hmm I'm probably in a minority
Innovations in healing from 4e I like is clerics being able to heal as a minor action, even the entire party, in one shot. That is cool. But! A fighter with 50 HP and 28 AC gets healed for 3d8+10, let's say, with a cure serious wounds spell in 3.x or PF. Now you can either spend two to heal the fighter at the end of the fight, or one on the fighter and one on himself or the rogue. What do you do?
As 4e taught us, aside from healing surges granting recipient-based healing, is that having higher defenses is tantamount to having more HP, of course this is not true in a game where all the hits go towards the fighter, but in a game where enemies would target the wizards first to kill them off, more like 3.5 (let's say marking or mark punishment did not exist), you would get a more balanced drain, less frequency of hits but the ones that do target them land more often, and do a greater fraction of the recipient's HP. What am I saying here? I think fighters should take a few more heals, or standard action heals or higher level ones, to amount to the same fraction of HP restored as one targetting the rogue or wizard. I think that's a feature, not a bug. So, spend two minor actions, or three, in one round, and cast a cure serious, a cure moderate, and a cure light to top off the fighter, if he's really in such a bind. I really dislike that in 3.x and PF clerics, even though they can spontanously convert into heals, end up spending many of their standard actions to buff allies or debuff enemies or heal. When do I get to fight, huh?
I spent tons of effort getting my Axe swing all magicky and dangerous and stuff. But I rarely got to use it. Also, anecdotally, with spell conversions, I rarely had a given day where I could not heal up the entire party with what spells I had left. Granted, my PF cleric had the healing subdomain that boosts heals by 50%, but still. Even before I got there, we rarely camped not at full or reasonably close to full (or at least capable of surviving what might attack us during the night).
What am I saying? I prefer spells to scale with the proficiency of the caster, with a Con bonus for the receiver as others have suggested. A cleric's balancing act is often between how much healing to do, vs keeping that Remove Poison spell handy because when you need it, you REALLY need it. Now. I guess it's up to DMs to give a good variety of monsters to keep clerics on their toes about what spells they prepare, so it doesn't get monotonous, but I'd like healing spells to be minor actions, at least as you go up levels.
Maybe standard->move->minor upgrade. Action economy is big in D&D, even for a cleric. Being able to "nova" more healing to restore a fighter when you don't have any "Heal" big heals left, is good. Or maybe a feat or a theme or archetype that lets you do that. It would make me want to play a cleric again. Wait, what am I saying, even despite the crappy action economy of PF clerics' normal heals, their channel heals are super good. They should get some free metamagic feats to boost those though. I never had enough feats to make a halfway decent warrior who could channel in the midst of combat without healing all his foes. Sucks that Charisma and Wisdom and Strength and Con are all necessary for certain builds.
Innovations in healing from 4e I like is clerics being able to heal as a minor action, even the entire party, in one shot. That is cool. But! A fighter with 50 HP and 28 AC gets healed for 3d8+10, let's say, with a cure serious wounds spell in 3.x or PF. Now you can either spend two to heal the fighter at the end of the fight, or one on the fighter and one on himself or the rogue. What do you do?
As 4e taught us, aside from healing surges granting recipient-based healing, is that having higher defenses is tantamount to having more HP, of course this is not true in a game where all the hits go towards the fighter, but in a game where enemies would target the wizards first to kill them off, more like 3.5 (let's say marking or mark punishment did not exist), you would get a more balanced drain, less frequency of hits but the ones that do target them land more often, and do a greater fraction of the recipient's HP. What am I saying here? I think fighters should take a few more heals, or standard action heals or higher level ones, to amount to the same fraction of HP restored as one targetting the rogue or wizard. I think that's a feature, not a bug. So, spend two minor actions, or three, in one round, and cast a cure serious, a cure moderate, and a cure light to top off the fighter, if he's really in such a bind. I really dislike that in 3.x and PF clerics, even though they can spontanously convert into heals, end up spending many of their standard actions to buff allies or debuff enemies or heal. When do I get to fight, huh?
I spent tons of effort getting my Axe swing all magicky and dangerous and stuff. But I rarely got to use it. Also, anecdotally, with spell conversions, I rarely had a given day where I could not heal up the entire party with what spells I had left. Granted, my PF cleric had the healing subdomain that boosts heals by 50%, but still. Even before I got there, we rarely camped not at full or reasonably close to full (or at least capable of surviving what might attack us during the night).
What am I saying? I prefer spells to scale with the proficiency of the caster, with a Con bonus for the receiver as others have suggested. A cleric's balancing act is often between how much healing to do, vs keeping that Remove Poison spell handy because when you need it, you REALLY need it. Now. I guess it's up to DMs to give a good variety of monsters to keep clerics on their toes about what spells they prepare, so it doesn't get monotonous, but I'd like healing spells to be minor actions, at least as you go up levels.
Maybe standard->move->minor upgrade. Action economy is big in D&D, even for a cleric. Being able to "nova" more healing to restore a fighter when you don't have any "Heal" big heals left, is good. Or maybe a feat or a theme or archetype that lets you do that. It would make me want to play a cleric again. Wait, what am I saying, even despite the crappy action economy of PF clerics' normal heals, their channel heals are super good. They should get some free metamagic feats to boost those though. I never had enough feats to make a halfway decent warrior who could channel in the midst of combat without healing all his foes. Sucks that Charisma and Wisdom and Strength and Con are all necessary for certain builds.
