At-Will Healing: game-breaking, or no?

[Extra Anchovies]

Just want to know your thoughts on the matter. A DM I played with recently allowed the party to craft a use-activated item of CLW, and using it felt pretty unfair, but it would have only been more efficient than wands after about 125 uses. Still made me feel pretty discouraged from playing characters with lots of healing effects (e.g. Pathfinder paladins), though. Having full health after every encounter made it feel like we were playing on easy mode.

What do you all think about use-activated or command-word healing items? Do you allow/use them in your games?

[Spore]

Health and healing is a ressource in Pathfinder. But it is a ressource that is unevenly distributed. A fighter has more than the wizard, and the guy that got attacked last encounter has it worse in the upcoming battle. Pathfinder and D&D expects you to have non optimized characters with strengths and benefits but they also expect you to enter combat fully healed and rid of most status effects.


Still made me feel pretty discouraged from playing characters with lots of healing effects (e.g. Pathfinder paladins), though.

You should voice your opinion in a calm manner. But hear this before: Sometimes time is of the essence so bigger heals and healers are very much encouraged. You can't spend 10 minutes healing after a battle when you know the whole enemy dungeon is alerted to your presence. When guards are actively searching for the intruders.

Is it some kind of eternal wand of CLW? Or is it "unlimited instant health the DM-fiat the stick (TM)"? How quickly does it really heal?

[Extra Anchovies]

Health and healing is a resource in Pathfinder. But it is a resource that is unevenly distributed. A fighter has more than the wizard, and the guy that got attacked last encounter has it worse in the upcoming battle. Pathfinder and D&D expects you to have non optimized characters with strengths and benefits but they also expect you to enter combat fully healed and rid of most status effects.

Hm.

An encounter with an Encounter Level (EL) equal to the PCs’ level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources—hit points, spells, magic item uses, and so on.
I personally see at-will healing as reducing this estimated 20% resource costs by too much, i.e. by saving the spell slots that would have been spent on healing, or by removing the need for expenditure of magic item charges.


You should voice your opinion in a calm manner. But hear this before: Sometimes time is of the essence so bigger heals and healers are very much encouraged. You can't spend 10 minutes healing after a battle when you know the whole enemy dungeon is alerted to your presence. When guards are actively searching for the intruders.

(For the record, this is a past game that has since ended.)
Hm. That's a fair point; burst healing is still definitely useful in some situations, e.g. in combat or in highly time-sensitive situations.


Is it some kind of eternal wand of CLW? Or is it "unlimited instant health the DM-fiat the stick (TM)"? How quickly does it really heal?

It was use-activated Cure Light Wounds. Should've mentioned that in the OP. Will edit appropriately.

[Necroticplague]

Actually, I find that out-of-combat full-healing makes the game easier to run good encounters for. After all, I don't have to balance encounters with the uncertainty of knowing how much health the party will have when they come into it. I don't have to pull punches because 'they could all be half-dead when they fight this'. I actually find burst healing to be more problematic, because after a certain point (the point in which any damage that isn't instantly fatal can be fully repaired in one round), you have to use OHKOs or all damage is just pointless (and I consider OHKOs to be very problematic and unfun game mechanics).

In terms of your item: no, because I don't allows custom magic items at all. However, I encourage everyone to look into some source of Fast Healing as soon as possible.

[NichG]

I wouldn't say 'game-breaking', but I might say 'game-changing'. There are certain kinds of challenges that just become meaningless with this kind of thing. If the game is already focused on occasional big/challenging fights with lots of time in between (or player-controlled pacing) then it won't make a real difference. But the presence of at-will healing means that the only way to have a real attrition-minimization based challenge is to upgrade the form of attrition to things which are harder to deal with - ability damage and drain, each encounter having a chance of killing characters, etc.

Essentially, without abundant healing, you can have an encounter which has 0% chance of killing even a single PC but which is still meaningful in the overall sequence of encounters. If the PCs treat it cavalierly, then they take more hitpoint damage than if they play smart. For a single encounter that doesn't matter but if you have to go through four or five and then you have a big no-holds-barred boss fight, then it challenges the players' ability to conserve resources, balance risk and reward, and generally exercise long-term strategic thinking. With abundant healing, the same encounters aren't going to really have an impact on the boss encounter, so they should be cut out or amplified into things that actually do drain relevant resources if mishandled.

So what it comes down to is, there are certain types of gameplay which become harder to engage in with at-will healing. Those types of gameplay are not the only types of gameplay you can have, so whether it 'breaks' a particular campaign depends a lot on what that campaign is trying to be.

[Chronos]

Yeah, it's definitely a change. Whether that change is for good or ill is a matter of taste, and will vary from group to group. But it's hard to get away from it entirely, as long as conventional healing resources are so cheap.

[Elricaltovilla]

Lord_Gareth wrote a blog post about infinite healing, you should give it a read (http://dreamscarred.com/the-bag-of-kittens-and-you/).

That being said, I've done the infinite healing thing before. If you've got silver crane maneuvers and a +1 merciful gauntlet, you can punch your allies all day long to heal them at the cost of only 1d3+STR+1d6+1 nonlethal damage. It does feel a little rude to the DM but its hardly outside the realm of adjustment, and it's incredibly amusing to have the party dwarf run up to you and shout "I'm bleeding! Punch me in the face!"

[Uncle Pine]

I had a similar experience recently: what happened was that the party's Crusader realized that Martial Spirit doesn't actually require you to hit a foe and that he could just poke the ground with his sword, healing the party in the process. Three sessions has passed since, the players look satisfied and I didn't notice any game-breaking changes even without accomodating encounters: in fact, even though they now have access to a reasonable source of out-of-combat healing, they still need to rest every couple of hard encounters because the Wizard runs out of summons, the Totemist still risks to die almost every time the monster he just charged has enough to-hit bonus to bypass his huge natural AC, the Swift Hunter still rolls only incredibly low numbers on his attacks, the Spellthief still avoid taking damage at all because he uses a great crossbow and the Crusader feels over-the-top because even if he doesn't hit really hard (he invested heavily on AC) he's incredibly useful. Besides, healing 2 hp/round (they're all 4th level) didn't prove that game-breaking when they had to escape from a heavily guarded owlbear outpost, when they had little time to recover between each encounter. That time, the Wizard's healing belt proved much more useful.

As for your situation, I don't think that at-will healing is game-breaking, nor that it is game-defeating per se. For example, if the at-will healing is acquired at a "fair" price like a feat (Troll-Blooded), a dip (Crusader 1) and/or comes from the powers of a single character (or even a bunch of characters) who can be seen as "the cool guy who makes things easier for us", it can be a nice addition to a game. On the other hand, if everyone can acquire at-will healing for cheap (how much for a command word CLW item? 1.800 gp?), the DM should inform players that they shouldn't build their characters around healing people, because otherwise they will feel useless if they decide to play that kind of character (partially or totally, depending on how many resources they invested in being a good healer).
TL;DR: If you're going to let your player have at-will healing for 1.800 gp, you should nicely tell them to avoid playing a healer, similarly to how you should inform your players to not build a squad of diplomancers if your game will be based on Robinson Crusoe.

EDIT:

Lord_Gareth wrote a blog post about infinite healing, you should give it a read (http://dreamscarred.com/the-bag-of-kittens-and-you/).
I don't see how that post is about infinite healing. Command word CLW items don't require sacrifices in kitten, do they? :smallconfused:
On the other hand, that post is beautiful. Let's have a moment of silence for all the kitten and bees that died fueling (Greater) Consumptive Fields.

[Extra Anchovies]

Lord_Gareth wrote a blog post about infinite healing, you should give it a read (http://dreamscarred.com/the-bag-of-kittens-and-you/).

You may have linked the wrong article. I don't see the connection. If you did mean to link the "bag of cats" post, it would be nice if you could explain its relevance here.

[Spore]

Having full health after every encounter made it feel like we were playing on easy mode.

In addition to that you're probably playing Pathfinder in "Burst Mode" now. Your fights come in bigger bursts (because you need bigger boats to challenge fully healed PCs) instead of attrition (fighting 25 goblins is a thing your PCs can succeed in but it is merely a balancing act of ressources spent on offense and defense).


I personally see at-will healing as reducing this estimated 20% resource costs by too much, i.e. by saving the spell slots that would have been spent on healing, or by removing the need for expenditure of magic item charges.

Having full health is not a ressource factor but action economy in the fight. Healing infight is incredibly expensive actionwise. We fought an epic (CR+4) encounter yesterday where my Paladin dropped from 98 to 7 HP (so I lost 114 HP, plus one spell use of Hero's Defiance plus LoH). If I would have been damaged by the Nightmare spell that was cast onto us (1d10 = 8) I would've been dead now. One guy of five being decimated from 100% to negative HP is about 20% of the party's health. Still, it would have been pyrrhic victory. Yes we had a Cleric with "Heal" prepared. Yet, he was hit by Blasphemy and stunned for a round making him unable to come to me in time.

So no, having an eternal wand is NOT game breaking

[Gnaeus]

1. In most games, casters are burning spells in encounters, muggles are burning hp. Unlimited healing helps muggles vs casters a little. Since casters are stronger than muggles, this is not usually a bad thing.

2. A cure light wounds wand tends to last through a couple of levels of heavy use. If your wand has the cost of 2.5 wands of clw, it will have no effect on game balance at all for 4-5 levels, since you could have just bought normal wands with the same money.

[Elricaltovilla]

You may have linked the wrong article. I don't see the connection. If you did mean to link the "bag of cats" post, it would be nice if you could explain its relevance here.

It's similar when you consider things like Silver Crane or (in 3.5) Devoted Spirit giving out infinite healing by hitting stuff. A character using one of those disciplines could carry around a "bag of kittens" to get the same effect as a command word item of Cure Light Wounds or much greater. This was supposedly a balance issue.

The impetus for the article was the harbinger's recovery mechanic, but it's still relevant to the discussion as bag of kittening is an easy way to get infinite healing, at a much cheaper rate than custom magic items. Never mind that, y'know you have to be good to be able to use Silver Crane, and killing helpless kittens is anything but good.

[Seerow]

It's similar when you consider things like Silver Crane or (in 3.5) Devoted Spirit giving out infinite healing by hitting stuff. A character using one of those disciplines could carry around a "bag of kittens" to get the same effect as a command word item of Cure Light Wounds or much greater. This was supposedly a balance issue.

The impetus for the article was the harbinger's recovery mechanic, but it's still relevant to the discussion as bag of kittening is an easy way to get infinite healing, at a much cheaper rate than custom magic items. Never mind that, y'know you have to be good to be able to use Silver Crane, and killing helpless kittens is anything but good.

Cats are the embodiment of pure evil. Killing kittens isn't just a good act but a [Good] act. Those who claim otherwise are unfortunate victims of the feline agenda

[GilesTheCleric]

I'll add my voice to the crowd that's staying that free healing isn't game-breaking. Now, if you become able to cast Heal at-will, then I might throw a few flags, but even that usually isn't as useful as casting other spells. If you follow the wands of lesser vigour link in my sig, you can see some graphs (via a link in the first paragraph) that show how inefficient healing is.

Further, it shows the expected cost of healing, which ends up being less than 5% WBL by the end of the game. So, making it entirely free doesn't change much, and practically only matters at very low levels where healing is still both expensive and efficient.

[GreatDane]

I don't mind at-will healing; it's priced appropriately within the game's structure (in terms of gold and other resources like feats and spells and class features). I wouldn't like an item such as the one you're describing unless it was proportionately expensive - the PCs should expend resources to "solve" the issue of walking into every encounter unharmed.

[Gnaeus]

Further, it shows the expected cost of healing, which ends up being less than 5% WBL by the end of the game. So, making it entirely free doesn't change much, and practically only matters at very low levels where healing is still both expensive and efficient.

And if anything, that overstates the actual cost of healing, since it assumes all healing comes from wands, when in practice the wands will often be supplemented by free class abilities (positive energy channeling from clerics, goodberry cast by druids or shamans on the day before the adventure, cleric or bard spells converted to cures at the end of the day, lay on hands, cures cast by summoned outsiders after the combat ends, temporary hp like aid or false life.)

[GilesTheCleric]

And if anything, that overstates the actual cost of healing, since it assumes all healing comes from wands, when in practice the wands will often be supplemented by free class abilities (positive energy channeling from clerics, goodberry cast by druids or shamans on the day before the adventure, cleric or bard spells converted to cures at the end of the day, lay on hands, cures cast by summoned outsiders after the combat ends, temporary hp like aid or false life.)

That's an excellent point. The graphs already do overstate the requisite healing by assuming that PCs will reach 38 con by level 20, and aren't using other healing whose cost quickly approaches zero (healing belt) or is free like you've mentioned. If I weren't busy with life and that domain handbook, I might make a more comprehensive examination of healing. Maybe in a few months.

[Evan Epis]

I wouldn't say 'game-breaking', but I might say 'game-changing'. There are certain kinds of challenges that just become meaningless with this kind of thing.

Pretty much this.

We have a DMM cleric in our party, and with lesser vigor persisted, we really ignore things like one of us falling at negative HPs, the wounds we suffered during a battle, or the chest that might be guarded by a burning hands spell that is activated if you try to crack it open instead of finding the key.

[Honest Tiefling]

I'd also like to point out that if you have less experienced or op-savvy people in the game, there's a good chance they'll lag behind more powerful characters/more tactical players. They're far more likely to take a bunch of HP damage to the face, and be unable to keep up.

[Elricaltovilla]

Pretty much this.

We have a DMM cleric in our party, and with lesser vigor persisted, we really ignore things like one of us falling at negative HPs, the wounds we suffered during a battle, or the chest that might be guarded by a burning hands spell that is activated if you try to crack it open instead of finding the key.

The trick with that one is to have the chest trapped to destroy whatever's inside it instead of attacking the players. One lost treasure chest and the party will never, ever risk busting open a chest again without going over it with a fine toothed comb.

[Evan Epis]

The trick with that one is to have the chest trapped to destroy whatever's inside it instead of attacking the players. One lost treasure chest and the party will never, ever risk busting open a chest again without going over it with a fine toothed comb.

Sure, of course. There are many ways around it,I'm not denying that.

The spell in question might have been an inflict spell or whatever. Said example was used just to describe some things you can "ignore" with infinite healing, like traps that would otherwise hinder and soften you before the next battle.

[Spore]

Pretty much this.

We have a DMM cleric in our party, and with lesser vigor persisted, we really ignore things like one of us falling at negative HPs, the wounds we suffered during a battle, or the chest that might be guarded by a burning hands spell that is activated if you try to crack it open instead of finding the key.

Also this feels like bad roleplaying. Unless all characters have severe sadomasochistic tendencies, they still would avoid physical harm just because it really really hurts. Not to talk about the risks involved (because vigor is a comparatively slow healing spell and does not cover even the poorest poisoned dart).

[Evan Epis]

Also this feels like bad roleplaying. Unless all characters have severe sadomasochistic tendencies, they still would avoid physical harm just because it really really hurts. Not to talk about the risks involved (because vigor is a comparatively slow healing spell and does not cover even the poorest poisoned dart).

I'm not imlying that you should throw yourself intentionally into every magically trapped chest, door, box etc you find before you, and try to destroy it via force while you are being hit repeatedly by magical energies in the process, just because you know your wounds are going to heal. Or that, we, do it on purpose continuously. And as you are correctly stating, of course said spell could be... an enervation spell which is not something a lesser vigor cannot deal with.

My examples were given just to describe what the quote I used meant more or less:


"I wouldn't say 'game-breaking', but I might say 'game-changing'. There are certain kinds of challenges that just become meaningless with this kind of thing."

[sleepyphoenixx]

The general assumption in my games is that encounters start at full health. If they got there with a wand, fast healing or an infinite use item is irrelevant, so it's not game-breaking.
They might have a little more gold, long-term, but hardly enough to make a significant difference.


Also this feels like bad roleplaying. Unless all characters have severe sadomasochistic tendencies, they still would avoid physical harm just because it really really hurts. Not to talk about the risks involved (because vigor is a comparatively slow healing spell and does not cover even the poorest poisoned dart).

If they were afraid of pain they would have gone for a different profession. Adventurers get hurt.
Not to mention that they already know "the cleric cast a vigor spell on us, so it'll be fine".

Of course ignoring someone dropping into negatives is a good way to get that someone killed by an unlucky AoE or a monster following through, so it's not the smartest decision.
But letting the precast spell take care of any wounds that aren't immediately life threatening is completely in-character, because that's what it's for.

[Grim Portent]

The trick with that one is to have the chest trapped to destroy whatever's inside it instead of attacking the players. One lost treasure chest and the party will never, ever risk busting open a chest again without going over it with a fine toothed comb.

Isn't that kind of an issue from a common sense perspective?

You put something into a locked chest to keep it safe, if you're going to blow it up at the risk of someone trying to steal it you may as well have just chucked the item in a trash heap rather than spending time and money on a box to put it in, and if you were going to destroy the item anyway why bother with the box, just destroy it now.

It's a bit like putting your family heirlooms inside a proximity triggered bomb rather than putting the bomb in the entrance to the room. It just makes very little sense.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Overall I like it, because it means martials really can fight all day while casters have to budget carefully. Without plentiful out of combat healing, it's usually the martials who need to stop first, because being at 20% hp is much much more scary than being at 20% spell slots left. You do need to have multiple fights in a day for it to even matter, but I have to do that anyway just to keep the casters in line.

The only bad thing is that it makes it harder to pull off the whole "heroes gradually battered throughout the villain's dungeon before bravely confronting him while injured" thing. Although it's a game and not a novel, so if they really feel weakened, they're going to try their best to weasel out of continuing and retreat back to rest no matter what you do for healing rules.
You need to implement more long-lasting debuffs, ability damage, and level drain instead. Or utilize wave attacks and turn multiple encounters into one giant fight that lasts many rounds.
Time limits to reach the end of a dungeon or else bad stuff happens also nips it in the bud and makes everything more tense and exciting, but you can't justify that all the time.

At-will healing being allowed needs to come with the understanding that the party will try its best to push on and not still fall back on the nova'ing 15 min. adventuring day for it to be anything more than a thing to further trivialize the difficulty. I had the pre-nerf Glorious Heat feat in a PF gestalt game and could full heal people just by lighting candles ("new-agey hippy healing"!) with my unlimited use Spark orison. We'd fight seriously like 10-16 encounters some days, rushing through huge dungeons in one big slog. Having lots of 10 min/level buffs we wanted to get the most possible use out of may also have had something to do with it... :smallsmile:

[Elricaltovilla]

Isn't that kind of an issue from a common sense perspective?

You put something into a locked chest to keep it safe, if you're going to blow it up at the risk of someone trying to steal it you may as well have just chucked the item in a trash heap rather than spending time and money on a box to put it in, and if you were going to destroy the item anyway why bother with the box, just destroy it now.

It's a bit like putting your family heirlooms inside a proximity triggered bomb rather than putting the bomb in the entrance to the room. It just makes very little sense.

Not necessarily. Self destructing safes are a real thing, they're useful because sometimes it's more important to keep whatever's inside the safe out of somebody else's hands than it is to keep it in the safe. This is especially true in the case of sensitive information, but also applies in any case where the material value of the item in question is less than the application value.

[Spore]

I had the pre-nerf Glorious Heat feat in a PF gestalt game and could full heal people just by lighting candles ("new-agey hippy healing"!) with my unlimited use Spark orison.

That is goddamn hilarious. Relax, dudes. We're out of danger and the next guy trying to kill us is at LEAST two doors away. :D

[Chronos]

Personally, my feeling is that it's fine as long as the party has made a meaningful investment in it. Just buying an unlimited-use healstick for a few thousand gold isn't a meaningful investment, but if someone wants to take a feat-class combo or something that results in limitless healing, sure, I'm cool with that.

[NichG]

Also this feels like bad roleplaying. Unless all characters have severe sadomasochistic tendencies, they still would avoid physical harm just because it really really hurts. Not to talk about the risks involved (because vigor is a comparatively slow healing spell and does not cover even the poorest poisoned dart).

Just because it could be seen as bad roleplaying doesn't mean that players aren't going to go and do it anyhow, because with infinite healing it actually does make good tactical sense. When you put two things in tension like that, you're asking the players a question (which do you prefer? which is more important to you? etc). You should generally be prepared to accept either answer you receive.

It reminds me of a particular comment on game design from the guy who made AI War. It was something like 'if there's something boring or tedious that players can do to gain an advantage, players will do it and then be bored or frustrated'.

[Firechanter]

IME it's no big deal. But let's look at it analytically:
nominally, a party is supposed to lose about 20% HP per (standard) encounter. In practice this will often not be the case, but let's stick to it for now. A party is also supposed to level up ever 13,33 standard encounters (in 3.5 at least). So between every two levelups, you have to heal about 2,66 times the party's total HP.

Now for example, at level 5 you can expect a total HP pool of roughly 150HP. Which means that on their way to level 6, they have to heal about 400HP. That seems actually quite a lot, now that I look at the number. It's about 73 CLW Wand charges, or 1,5 CLW Wands, IF they healed every single lost HP via wand.
So in this scenario, the party would spend about 1.125GP on healing during level 5. During the same time, they can expect to gain about 22.000GP as WBL for four characters. So healing would actually cost some 5% of their total WBL.

Now, in practice, I find this already to be exaggerated: firstly, a well-played party will lose less than 20% HP per encounter. Secondly, Clerics can still spontaneously convert any leftover spells at the end of the day, and in PF also Channel Energy for free healing.
So in practice, let's say that the costs for wand healing come down to 2-3% of WBL.

In other words, giving the players At-Will Healing effectively means increasing their WBL by about 3%. Do you think that would break a game? Certainly not. Many published adventures over- or undershoot the recommended WBL by 20% or more. So 3% extra is certainly not going to crash the game.

As for Paladins: Pallies are not supposed to be the party's healbot. Their best use of Lay on Hands is on themselves, because they can use it as a Swift Action and still attack on the same turn. That's what the makes the PF Paladin a real awesome Energizer Bunny (especially if combined with Fey Foundling and Greater Mercy).

For comparison, in our current 3.5 game, two characters have one Healing Belt each, and beyond that we have two Wands of Lesser Vigor. On the route from level 5 to 7,5 we have used maybe 15 Wand charges. It's barely worth keeping track of.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Pretty much this.

We have a DMM cleric in our party, and with lesser vigor persisted, we really ignore things like one of us falling at negative HPs, the wounds we suffered during a battle, or the chest that might be guarded by a burning hands spell that is activated if you try to crack it open instead of finding the key.
Seems like the bigger issue is that your enemy is setting weak direct damage spells as traps. "Makes the cleric cast CMW" isn't much of a danger.

I'm firmly on the side of at-will healing, at least past a certain (low-level) point. The game already has cheap ways to make out-of-combat healing a nonissue (a wand of CLW or lesser vigor every level or two from party funds is dirt cheap), and plenty of ways to inflict lasting injuries (ability damage/drain, permanent spells like bestow curse, etc).

[Chronos]

Whenever anyone talks about brute-forcing through traps, I'm always reminded of the simple alarm trap (which may be the spell, or may just be something as simple as a bell on a tripwire): The effect of the trap is to get all of the monsters in the dungeon to that location at once. If that happens, it won't matter if the trap was triggered by the rogue, or by the big stupid fighter, or by the druid's summoned earth elemental: The party is equally screwed. Or, if the party isn't screwed by the entire dungeon's worth of monsters showing up at once, then they're running material so trivial they shouldn't be bothering with it.

[Pex]

No.

The bad guys of the non-first combat of the day are at full hit points. It is not unbalanced that the party is as well. The bad guys of the non-first combat of the day will be at full resource use. The party will not because they had to use resources in the first combat of the day and whatever combats they had before their current one. There are infinite bad guys of particular amounts at specific intervals for the DM to play with. When a bad guy dies another one is just an encounter away. The players only have their one character. Should a character die it's an ordeal to get it raised or create a new one, in and out of game. If it's a TPK, game over. It's more involved to create a new party. Even if it's the same campaign it's a new game. Full hit points is a player's security blanket. It encourages continuing the adventure that same game day instead of camping for the night because one hit will kill them regardless of resources available.

[lsfreak]

Also this feels like bad roleplaying. Unless all characters have severe sadomasochistic tendencies, they still would avoid physical harm just because it really really hurts. Not to talk about the risks involved (because vigor is a comparatively slow healing spell and does not cover even the poorest poisoned dart).

That's assuming a particular perspective on what hit points represent, though. RAW is "the ability to take physical punishment and keep going, and the ability to turn a serious blow into a less serious one. For some characters, hit points may represent divine favor or inner power." Many of us take that to mean that anything that fails to bring you to 0 health isn't necessarily even a hit that connects, but one that was successfully parried/voided/blocked, which wearies (making you more likely to take a lethal hit later) but isn't itself painful. (I could also point out that IRL mentally sound people basically do everything they can to actually avoid getting in a fight [especially with lethal weapons] because it's ****ing terrifying, but we don't call it bad roleplaying when we handwave that in the game.)

[NichG]

IME it's no big deal. But let's look at it analytically:

...

In other words, giving the players At-Will Healing effectively means increasing their WBL by about 3%. Do you think that would break a game? Certainly not. Many published adventures over- or undershoot the recommended WBL by 20% or more. So 3% extra is certainly not going to crash the game.

WBL equivalency is not a very good measure of gameplay balance. Not only does it vary a ton from class to class (it'll hurt a martial much more to lose some percentage of WBL than it would a caster), but it also is very specifically a long-term resource rather than a short-term resource. If you treat them as interchangeable, you can get a very skewed impression of how things will actually play out in practice.

It also isn't the case that the baseline of the game doesn't have this issue with resource attrition being meaningless, because there are already a bunch of ways to get 'almost at-will healing'. The more revealing question should rather be 'what does the game look like if healing is very hard to stockpile' versus 'what does the game look like when healing is easy to stockpile'?

[bekeleven]

That's an excellent point. The graphs already do overstate the requisite healing by assuming that PCs will reach 38 con by level 20, and aren't using other healing whose cost quickly approaches zero (healing belt) or is free like you've mentioned. If I weren't busy with life and that domain handbook, I might make a more comprehensive examination of healing. Maybe in a few months.

One further comment on that thread:

You got called out (erm, politely) for comparing HP:GP of a wand to that of a HB.

A better comparison may be how long you need a HB before it's a more efficient buy.

HB heals 27 HP/Day out of combat. It's approximately as efficient as a WoLV after 20 days (1.39 GP/HP) and more efficient after 21 days (1.32 GP/HP).

Assuming that you have the DMG-recommended 3 encounters/day and 13.3 encounters/level, that means a healing belt will lap a wand every 4.725 levels.

Back on topic: I think there are a few easy ways to heal up to half, like the dragon shaman?

There's also the Binder, which allows unlimited healing out of combat. It convinced me I could let my homebrew do the same without breaking too much.

[Chronos]

There are at least three ways for the binder to heal fully out of combat. The first and most straightforward is the Buer vestige. It was unambiguously intended to do exactly that, it's from the same source as the Binder itself, and there are no RAW issues with it (so far as I know, it's the only source of unlimited healing from any 3.x source that was intended to be such). But it's an entire vestige, that does pretty much nothing but that healing. That's a very steep price to pay.

The second method is the Tenebrous vestige, combined with a feat (there are at least three of them to choose from) that lets you use Turn Undead to heal. I don't know of any RAW problems with this method (at most, a DM might require you to dip a class for regular Turn Undead before taking one of those feats), but it requires material from multiple books and was probably not intended. This gives you more options than Buer, but it also costs you a feat in addition to one of your vestige slots. This is probably a fair price to pay.

The third method is the Zcerryl vestige, which eventually lets you summon bralani which can heal for you. This requires online material, which some DMs might not allow, and while the designers should have anticipated this possibility, since it only relies on core material, I'm guessing they didn't. This has essentially no cost to it at all, since Zcerryl is such a potent vestige that you'd probably be taking it anyway if it's allowed. On the other hand, it doesn't come online until level 12 at the earliest.

[Zirconia]

My current 3.5 game has a homebrewed mechanic to give us unlimited healing out of combat (1 hit point/round), and it hasn't been terribly different from a previous one where we bought CLW wands except a bit less tracking, which is nice. As others have pointed out, it mainly benefits the mundanes over the magic users, which is good.

It just means that our DM puts us in situations where we are taking other forms of damage, or running low on other resources, or too time constrained to use it, and so on. All pretty easy to do, and as I said, once D&D inserted purchasable magic items like CLW wands the "might run out of hit points over an adventuring day" train had left the station. :)

[Rubik]

So in this scenario, the party would spend about 1.125GP on healing during level 5.Uh... Healing tends to be WAY more expensive than 1 1/8 gp per level.

[Tvtyrant]

Personally I am fine with it. At low levels getting killed is really easy anyway, and at high levels hit point damage is less likely to kill you then the huge number of save or dies.

[Pex]

My pathfinder group uses a house rule of all healing outside of combat is auto-maximized. It still uses up a resource - spell, channel, wand charge, potion - but the healing is maxed. It's a facilitator. It hasn't caused problems. It speeds up play as we continue on the adventure towards the next encounter.

[Jack_Simth]

I had the pre-nerf Glorious Heat feat in a PF gestalt game and could full heal people just by lighting candles ("new-agey hippy healing"!) with my unlimited use Spark orison. We'd fight seriously like 10-16 encounters some days, rushing through huge dungeons in one big slog. Having lots of 10 min/level buffs we wanted to get the most possible use out of may also have had something to do with it... :smallsmile:If it matters, you can revert back to what amounts to the original by way of adding the Sacred Geometry feat for Heighten spell (and, of course, skill ranks). Heighten it at casting at no cost to your maximum spell level, and you're done.

But as to the OP:
I'll join the list of people saying that infinite healing changes the game a little, but not by all that much.




Uh... Healing tends to be WAY more expensive than 1 1/8 gp per level.

Things are listed differently depending on which side of the pond you're on. That's 1,125 gp per level, US.

[Morty]

I think the discussion about traps and healing mostly serves to point out how incredibly pointless traps are, rather than make any statement about at-will healing.

[Seerow]

I think the discussion about traps and healing mostly serves to point out how incredibly pointless traps are, rather than make any statement about at-will healing.

Yeah, trap design in all editions of D&D are seriously lacking. At their best they're a non-monster complication to an encounter. On average, they are speed bumps that you have to deal with but don't meaningfully affect anything. At their worst, you get Tomb of Horrors, where they exist as a test of your ability to read the DM's mind to solve the puzzle or die horribly. I'd love to see a game that could make traps interesting, but D&D has never really nailed it for me.

[Rubik]

Yeah, trap design in all editions of D&D are seriously lacking. At their best they're a non-monster complication to an encounter. On average, they are speed bumps that you have to deal with but don't meaningfully affect anything. At their worst, you get Tomb of Horrors, where they exist as a test of your ability to read the DM's mind to solve the puzzle or die horribly. I'd love to see a game that could make traps interesting, but D&D has never really nailed it for me.Lycanthromancer's posts in this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?155518-Tucker-s-Kobolds-PEACH-3-5) seem to do "traps" well. Of course, they're half-ambush encounter and half-trap, for what it's worth.

[137beth]

The important thing to remember when considering out-of-combat healing is that "resource attrition" only matters if the resource in question is actually limited.

I analyzed this awhile back when I was experimenting with at-will 0th level spells (including CMW). Firechanter got essentially the same result I did


IME it's no big deal. But let's look at it analytically:
nominally, a party is supposed to lose about 20% HP per (standard) encounter. In practice this will often not be the case, but let's stick to it for now. A party is also supposed to level up ever 13,33 standard encounters (in 3.5 at least). So between every two levelups, you have to heal about 2,66 times the party's total HP.

Now for example, at level 5 you can expect a total HP pool of roughly 150HP. Which means that on their way to level 6, they have to heal about 400HP. That seems actually quite a lot, now that I look at the number. It's about 73 CLW Wand charges, or 1,5 CLW Wands, IF they healed every single lost HP via wand.
So in this scenario, the party would spend about 1.125GP on healing during level 5. During the same time, they can expect to gain about 22.000GP as WBL for four characters. So healing would actually cost some 5% of their total WBL.

Now, in practice, I find this already to be exaggerated: firstly, a well-played party will lose less than 20% HP per encounter. Secondly, Clerics can still spontaneously convert any leftover spells at the end of the day, and in PF also Channel Energy for free healing.
So in practice, let's say that the costs for wand healing come down to 2-3% of WBL.

In other words, giving the players At-Will Healing effectively means increasing their WBL by about 3%. Do you think that would break a game? Certainly not. Many published adventures over- or undershoot the recommended WBL by 20% or more. So 3% extra is certainly not going to crash the game.

As for Paladins: Pallies are not supposed to be the party's healbot. Their best use of Lay on Hands is on themselves, because they can use it as a Swift Action and still attack on the same turn. That's what the makes the PF Paladin a real awesome Energizer Bunny (especially if combined with Fey Foundling and Greater Mercy).

For comparison, in our current 3.5 game, two characters have one Healing Belt each, and beyond that we have two Wands of Lesser Vigor. On the route from level 5 to 7,5 we have used maybe 15 Wand charges. It's barely worth keeping track of.

Going further, WBL increases significantly faster than HP. The cost of healing via wands is already pretty insignificant at level five, but it is entirely negligible at level 10. On the other hand, the time taken for the players to track CLW charges actually increases with level (not a lot, but it's still there). The players still have to waste real life time during the session to track a 'resource' which amounts to .1% of their WBL. Making wands the primary source of out-of-combat healing essentially has the effect of making healing free to the characters but not to the players. In-game mechanics should not be balanced with out-of-game costs.

So no, it is not overpowered. In fact, if you have wands of CLW, 'free' out of combat healing is already there. The only effect of actual at-will healing is to reduce out-of-character record keeping.


But that's at level five and above. At level 1, out-of-combat healing is still expensive. Making it available at level one does have a significant impact on the game. Eventually I decided it was an impact I liked--in fact, the need to carefully track healing resources out of combat is one of the reasons I dislike playing level 1-4 games RAW. I ended up implementing at-will cantrips and orisons without altering cure minor wounds, and haven't looked back since.

[137beth]

On the subject of traps, my favorite traps (in the usual sense of the word and not like automatically resetting create food and water 'traps':smalltongue:) are those that reposition the victims on the encounter map. Move the PCs into a tactically inferior position, and let the NPCs/monsters do the real damage.

Yes, traps that just deal hit-point damage are pointless on their own, and not particularly interesting even in an encounter.

[Endarire]

At-will out-of-combat healing is only game breaking if your game depends on its strict absense.

In games I've GMed and played in, I've been generally in favor of at-will noncombat healing. It just means I can do my GMing job (if I'm GM) of challenging the party without also having to consider the ramifications of fighting things when severely gimped.

For the sake of the game, giving everyone basically full health between each fight at the cost of in-game time is generally well worth it. When the PCs are under a time crunch, they get more cautious or/and resourceful. When not, you basically handwave the event and keep going. With at-will noncombat healing in play, PCs spend less time resting mid-dungeon/mid-adventure, less time retreating, and more time advancing the plot.

Let's examine the alternatives. Since healing items are already in-game - the wand of cure light wounds or lesser vigor or the custom item of (healing spell) X/day - are already prevalent. Spell slots for healing spells already exist. All at-will noncombat healing does is redirect resources from absolutely needing separate noncombat healing to having these resources on hand just in case they're needed in a fight - if your PCs invest in such things at all!

Consider also what sorts of actions this healing requires and what sorts of cooldowns it has. Is it, say, 5 HP per round? That's a long time when you have even 50 HP to recover. Or a party of people who need 50+ healing each.

[The Insanity]

I don't think it's game-breaking per se, more like setting-breaking.

[ryu]

I don't think it's game-breaking per se, more like setting-breaking.

At no point should the rules of D&D as presented EVER logically reproduce the standard fantasy setting everyone thinks of when these things come up. While we don't necessarily require that every game world have a Tippy style singularity in place, the very least that should happen is a world that takes into account the sheer amount of useful low level spells affordable for purchase even on peasant earning rates. I mean really the base setting falls apart on its own. The thing is held together with bits of chewed up gum, rubber bands, and lots of wishful thinking.

[The Insanity]

At no point should the rules of D&D as presented EVER logically reproduce the standard fantasy setting everyone thinks of when these things come up. While we don't necessarily require that every game world have a Tippy style singularity in place, the very least that should happen is a world that takes into account the sheer amount of useful low level spells affordable for purchase even on peasant earning rates. I mean really the base setting falls apart on its own. The thing is held together with bits of chewed up gum, rubber bands, and lots of wishful thinking.
Your point?

[137beth]

Your point?

That it's no more 'setting-breaking' than lots of other things in the game that people take for granted.

[The Insanity]

Uhh... And that makes it not-setting-breaking... how exactly? :smallconfused:

[NichG]

That it's no more 'setting-breaking' than lots of other things in the game that people take for granted.

Different people take different things for granted though. To a group that has never thought of buying bundles of CLW wands, the fact that you could do that doesn't really matter to how their game goes. They're not playing a version of D&D where that is done, for whatever reason (mental block, lack of knowledge, table culture, whatever).

People underestimate the impact of watershed features when they're on the downstream side of things. Just because it wouldn't make a difference to your game doesn't mean that it wouldn't make a difference to an 'upstream' game.

[Firechanter]

Uh... Healing tends to be WAY more expensive than 1 1/8 gp per level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#/media/File:DecimalSeparator.svg

It should be glaringly clear what I meant, so such a comment is not helpful in the least.



Going further, WBL increases significantly faster than HP. The cost of healing via wands is already pretty insignificant at level five, but it is entirely negligible at level 10.

Yeah, that's also true. At level 10 a character will have _roughly_ twice the HP of level 5, but more than five times the wealth. So the relative healing expenses will drop to maybe 1% WBL at that time. And even less at every level beyond that.


I ended up implementing at-will cantrips and orisons without altering cure minor wounds, and haven't looked back since.

BTW, note that there is also a rules-legal infinite healing method in Pathfinder (which has At-Will Orisons, but no CMinW) -- you need to have an Oracle of Life and Boots of the Earth (iirc). The boots give you Fast Healing as long as you don't move, and your class power allows you to transfer HP to party members. Presto. The boots are dirt cheap to, er, boot, but are from a rather obscure source.

[Extra Anchovies]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark#/media/File:DecimalSeparator.svg

It should be glaringly clear what I meant, so such a comment is not helpful in the least.

Considering this is an English-language forum and most native English speakers are American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Three_circles_of_English-speaking_countries) (by quite a large margin, in fact), I wouldn't fault him for not knowing what you meant. Not everyone is aware that a period (".") is not the standard notation for a digit group separator in some countries.

Also, (".") looks like some weird emoticon. I might start using it every now and then, but I'm not sure what for.


BTW, note that there is also a rules-legal infinite healing method in Pathfinder (which has At-Will Orisons, but no CMinW) -- you need to have an Oracle of Life and Boots of the Earth (iirc). The boots give you Fast Healing as long as you don't move, and your class power allows you to transfer HP to party members. Presto. The boots are dirt cheap to, er, boot, but are from a rather obscure source.

Boots of the Earth, yes. Not on the PFSRD as far as I can tell, but they're from one of the Inner Sea books. Inner Sea Gods, I think. Only Fast Healing 1, so it's not really useful in time-sensitive situations, but it's good when you have the time to spare.

[Der_DWSage]

BTW, note that there is also a rules-legal infinite healing method in Pathfinder (which has At-Will Orisons, but no CMinW) -- you need to have an Oracle of Life and Boots of the Earth (iirc). The boots give you Fast Healing as long as you don't move, and your class power allows you to transfer HP to party members. Presto. The boots are dirt cheap to, er, boot, but are from a rather obscure source.

Er. Not to be that guy, but you really don't need to be an Oracle either-you could just share the boots around the party. There's no attunement time on them, aside from however long it takes to take off existing boots and put the new ones on.

But yeah, to add a tack onto what everyone else has said-at will healing isn't gamebreaking, so long as the GM prepares for it accordingly. If he can go 'Well, they're going to be at full health for every battle, I may as well make every single one moderately challenging and see if they burn up spell slots instead,' then it's perfectly fine. It also really helps the martial classes with the whole 'I can swing a sword all day long' thing, so that they aren't paying for encounters with precious, precious HP.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Also, (".") looks like some weird emoticon. I might start using it every now and then, but I'm not sure what for.
Looks kind of like an angry bunny?

[Rubik]

Looks kind of like an angry bunny?https://mlpforums.com/uploads/monthly_11_2014/post-1029-0-24615600-1415510089.jpg

[Urpriest]

Ok, why is everyone in this thread ignoring the most important part of the OP?

This is a use-activated item, guys, not command-word. It's not out of combat healing, it's in-combat healing.

If the "use" that activated the item were "bandaging a wound" or the like, it would just be command-word. The only reason to make an item use-activated rather than command-word is if you want to reduce the action cost. In published items, this usually means tacking an effect on to something you do in combat anyway, while in TO it get attached to free actions like talking. Either way, these players are healing frequently in combat, not just out of combat.

[Rubik]

Ok, why is everyone in this thread ignoring the most important part of the OP?Angel Bunny violently denies your silly "on-topicness." With violence.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Ok, why is everyone in this thread ignoring the most important part of the OP?

This is a use-activated item, guys, not command-word. It's not out of combat healing, it's in-combat healing.

If the "use" that activated the item were "bandaging a wound" or the like, it would just be command-word. The only reason to make an item use-activated rather than command-word is if you want to reduce the action cost. In published items, this usually means tacking an effect on to something you do in combat anyway, while in TO it get attached to free actions like talking. Either way, these players are healing frequently in combat, not just out of combat.
If the OP is worried about the power of infinite CLW, he's almost certainly not playing at the levels of optimization that would attach magical effect to, say, taking a step, so I'm betting on the item taking a standard action.

Also, I'm pretty sure "bandaging a wound" is use-activated. Magical bandages that activate when you put them on a wound are definitely not "command word."

[Extra Anchovies]

Also, I'm pretty sure "bandaging a wound" is use-activated. Magical bandages that activate when you put them on a wound are definitely not "command word."

Either that, or the command word is "ooh! that stings!"

[AGrinningCat]

GM here. I'm running a Skulls and Shackles campaign. The party is well into 8th level by now and ever since 4th they've had "Magical Wellness Stick" that functions as a 1d6 Club that heals people for 1d8+3 hp every time it hits you. It's basically a source of infinite out of combat healing.

It's probably due to the pacing of this module, but infinite out of combat healing has not been an issue. The players still spend resources, still get KOed ocassionally, and I believe the party is up to two deaths post Magical wellness stick, with a total of 5 Deaths amongst the players.

Another game I play in, I have a 5 minute ritual(spheres of power) I can perform that heals 1d8+5 damage for free. Pacing is more of an issue here since I can't always find the 30 or so minutes between encounters to patch everyone to full, so sometimes we have to truck on and bleed along the way.

An infinite cure light stick loses value in combat as levels go on, but retains its benefits for out of combat healing, but really you have to look at your encounters and players and ask what set up are you going for? Infinite out of combat healing will hurt your typical dungeon crawl since each room is supposed to be bit by bit thay adds up over time. If you are designing (or playing) where encounters are few, but violent, infinite magical healing won't hurt much ( and even open up design space for stronger encounters)

[Felyndiira]

Like pretty much everything else, this depends mostly on the group and the GM.

At-will healing is not broken in the numerical sense, but it does remove a few things from the GM's toolbox that may make the GM uncomfortable. If the GM wants to run a low-optimization, dramatic game at low levels, with a large focus on things like oil traps, Tucker's kobolds, and the likes, then at-will healing is going to be "overpowered" for that campaign. If the GM is okay with working around it, at-will out-of-combat healing is totally fine (and something often done anyway, except with a bit of the player's WBL). I would consider it to be around "mid-optimization".

Also, do keep in mind that, at least in Pathfinder, at-will out-of-combat healing exist for only 5,000 GP (http://www.archivesofnethys.com/MagicWondrousDisplay.aspx?FinalName=Boots%20of%20t he%20Earth). In 3.5 there are plenty of tricks to do this (persist vigor, tomb tainted soul + dread necro, devoted spirit maneuvers - available for one feat!, touch of healing reserve feat [half HP max, but unlimited nonetheless], Shadow Sun Ninja, etc.) that it's not really a big deal past level 8 or so.

[Falkyron]

I had a similar experience recently: what happened was that the party's Crusader realized that Martial Spirit doesn't actually require you to hit a foe and that he could just poke the ground with his sword, healing the party in the process.
I don't think slow out-of-combat healing is too imbalanced either, but I disagree with the conclusion that this particular trick would function. Your friend seems to rely upon glossing over of the intent and stated balancing factors of the Devoted Spirit line of maneuvers.
"You must make a successful melee attack against an enemy whose alignment has at least one component different from yours. This foe must pose a threat to you or your allies in some direct, immediate way." -Key requirements to using a crusader's healing maneuvers. Even if the player could bodge together a reasonable explanation as to how a certain inanimate object might be a threat, I seriously doubt any DM would consider dirt to have an alignment.

Even if you cite that it is only spelled out in certain cases: most of the maneuvers that do not have this laid out reference 'as X' where 'X' is an ability with it spelled out, and the RAI/lore makes it clear that the healing is tied into the 'vigor, drive and toughness you inspire in others' as a result of your brave act. I would hesitate to call poking the floor 'brave'. Even the vaguest healing ability which comes from the Martial Spirit stance cites that you strike an 'opponent' before you decide who receives the 2hp.

If you can manage to justify bypassing all this, you then have to deal with the recovery mechanic that a crusader uses. I can look past the condition of having them begin their cycle when an encounter begins, since what constitutes an encounter is open to interpretation on a moment-by-moment basis (so we could probably just ignore that). Even so - with the lowest readied maneuvers and good optimization, he can't rely on having the same maneuver more than once in four rounds.
I see that you seem to base his healing on a stance, though. So I suppose that this last paragraph isn't very relevant unless he begins to start using strikes to be more efficient.

Edit: Some of my post went missing in the middle. Strange.

[Necroticplague]

I don't think slow out-of-combat healing is too imbalanced either, but I disagree with the conclusion that this particular trick would function. Your friend seems to rely upon glossing over of the intent and stated balancing factors of the Devoted Spirit line of maneuvers.
"You must make a successful melee attack against an enemy whose alignment has at least one component different from yours. This foe must pose a threat to you or your allies in some direct, immediate way." -Key requirements to using a crusader's healing maneuvers. Even if the player could bodge together a reasonable explanation as to how a certain inanimate object might be a threat, I seriously doubt any DM would consider dirt to have an alignment.

Even if you cite that it is only spelled out in certain cases: most of the maneuvers that do not have this laid out reference 'as X' where 'X' is an ability with it spelled out, and the RAI/lore makes it clear that the healing is tied into the 'vigor, drive and toughness you inspire in others' as a result of your brave act. I would hesitate to call poking the floor 'brave'. Even the vaguest healing ability which comes from the Martial Spirit stance cites that you strike an 'opponent' before you decide who receives the 2hp.

Martial Spirit doesn't have that restriction. It's also a stance, so recovery doesn't enter into it (since you don't recover stances). It also doesn't say you have to hit an enemy, just make a successful melee attack. It also doesn't reference any of the maneuvers that do have that restriction.


While you are in this stance, you or an ally within 30 feet heals 2 points of damage each time you make a successful melee attack. This healing represents the vigor, drive, and toughness you inspire in others. Your connection to the divine causes such inspiration to have a real, tangible effect on your allies’ health.

Each time you hit an opponent in melee, you can choose a different recipient within range to receive this healing.

While it may not be brave, smacking the ground after a battle certainly seems like an act of vigor. It works, even if it is kinda weird (personally, i think it can be easily fluffed as a type of inspiring excercise or prayer).

[icefractal]

Ok, why is everyone in this thread ignoring the most important part of the OP?

This is a use-activated item, guys, not command-word. It's not out of combat healing, it's in-combat healing.Because that isn't the most important part? Beyond the first few levels, healing 1d8+1 a turn in combat, even if it's automatic like Fast Healing, is pretty trivial - it saves people from bleeding out (but also gives the foes incentive to CdG), but it's puny compared to the damage the foes are throwing at you.

Where-as full healing between each combat is a much more significant effect. It may or may not be game breaking, depending on the campaign (for a standard one, no, but it'd break an attrition-oriented one).

[Ssalarn]

I personally find that unlimited healing of the cure light wounds isn't going to be particularly game-breaking after the first couple levels. That assumes a certain level of system mastery though, one where you're usually efficient enough with party resources that you're going to be "topped off" going into any major fights anyways (unless it's a surprise encounter immediately following another one, at which point it doesn't matter how many CLW uses you have).

I have noticed that some players and DM/GMs just don't like the feel of unlimited healing though. I had a discussion along those lines regarding the Vitalist from Dreamscarred Press and the Life Oracle, basically the two classes whose healing capabilities are finely tuned enough that in combat healing is regularly a viable and mathematically feasible option. Both classes can bring a dynamic to the game where the party is never in any danger of dying from hit point damage, right up until the healer's resources run dry and suddenly there's no more healing to be had. I actually really like having healers like this on hand though, because it kind of streamlines the game. Healing up after/between encounters usually takes less time, both to discuss and implement, and people generally want to play those healers because they actually feel effective.

Even without unlimited healing, I've never had a party spend anywhere close to 20% of their WBL on healing items; its rare for my players to more than grab whatever healing potions they're enemies don't manage to use. They generally focus on items that provide them with more efficient or alternate modes of travel, items that provide substantial bonuses to key skills, etc.

There's also the fact that I really don't care too much about killing my players through hit point damage after orcs stop being a viable threat. "Horatio the Swashbuckler dies by a thousand paper-cuts" is a pretty lame ending to a character that you've invested months of play time in. I'd much rather Horatio implode, dissolve in acid after a horrific fall into a greased pit, be turned into a statue whose existence will always stand tribute to his heroic last stand, or be rent in twain by a mighty giant chieftain. I'd actually prefer not to have my player's hero whittled down 1 hit point at a time by some Gygaxian meat grinder, and truthfully, even in the older editions there were very few times when I or a player lost a character due to attrition (though there were a few idiots who stuck some important body part directly into that sphere of annihilation). Maybe I just have a different playstyle though.