We've all experienced how healing during combat is almost always a lost cause because as fast as one player can spend spell slots, the opponents are taking those HP back again. Since damage spells deal more damage, the general thought is, "just kill the enemies and the damage will stop."
I want to throw out an idea and see if it could be used to fix the problem and give healers a place in the party once again. I know for many of us, playing a healer would be boring, but that is a different subject, and you don't have to play a healer anyway.
So, if Cure Wounds (touch) spell did cure wounds and also give a similar number of temporary HP, would that create a balance that was worth a spell slot? My reasoning is, we "heal" the actual damage, and we provide extra temporary HP so the player doesn't lose all their just received healing to the next swing of an axe. Do you think this could be an adjustment that gave Cure Wounds, and similar spells, a balance to justify a spell slot and an action?
Would you think a similar adjustment would be appropriate to Healing Word (range) spell?
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
We've all experienced how healing during combat is almost always a lost cause because as fast as one player can spend spell slots, the opponents are taking those HP back again. Since damage spells deal more damage, the general thought is, "just kill the enemies and the damage will stop."
I want to throw out an idea and see if it could be used to fix the problem and give healers a place in the party once again. I know for many of us, playing a healer would be boring, but that is a different subject, and you don't have to play a healer anyway.
So, if Cure Wounds (touch) spell did cure wounds and also give a similar number of temporary HP, would that create a balance that was worth a spell slot? My reasoning is, we "heal" the actual damage, and we provide extra temporary HP so the player doesn't lose all their just received healing to the next swing of an axe. Do you think this could be an adjustment that gave Cure Wounds, and similar spells, a balance to justify a spell slot and an action?
Would you think a similar adjustment would be appropriate to Healing Word (range) spell?
Healing spells don't need buffs. The point of healing isn't to out-heal damage being received, it's to prevent the next source of damage from downing someone or to prevent that downed person from dying. Simple as that. Giving temp hp to spells like cure wounds on top of their healing would make classes like clerics and druids even more powerful than they already are, and make the game worse off overall.
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Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
Stronger healing just makes combat take longer for no real benefit. It's not just that playing the healer is boring; they make the game more boring for everyone involved.
Healing Word specifically is already insanely strong as a ranged bonus action heal, buffing it in any way would be asinine.
I think that's one of those weird facts about 5e... the Healing kinda sucks, but also it's way more survivable than early editions... unless your DM is deliberately putting you into extra dire circumstances, odds are you're going to survive most encounters.
We've all experienced how healing during combat is almost always a lost cause because as fast as one player can spend spell slots, the opponents are taking those HP back again. Since damage spells deal more damage, the general thought is, "just kill the enemies and the damage will stop."
I want to throw out an idea and see if it could be used to fix the problem and give healers a place in the party once again. I know for many of us, playing a healer would be boring, but that is a different subject, and you don't have to play a healer anyway.
So, if Cure Wounds (touch) spell did cure wounds and also give a similar number of temporary HP, would that create a balance that was worth a spell slot? My reasoning is, we "heal" the actual damage, and we provide extra temporary HP so the player doesn't lose all their just received healing to the next swing of an axe. Do you think this could be an adjustment that gave Cure Wounds, and similar spells, a balance to justify a spell slot and an action?
Would you think a similar adjustment would be appropriate to Healing Word (range) spell?
You want to fix Healing? Make it MORE restrictive, as opposed to less. Or change the non-magical healing mechanic so PC's are not back to full health from death's door in less than 48 hours by simply burning HD. If healing was more valuable, then playing a healer would be far less boring, which of course it is not.
So, my read is that healing is supposed to be a little thing. It isn't even really supposed to be used during combat.
Previous editions had significant importance placed on healing. It was damn close to the only function in the game that allowed one to recover hit points in a game day.
In 5e, a player can "spend hit dice" to recover HP during an hour long short rest, recovering more HP than the old spells would provide.
During a long rest, they recover all their HP.
The Healer's kit can stop a person from dying.
So, given a chance to rest, a party generally doesn't need much healing -- the spells sort pick up the occasional slack from bad rolls, really.
That's the default rules.
To make healing more useful in my game (because we messed with a lot of this stuff), I limited the number of hit dice that could be spent during a short rest, and a long rest only recovers half the maximum HP. IOW, i made the "self healing" rules about half as useful -- and in doing so I could empower the healing spells to be more powerful.
I happen to be pretty fond of healing classes, despite not being a player. On the few times I have, I always played a healing class, with the exception of my very first character, lol. I was also very fond of the flipside of those spells, back in the day, lol.
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
I would be willing to play with a more restrictive hit point recovery system.
Or at least a general recovery system that reflects the severity of total damage. Something like one day of rest for every roll of the death die. Or at least a level of exhaustion for each death saving throw.
It always seemed odd that someone could be at 0 hit points then inside the next hour be fully ready to fight with a little magic help.
I would be willing to play with a more restrictive hit point recovery system.
Or at least a general recovery system that reflects the severity of total damage. Something like one day of rest for every roll of the death die. Or at least a level of exhaustion for each death saving throw.
It always seemed odd that someone could be at 0 hit points then inside the next hour be fully ready to fight with a little magic help.
In 1e, if a char goes below 0 HP and does not end up "dead dead", and a char is brought back (that can happen fairly easily) that char needs a WEEK of bedrest, and cannot adventure. And in general, HP are restored at 1 HP/good night's sleep, for all chars. Magical healing becomes a VERY big deal.
Keep in mind that 5e hit points are not solely reflective of how many wounds you can receive; they’re partly an abstraction of a character’s general “staying power” in a fight, and consequently the reduction of hit points doesn’t necessarily reflect physical injury. I think the PHB says that you’re not talking physical injuries until you’re below half health, and honesty as you get up there in levels I’d move that closer to 1/4. Even then, you’re not actually “seriously wounded” until you’re at 0, although I admit at that point the restorative power of a long rest does break down a bit without someone who can cast Cure Wounds in the party.
That’s the Watsonian explanation anyways. The Doylist is that they want to break Clerics out of the dedicated healer role and generally make characters more sturdy and harder to kill without a certain degree of deliberate effort.
I would be willing to play with a more restrictive hit point recovery system.
Or at least a general recovery system that reflects the severity of total damage. Something like one day of rest for every roll of the death die. Or at least a level of exhaustion for each death saving throw.
It always seemed odd that someone could be at 0 hit points then inside the next hour be fully ready to fight with a little magic help.
In 1e, if a char goes below 0 HP and does not end up "dead dead", and a char is brought back (that can happen fairly easily) that char needs a WEEK of bed rest, and cannot adventure. And in general, HP are restored at 1 HP/good night's sleep, for all chars. Magical healing becomes a VERY big deal.
Not much different than my idea I admit, but in my idea that week could be shortened to just one full day or go as long as 6. Depending on how many rolls they needed to make. Or you could even go hard core and make it a week a roll. Granted the time could be hand waved away but the rest of the party or campaign could require the character to miss out a little while they take care of business.
Things like this can be represented in any number of house rule ways. Just keep it consistent and semi logical to your world.
I would be willing to play with a more restrictive hit point recovery system.
Or at least a general recovery system that reflects the severity of total damage. Something like one day of rest for every roll of the death die. Or at least a level of exhaustion for each death saving throw.
It always seemed odd that someone could be at 0 hit points then inside the next hour be fully ready to fight with a little magic help.
In 1e, if a char goes below 0 HP and does not end up "dead dead", and a char is brought back (that can happen fairly easily) that char needs a WEEK of bedrest, and cannot adventure. And in general, HP are restored at 1 HP/good night's sleep, for all chars. Magical healing becomes a VERY big deal.
My recollection of 1e (AD&D) was we healed 1HD of HP every "long rest", but we just assumed that was each night. Were we not playing RAW at my table? This would be about 1978-ish.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
I would be willing to play with a more restrictive hit point recovery system.
Or at least a general recovery system that reflects the severity of total damage. Something like one day of rest for every roll of the death die. Or at least a level of exhaustion for each death saving throw.
It always seemed odd that someone could be at 0 hit points then inside the next hour be fully ready to fight with a little magic help.
In 1e, if a char goes below 0 HP and does not end up "dead dead", and a char is brought back (that can happen fairly easily) that char needs a WEEK of bedrest, and cannot adventure. And in general, HP are restored at 1 HP/good night's sleep, for all chars. Magical healing becomes a VERY big deal.
My recollection of 1e (AD&D) was we healed 1HD of HP every "long rest", but we just assumed that was each night. Were we not playing RAW at my table? This would be about 1978-ish.
Yeah, that wasn't RAW.
1e RAW was 1 hit point each day for seven days, affected by the Con modifier weekly (if negative). After the first week, you could add your CON modifier (so Max 11 per week at 18 CON). However, anyone cold fully heal in 4 weeks.
That Said, you mention 1978-ish, so that would be late '78 (Q3 or Q4), because 1e PHB was out in June '78.
From then, there were no rules for recovery of hit points other than healing, except three different competing systems published in Dungeon, none of them official. So at the time you are describing, you could do that, lol.
The DMG was published in August of 1979. Page 82 of the 1e DMG lays out the rules (second column, top).
Unrelated, why do folks complaining about the size of the books always forget that 1e books were printed in an 8 point typeface?
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
We've all experienced how healing during combat is almost always a lost cause because as fast as one player can spend spell slots, the opponents are taking those HP back again. Since damage spells deal more damage, the general thought is, "just kill the enemies and the damage will stop."
I want to throw out an idea and see if it could be used to fix the problem and give healers a place in the party once again. I know for many of us, playing a healer would be boring, but that is a different subject, and you don't have to play a healer anyway.
So, if Cure Wounds (touch) spell did cure wounds and also give a similar number of temporary HP, would that create a balance that was worth a spell slot? My reasoning is, we "heal" the actual damage, and we provide extra temporary HP so the player doesn't lose all their just received healing to the next swing of an axe. Do you think this could be an adjustment that gave Cure Wounds, and similar spells, a balance to justify a spell slot and an action?
Would you think a similar adjustment would be appropriate to Healing Word (range) spell?
Why not just make it 2d8 + your spellcasting ability modifier? If that's too much, change it to 2d6 instead of 2d8.
Now, for healing, the same basis is used. A 1st level healing spell is only going to heal d6 no matter what, but the number of the d6 will increase as the caster's level does.
It also means that all cantrips to 1d6 damage at 1st level -- and 20d6 damage at 20th level. You would not believe how many arguments this solved about the relative power of a given cantrip, and how it shifted the optimization approach.
I will also note that this only applies to spells, not "features" or special abilities, like Laying of Hands.
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Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
It's a cost/benefit analysis - and it's not designed to favor healing by default. Then, there wouldn't be anything to analyze.
Recently, our barbarianguy was at something like 7 HP, and at a predictably high risk of taking something like 6-10 points of damage. It was my turn. As bardguy, I have healing word. So ... cost/benefit: Is it worth my bonus action to keep barbarianguy on his feet? I heal for 1d4+4, even at the worst result on the dice, I buy him another round. Hell yes it's worth it, his damage output is absurd - so long as he's standing.
So, basically, by buying him that extra round, my bardguy killed two enemies, and won the fight. Barbarianguy begs to differ, but he's a barbarian - he doesn't get the math of the thing =)
Also, healing barbarians is 2x as effective as healing anyone else, which is wonderful. As a healer I'm entirely in favor of punishing other classes for not being barbarians - by not healing them. By the same logic of course, barbarians out of rage get no healing.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I'm a firm believer that the problem isn't that the healing spells are too weak, it's that the healing power of a good night's sleep is too much, combined with the fact that it's more efficient to heal people when they drop than to heal them so they don't drop, most of the time. In short, the other rules make healing less effective.
I've already made a solution for the whack-a-mole playstyle in my dmsguild thread, and I'm in the process of making a grittier system for resting which can be tuned by the DM to get the feel they want for their games, and which has the side-benefit of bringing casters more in line with martials for capabilities, which is something else I see mentioned a lot!
The one in the link is my Gritty and Consequential Dying rules, which features things like gaining levels of exhaustion, doing things whilst dying, and healing working differently on someone who's dying, making dropping to 0hp more serious, and also not taking you out of the fight if you don't want it to, letting you make a heroic last stand even as you bleed out. I'm rather proud of them, I must say!
If you want to have healing during combat, just go the 4e route turn all action healing into a bonus action instead. That's all you need to do to prevent that conflict between healing and actually getting the encounter closer to done. It's not that healing isn't good enough, it's that blowing your action - essentially, your whole turn - on healing one creature is just too costly from an action economy perspective.
Personally though, I'm okay with reserving the bulk of healing to outside of combat.
In answer to the original post- it doesn't make sense to add temporary HP to existing healing spells. It doesn't change the 'whack-a-mole' process of waiting until a character goes down to give them just enough HP to get on their feet again.
Combat is the worst part of D&D as far as time-expenditure versus story advancement. With 6 players and multiple foes, it can take a half hour to adjudicate a 6 second exchange, and then repeat for the next round. And during most of that time, most of the players are not actively involved. So anything that extends combat reduces player interaction and fun. Which is why the game focuses on out-of-combat healing.
Part of the problem is that players do not want to take short rests to recover, or DMs seem to think that taking a short rest 'breaks immersion' somehow. But they are an integral part of the game as designed. It is one thing I tell newer GMs- pay attention to how long you think tasks really should take out of combat. "I search the wizard's library" is resolved with a roll or two- but in-game that could take from a few minutes to a hour depending on what they are looking for. Obvious magic stuff- maybe a few minutes. A note about the impending apocalypse tucked into a single book among dozens on several shelves- could take a full short rest to find. Making short rests a more natural part of the narrative go a long way towards making Hit dice for healing acceptable.
For those who want a little more dangerous, I suggest my home rule- you can only spend Hit Dice to recover HP on a short rest which MUST include at least 1 successful DC10 medicine roll per character. Others can make the roll and a second one can assist, but must have the medicine skill. Long rests do not recover hit points, only expended Hit Dice.
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Folks,
We've all experienced how healing during combat is almost always a lost cause because as fast as one player can spend spell slots, the opponents are taking those HP back again. Since damage spells deal more damage, the general thought is, "just kill the enemies and the damage will stop."
I want to throw out an idea and see if it could be used to fix the problem and give healers a place in the party once again. I know for many of us, playing a healer would be boring, but that is a different subject, and you don't have to play a healer anyway.
So, if Cure Wounds (touch) spell did cure wounds and also give a similar number of temporary HP, would that create a balance that was worth a spell slot? My reasoning is, we "heal" the actual damage, and we provide extra temporary HP so the player doesn't lose all their just received healing to the next swing of an axe. Do you think this could be an adjustment that gave Cure Wounds, and similar spells, a balance to justify a spell slot and an action?
Would you think a similar adjustment would be appropriate to Healing Word (range) spell?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Healing spells don't need buffs. The point of healing isn't to out-heal damage being received, it's to prevent the next source of damage from downing someone or to prevent that downed person from dying. Simple as that. Giving temp hp to spells like cure wounds on top of their healing would make classes like clerics and druids even more powerful than they already are, and make the game worse off overall.
Puzzle:
3 times, I have played level 20 characters. These experiences normally lead my sanity to divide as my other 4 players square up out of annoyance. In addition, 172 people polled by Eris, resident eldritch evil, say their sanity was a fifth of what is was after tracking max level combat with Solanar and Atemos. A while ago, I was rooted in fear after my character was stabbed. But the time was around 8.91 seconds before the end, and I rounded the fight out with a bang.
Yeah, healing is largely combat inefficient by design, partly to help combat move quickly.
Stronger healing just makes combat take longer for no real benefit. It's not just that playing the healer is boring; they make the game more boring for everyone involved.
Healing Word specifically is already insanely strong as a ranged bonus action heal, buffing it in any way would be asinine.
I think that's one of those weird facts about 5e... the Healing kinda sucks, but also it's way more survivable than early editions... unless your DM is deliberately putting you into extra dire circumstances, odds are you're going to survive most encounters.
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You want to fix Healing? Make it MORE restrictive, as opposed to less. Or change the non-magical healing mechanic so PC's are not back to full health from death's door in less than 48 hours by simply burning HD. If healing was more valuable, then playing a healer would be far less boring, which of course it is not.
Your DM must be doing things right if your this worried about it.
I would like to have a few other healing spells in other classes but all in all its pretty good so far.
So, my read is that healing is supposed to be a little thing. It isn't even really supposed to be used during combat.
Previous editions had significant importance placed on healing. It was damn close to the only function in the game that allowed one to recover hit points in a game day.
In 5e, a player can "spend hit dice" to recover HP during an hour long short rest, recovering more HP than the old spells would provide.
During a long rest, they recover all their HP.
The Healer's kit can stop a person from dying.
So, given a chance to rest, a party generally doesn't need much healing -- the spells sort pick up the occasional slack from bad rolls, really.
That's the default rules.
To make healing more useful in my game (because we messed with a lot of this stuff), I limited the number of hit dice that could be spent during a short rest, and a long rest only recovers half the maximum HP. IOW, i made the "self healing" rules about half as useful -- and in doing so I could empower the healing spells to be more powerful.
I happen to be pretty fond of healing classes, despite not being a player. On the few times I have, I always played a healing class, with the exception of my very first character, lol. I was also very fond of the flipside of those spells, back in the day, lol.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
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Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I would be willing to play with a more restrictive hit point recovery system.
Or at least a general recovery system that reflects the severity of total damage. Something like one day of rest for every roll of the death die. Or at least a level of exhaustion for each death saving throw.
It always seemed odd that someone could be at 0 hit points then inside the next hour be fully ready to fight with a little magic help.
In 1e, if a char goes below 0 HP and does not end up "dead dead", and a char is brought back (that can happen fairly easily) that char needs a WEEK of bedrest, and cannot adventure. And in general, HP are restored at 1 HP/good night's sleep, for all chars. Magical healing becomes a VERY big deal.
Keep in mind that 5e hit points are not solely reflective of how many wounds you can receive; they’re partly an abstraction of a character’s general “staying power” in a fight, and consequently the reduction of hit points doesn’t necessarily reflect physical injury. I think the PHB says that you’re not talking physical injuries until you’re below half health, and honesty as you get up there in levels I’d move that closer to 1/4. Even then, you’re not actually “seriously wounded” until you’re at 0, although I admit at that point the restorative power of a long rest does break down a bit without someone who can cast Cure Wounds in the party.
That’s the Watsonian explanation anyways. The Doylist is that they want to break Clerics out of the dedicated healer role and generally make characters more sturdy and harder to kill without a certain degree of deliberate effort.
Not much different than my idea I admit, but in my idea that week could be shortened to just one full day or go as long as 6. Depending on how many rolls they needed to make. Or you could even go hard core and make it a week a roll.
Granted the time could be hand waved away but the rest of the party or campaign could require the character to miss out a little while they take care of business.
Things like this can be represented in any number of house rule ways. Just keep it consistent and semi logical to your world.
My recollection of 1e (AD&D) was we healed 1HD of HP every "long rest", but we just assumed that was each night. Were we not playing RAW at my table? This would be about 1978-ish.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Yeah, that wasn't RAW.
1e RAW was 1 hit point each day for seven days, affected by the Con modifier weekly (if negative). After the first week, you could add your CON modifier (so Max 11 per week at 18 CON). However, anyone cold fully heal in 4 weeks.
That Said, you mention 1978-ish, so that would be late '78 (Q3 or Q4), because 1e PHB was out in June '78.
From then, there were no rules for recovery of hit points other than healing, except three different competing systems published in Dungeon, none of them official. So at the time you are describing, you could do that, lol.
The DMG was published in August of 1979. Page 82 of the 1e DMG lays out the rules (second column, top).
Unrelated, why do folks complaining about the size of the books always forget that 1e books were printed in an 8 point typeface?
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Wyrlde.com
Free PDFs
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Why not just make it 2d8 + your spellcasting ability modifier? If that's too much, change it to 2d6 instead of 2d8.
So, I noted that for my stuff we made it take longer to recover, increasing the value of healing magic.
I did not mention how we handle healing magic, lol. DoveArrow's post brought hat up.
We use a "universal principle". All six DMs use the same core function for all spells that heal or cause damage. It works something like this:
So, the whole thing scales.
Now, for healing, the same basis is used. A 1st level healing spell is only going to heal d6 no matter what, but the number of the d6 will increase as the caster's level does.
It also means that all cantrips to 1d6 damage at 1st level -- and 20d6 damage at 20th level. You would not believe how many arguments this solved about the relative power of a given cantrip, and how it shifted the optimization approach.
I will also note that this only applies to spells, not "features" or special abilities, like Laying of Hands.
Only a DM since 1980 (2000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA
Wyrlde.com
Free PDFs
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
It's a cost/benefit analysis - and it's not designed to favor healing by default. Then, there wouldn't be anything to analyze.
Recently, our barbarianguy was at something like 7 HP, and at a predictably high risk of taking something like 6-10 points of damage. It was my turn. As bardguy, I have healing word. So ... cost/benefit: Is it worth my bonus action to keep barbarianguy on his feet? I heal for 1d4+4, even at the worst result on the dice, I buy him another round. Hell yes it's worth it, his damage output is absurd - so long as he's standing.
So, basically, by buying him that extra round, my bardguy killed two enemies, and won the fight. Barbarianguy begs to differ, but he's a barbarian - he doesn't get the math of the thing =)
Also, healing barbarians is 2x as effective as healing anyone else, which is wonderful. As a healer I'm entirely in favor of punishing other classes for not being barbarians - by not healing them. By the same logic of course, barbarians out of rage get no healing.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
I'm a firm believer that the problem isn't that the healing spells are too weak, it's that the healing power of a good night's sleep is too much, combined with the fact that it's more efficient to heal people when they drop than to heal them so they don't drop, most of the time. In short, the other rules make healing less effective.
I've already made a solution for the whack-a-mole playstyle in my dmsguild thread, and I'm in the process of making a grittier system for resting which can be tuned by the DM to get the feel they want for their games, and which has the side-benefit of bringing casters more in line with martials for capabilities, which is something else I see mentioned a lot!
The one in the link is my Gritty and Consequential Dying rules, which features things like gaining levels of exhaustion, doing things whilst dying, and healing working differently on someone who's dying, making dropping to 0hp more serious, and also not taking you out of the fight if you don't want it to, letting you make a heroic last stand even as you bleed out. I'm rather proud of them, I must say!
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If you want to have healing during combat, just go the 4e route turn all action healing into a bonus action instead. That's all you need to do to prevent that conflict between healing and actually getting the encounter closer to done. It's not that healing isn't good enough, it's that blowing your action - essentially, your whole turn - on healing one creature is just too costly from an action economy perspective.
Personally though, I'm okay with reserving the bulk of healing to outside of combat.
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In answer to the original post- it doesn't make sense to add temporary HP to existing healing spells. It doesn't change the 'whack-a-mole' process of waiting until a character goes down to give them just enough HP to get on their feet again.
Combat is the worst part of D&D as far as time-expenditure versus story advancement. With 6 players and multiple foes, it can take a half hour to adjudicate a 6 second exchange, and then repeat for the next round. And during most of that time, most of the players are not actively involved. So anything that extends combat reduces player interaction and fun. Which is why the game focuses on out-of-combat healing.
Part of the problem is that players do not want to take short rests to recover, or DMs seem to think that taking a short rest 'breaks immersion' somehow. But they are an integral part of the game as designed. It is one thing I tell newer GMs- pay attention to how long you think tasks really should take out of combat. "I search the wizard's library" is resolved with a roll or two- but in-game that could take from a few minutes to a hour depending on what they are looking for. Obvious magic stuff- maybe a few minutes. A note about the impending apocalypse tucked into a single book among dozens on several shelves- could take a full short rest to find. Making short rests a more natural part of the narrative go a long way towards making Hit dice for healing acceptable.
For those who want a little more dangerous, I suggest my home rule- you can only spend Hit Dice to recover HP on a short rest which MUST include at least 1 successful DC10 medicine roll per character. Others can make the roll and a second one can assist, but must have the medicine skill. Long rests do not recover hit points, only expended Hit Dice.