I agree that healing capability is extremely powerful- but so is magic of any kind, applied appropriately. (A good offensive spell barrage might render the healing spells moot, if everyone is dead!)
In a world where magic is commonplace, healing magic would be an extremely valuable resource and cultivated/hoarded like any other valuable resource. If you play a lower magic world, then it might be even more valuable/rare but possibly less effective overall, as it is not available in enough quantity to really tip the balance.
To take your point about a war (of attrition or otherwise), if you assume magic is readily available, as 3rd ed implies, then both sides will be mobilising their healing troops and stock piling their potions etc. Any viable society in a high magic world must have developed a sufficient healing capability to avoid being overtaken by other societies, OR perhaps have a sufficiently high birth rate to replace those members lost to disease, wounds etc. So you might have a low population of elves with lots of magic enabling them to survive the conflicts with the numerous but "magic resource inferior" orcs. The orcs may drop like flies but there's always more where they came from, whereas the elves are hard to take down but every elf lost is a tragedy to their society and its resources. Another possibility is that a group may have developed specialised tactics for dealing with enemies who have more healing magic than them. (Off the cuff, maybe their warriors try to force decisive resolutions to conflicts and avoid being drawn into guerilla warfare situations).
If you are thinking about "hit and run" tactics in raiding the "typical" dungeons, the same more or less applies, but in microcosm. If denizens of a dungeon don't have any healing capability (unlikely in the case of intelligent humanoids in a high magic world who have managed to survive this long) then they must have ways to compensate or they will already be dead! Intelligent opponents will take precautions against repeat incursions, maybe setting traps to redress the balance and pursuing the characters. Unintelligent ones may well pursue or if wounded they might even flee the area completely to avoid the threat, holing up somewhere to lick their wounds and recover. From the point of view of a challenging game, a single encounter is balanced by EL even allowing for magical healing. If players insist on retiring to rest every encounter, then things can be adjusted so that they get more monsters moving in to the vacant rooms, or they get missions with time constraints etc. etc. etc.
So, I don't think healing is unbalanced, as long as you take a world where such magic exists to its logical conclusion, and don't let players treat monsters as idiots held in stasis until their dungeon door is opened.
In a world where magic is commonplace, healing magic would be an extremely valuable resource and cultivated/hoarded like any other valuable resource. If you play a lower magic world, then it might be even more valuable/rare but possibly less effective overall, as it is not available in enough quantity to really tip the balance.
To take your point about a war (of attrition or otherwise), if you assume magic is readily available, as 3rd ed implies, then both sides will be mobilising their healing troops and stock piling their potions etc. Any viable society in a high magic world must have developed a sufficient healing capability to avoid being overtaken by other societies, OR perhaps have a sufficiently high birth rate to replace those members lost to disease, wounds etc. So you might have a low population of elves with lots of magic enabling them to survive the conflicts with the numerous but "magic resource inferior" orcs. The orcs may drop like flies but there's always more where they came from, whereas the elves are hard to take down but every elf lost is a tragedy to their society and its resources. Another possibility is that a group may have developed specialised tactics for dealing with enemies who have more healing magic than them. (Off the cuff, maybe their warriors try to force decisive resolutions to conflicts and avoid being drawn into guerilla warfare situations).
If you are thinking about "hit and run" tactics in raiding the "typical" dungeons, the same more or less applies, but in microcosm. If denizens of a dungeon don't have any healing capability (unlikely in the case of intelligent humanoids in a high magic world who have managed to survive this long) then they must have ways to compensate or they will already be dead! Intelligent opponents will take precautions against repeat incursions, maybe setting traps to redress the balance and pursuing the characters. Unintelligent ones may well pursue or if wounded they might even flee the area completely to avoid the threat, holing up somewhere to lick their wounds and recover. From the point of view of a challenging game, a single encounter is balanced by EL even allowing for magical healing. If players insist on retiring to rest every encounter, then things can be adjusted so that they get more monsters moving in to the vacant rooms, or they get missions with time constraints etc. etc. etc.
So, I don't think healing is unbalanced, as long as you take a world where such magic exists to its logical conclusion, and don't let players treat monsters as idiots held in stasis until their dungeon door is opened.
