Houserule on First Aid: Is this balanced?

[PhallicWarrior]

One of my fellow players spent most of our last session twiddling her thumbs because her Fighter took an errant crit to the face from a Hobgoblin Warmage and the party didn't have time to sit down and let her take a short rest before they booked it out of the area. (long, involved chase scene.) She could have been back on her feet in no time if the guy tending to her had any healing abilities left, but she'd already spent her second wind so he couldn't use Heal to trigger it and put her back on her feet. She amounted to a floating -2 penalty to whichever other PC carried her out while she bled out all over the ground, and it's only due to Stubborn Survivor that she didn't die before they could give her medical attention. She didn't enjoy this so she asked the DM to houserule First Aid into triggering a healing surge rather than a second wind. The idea would be that each person could be tended to by anyone trained in Heal once per scene total. Would this horribly unbalance anything?

[Akodo Makama]

PHB p 185: Stabilize the dying. DC 15 heal check allows you to cause an adjacent ally to stop needing to make death checks. She at least wouldn't have been bleeding out, and would not have been in danger of dying at all.

[Binks]

Just out of curiosity does your party have a leader (the role)? If so, had they already expended all of their healing abilities? Or did anyone have a healing potion on them?

It's probably not terribly unbalanced, but it's kind of unnecessary. Just buy a couple cheap healing potions and this won't ever happen again, it's a standard action to feed an adjacent ally a healing potion and lets them spend a healing surge to regain some hp.

[Sipex]

I wouldn't create a whole new house rule around it.

However, if I was the DM I'd use discretion. When things started dragging out I'd let her spend a healing surge though so she could get back in the action.

[WickerNipple]

Houserule is unnecessary: there's no reason the player should have been bleeding or risking death post-battle. Just stabilize the player.

And if a similar situation arises where you think a player will be out for hours because of something like this: lo! a single healing potion in the loot! rejoice!

[Mando Knight]

The idea would be that each person could be tended to by anyone trained in Heal once per scene total.

Second Wind is per-encounter.

Also, the chase scene was poorly DM'd... if they're not going to get a rest, the damage should be paced like it was just one encounter.

[PhallicWarrior]

PHB p 185: Stabilize the dying. DC 15 heal check allows you to cause an adjacent ally to stop needing to make death checks. She at least wouldn't have been bleeding out, and would not have been in danger of dying at all.

I should have clarified: they did stabilize her fairly quickly after the initial fight, although she did almost bleed out; the player's beef was that because no one had any healing items or powers left, and she'd already used her second wind, she was stuck unconscious being carried around for the rest of the session.

[Binks]

What level is the group? Buying a 50gp healing potion to carry around for this kind of situation shouldn't be hard unless they're level 1, and I don't really see the point in adding a houserule for something that can easily be dealt with by the PCs.

The houserule certainly won't break anything, but it devalues some items that are already extremely easy to get and adds more tracking in a way I wouldn't be comfortable with myself. Personally I'd just throw a healing potion or two in their loot every once in a while if it was a problem, it's such a cheap item it shouldn't make much of an impact.

tl;dr - I would not add another variable to be tracked during combat (has this person had a healing surge triggered by a heal check yet this encounter + have they used second wind instead of just the second) when a 50gp item does the same thing.