I, personally, can't stand that idea. Presuming that ("spike") healing - or some other immediate method of putting unconscious foes back on their feet - exists, then intelligent monsters should know to take an action to make sure that the enemy they just put down stays down, as your footnote noted.
Which is why I think spike healing of that sort should not exist--or at least, it should be quite rare. One of the things I hated about 4E was the way front-line fighters behaved like jack-in-the-boxes. He's down! He's up! He's down again! Ugh. When you go down, you should stay down for the rest of the fight.
Going to zero should sting. It should be a fate that PCs strive to avoid. It just shouldn't be an automatic death sentence.
The very idea of being unconscious and helpless as being a superior defense to being conscious and able to act just seems incredibly backwards to me.
It's not much of a defense. All it does is buy your buddies time to save you. If they don't, you're screwed.
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