I was originally going to talk about this in the potions thread, but it's a more general issue: standard action heals, such as [Tooltip Not Found] are generally a terrible use of your action in combat. They have some value out of combat, but that's what hit dice are for.
There are two fundamental problems: healing efficiency and action economy.
The healing efficiency issue is very simple: if someone with 10 hp gets hit for 30 and then healed for 1, they wind up at 1 hp -- so 1 point healing negated 21 points of damage.
The action economy issue is only slightly less simple: spending your action on healing someone is generally worthwhile if it makes the difference between them getting an action and them not getting an action.
This is very predictable for healing a downed target: they go from not getting an action, to either getting an action, or absorbing an attack that would otherwise have hit another PC. This means, unless the PC is going to be collateral damage of an AoE (in which case all you've done is reset their death checks) healing a downed ally is almost useful (there are specialized situations where its better to do something else).
On an ally who is currently up, however, it's much lower value, because it's only an action economy improvement if it makes the difference between being taken out and not taken out, and there's a good chance that it won't -- the target you healed won't get taken out in the first place, or gets taken out despite your healing. For an example, consider a party of level 3 adventurers fighting a Troll. The fighter got beat up last round and is at 10 hp, and is holding a door so the troll can't attack the other PCs. Assuming AC 18, there are 8 equally likely outcomes for the troll's attack: xxx, Bxx, BCx, BxC, BCC, xCx, xxC, xCC.
If you don't heal the fighter, Bxx is 17% to drop the fighter, xCx and xxC are 69%, BCx, BxC, BCC, and xCC are 100%. Overall, 69% the fighter goes down, with a moderate chance the troll manages to hit someone else
If you cast a level 1 Cure Wounds for 8, Bxx, xCx, and xxC cannot drop the fighter; BCx and BxC are 62.5%, BCC is 84%. Overall, 36% the fighter goes down.
So, you spent your action and a first level spell (which you don't have that many of) to have a 33% chance of granting the fighter an additional action (note that, if not fighting in a choke, the troll might just attack someone else, making healing the fighter even less valuable). By comparison, if you just cast Command you have a 65% chance of affecting the troll (canceling its next action), reducing the fighter's chance of being dropped to 25% and preventing an average of 14.5 damage, or you can cast something like Guiding Bolt and try to prevent damage by killing the troll first.
So...
The first question is whether we care. The second issue doesn't necessarily bother me that much -- having all healing be done out of combat has been pretty much the norm for every edition except 4th (which made combat healing much stronger than in 5e) -- but "Let them drop and we'll prop them back up when they fall" is somewhat unappealing. The easiest correction is probably to have negative hit points, though that has bookkeeping consequences. On the other hand, if combat healing is something we want, it probably needs to change how it works. Something like:
Cure Wounds: target may spend (level of spell) HD, and adds an additional 1d8+casting attribute per HD spent (so level 1 healing on a fighter who has HD to spend averages 13).
Healing Word: target may spend (level of spell) HD, and adds your casting attribute to every die rolled.
.... I don't follow the Bx business at all. Confusing.
The utility of healing is more than just the math of whether damage will out pace it, or whether the healer's turn could have had a greater maginute impact on the balance of HP between allies and enemies by attacking. There's an action economy element (a striker's action is more valuable than the healer's action for impacting enemy team HP, and not healing the striker risks them going down and missing one or more turns), there's an overkill element (1 HP tanking makes it very risky that a character can take 1+50% HP damage and die outright), there's focus fire risk (risk that enemies not only knock the low HP ally out, but continue to strike him while unconscious doing automatic criticals and forcing two failed death saves per hit).
Healing isn't broken or underpowered, because groups can and do heal in and out of combat. There's no great outcry in the community that nobody is playing a healer, working out on paper how to make healers even better overlooks that it's a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist right now.
.... I don't follow the Bx business at all. Confusing.
The utility of healing is more than just the math of whether damage will out pace it, or whether the healer's turn could have had a greater maginute impact on the balance of HP between allies and enemies by attacking. There's an action economy element (a striker's action is more valuable than the healer's action for impacting enemy team HP, and not healing the striker risks them going down and missing one or more turns), there's an overkill element (1 HP tanking makes it very risky that a character can take 1+50% HP damage and die outright), there's focus fire risk (risk that enemies not only knock the low HP ally out, but continue to strike him while unconscious doing automatic criticals and forcing two failed death saves per hit).
Healing isn't broken or underpowered, because groups can and do heal in and out of combat. There's no great outcry in the community that nobody is playing a healer, working out on paper how to make healers even better overlooks that it's a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist right now.
Agreed with this.
Only rule note: Instant death only occurs if you take more than your HP maximum in damage, not 50%
.... I don't follow the Bx business at all. Confusing.
That's just doing the math of three attacks, each of which has a 50% chance to hit, so I could demonstrate the real effect of spending your action on a heal: approximately 33% to make the difference between the fighter going down the next round, and not going down.
Oh I see, "B" is hit with the bite, and each "C" is hit with the claw, and "x" is a miss with that B or C. So there's a 1/8 chance of hitting with all three (7+11+11, avg. 29), 1/8 chance of missing with all three (0), a 1/8 chance of hitting with only one for 7 (bite) or a 2/8 chance of hitting with only one for 11 (claw), a 2/8 chance of hitting with only two for 18 (B+C), and a 1/8 chance of hitting with only two for 22 (C+C).
With that said, I don't follow your math? At first, there's only a 2/8 (25%) chance that the Troll doesn't drop the Fighter (miss with all attacks, or hit with only bite) without intervention. Casting a first-level Cure Wounds for 9 healing changes that into a 6/8 (75%) chance that the Troll doesn't drop the Fighter (miss with all attack, hit with only bite, hit with only claw (x2), hit with bite+claw (x2)). At very least, it heals for 6, raising the 25% chance of survival to a 50% chance. That has significantly improved the Fighter's chances, with no risk of the Cure failing.
I mean the percentage impact of healing will change depending on who you're healing, at what HP, against what targets... math isn't the answer here. Tactics is: it's better to prevent your allies from going down, than it is to allow them to go down and then assume you'll be able to get them back up again.
Edit: Wait, you were using level 3 adventurers, while I was using max spellcasting modifier... but why are level 3 adventurers fighting a CR 5 troll? Whatever, math isn't the answer.
I always see people look at the math and the percentages, but you also need to factor in, the heal will “hit” every single time. Guiding bolt might miss. Command might fail. The heal will hit. Seems like that’s a big factor in whether or not you’ve wasted your turn: a healed ally > a missed attack. And you might know the average damage the troll will do, but that doesn’t matter in a given combat. What matters is how much that specific troll does to that fighter in that round. Of course, you can’t know that beforehand, but the troll could roll low damage, and then your action has bought the fighter another round, instead of a lost round from being dropped.
Id rather take the chance that healing gives the fighter a chance to make his attack rolls — or disengage and run away, than wait for him to drop before I try to help him.
I think the real problem is just the Heal values, they suck. Heal values need to at least match Damage values. It would still make healing the the whole party impossible but, keeping up a strategic "Tank" would still be remotely possible as well as putting survival heals on other group members.
I think it's quite dumb that I can do Inflict Wounds for 3d10 pretty reliably and only heal for 1d8+mod with Cure Wounds. Yes, I do have a chance to miss the first spell but, still...3d10 vs 1d8 at 1st level for dice rolls? Obscene difference.
I think the real problem is just the Heal values, they suck. Heal values need to at least match Damage values. It would still make healing the the whole party impossible but, keeping up a strategic "Tank" would still be remotely possible as well as putting survival heals on other group members.
I think it's quite dumb that I can do Inflict Wounds for 3d10 pretty reliably and only heal for 1d8+mod with Cure Wounds. Yes, I do have a chance to miss the first spell but, still...3d10 vs 1d8 at 1st level for dice rolls? Obscene difference.
It absolutely makes complete sense that damage is more effective than healing. Next time you are at work, walk over to a coworkers desk and just sweep your arm across in one quick motion. Then watch how long it takes them to put everything back in order compared to how quickly you destroyed it. It is easier to destroy something than to fix it.
In combat healing isn't about bringing your party to 100%, it is about triage until everything doing damage has been killed or fled, doesn't matter if you end the fight at 10 hp or 60.
I think the real problem is just the Heal values, they suck. Heal values need to at least match Damage values. It would still make healing the the whole party impossible but, keeping up a strategic "Tank" would still be remotely possible as well as putting survival heals on other group members.
I think it's quite dumb that I can do Inflict Wounds for 3d10 pretty reliably and only heal for 1d8+mod with Cure Wounds. Yes, I do have a chance to miss the first spell but, still...3d10 vs 1d8 at 1st level for dice rolls? Obscene difference.
It absolutely makes complete sense that damage is more effective than healing. Next time you are at work, walk over to a coworkers desk and just sweep your arm across in one quick motion. Then watch how long it takes them to put everything back in order compared to how quickly you destroyed it. It is easier to destroy something than to fix it.
In combat healing isn't about bringing your party to 100%, it is about triage until everything doing damage has been killed or fled, doesn't matter if you end the fight at 10 hp or 60.
Brandolini's Law :3
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
3d10 (no mod) is average 13.5. You’ll probably have a... 60% chance to hit with it? 70% at most? So effective 8 average damage on a cast? A heal is never less than 4, but is average 8 at same level.
If anything, inflict wounds needs a big buff to justify risking a slot on a very crappy melee attack with no secondary effect.
edit: whoops used d8s, wound does a couple more than that, but you get the idea
3d10 is average 16.5; typical hit probability is around 65-70% so typical effect is about 11. Like most single target spells, it's a pretty dubious (guiding bolt is 4d6, but the advantage for the next attack typically makes it comparable overall).
Honestly, the problem might just be that Cure Wounds is bad. For a first level slot I''ll use Healing Word, sacrificing 2 healing to cast at 60' for a bonus action is easily worth it. Second level has Aid if I need to bring up multiple allies, otherwise not much point to upcasting either of the level 1 heals; both Aid and Healing Spirit scale much better than either level 1 spell and remain solid choices until Heal becomes available at level 6 (side point: Regenerate does not say it stops when the target is at 0 hp, so you recover at the start of each of your turns; the only way to actually stop someone is to trigger instant death or cause three failed death checks).
I think the real problem is just the Heal values, they suck. Heal values need to at least match Damage values. It would still make healing the the whole party impossible but, keeping up a strategic "Tank" would still be remotely possible as well as putting survival heals on other group members.
I think it's quite dumb that I can do Inflict Wounds for 3d10 pretty reliably and only heal for 1d8+mod with Cure Wounds. Yes, I do have a chance to miss the first spell but, still...3d10 vs 1d8 at 1st level for dice rolls? Obscene difference.
It absolutely makes complete sense that damage is more effective than healing. Next time you are at work, walk over to a coworkers desk and just sweep your arm across in one quick motion. Then watch how long it takes them to put everything back in order compared to how quickly you destroyed it. It is easier to destroy something than to fix it.
In combat healing isn't about bringing your party to 100%, it is about triage until everything doing damage has been killed or fled, doesn't matter if you end the fight at 10 hp or 60.
Not sure that argument holds water when magic is involved...
While everyone makes good points I would like to address the one made by Lyxen.
I absolutely agree with him about the reasons heals can't be too powerful, I just disagree about the power level that tips the scales and the level of power between spell effects that cause damage and those that heal. I play a Grave Cleric and I get some special perks, I can negate crits, I can cast Ray of Enfeeblement which will guarantee half damage on STR based attacks for a round. I have so many useful non-healing spells that increase party survivability and offensive capabilities, as well as incredible damage and debuffing against the enemies. Healing is almost the last resort as it is so inefficient, that is unacceptable to me.
You can make any argument you want but, it's all semantics. Having a powerful Healer in the group would turn the tides no more that having an AoE damage dealer that can wipe out half of all enemies by themselves. Different method, same effect, you win.
While everyone makes good points I would like to address the one made by Lyxen.
I absolutely agree with him about the reasons heals can't be too powerful, I just disagree about the power level that tips the scales and the level of power between spell effects that cause damage and those that heal. I play a Grave Cleric and I get some special perks, I can negate crits, I can cast Ray of Enfeeblement which will guarantee half damage on STR based attacks for a round. I have so many useful non-healing spells that increase party survivability and offensive capabilities, as well as incredible damage and debuffing against the enemies. Healing is almost the last resort as it is so inefficient, that is unacceptable to me.
You can make any argument you want but, it's all semantics. Having a powerful Healer in the group would turn the tides no more that having an AoE damage dealer that can wipe out half of all enemies by themselves. Different method, same effect, you win.
Yet you don't even mention that grave clerics WANT to wait to the last moment to heal. Why? because if they PC being healed as 0 HP, they get max HP back on a heal. Grave Clerics don't want to waster their heals early because they are so poor before hand. - that's a big argument for why healing should be better.
I still don't think healing needs to be improved in anyway. Look again to the point. Everyone wants those big heals, until combat takes 12 hours due to both sides being able to negate and over heal the damage taken. Frankly (as seen in prior editions) that was not fun.
As I said, one good Healer with healing spells that have output on par with damage abilities 1 v 1, is still at a severe disadvantage against multiple damage sources. Which is almost always the case. You are still just arguing semantics as I said above. If you think of 2 Clerics on opposite sides Healing as 2 Wizards Counterspelling each others AoE, the effect is the same. The fight will take longer.
You may be happy but, Healing could almost be taken out of the game altogether. Here is the most extreme example I could currently perform on my character:
I could cast Dawn and affect a cubic volume of 130,000 ft. If you divide that by 125(the cubic volume of a 5ft*5ft*5ft space on a 3d grid), you get 1040 areas that could be occupied spaces. If we only assume 5% of these spaces are targets either on the ground or in the air, we still hit 52 targets on the spells cast. With a 4d10 spell, up to 1 min duration.
For the same level spell, I can cast Mass Cure Wounds and heal up to 6 targets with 3d8+mod.
Sometimes I wonder if the diminishing effectiveness of healing spells is really a factor of playing D&D and deciding they were really too powerful or more a factor of playing MMO's where the game mechanics are completely different, where healers are running off self renewing mana pools and thus healing is very different.
I actually think that the MMO made healers more palatable in the general public, I know that I have many more people wanting to play "healers" than in the editions before 4e. That being said, you can play a non-cleric healer, which is also a change, as there are also lots of people who do not like to play clerics because of the religious aspect (whether it is because they do not like religion in general, because they do not want the constraints of following a god, or do not want/like to play the type).
I'm pretty sure 4E mechanics are responsible for the Healing rules in 5E as well. Everyone who hated 4E compared the rules to an MMO style of play, which was easy to see. Yes, MMO healing mechanics made Healing more interesting of an idea to try for some playing tabletop RPGs. As someone who played many roles in several MMOs, it would be dishonest to say that Healers in those games aren't the definition of ridiculous. It was quite common for a healer to keep up a whole 10 man group in PVP or a Raid or 2-4 healers for a 25 man.
The obvious reason is because you could take a player out of combat or capture them without having to kill them or play whack-a-mole pop-up game with tiny heals(Healing Word).
"the stakes for someone going down feel more tactically significant". VS "The obvious reason is because you could take a player out of combat or capture them"
"It would make it more of a scary thing when they go down, without it being too dire (them being killed outright)". VS "without having to kill them"
"This would also increase the value of combat heals, since it becomes more important for allies not to go down". VS "or play whack-a-mole pop-up game with tiny heals(Healing Word)".
I don't know, I think this is pretty solid ground for an "I told you so" Lyxen !
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I was originally going to talk about this in the potions thread, but it's a more general issue: standard action heals, such as [Tooltip Not Found] are generally a terrible use of your action in combat. They have some value out of combat, but that's what hit dice are for.
There are two fundamental problems: healing efficiency and action economy.
The healing efficiency issue is very simple: if someone with 10 hp gets hit for 30 and then healed for 1, they wind up at 1 hp -- so 1 point healing negated 21 points of damage.
The action economy issue is only slightly less simple: spending your action on healing someone is generally worthwhile if it makes the difference between them getting an action and them not getting an action.
This is very predictable for healing a downed target: they go from not getting an action, to either getting an action, or absorbing an attack that would otherwise have hit another PC. This means, unless the PC is going to be collateral damage of an AoE (in which case all you've done is reset their death checks) healing a downed ally is almost useful (there are specialized situations where its better to do something else).
On an ally who is currently up, however, it's much lower value, because it's only an action economy improvement if it makes the difference between being taken out and not taken out, and there's a good chance that it won't -- the target you healed won't get taken out in the first place, or gets taken out despite your healing. For an example, consider a party of level 3 adventurers fighting a Troll. The fighter got beat up last round and is at 10 hp, and is holding a door so the troll can't attack the other PCs. Assuming AC 18, there are 8 equally likely outcomes for the troll's attack: xxx, Bxx, BCx, BxC, BCC, xCx, xxC, xCC.
So, you spent your action and a first level spell (which you don't have that many of) to have a 33% chance of granting the fighter an additional action (note that, if not fighting in a choke, the troll might just attack someone else, making healing the fighter even less valuable). By comparison, if you just cast Command you have a 65% chance of affecting the troll (canceling its next action), reducing the fighter's chance of being dropped to 25% and preventing an average of 14.5 damage, or you can cast something like Guiding Bolt and try to prevent damage by killing the troll first.
So...
The first question is whether we care. The second issue doesn't necessarily bother me that much -- having all healing be done out of combat has been pretty much the norm for every edition except 4th (which made combat healing much stronger than in 5e) -- but "Let them drop and we'll prop them back up when they fall" is somewhat unappealing. The easiest correction is probably to have negative hit points, though that has bookkeeping consequences. On the other hand, if combat healing is something we want, it probably needs to change how it works. Something like:
.... I don't follow the Bx business at all. Confusing.
The utility of healing is more than just the math of whether damage will out pace it, or whether the healer's turn could have had a greater maginute impact on the balance of HP between allies and enemies by attacking. There's an action economy element (a striker's action is more valuable than the healer's action for impacting enemy team HP, and not healing the striker risks them going down and missing one or more turns), there's an overkill element (1 HP tanking makes it very risky that a character can take 1+50% HP damage and die outright), there's focus fire risk (risk that enemies not only knock the low HP ally out, but continue to strike him while unconscious doing automatic criticals and forcing two failed death saves per hit).
Healing isn't broken or underpowered, because groups can and do heal in and out of combat. There's no great outcry in the community that nobody is playing a healer, working out on paper how to make healers even better overlooks that it's a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist right now.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Agreed with this.
Only rule note: Instant death only occurs if you take more than your HP maximum in damage, not 50%
That's just doing the math of three attacks, each of which has a 50% chance to hit, so I could demonstrate the real effect of spending your action on a heal: approximately 33% to make the difference between the fighter going down the next round, and not going down.
Oh I see, "B" is hit with the bite, and each "C" is hit with the claw, and "x" is a miss with that B or C. So there's a 1/8 chance of hitting with all three (7+11+11, avg. 29), 1/8 chance of missing with all three (0), a 1/8 chance of hitting with only one for 7 (bite) or a 2/8 chance of hitting with only one for 11 (claw), a 2/8 chance of hitting with only two for 18 (B+C), and a 1/8 chance of hitting with only two for 22 (C+C).
With that said, I don't follow your math? At first, there's only a 2/8 (25%) chance that the Troll doesn't drop the Fighter (miss with all attacks, or hit with only bite) without intervention. Casting a first-level Cure Wounds for 9 healing changes that into a 6/8 (75%) chance that the Troll doesn't drop the Fighter (miss with all attack, hit with only bite, hit with only claw (x2), hit with bite+claw (x2)). At very least, it heals for 6, raising the 25% chance of survival to a 50% chance. That has significantly improved the Fighter's chances, with no risk of the Cure failing.
I mean the percentage impact of healing will change depending on who you're healing, at what HP, against what targets... math isn't the answer here. Tactics is: it's better to prevent your allies from going down, than it is to allow them to go down and then assume you'll be able to get them back up again.
Edit: Wait, you were using level 3 adventurers, while I was using max spellcasting modifier... but why are level 3 adventurers fighting a CR 5 troll? Whatever, math isn't the answer.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I always see people look at the math and the percentages, but you also need to factor in, the heal will “hit” every single time. Guiding bolt might miss. Command might fail. The heal will hit. Seems like that’s a big factor in whether or not you’ve wasted your turn: a healed ally > a missed attack.
And you might know the average damage the troll will do, but that doesn’t matter in a given combat. What matters is how much that specific troll does to that fighter in that round. Of course, you can’t know that beforehand, but the troll could roll low damage, and then your action has bought the fighter another round, instead of a lost round from being dropped.
Id rather take the chance that healing gives the fighter a chance to make his attack rolls — or disengage and run away, than wait for him to drop before I try to help him.
I did factor that in. The fact that it always hits does not mean it's always meaningful that it hits.
I think the real problem is just the Heal values, they suck. Heal values need to at least match Damage values. It would still make healing the the whole party impossible but, keeping up a strategic "Tank" would still be remotely possible as well as putting survival heals on other group members.
I think it's quite dumb that I can do Inflict Wounds for 3d10 pretty reliably and only heal for 1d8+mod with Cure Wounds. Yes, I do have a chance to miss the first spell but, still...3d10 vs 1d8 at 1st level for dice rolls? Obscene difference.
It absolutely makes complete sense that damage is more effective than healing. Next time you are at work, walk over to a coworkers desk and just sweep your arm across in one quick motion. Then watch how long it takes them to put everything back in order compared to how quickly you destroyed it. It is easier to destroy something than to fix it.
In combat healing isn't about bringing your party to 100%, it is about triage until everything doing damage has been killed or fled, doesn't matter if you end the fight at 10 hp or 60.
Brandolini's Law :3
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
3d10 (no mod) is average 13.5. You’ll probably have a... 60% chance to hit with it? 70% at most? So effective 8 average damage on a cast? A heal is never less than 4, but is average 8 at same level.
If anything, inflict wounds needs a big buff to justify risking a slot on a very crappy melee attack with no secondary effect.
edit: whoops used d8s, wound does a couple more than that, but you get the idea
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
3d10 is average 16.5; typical hit probability is around 65-70% so typical effect is about 11. Like most single target spells, it's a pretty dubious (guiding bolt is 4d6, but the advantage for the next attack typically makes it comparable overall).
Honestly, the problem might just be that Cure Wounds is bad. For a first level slot I''ll use Healing Word, sacrificing 2 healing to cast at 60' for a bonus action is easily worth it. Second level has Aid if I need to bring up multiple allies, otherwise not much point to upcasting either of the level 1 heals; both Aid and Healing Spirit scale much better than either level 1 spell and remain solid choices until Heal becomes available at level 6 (side point: Regenerate does not say it stops when the target is at 0 hp, so you recover at the start of each of your turns; the only way to actually stop someone is to trigger instant death or cause three failed death checks).
Not sure that argument holds water when magic is involved...
While everyone makes good points I would like to address the one made by Lyxen.
I absolutely agree with him about the reasons heals can't be too powerful, I just disagree about the power level that tips the scales and the level of power between spell effects that cause damage and those that heal. I play a Grave Cleric and I get some special perks, I can negate crits, I can cast Ray of Enfeeblement which will guarantee half damage on STR based attacks for a round. I have so many useful non-healing spells that increase party survivability and offensive capabilities, as well as incredible damage and debuffing against the enemies. Healing is almost the last resort as it is so inefficient, that is unacceptable to me.
You can make any argument you want but, it's all semantics. Having a powerful Healer in the group would turn the tides no more that having an AoE damage dealer that can wipe out half of all enemies by themselves. Different method, same effect, you win.
Yet you don't even mention that grave clerics WANT to wait to the last moment to heal. Why? because if they PC being healed as 0 HP, they get max HP back on a heal. Grave Clerics don't want to waster their heals early because they are so poor before hand. - that's a big argument for why healing should be better.
I still don't think healing needs to be improved in anyway. Look again to the point. Everyone wants those big heals, until combat takes 12 hours due to both sides being able to negate and over heal the damage taken. Frankly (as seen in prior editions) that was not fun.
As I said, one good Healer with healing spells that have output on par with damage abilities 1 v 1, is still at a severe disadvantage against multiple damage sources. Which is almost always the case. You are still just arguing semantics as I said above. If you think of 2 Clerics on opposite sides Healing as 2 Wizards Counterspelling each others AoE, the effect is the same. The fight will take longer.
You may be happy but, Healing could almost be taken out of the game altogether. Here is the most extreme example I could currently perform on my character:
I could cast Dawn and affect a cubic volume of 130,000 ft. If you divide that by 125(the cubic volume of a 5ft*5ft*5ft space on a 3d grid), you get 1040 areas that could be occupied spaces. If we only assume 5% of these spaces are targets either on the ground or in the air, we still hit 52 targets on the spells cast. With a 4d10 spell, up to 1 min duration.
For the same level spell, I can cast Mass Cure Wounds and heal up to 6 targets with 3d8+mod.
I'm confused, am I a Wizard or a Cleric?
I'm pretty sure 4E mechanics are responsible for the Healing rules in 5E as well. Everyone who hated 4E compared the rules to an MMO style of play, which was easy to see. Yes, MMO healing mechanics made Healing more interesting of an idea to try for some playing tabletop RPGs. As someone who played many roles in several MMOs, it would be dishonest to say that Healers in those games aren't the definition of ridiculous. It was quite common for a healer to keep up a whole 10 man group in PVP or a Raid or 2-4 healers for a 25 man.
The obvious reason is because you could take a player out of combat or capture them without having to kill them or play whack-a-mole pop-up game with tiny heals(Healing Word).
Hmmm, different words, same meaning.
"the stakes for someone going down feel more tactically significant". VS "The obvious reason is because you could take a player out of combat or capture them"
"It would make it more of a scary thing when they go down, without it being too dire (them being killed outright)". VS "without having to kill them"
"This would also increase the value of combat heals, since it becomes more important for allies not to go down". VS "or play whack-a-mole pop-up game with tiny heals(Healing Word)".
I don't know, I think this is pretty solid ground for an "I told you so" Lyxen !