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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6730397" data-attributes="member: 996">You can't mitigate damage after the fact.  You can heal after the fact.  I'm sorry, there's just no way around it - not without radically changing mitigation, I guess.Not if both options took an action.  And, if you needed to THP one before hand, what if it's a third that ends up needing the help.  You can't see how a character who can bring allies back from 0 has an edge over one that can't?Allies getting dropped is not a corner case.  Not being prescient is not a corner case.  You're not-prescient 24/7.That's just another strike against mitigation.  AC buff is mitigation.  Doesn't help when the party's fireballed.  Healing does.  Save bonus is mitigation.  Doesn't help when you're beaten down by an ogre.  Healing Does.  Resist fire is mitigation, doesn't matter when a white dragon breathes on you.  Healing does. Negating an enemy's attack is mitigation.  Doen't matter when an ally falls in a pit.  Healing does.I'd be delighted if the equivalency you posit were true, it would make certain things easier.  But, I'm afraid it just doesn't hold up.Healing heals hps, it doesn't matter where the damage came from, unless your maximum hps have been reduced (there's what, one monster that does that, and it's arguably broken?).  Temp hps are about as good as it gets for mitigation, because at least they don't care what kind of damage you're going to take.  But whether you take damage still matters, and they can't bring you up from 0.From there, specific sorts of mitigation all get more and more situational. Where temps and other forms of mitigation are 'better' than healing is when you /are/ feeling a little prescient, when you know there's a fight coming, or you know it'll be with something that does a specific damage type, or whatever.  Then you can use actions in advance to set up the most useful sort of mitigation for what you expect - saving actions for other uses in combat.  Which is great, but further illustrates that they're not equivalent.</blockquote>

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