Surfaces were great in DOS:2, but Stabbey has delivered really good points, that you fail to address in a meaningful matter.
Stabbey makes many assumptions, for example, the assumption that adding surfaces does not work in a game where you are expected to go many encounters without resting. As nice as this assumption is, its demonstrably false. Just like any other resource drain, it depends on how they are used. You could have a fight with no surfaces at all which would drain all of your resources to beat it. You can also have a fight which is a single caster and a lot of surfaces and simply dispelling the surfaces or avoiding them, almost automatically wins you the fight.
I also pointed out why, if you want to have surfaces in the game, it makes sense to increase enemy HP values (and possibly decrease AC, although I am fine with high AC as well).
But I say one thing about the surfaces in this game: they are not tactical. In any way or form. See in DOS you had 2 types or armor, that you could use to ignore the ground for an amount of time, so you had to manage things in time or maybe even convert the ground into something you want. You had to do some decisions, you had to plan ahead how you deal with your armor and the ground that is currently present.
Surfaces, in a proper implementation of them, have many tactical elements to them. Even in their current implementation, there are the following considerations.
• Do I want to avoid the surface, thus constraining my movement, or do I want to go through them, taking incidental damage.
• If there is not currently a surface on the ground, but I suspect an enemy is capable of applying one, how do I position my characters to minimize the threat from surfaces
And with adjustments (proper tools to deal with surfaces and ideally also a trade off for using them), they would also add.
• Do I want to remove the surface, or perform some other action (A trade off between making the arena less constraining and another action).
• Do I want to apply a surface, or perform some other action.
These are all considerations added by surfaces. I would argue that surfaces in DOS:2 were actually flawed in that you never wanted to remove them, because in terms of action economy, it always took far too much effort to remove them relative to an enemy like an ooze just moving around and spreading them everywhere. Furthermore, because of the armor type, there wasn't really any real threat from the surfaces themselves and you could just ignore them almost all of the time.
