At-Will Healing in the game world.

[AstralFire]

Continuing a side discussion from here, as I don't feel it's appropriate to twist Fax's thread when he's put a lot of work into that thing. I do hope Fax reads this thread, but I don't want his to be derailed for my simulationist itch.

Combine that with the fact that most small towns will have adepts rather than clerics (who, I'd assume, aren't affected by the move to unlimited healing) and suspension of disbelief shouldn't be more of a problem than normal.

(Since Dirdle seemed to misinterpret my tone, let me make clear my intentions: I honestly want to know what is it about the magic words "at will" that make people dislike it, when it makes little difference in play?)

In a small village, sure, you're right.

What happens in a big town? Or a city, no less? Out of a million people, I'm sure way more than six take injury every day, constantly. There's also the issue that it's at level 1. The training to be able to do this is fairly minor, so there becomes more and more places that will have their own local Hospitaloid.

There's also the issue that the cleric knows it's at-will. When he doesn't, he can justify saving some of his uses, in case there's an emergency. When he knows that he can, in fact, do everything he wants to do to help the local people (or get money for little effort, depending) with time as his only and minor limitation - I just don't see why he'd stop himself unless he was particularly curmudgeonly.

This is why I really like healing that autoscales to character level or works like a second wind mechanic. The healer can use his glowy hands all day, but there's a limit to what the soul can take. Genuine, no holds barred, full contact Messiahdom healing should be extremely special until level 9-ish, I think. That's when you're fully past the limits of what D&D considers reality and Wizards can begin making their tweaks to the universe permanent.

[Morty]

I'd agree with that. At-will healing might not look too bad in the context of an adventuring party, but when you apply it to the entire world - especially one where mid-to-high level characters aren't uncommon, like Faerun - problems arise. So there needs to be a damper of some sort.

[Myshlaevsky]

I'd agree with that. At-will healing might not look too bad in the context of an adventuring party, but when you apply it to the entire world - especially one where mid-to-high level characters aren't uncommon, like Faerun - problems arise. So there needs to be a damper of some sort.

A divinely sanctioned limit? After all, if the gods could heal everyone all the time why wouldn't they have done it already?

[jmbrown]

Are we talking about 4E here? Because healing surges are a heroic thing I.E. the average layman has no ability to heal himself rendering the idea of at-will healing a moot point.

[AstralFire]

Are we talking about 4E here? Because healing surges are a heroic thing I.E. the average layman has no ability to heal himself rendering the idea of at-will healing a moot point.

3E, a mechanic Fax was introducing for his d20r. I really like, from a simulationist standpoint, how 4E's healing works, especially as it more thoroughly suggests HP as Stamina rather than HP as wounds.

[Lysander]

Or maybe some fantasy worlds just have lots of cheap healing. Might make things more even considering how many horrific monsters are out there waiting to injure you.

[AstralFire]

Or maybe some fantasy worlds just have lots of cheap healing. Might make things more even considering how many horrific monsters are out there waiting to injure you.

This I'm fine with, but it makes it hard to universally import D&D classes into a world that is - as Pair O'Dice put it - Medieval England with MAAAAAGIC.

[Myshlaevsky]

This I'm fine with, but it makes it hard to universally import D&D classes into a world that is - as Pair O'Dice put it - Medieval England with MAAAAAGIC.

And going to war with Undead would be a nightmare. For the Undead.

Or maybe some fantasy worlds just have lots of cheap healing. Might make things more even considering how many horrific monsters are out there waiting to injure you.

I'm not sure it makes a difference in the monster situation. A "horrific monster out there waiting to injure you" would probably dispose of Joe Commoner pretty easily, and even if LowLevel McCleric was there, he wouldn't be much more of a problem.

It generally applies in a much more significant fashion to everyday injuries.

[AstralFire]

Random thing I just noticed - isn't it odd that Sci-Fi and Sci-Fantasy will often consider the effects of widespread and cheap, easily available healing but that games based on them do not make healing a major lynchpin of the combat mechanic often (generally using them as post-fight patchup), while Fantasy is the opposite?

[Tempest Fennac]

I know Reiki isn't as effective as D&D healing by a large margin, but I can do that all day without feeling drained because it's not actually using my energy (Reiki is like Divine magic in the sense that it uses another source of energy).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

In a small village, sure, you're right.

What happens in a big town? Or a city, no less? Out of a million people, I'm sure way more than six take injury every day, constantly. There's also the issue that it's at level 1. The training to be able to do this is fairly minor, so there becomes more and more places that will have their own local Hospitaloid.

In a big city it's not as much of an issue. In a small town, you'd probably have one or two divine casters at most, so changing those from adepts into at-will-healing clerics would make a big impact. In a large city, though, where you have temples of Pelor with several dozen 1st-level clerics with the Healing domain and temples to several other good gods with available healing, an individual cleric's healing capacity being increased is less noticeable. One cleric with the Healing domain can heal 6 people of life-threatening injuries; a dozen can heal 72; three dozen can heal 216. Assuming only two other temples of clerics without the Healing domain (5 heals a day), that's 578 people healed every day--and if you have close to 600 people suffering lethal wounds every day, you have a bigger problem than infinite healing.

There's also the issue that the cleric knows it's at-will. When he doesn't, he can justify saving some of his uses, in case there's an emergency. When he knows that he can, in fact, do everything he wants to do to help the local people (or get money for little effort, depending) with time as his only and minor limitation - I just don't see why he'd stop himself unless he was particularly curmudgeonly.

Well, if one of your PCs plays a dragon shaman, does he stand around hospitals healing the commoners to consciousness for the glory of Bahamut? Yes, a cleric could do that, but he has other duties--bringing food and water to the hungry, asking his god questions on the king's behalf, and so on, not to mention spending time in prayer to thank his god for these powers. Conversely, if a particular order of priests has dedicated itself to do nothing but heal the people, eliminate disease, and otherwise make death a minor problem, they shouldn't have to tell people "Sorry you're going to die in a few minutes, but I'm out for the day. See you in 8 hours, if you survive."

This is why I really like healing that autoscales to character level or works like a second wind mechanic. The healer can use his glowy hands all day, but there's a limit to what the soul can take. Genuine, no holds barred, full contact Messiahdom healing should be extremely special until level 9-ish, I think. That's when you're fully past the limits of what D&D considers reality and Wizards can begin making their tweaks to the universe permanent.

Level 6 is closer to the cutoff point, but I agree that scaling/internal healing is a good option if you don't like the infinite healing issue.

I'd agree with that. At-will healing might not look too bad in the context of an adventuring party, but when you apply it to the entire world - especially one where mid-to-high level characters aren't uncommon, like Faerun - problems arise. So there needs to be a damper of some sort.

As I mentioned on the other thread, healing is the least of your worries if you're concerned about verisimilitude.

• Create water and purify food and water give you gallons of water per day guaranteed to be fresh and disease-free.
• Light and dancing lights make the chances of fire much less likely in larger wooden buildings.
• Mending saves commoners money, as they can repair most of their possessions rather than spending money on new ones.
• Cure minor wounds stops a bleeding wound and lets you get someone to a temple for more healing.
• Ray of frost lets you keep meat and other food cold by turning a container of water into a minifridge.
• Ghost sound and message allow mid-range remote communication.
• Mage hand and open/close allow you to retrieve items on roofs, close high windows, and do other things without needing ladders or scaffolding.
• Prestidigitation...well, it's awesome.

And that's only looking at the cantrips and orisons, without going outside of the PHB. Characters can get up to 3rd level spells before they hit the superhuman mark, and that gives you things like fly.

This I'm fine with, but it makes it hard to universally import D&D classes into a world that is - as Pair O'Dice put it - Medieval England with MAAAAAGIC.

I didn't have quite so many A's in there, but that's the general sentiment. If you try to keep everything as medieval England and then add magic on top of that, without considering the ramifications D&D's plentiful, easy magic has, you have one of two outcomes: broken verisimilitude or a world that doesn't look like medieval England. I prefer the latter for its internal consistency, but if you prefer the former, you're probably going to be disappointed.

Random thing I just noticed - isn't it odd that Sci-Fi and Sci-Fantasy will often consider the effects of widespread and cheap, easily available healing but that games based on them do not make healing a major lynchpin of the combat mechanic often (generally using them as post-fight patchup), while Fantasy is the opposite?

I don't know about that. I've seen many Sci-Fi series where a stimpack or medkit or some other sort of applied medical phlebotonium takes a wounded guy and lets him fight again for while; low-magic settings tend to make healing magic simply enhance natural healing, and D&D healing isn't as useful in combat as out-of-combat healing except for the really big spells. Sci-Fantasy tends to be split pretty evenly (for every get-well-quick handwave there's a bacta tank).

[FinalJustice]

My suspension of disbelief would not be broken, as unlimited healing would be sort of an extension of 'public health' for me. I explain. The unlimited heal would be like current medicine, publicly accessible (how accessible would depend of other factors, of course) and able to treat most problems of the common men. Other afflictions, like vile damage, lycanthropy and curses would demand more specialized care (higher level Clerics/Adepts).

I'd encourage the GM to reinforce the flulff that, while the injure is healed or healing, there's still pain, recovery time, etc... Nothing that would affect gameplay, but everyday life. It would also add awesome to the PCs, people who just shrug these annoyances and keep on fighting, which is a good thing in my book.

[Lamech]

Doesn't everyone if 4th have healing surges and a second wind? More importantly don't most people have 1 hp because they are minions? (Humans at least.)

Anyway HP healing in 3.5 can fix anything that a couple days could for most people anyway, so it isn't a big change. So magical healing is really just an emergency type thing, to stablize someone. Something a heal check could do anyway... I don't think at will healing would change anything, I suppose people would recover like a week sooner from life threatening injuries, but that wouldn't be a major change from the way things are now. Whats the big change everyone is worried about?

[AstralFire]

In a big city it's not as much of an issue. In a small town, you'd probably have one or two divine casters at most, so changing those from adepts into at-will-healing clerics would make a big impact. In a large city, though, where you have temples of Pelor with several dozen 1st-level clerics with the Healing domain and temples to several other good gods with available healing, an individual cleric's healing capacity being increased is less noticeable. One cleric with the Healing domain can heal 6 people of life-threatening injuries; a dozen can heal 72; three dozen can heal 216. Assuming only two other temples of clerics without the Healing domain (5 heals a day), that's 578 people healed every day--and if you have close to 600 people suffering lethal wounds every day, you have a bigger problem than infinite healing.

I think part of this is that I find it more pivotal for D&D to be able to work in MEw/M than to work in its canon settings - all you have to do for the latter is scale up the character levels. So much as one of these clerics at level 1 in London, though, would be a miracle.

And I don't allow dragon shamans. Or any dragon-inspired class.

I didn't have quite so many A's in there, but that's the general sentiment. If you try to keep everything as medieval England and then add magic on top of that, without considering the ramifications D&D's plentiful, easy magic has, you have one of two outcomes: broken verisimilitude or a world that doesn't look like medieval England. I prefer the latter for its internal consistency, but if you prefer the former, you're probably going to be disappointed.

I prefer the latter for the same, but I think - again - any attempts to reformat D&D as a whole have to consider the former. It's what everyone thinks of when they say D&D - the quaint little hamlet where a local hero becomes a savior upon entering the depths of the wider world before him.

I don't know about that. I've seen many Sci-Fi series where a stimpack or medkit or some other sort of applied medical phlebotonium takes a wounded guy and lets him fight again for while

I mean there's not so much the mentality that you should have one guy - 'meat shield' standing in the front of the group taking all of the hits while someone cowers behind him going "GET BETTER! GET BETTER! GET BETTER!", and you can do that in D&D at low levels and again once you pick up heal.

[Fax Celestis]

So let me attempt to justify my reasoning for allowing at-will healing.

1. The d20r Cleric has an at-will spell mechanic. This is probably the root of the whole issue: most people are used to seeing a cleric with Vancian casting, while this one appears more like a CArc Warlock. A cleric taps into his god's power--which, if not limitless, is certainly of gigantic capacity--and uses that energy to render his god's influence upon the world. What this does is it better represents the connection between a cleric and their god: rather than having a cleric who hand-picks which spells they're going to pray for today, they merely know how to tap into their god's powers in a limited and specific fashion that they maintain from day to day and from level to level.

2. The d20r Cleric doesn't know every prayer on it's list. Rather, they know specific prayers/level. Since the cure prayers aren't limited to domain-only, they're available for every cleric, but aren't necessarily something every cleric is going to take.

3. At-will healing is effectively already in the basic game. Let's start with the Dragon Shaman, wands of lesser vigor, wands of cure light wounds, spontaneous spell conversion, the Eldritch Disciple...these all have been in the game for quite some time, and none of them have rendered the game unplayable. Some of them are certainly limited (wands in particular), but their functions are essentially at-will in that you can use them whenever you need a quick fix and can readily obtain more.

4. In a world with at-will healing, why would there be injury, death, or disease? There's nothing saying that clerics would give out healing for free--in fact, as we can see by modern-day hospitals, healing can often be quite expensive. Further, if we go back to #2, we'll recognize that not every cleric will have the capacity to heal people, and we can also assume that clerics of evil (and frankly most of the non-good) alignments won't be handing out healing for free either. Sure, some clerics will hand out their healing for free or cheap (like modern-day free health clinics), but there's only so many of them and only so much care they can provide in a day--they need to eat and sleep sometime, or at least rest to keep from going insane.

[Myshlaevsky]

4. In a world with at-will healing, why would there be injury, death, or disease? There's nothing saying that clerics would give out healing for free--in fact, as we can see by modern-day hospitals, healing can often be quite expensive. Further, if we go back to #2, we'll recognize that not every cleric will have the capacity to heal people, and we can also assume that clerics of evil (and frankly most of the non-good) alignments won't be handing out healing for free either. Sure, some clerics will hand out their healing for free or cheap (like modern-day free health clinics), but there's only so many of them and only so much care they can provide in a day--they need to eat and sleep sometime, or at least rest to keep from going insane.

This doesn't really work as a comparison because a Cleric's at-will healing is essentially free. You don't need that many to provide round-the-clock, manageable care for all the injured that will come to them. If we assume the presence of a dedicated god of healing and their followers, then it's even more likely.

3. At-will healing is effectively already in the basic game. Let's start with the Dragon Shaman, wands of lesser vigor, wands of cure light wounds, spontaneous spell conversion, the Eldritch Disciple...these all have been in the game for quite some time, and none of them have rendered the game unplayable. Some of them are certainly limited (wands in particular), but their functions are essentially at-will in that you can use them whenever you need a quick fix and can readily obtain more.

I think the issue with this point is that the existing methods require either a certain real, physical cost or are otherwise performed by a class which is seen as much, much smaller in numbers and less organized on a societal level than the Cleric class.

2. The d20r Cleric doesn't know every prayer on it's list. Rather, they know specific prayers/level. Since the cure prayers aren't limited to domain-only, they're available for every cleric, but aren't necessarily something every cleric is going to take.

It seems likely that the overwhelming majority of clerics will take at least the lowest-level of the cure spells, because of the advantage that some healing has over none.

[AstralFire]

1. The d20r Cleric has an at-will spell mechanic. This is probably the root of the whole issue: most people are used to seeing a cleric with Vancian casting, while this one appears more like a CArc Warlock. A cleric taps into his god's power--which, if not limitless, is certainly of gigantic capacity--and uses that energy to render his god's influence upon the world. What this does is it better represents the connection between a cleric and their god: rather than having a cleric who hand-picks which spells they're going to pray for today, they merely know how to tap into their god's powers in a limited and specific fashion that they maintain from day to day and from level to level.

I agree that at-will spells are a far superior mechanic for this. Far. Vancian casting should be the sole province of the Wizard, and I've never liked it generalized.

Points 2 and 3 do not bother me, except that with point 4, I question what Cleric would not take at least some form of at-will healing.

4. In a world with at-will healing, why would there be injury, death, or disease? There's nothing saying that clerics would give out healing for free--in fact, as we can see by modern-day hospitals, healing can often be quite expensive. Further, if we go back to #2, we'll recognize that not every cleric will have the capacity to heal people, and we can also assume that clerics of evil (and frankly most of the non-good) alignments won't be handing out healing for free either. Sure, some clerics will hand out their healing for free or cheap (like modern-day free health clinics), but there's only so many of them and only so much care they can provide in a day--they need to eat and sleep sometime, or at least rest to keep from going insane.

This still has wide implications for any ME+M game. You can have clerics who effectively can wield their healing power as a club with which to gain great power and glory for their lord. I mean, how many gods are not going to appreciate diplomatic or extortive uses of this? You can end up with Mad Max style roving warlord Clerics - all because they can heal lackeys indefinitely. Also, real life medicine has a lot of overhead going into both producing a doctor and making upkeep; here we're talking 6 seconds in the microwave. I think it's much harder to find reasons - especially if there's any level of competition - for healing to be anything less than an ordinary occurrence.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I think part of this is that I find it more pivotal for D&D to be able to work in MEw/M than to work in its canon settings - all you have to do for the latter is scale up the character levels. So much as one of these clerics at level 1 in London, though, would be a miracle.

Well, there's a difference between "Medieval England...with MAGIC!" and "something resembling medieval England with magic." I've seen people make settings with hyperrealistic detail such that even a single spell cast or a single elf played wrecks it all. In general, D&D isn't averse to too much magic use, since healing for heroes is fairly plentiful and monsters are all over the plane; really, D&D kind of assumes that magic will be there, as what other explanation would there be for having fairly stable cities with fairly healthy commoners and a good degree of literacy besides magic or technology?

So yes, if you're in historical England, a single cure spell is a miracle; if you're in D&D's assumed medieval-ish world, it's not so much of a stretch.

And I don't allow dragon shamans. Or any dragon-inspired class.

Eh, drop the flavor and they're fine. I gave the dragon shaman a nice Seelie fae spin and my players like it, even the dracophobes.

I prefer the latter for the same, but I think - again - any attempts to reformat D&D as a whole have to consider the former. It's what everyone thinks of when they say D&D - the quaint little hamlet where a local hero becomes a savior upon entering the depths of the wider world before him.

As mentioned, you can have the quaint little hamlet while still having a not-insignificant level of magic. The point about infinite healing not working so much with MEwM was more regarding "having magic affect the world breaks verisimilitude" rather than "medieval England doesn't work as a basis for D&D."

I mean there's not so much the mentality that you should have one guy - 'meat shield' standing in the front of the group taking all of the hits while someone cowers behind him going "GET BETTER! GET BETTER! GET BETTER!", and you can do that in D&D at low levels and again once you pick up heal.

^*cough*Team Fortress 2^{*cough*
*cough*}Starcraft^{*cough*
*cough*}People who play all SF RPGs as if they're in the above^*cough*

[Morty]

As I mentioned on the other thread, healing is the least of your worries if you're concerned about verisimilitude.

• Create water and purify food and water give you gallons of water per day guaranteed to be fresh and disease-free.
• Light and dancing lights make the chances of fire much less likely in larger wooden buildings.
• Mending saves commoners money, as they can repair most of their possessions rather than spending money on new ones.
• Cure minor wounds stops a bleeding wound and lets you get someone to a temple for more healing.
• Ray of frost lets you keep meat and other food cold by turning a container of water into a minifridge.
• Ghost sound and message allow mid-range remote communication.
• Mage hand and open/close allow you to retrieve items on roofs, close high windows, and do other things without needing ladders or scaffolding.
• Prestidigitation...well, it's awesome.

And that's only looking at the cantrips and orisons, without going outside of the PHB. Characters can get up to 3rd level spells before they hit the superhuman mark, and that gives you things like fly.

Fax's d20r features an entirely different magic system. The things you mentioned may very well not be a factor there. We don't know that yet. However, at-will healing is a factor, as it's been estabilished to exist.

[HamsterOfTheGod]

That the party cleric can heal at will does not have to mean that there are NPC clerics doing at will healing continually in the imagined world.

It's like any other at will power. That the party warlock can blast at will does not have to mean that there are NPC warlocks doing at will blasting continually in the imagined world.

"At will" should mean "at will for game or story purposes" not "once every 6 seconds in the imaginary world".

[PairO'Dice Lost]

This doesn't really work as a comparison because a Cleric's at-will healing is essentially free. You don't need that many to provide round-the-clock, manageable care for all the injured that will come to them. If we assume the presence of a dedicated god of healing and their followers, then it's even more likely.

Again, a few dozen clerics spread among a handful of temples can already meet the healing needs of a city. At the point where a city is big enough to support a dedicated temple (i.e., about the same point one or two adepts can't heal everyone who needs it) your healing needs are most likely already covered.

Fax's d20r features an entirely different magic system. The things you mentioned may very well not be a factor there. We don't know that yet. However, at-will healing is a factor, as it's been estabilished to exist.

This is true. However, it has also been established that, in D&D core, you have effectively infinite healing for heroes at a minor cost and as much healing as you'll need for the general population. This isn't just an issue of infinite healing in Fax's d20r (though that started the discussion), it's an issue of infinite healing in general, since (A) many people add that to homebrews and (B) many people dislike it.

[Fax Celestis]

It seems likely that the overwhelming majority of clerics will take at least the lowest-level of the cure spells, because of the advantage that some healing has over none.

I think in the type of world we are talking about impacting significantly, it is safe to assume that most people will be ECL 4 or less. A 4th level d20r cleric knows 4 orisions and 1 litany--five prayers. Cure light wounds is an orison that heals 1d6 damage, +1 per caster level (max +5). Cure moderate wounds is a litany that heals 3d6 damage, +1 per caster level (max +8).

That's...really not all that much. 3d6+4 is 7-22 points of healing. A comparatively leveled warlord with 16 Con will have 4d10+12 HP, or 16-52. A comparatively leveled dreadnaught with 18 Con will have 4d12+16+4, or 24-68.

[AstralFire]

Aside not relevant but tangential to discussion:

Spoiler

Show

These sorts of assumptions I think are what ultimately killed 3E for me the most. I don't like the Christmas Tree effect, so I hate most items with charges. Things with charges should be (in my own preference) things like bags of caltrops or quintessence, stuff that doesn't provide a direct mechanical benefit. Therefore, I prefer a party ultimately be limited by their personal physical stamina. And for all the improvements to game balance that were wrought by 3E as it dragged on, it felt more and more like they were more interested in running with the implications of a 3E core world than they were in trying adjust the impact of those implications.

[Draz74]

I really like, from a simulationist standpoint, how 4E's healing works, especially as it more thoroughly suggests HP as Stamina rather than HP as wounds.

It does do that, but IMHO it has plenty of simulationist problems of its own ... like how there's no wound that won't heal with one night's rest ...

[*]Prestidigitation...well, it's awesome.

That really doesn't even begin to cover it. The sanitation implications alone are staggering ... do you know how many people in medieval times died, in the long run, just because of how dirty their "bathrooms" were? Modern lifestyles save a lot more people by preventing disease than even by curing it.

[Fax Celestis]

Aside not relevant but tangential to discussion:

Spoiler

Show

These sorts of assumptions I think are what ultimately killed 3E for me the most. I don't like the Christmas Tree effect, so I hate most items with charges. Things with charges should be (in my own preference) things like bags of caltrops or quintessence, stuff that doesn't provide a direct mechanical benefit. Therefore, I prefer a party ultimately be limited by their personal physical stamina. And for all the improvements to game balance that were wrought by 3E as it dragged on, it felt more and more like they were more interested in running with the implications of a 3E core world than they were in trying adjust the impact of those implications.

So what you're telling me is that I'm not going to be able to satisfy you.

What if I were to make the cure spells Healing Domain only and allowing them access by using a higher level slot? That would mean that the earliest a non-Healing domain cleric could learn cure light wounds would be as a litany (meaning available at 4th level).

[AstralFire]

So what you're telling me is that I'm not going to be able to satisfy you.

That would be why I put this into another thread. I realized this, and I didn't want to harass your efforts with my pet peeves about 3E. Sorry.

What if I were to make the cure spells Healing Domain only and allowing them access by using a higher level slot? That would mean that the earliest a non-Healing domain cleric could learn cure light wounds would be as a litany (meaning available at 4th level).

I think that would work. You start transcending mortals physically around level 5 (and fully reach that point by level 9, imo), so there wouldn't be many NPCs in a lower-powered game walking around at level 4.

It does do that, but IMHO it has plenty of simulationist problems of its own ... like how there's no wound that won't heal with one night's rest ...

I did say (or if I didn't, I meant to), 'at least in this regard'.

[Pharaoh's Fist]

It does do that, but IMHO it has plenty of simulationist problems of its own ... like how there's no wound that won't heal with one night's rest ...

"I got better!"

[Draz74]

I think that would work. You start transcending mortals physically around level 5 (and fully reach that point by level 9, imo), so there wouldn't be many NPCs in a lower-powered game walking around at level 4.

Unless there's a popular god who grants the Healing Domain. Then you could still have L1 Clerics who change the history of entire kingdoms by just going around healing all day ...

[oxybe]

a "civilized" D&D town needs pretty much just 2 things to get going:

1) a "evil" breadbox trap, which will create all the food the people actually need. it's nothing fancy but quite good

2) and a "cure light wounds" treatment zone: a 500 GP "trap" (as per trap rules ) that activates whenever it is stepped on. for an extra 7500gp you can add remove disease to the effects.

so for about 16500gp a town can have all the food, water, and medical treatment (wounds, diseases & parasites) it could ever want. for 9000gp you're only lacking removal of diseases and parasites.

note that the cost is only slightly more then that of 2 +2 items and less then a single +3.

even a small village of 200 could save up the money needed without too much hassle, as i'm ballparking that a peasant/hireling makes approx 5-7 SP a day (as room + board in an inn is about 5sp a night, depending on the quality), or about 4GP a week. this means about 200GP per peasant with each of them having 20 or so GP a year saved up.

if the mayor taxes them each 10GP a year to save up for the services, they could pay it off in 8-9 years, purchasing the "medical center (cure light wounds only)" in the span of a few months.

once the breadbox is paid for, they won't need to spend money on food (well, food that isn't fancy at least), so that can be donated to the fund or kept & spent on other things.

the reality of things is that people don't consider how easy it actually is to get the things if you know how to use the rules of the game for the desired effect. they're happy with a "pseudo-medieval europe... with magic" for lack of a better term IMO, and that's fine as there is nothing wrong with it.

[AstralFire]

Unless there's a popular god who grants the Healing Domain. Then you could still have L1 Clerics who change the history of entire kingdoms by just going around healing all day ...

This is correct; however, that's much easier for a group to say 'not for us.' I don't necessarily believe that a god who believes in certain things has to grant a domain for those things. The domain can be viewed either as "this is what my god is interested in" or as "this is what my god has the power to do."

I hate to use an example from Forgotten Realms as it's not my favorite setting, but Kelemvor (I do like him! Hate the stories he's in, but I do like him) has obligations that transcend what he wants to do for people.