Healing Cantrip?

Finding the lack of healing cantrip in DnD a bit curious. I'm sure this has been discussed, but seems odd that you can dish out respectable damage without limit but not heal at all (other than stabilizing a downed ally with Spare the Dying).

At level 5, you can deal 2d8/2d10/2d12 already, more with things like Booming Blade or Potent Spellcasting later on for Clerics. Seems reasonable for there to be at least something restoring minimal HP. Could be a lower dice roll and/or maybe not scale, to not compete with leveled healing spells? 

Of course, I'm guessing the main issue is the spamability of healing out-of-combat? So as easy fix could just be: a character can only be healed by that cantrip once per day, or once per long rest, or some other restriction.

I dunno, seems like there ways to make it functional. Thoughts?

Quote from DrakojaPax >>

Finding the lack of healing cantrip in DnD a bit curious. I'm sure this has been discussed, but seems odd that you can dish out respectable damage without limit but not heal at all (other than stabilizing a downed ally with Spare the Dying).

One of the unwritten design rules for 5e/5.5e D&D is "no free healing". Healing a player character pretty much always requires expending some kind of limited resource, whether it's a spell slot, a Hit Die, an ability you can use Wisdom modifier times per long rest, etc.

This is a pretty important restriction for game balance reasons. Removing it would essentially mean that Hit Dice don't matter anymore, and enemies would have to be greatly strengthened to keep them challenging; that would cause combat to be drawn out more, which everyone always complains about. 

Quote from DrakojaPax >>

 

Of course, I'm guessing the main issue is the spamability of healing out-of-combat? So as easy fix could just be: a character can only be healed by that cantrip once per day, or once per long rest, or some other restriction.

Sure, but if you start putting restrictions on how many times you can use a cantrip per day, it's not meaningfully a cantrip anymore, and you're just describing how existing healing works.

Yeah, a healing cantrip would have to burn hit dice to avoid being spammable.

So really, there's design space for two healing cantrips:

• Target spends a hit die
• You spend a hit die

The new Ravenloft book does slightly bend this rule in one very specific area: the Reanimator Artificer's frankensteinian pet creature is healed by taking Lightning damage, so you can heal it as much as you like by whacking it with Shocking Grasp over and over. But that's a very narrow breaking of the "no free healing" rule. As far as I know there aren't any exceptions that work on PCs.

I’ll also add in the healing potions are relatively inexpensive, and probably heal about what a cantrip would. And by inexpensive, I mean that after a few adventures, the PCs probably have enough gold to stock up on them.  Of course purse, that’s still spending a resource in terms of gp.