The only way I can see to get rid of these three effects is, in fact, to limit the amount of healing that one can receive during a single day.
IMO, directly limiting healing seems counter intuitive to what you want to achieve. Limiting the amount someone can be healed is going to promote multiple rests in a row to an extreme. If the story doesn't allow this, it will force the party to expend resources to find ways to heals; whether it be through expendables, if they exist, or figuring out ways to ensure additional rests. Essentially, turning part of the game into resource management, and that is no fun IMO.
I played in a 3.5 game that went from lvl 3 to lvl 29 over a few years. Our healing was limited and traditional resting was difficult, especially at higher levels. However, at higher levels, we spent so much out of game time sitting around looking for items, spells, allies, etc... to ensure we had a place to rest or expendables to heal. Again, turning multiple sessions into managing inventory. Not to say the DM didn't try to make it fun for us to do so, but it was rather boring for me as a rogue'ish type. On top of that it just prompted the DM to modify his encounters to make sure they were challenging and drained our resources appropriately; further escalating the issue.
While my example is anecdotal and based on previous editions it does show that a problem exists in simply limiting healing without taking into account how it influences the party.
IMO, what the real, underlying issue is, is how to make the game challenging and deadlier to the players without just throwing deadly encounters that assume the PC's are healed to full; all while keeping the game fun. This may be simplified, but it's what I think is the style of gaming to what you are alluding.
An idea that I would like to see is to have two hp tracks. The normal HP track, which can only be healed through natural rest, and a temporary HP track, upon which temps of one other source can stack. The temporary HP track could be diminished to something like 1/2 the max normal HP track, or con score or something like that. The point it that it's diminished.
Once the temp stack is gone, further damage goes to the normal HP stack, which is much more difficult to heal. Healing spells, burning hit dice, etc... all short term healing goes into the temp stack, which is capped at 1/2 the normal hp track max or whatever you want to use. Maybe have one other source of temp hp stack on the temp hp stack, but, like temp hp normally, does not allow healing beyond the max of the temp track. (sorry if I am confusing things)
I woud love to take the idea of ritual healing, done out of combat, to heal the normal hp track. Rituals in 4e are a great idea, IMO.
I think this suggestions solves most of the issues addressed by assuming and allowing the following:
- PC's start the day with a "total" amount of HP greater than usual
- Healing is naturally limited as the day goes on since after temps are gone the normal HP is eaten into
- Expendables can still be used, and clerics can be healing bots if they would like but no longer need to max out healing spells since the temp hp track is capped
One issue that still exists is the amount of healing that clerics need to do might not change much. Allowing expendables, though, could allieve some pressure on the cleric and other healing classes.
Also, I would love it if clerics could sack spell slots for healing spells, which are cast as free actions or something like that. Allowing the cleric to still do something else, as in 4e. That is one aspect of 4e I really like.
What do people think about this idea?