Neonchameleon
Legend
@Neonchameleon - We're down to opinions and personal feelings about the game now, which means a fundamental difference in how we play D&D, what we want out of D&D, and how we view various incarnations of D&D over the years. I've never felt that HP were broken. We are at an impasse. And 5E is supposed to bridge the gap between us. They have a ridiculously hard task to complete and I don't envy their position. I hope they can do it.
Yup.
(Incidentally in 3.5, crafting wands requires the cleric to be level 5 and expend a valuable feat slot [of which they'd only have 3 if they were humans, 2 if any other race].
The single best investment they can make.
It can't be rushed and it sets back the crafter's experience delaying his next chance to level up.
XP is a river.
And that all means time not spent exploring dungeons, saving kingdoms, searching for lost treasures, etc. It's not as simple as "Hey, let's take a break in this dungeon to make a wand." or "Delay the assault on the castle as long as you can. I'm busy making this wand here.")
It's one day. If your PCs are needed every single day then I dread to think how much of the world they are busy depopulating.
And now comes out the "reality" argument, which holds absolutely zero weight because REAL clerics didn't cast spells at all. Drop the silliness.
Myths and stories are based on things people find in reality.
So your "good fiction" involves nigh unkillable heroes
Not proven.
who heal themselves simply by taking a five minute rest or sleeping one night
I agree that 4e extended rests are a mistake. And have frequently said that I houserule extended rests to a long lazy weekend at a minimum. This problem is ultimately no different to the classic D&D spellcaster recovery one where spellcasters get a full loadout of spells each day, every day.
EDIT: And I'm done arguing with you because it's completely apparent that neither side really groks the problems the other side has. Different experiences, different expectations, different desires, and different viewpoints, all of which are irreconcilable without differing rules to cater to each side. You're unwilling to take a step back, as you probably see it, and I think the step forward was no such thing, so I don't want to move away from what has worked since RPGs were created for a system that I just don't like, even after playing it for 2 years.
Agreed.
To me, this is merely a question of "Do we want cure light wounds to be craftable in a wand at such a wholesale price"...to which the answer must be a resounding No. If anything, it kills off clerics just as much as healing surges do. Let's make clerics reflavorable and fun to play, including combat, with whatever weapons their deities favor, and we can move on from there.
Reflavourable and fun to play is exactly what 4e did.
This skirts my other main point, that a level 1 hero with ten surges has over 100hp to soak up each and every day. This is more HP than almost any other character I've played,
And damage per attack is higher and monster hit points are higher. A non-minion kobold has over 20hp as opposed to IIRC 2.
There's a difference between action hero and Superman. If a wizard feels like superman (our wizard too, never spent his entire allowed surges in two years of gameplay), Houston, we have a problem.
You know what feels like Superman? The ability to stop time. The ability to travel across the continent in the blink of an eye. The ability to showboat making yourself utterly immune to arrows.
Huston, we have a pre-4e wizard. And I'll happily accept that pre MM3 monsters didn't do enough damage.
That said in our PF games without a cleric, our wand has come in handy and allowed us to ram through lots of adventures while stuff having tons of danger and chance of death during combat, something I've never, ever experienced or felt in 4e, no matter the DM, module or custom setting.
YMMV. I have no problem terrifying my PCs in 4e post MM3.
When PCs die once every few sessions, you tend to learn the value of life and avoiding that.
The campaign I was in with S'mon had an average PC death rate of more than 1/session. (This included several near TPKs admittedly).
Why in two+ years of playing 4e every week did we not respec a single player as a cleric? because none of us died and made us think "hey, maybe I should build my new char as a cleric and the party would do better."
Ding, dong, the witch is dead! The idea that "Hey! This one class needs to be in any party" is in 4e exactly where it belongs. Six foot underground and well tamped down. People should be able to play what they want, not be strongarmed into playing clerics.
That said, no deaths is excessive. Seriously excessive. And they did have to raise monster damage.
This is quite different than, well, maybe you might be better off with a cleric in your party.
In PF, in my experience, no cleric = dead.
And this is a good thing? Forcing someone to play a cleric rather than giving them free reign to choose whichever of the twenty or so classes there are. The idea that the party must recruit a cleric is not a good thing.