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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 8423035" data-attributes="member: 20564">Once you can upcast, Cure Wounds is much more efficient in terms of HPs restored.But, efficiency needs to be evaluated not just in number of HPs, but in the boolean "character up/down" which is the real concern.  And for that, it is almost more efficient to take X damage, have a character drop, and then heal them Y from zero to bring them up. Because healing Y (not from zero), then they take X, will still often end up a character down. Because any healing from zero will get a character back up, Healing Word seems much more efficient because of the caster action economy and range. Remember that the range may make it into a "this round" vs. "next round" which gives back a whole action to the downed character.If (a) healing from zero didn't have extra efficiency built in (i.e. we had negative HPs), and (b) damage was in scale to healing, then Cure Wounds would be well balanced vs. Healing Word.  However neither of those are desirable - the first leaves players bored because they are down, the second makes combat stretch and moves us back to requiring a healer role.</blockquote>