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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 6089971" data-attributes="member: 32740">I've had a lot of dislike for 4E for a variety of reasons, but even though I abhorred the actual implementation I thought that removing healing from being a clerical burden was a smart and LONG-needed change.  It was something 4E at least tried to take in the right direction.  It had long been my own experience that players disliked and avoided playing clerics overwhelmingly because they did not want the in-game and meta-game social obligation of devoting their spells to healing.  Healing is of course something of a necessity.  It's important and highly desired - but it was un-fun to be curing hit points so that OTHER characters could go back out and kill monsters, and do other exciting things.  When clerics reserved more of their healing for themselves they were chided for it: healing was better spent upon the fighters who could make best use of it, and clerics who put themselves too willingly into harms way were treated as "not knowing their place" by interfering with the amount of healing that other players/characters had understandably come to expect.Though it wasn't strictly necessary to have a cleric in the party it surely altered the dynamics of the game NOT to have one, or to have one who DIDN'T willingly act as the hit point battery around which the rest of the party could center.Divorcing hit point recovery from clerics with all that that entails opens up FAR more dynamic and interesting possibilities for them as a class.  Most importantly it eliminates unneeded and unwanted pressure that ONE player must play a particular class whether he wants to or not.  Without that character being present and being played in the way that OTHER players want it played the flow of the game becomes rather different.  The DM has to provide alternative means of healing, the length and success of the so-called "adventuring day" is affected, the general attitudes among gamers at the table erodes if someone refuses to "play ball", etc.It doesn't matter necessarily if the source of hit point recovery is magical or not.  What IS important is that it not be so heavily burdensome to ONE CHARACTER in the party to be the all-important source of it.  It ought to instead be spread around to as many potential sources as possible.  Wizards should be able to cast arcane spells to repair bodies.   Clerics could conduct daily rituals in which others could participate for the gods to lend them assistance.  Fighters might have their own ability to simply come to grips with the pain or demonstrate that it just wasn't as bad a wound as it looked to be at first.  Fantasy worlds should be full of all manner of herbs and minerals to heal this or that particular ill.  Why not a freakin' rabbits foot or 4-leaf clover lucky charm that's good for x amount of hit points a day?There are a dozen ways to "heal" physical damage.  There are dozens more that can simply replenish hit points.  Don't call it all HEALING.  Call it what it once was - part luck, part divine favor, some skill, and of course fatigue.  Aren't these still supposed to be indefinable but indivisible components of hit points?  Are you really stuck on the idea that clerics have to still be the ones replacing everybody else's hit points?  I say you're not trying very hard if you are.</blockquote>

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