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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 4731966" data-attributes="member: 12731">I got thinking... It seems the game is worse off when the characters have access to "too much" healing.Do you agree and if so, what can be done, short of making the players roll up new characters?What I mean by "too much" healing is if everyone in the party takes a multiclass feat into a healing character. If this is a group of five, where one character already is a healer, you'd have five daily Healing Words plus two encounter Healing Words. Add to this a character in Dwarven Armor and perhaps two characters with powers like Comeback Strike, which adds three more daily healing surges.And suddenly we're looking at a party with no less than 10 powers that return hit points, without including the less effective Second Wind and Healing Potions.This makes it all but impossible for me to challenge the group in any given encounter, as healing will flow so freely (meaning that out of these 10 heals, 9 can be done in addition to making an attack. Only one works like Second Wind in that you'd have to give up your standard action to use it).It also makes the group really sensitive to the 15-minute adventuring day syndrome. The difference between having most of those heals and not having them is huge in terms of being able to focus on damage output and not having to worry about running out of hp and the risk of death.Basically, it makes the game revolve entirely around healing surges. Either they have them or they don't.If they do: they're almost invulnerable to anything less than a level+4 encounter. Either I persist in throwing "appropriate" encounters at them, which are trivial in every way and really can be reduced to "how many surges do I need to use up?". Or I give them an exciting fight - but their capacity for healing means that this fight will both be the first and last for that day.If they don't: they'll focus entirely on avoiding combat at all costs. I can't say I blame them. It's not fun to force combat upon characters that want nothing else than just to bed down (at ten in the morning) because they're acutely aware of their lack of healing.It makes the players resent being forced to continue adventuring when they're out of healing surges and/or powers; and it makes me feel like a villain for forcing them.Continuing without them is painful when they know they're so much more safe with them. They see absolutely no reason to ever volunteer to go on, if there is a choice at all.---The problem isn't just that the game allows an all-Leader party. It's also the multiclassing feats. Getting a daily Healing Word to my players seem like a much better idea than some minuscule boost elsewhere.It's almost like it's a feat tax, for them. They'll agree to all take the feat so nobody can just free-ride.One daily Healing Word would be nice, but five of them...? It seems the game is designed with the assumption there should be fewer good healing powers than PCs (per encounter), so Second Winds and Healing Potions actually get used, which adds tension to a combat because they don't let you eat the cake and having it too. And so the DM doesn't have to always use very hard encounters for the players to even blink.(Sorry, we don't have time to string out three or four initial boring-but-resource-depleting small fights before arriving atthe real meat of the scenario).</blockquote>

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