atom crash said:
While everyone is focusing on the "unless blah blah blah" statement, I'd still like to see more discussion on this sentence:
"Healing that raises your hit points above 0 makes you fully functional again, just as if you’d never been reduced to 0 or fewer hit points."
I'll restate my point of view on the subject.
1. The statement appears at first blush to be retroactive: "as if you'd never been reduced to 0 or fewer hit points." This is the main contention of the "Pro-CMW Camp."
2. Being actually retroactive, however, results in severe temporal oddities. For instance, if you are Disabled before your action in round 3, take move actions in rounds 3-6, and heal yourself with a spell (other than CMW

) in round 7, should you not retroactively receive actions in the last three rounds?
3. That's a patently silly proposition.
4. Therefore, it's not really a retroactive statement at all, which means it can't retroactively apply to the beginning of *this* round either (i.e., casting a healing spell in round 3 doesn't give you an extra move action).
5. Therefore, you don't get to ignore any of the consequences of being Disabled, one of which is, to paraphrase, "If you take a standard action (or perform other strenuous action), you lose 1 hit point at the end of that action."
6. Therefore, "Healing that raises your hit points above 0" can only be interpreted as "Healing that raises your hit points above 0 allowing for the hit point you're going to lose for performing a standard [etc.] action."
7. Cure Minor Wounds, since it heals only 1 hit point, is not "Healing that raises your hit points above 0 allowing for the hit point you're going to lose for performing a standard [etc.] action."
8. Therefore, CMW cannot be used to bring yourself out of the Disabled state.
9. However, CMW does work with the "Unless" clause, because it is a standard action that does heal you, and therefore prevents you from being at negative hit points and dying.
10. Furthermore, it is my contention that a close reading of the rules from 2nd Edition (and possibly 1st - I don't own it) explain the reasoning behind the "Healing that raises ... [etc.]" statement.
11. Succinctly, in earlier editions, characters who were healed from negative hit points (dying) or 0 hit points (unconscious) into positive hit points were "disabled" until they could rest.
12. Thus, character's saved from Death's Door were prohibited from acting in the rest of the current battle, at least.
13. The designers of 3rd Edition wanted to make it absolutely clear that this rule from previous editions was being overwritten.
14. Thus, they included the "Healing that raises ... [etc.]" text.
15. The End.
