Cure Light Wounds: Nearly Useless?

[Tony Vargas]

CLW is still healing that doesn't use a healing surge. That extends the useful life of your party in any given day. There are lots of healing powers, relatively few do not use up surges. Even potions use up surges.

 

[Pielorinho]

It does seem likely to me that Shield of Faith will prevent more damage than CLW will heal. But as someone else suggested, CLW allows you to concentrate the "prevented" damage on one person. It's less effective overall because it's more targeted: instead of preventing a bit of damage to everyone, it "prevents" a lot of damage to the person who most needs it.

It'll be interesting to see how these powers come out in play.

Daniel

 

[Evanta]

If the cleric manages to go before the monsters, I would see Shield of Faith as being a lot more useful.

If the monsters go first though, CLW might be better.

All in all, imo, Shield is good in terms of power, CLW is good in terms of versatility. If there's already a character that is able to buff party defence, CLW is the clear choice since power bonus doesn't stack.

 

[KarinsDad]

CLW is still healing that doesn't use a healing surge. That extends the useful life of your party in any given day. There are lots of healing powers, relatively few do not use up surges. Even potions use up surges.

One extra healing surges in a party of 5 that probably has over 35 healing surges already is not that significant.

And while CLW does not use up a healing surge, it does use up a resource: a second level utility power.

That utility power can be used for Bless, Divine Aid, Sanctuary, or Shield of Faith. Most of these (at least IMO) are better than the equivalent of a single extra healing surge per day.

Granted, CLW does give one extra healing surge within a combat (in which the group of 5 tends to have 7 or fewer of those at low level, but powers like Sacred Flame allow for extra temporary hit points), but at least in our game, most PCs have some of their healing surges left over when the group decides to quit for the day.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Granted, CLW does give one extra healing surge within a combat (in which the group of 5 tends to have 7 or fewer of those at low level, but powers like Sacred Flame allow for extra temporary hit points), but at least in our game, most PCs have some of their healing surges left over when the group decides to quit for the day.

I think the "1 more surge per combat" is massively more important than "1 more surge per day". Our party haven't been near running out of surges per day yet, but we've run out of healing per combat, and we've got a warlord, a paladin and a student of battle.

Additionally it's "1 more surge per combat for whomever needs it most". While it's optimal to make sure that each participant in a combat uses their healing, it's often not what actually happens - our warlock often doesn't use his healing surges at all, while the fighter does almost every single combat.