Emirikol said:
Yes, D&D requires healing magic. The reason is that the hit point mechanic, while buffering against unexpected random death, also encourages and requires frequent 'injury'. Because the hit point system is designed to keep a character from going down with one blow, it also requires blows to frequently land if anyone is ever going to be threatened at all. And thus, if the game is going to stay flowing smoothly from one scenario to the next and not be put on pause regularly, healing magic is required.
I don't think D&D's requirement for healing magic has much of anything to do with having a cleric. The cleric is just a convient place to hang D&D's need for healing magic. It could have been placed somewhere else, and that would leave the cleric doing the other things it does - which at least in 3rd edition is considerable if much less so in earlier editions.
In systems where injuries are less frequent (but generally more serious when they do happen), healing magic is also less important. In games where injuries are frequent, regardless of the system, something gets grafted into the system to serve the same role - whether it be super-regeneration, sufficiently advanced technology, or whatever.
D&D without healing magic would create a wierd situation. Combat could generally occur only once every few game days, but so long as it only occured that infrequently, it would retain the expectation that the PC's would win a given encounter without being seriously threatened. When it occurred more frequently, every other combat would be very grim and gritty or at a minimum would radically adjust the expected challenge of a particular combat.
Where I would disagree is whether this has any negative effect on D&D as a roleplaying game. In my experience, role playing occurs or doesn't occur quite independently of the game's mechanics. I don't think a game's mechanics can actually encourage or hinder role-playing, provided that they don't actually impinge too heavily on social interaction. Since a combat system never qualifies as this, I don't think the sort of combat system a game has has anything at all to do with whether or not role playing occurs. Now, for example, a Diplomacy system if taken too literally and if written too mechanically, could hinder roleplaying - but I've never yet been in a situation where this has happened in play. The reason it doesn't happen is that people who are actually interested in role playing, aren't interested in heavy mechanical resolutions of social conflicts. And people who aren't actually interested in playing out social conflicts, don't need detailed mechanical resolution of social conflicts.
Playing D&D, I've had sessions where we went 8 hours without throwing a dice, and I've had sessions where we were throwing dice as fast as we could for hours in order to resolve the conflict. Those are exceptions rather than the rule, and I like it that way; but on the other hand neither would I want to be in a campaign that percluded extreme exceptions on either end. Generally speaking, sessions where we throw alot of dice are about combat, and sessions where we don't throw alot of dice are about role playing. That is how I think it should be. I for one enjoy both roleplaying and combat, and much like how I'd not want to eat a meal that was all meat or all vegetables very often, but instead I want a balanced mix, in the same way I want to 'feast' on a balanced mixture of role playing (and all of its goodness) and combat (and all of its goodness). Most gamers also want variaty in thier 'diet'. Now, there are people who really enjoy role-playing, and are bored by combat, and there are people who really enjoy combat and see role-playing only as something you do to set up the next combat. IME, much like 'vegans' and 'carnivores', those gamers tend to be really snotty and arrogant about thier preference, and act real pretentious like their preferences were the only valid way, or at minimum the best way, to play an RPG.
Now, there is a small subcategory of RP which is 'role playing that occurs within combat' wherein I suppose a combat system would have a big impact. Traditionally, the D&D game has not done anything to encourage RP in combat, which tends to default D&D combat to 'I attack, hit, do damage.' The 3rd edition system helps a little bit simply by giving more options, but I suppose more could be done in that direction if you wanted. Still, I don't think that the generally powerful healing available in D&D impacts that one way or the other.
I guess I don't qualify as "a decent discussion".
PS: I don't think you should blame someone else for your own 'knee-jerk' reactions. If you are going to have knee jerk reactions, stop and think before posting. If you don't like a particular posters style, 'ignore' is always available, or you could - I don't know - show a little self-control and not post in the thread. "I was uncontrollably provoked into acting like a jerk." doesn't seem to me to be a valid defence.
