FireLance said:
However, I do think that the potential effects of a person or item that can provide unlimited healing are overstated. When an unlimited supply exists, the limiting factor becomes demand. How many people (or equally, what percentage of the population) would actually be in need of healing on any given day? More importantly, how much of this demand would already be met in a fantasy world where there are already clerics, paladins and other divine spellcasters? Assuming 1st-level clerics were as common as say, physicians today, how often would they actually have to deal with life-threatening injuries instead of diseases, minor cuts and bruises? Medical emergencies do exist, but how many clerics would you need to deal with all the medical emergencies that take place on an average day in a town of 10,000 inhabitants?
I absolutely agree with you that the typical temple (in a civilized land) or healer will mostly deal with small injuries, diseases, and such stuff. I also think the most of the time "healers" will use mundane things like heal skill, herbs, etc. The use of magic will probably be too expensive for the typical commoner.
Even if there are a lot of low level clerics and healers, if conflicts arise, say war with a orc horde, an attacking dragon, or a nice guild war then the spell slots of even many spell users could exhaust very quickly.
But the main issue I think is here that the availability of unlimited healing creates demand by itself. If you are a leader with unlimited healing under your command, you can send your thugs, soldiers, whatever much more often then without. Long resting times for your injured forces are no concern anymore, as are costs for clerics, the dependency on the good will of the church for healing, etc. With such unlimited healing you can get much better 'use' out of your fighting forces then without.
FireLance said:
The additional healing capacity would be more useful during times of war and natural disasters, but again, how much more of an advantage would it be over scrolls and wands of cure light wounds? Even if you priced an item of unlimited cure light wounds(arguably, too cheaply) at 1,800 gp, the same cost would have given you two such items with 50 charges each, which would give you about twice the healing output.
Even a small group of mean thugs can use up these charges very quickly. If you have only a limited capacity of 'healing', then you don't use it up like water. You use it, when you really must, when it's worth the cost. If your wand has only 1 charge left, you use it in a emergency situation, but not if one of your thugs/soldiers is injured after a job. He can heal through mundane ways. But if you have unlimited 'charges' left, you can do very hard and demanding jobs in very quick succession. Healing costs are no issue any longer. That changes what you can do - and thus what you will do.
FireLance said:
Arguably, in mass casualty situations, stabilizing as many people as quickly as you can is more important that being able to keep on healing. A wise ruler probably would want to invest in a small number of such items, to be used to get people out of hospital beds, but only after a greater number of cheaper charged items were used to stabilize as many as possible.
Absolutely. Every war leader will want to get these items, no matter what. Every single one. They will be so much more precious then a mere 10.000 GP. And not only rulers of big cities or nations, thug gangs, temples, thief guilds, adventuring parties, evil daemon lord worshiping cults, etc. There would be zillions of groups after these things. A typical fantasy world is full of conflict and war all the time. The demand for such items would be immense.
The question is how long would charged items stay cheaper? At 10.000 GP the unlimited item tops every charged item in no time. Does it cost 100.000? Then it can be the cheaper solution for even one single war, especially if your enemy has no such items, you can regroup, heal, and attack again very fast, when his soldiers are still resting. It may be worth several hundreds of thousands of GP, because with this advantage, you can win the war. These are exactly the questions to be asked, do get to the 'true' value of items (which can depend very much on your game and world).
FireLance said:
Frankly I think the main users of unlimited healing items would be people who tend to get severely injured on a regular basis, often in circumstances that require them to get back to full health as soon as possible. In other words - adventuring parties.
Adventuring parties, thief guilds, thugs, mercenaries, war parties, war loving goblinoids, people living on savage frontiers were they are often attacked, churches who fight against infidels or enemy churches. If you have such items, things will get more rough. A resource which previous limited their doings is now available at unlimited quantity. Leaders will get automatically more aggressive because they can afford it.
