Player-Driven Recovery

Healing in 4E is handled very differently than previous editions. The old system required players to either use magic items to heal, or rely on the priest to spent his actions casting spells. This meant that the cleric spent most of their time healing others rather than directly affecting things.

The new system gives all players "healing surges" that they can use once per encounter to regain one quarter of their health.

And the healing classes (there are now two: cleric and warlord) can heal and attack on the same turn or even as part of the same action, so they can provide a meaningful attack presence while also helping others.

One of the nice results of this system is that all players have a hand in healing. Using a Healing Surge is a conscious decision the player makes that aids his character. Everyone feels involved, and healing is something the players do, not something others do to them.

This also has the side benefit of making it feel like the player's fault when it goes wrong: "I should have used a healing surge" rather than "How come the game didn't heal me faster?" The lesson here is that healing doesn't have to be a background passive action. Give the player inputs, and he becomes more involved.

For most video games, directly adapting healing surges wouldn't be the best idea. Variants of this have worked in some cases: health packs in many games were basically a stolen version of healing potions.

But as health packs show, it can be difficult to manage health as a resource while worrying about five other thing in real-time.

That's where the healing classes can provide some additional inspiration -- having player attacks that alter healing rates as a side effect could be interesting in a variety of games, especially cooperative ones.

Give the player ways to alter his healing, but without adding new actions that could overload the process.

Location-Based Combat

D&D has always been about the monsters. But there's a dungeon in there with the dragons, which often gets neglected. And while the sense of place depends highly on the individual DMs setting up interesting encounters, the new edition provides tools to make it easier to craft unique encounters that are more than just monsters.

Terrain rules are clear and simple, and include many examples of interesting magical terrain with solid gameplay effects. But traps are where the DM has the most control of the combat space.

Traps get more attention in 4E, with the intent of integrating traps within a combat encounter. The character doesn't disable the poison darts in one room and fight the kobolds in the next -- they're all in the same room.

Traps are designed to be recurring dangers that threaten players and monsters with a variety of effects during combat.

And many of the new special powers, for player characters and monsters both, involve pushing each other around the room, giving all those traps and other danger zones interesting strategic roles. A good DM can quickly set up different rooms that create dramatically different combat experiences.