Did no one else in the fight get hit? If that's the case either your fighter is the best defender ever, or the fight isn't challenging enough. Almost every character in our games ends up spending at least one surge per encounter (with the exception of the Archer Ranger when we had one).
Huh? I used the example of a Fighter, not because no one else gets hit, but because he will usually have the highest hitpoints of anyone in the party. You're original contention was essentially "Yeah, that would for a 1st level Wizard...", I was merely showing that it works at most levels. A 5th level Fighter is a good example because it's right before the 6th level bump where the Cleric moves up to 2d6 extra HP healed.
Generally Healing Word gets used when someone is bloodied. While it's sometimes the same person, it's not always. If the healer was just healing the fighter, everyone else would lynch him. Dungeons and Theories is great, but at the table I can't see someone going from 9 to full. They're going to get hit again. Someone else is going to need healing. Something will happen.
I can concede that a cleric can do the job if he holds his healing until after the fight. I'm not used to them in a game. We've generally got a Warlord or an Artificer. I know the artificer doesn't work well, but we like the flavor of the class. Apparently they were something different in 3.5, something worse/broken.
I was mostly talking about after the fight healing, since there were many saying stuff like "Yeah, but you're gonna burn 4 surges after the fight!" when it's just not true most of the time. You either won't be all the way down to 1HP, or you'll have a leader that can increase healing effectiveness.
As for healing in battle though, the numbers still apply. That Fighter I mentioned? He can get healed from his bloodied value up to ~90% of his total HP value in only one Healing Word. That's a
perfect example of combat effectiveness. Even if he ends up getting healed twice and using his second wind though, that's 3 surges out of 12 (he had 16 CON), hardly a significant number. Then it would take no more than 2 Healing Words to get him back up to full after the fight...so worst case scenario, if he just got FUBAR'ed during the encounter, he burned 5 surges.
Lastly, every fight is different. I play a Fighter, and there's been combats where I've been dropped twice, and combats where I've been hit only once (It was a combination of the DM missing when he attacked me, and my own team actually blocking a corridor and not letting me attack...). There will be situations where people need 2 heals from the Cleric, and there will be situations where the Cleric might end the combat only having used one Healing Word. I was just giving the math on how much more effective a Cleric is at squeezing more HP out of the party's surges.
Just for the records, there are creatures (wight and wraith for example) that can remove healing surges when they hit.
Greetings,
I really don't see how that matters much here. Those are two enemy types, the lowest of which are levels 4 and 5 respectively. By that point, you've had 3 opportunities to pick up Durability if your character is frequently running low on surges.
Additionally, looking at the Wights the level 4 and 5 version are a Controller and a Skirmisher. Since it's only their melee At-Will that drains a surge, it shouldn't come into play all that much. Ultimately though, these are two enemy types out of the entire MM. How many times are you really going to run into healing surge draining enemies? Your DM also knows what they're capable of, and should be planning his encounters accordingly. Its an obstacle, but it's hardly something that brings the entire healing system crashing down.
