious and dying. The final attack that put the character below one hit point indicates some serious injury like a major concussion, a bloody wound or other damage that will result in death if no one tends to the character.

Healing surges replenish hit points. Typically a healing surge will replenish 1/4 of the character's total hit points. This number may be modified by various powers. A healing surge delivered by a cleric's or paladin's healing powers indicates divine intervention to sew up wounds, restore confidence and/or provide a burst of energy. A warlord's Inspiring Word power replenishes hit points as the warlord's commands and encouragement restores the target's confidence or grants him new found reserves of strength or stamina.

The second wind ability allows any character to restore 1/4 of his/her own hit points. Think of the second wind ability as the character taking a deep breath and reassessing the situation. You can also imagine your character as a hero in a movie: when the hero takes a punishing kick to the face he topples to the ground and the action pauses. Suddenly the hero rises to fight again, his stamina and grit renewed as he remembers what he is fighting for or against. A hero can only reach into this inner reserve of strength once during a single encounter.

The hit point number on a character sheet represents the static amount of abuse that a character can take in a short period of time before being in mortal danger. You can also think of hit points as a measure of plot immunity. That is, your character has a certain level of ability to avoid injury and death because s/he is the star of the movie. So until hit points are depleted s/he is immune to real danger from the bad guys. It takes a series of attacks from multiple enemies to put the hero in a really bad situation.

Healing surges represent the ability of a character to ignore minor wounds, recover from fatigue and otherwise restore his/her reserves of strength and stamina to fight on against all odds. Even this power has limits, which is represented by the total number of healing surges available to the character per day.

In a given encounter a character's hit points will be depleted and replenished as s/he suffers from the attacks of his/her enemies and recovers with the aid of his/her comrades or the use of his/her own second wind ability. Over a full day of adventuring the number of times a character can withstand assaults by enemies is regulated by the total number of healing surges s/he has available.

Hit points are an encounter resource. Healing surges are a daily resource. The second wind ability is the character's personal reserve of stamina that can be used once per encounter to persevere against danger.