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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anax" data-source="post: 3744196" data-attributes="member: 19868">I think that it does lessen the intensity of the consequences—but it doesn’t negate them.  Think about an ability that allows you to take an extra standard action.  If that ability is usable at will, clearly you can do it whenever you want.  Which will be all the time.  If it’s usable once per encounter, you have to think a little bit about when you want to expend it.  If you see a potentially deadly situation, you’re going to use it to help he party recover, and you hope there won’t be another for a while.  If it’s usable once per day, it’s really a constrained resource: you can use it to save somebody’s bacon—but if you do, and the next fight is even tougher, you might be hurting.In the case of the example of “I hit the bad guy and heal my friend”, what kinds of things can impact this choice?  Well, is this two independent actions (choose one to heal, choose one to attack, do them both)?  It doesn’t sound like it.  If they’re not independent, then what are the limits?  What happens if I attack my enemy and miss?  Well, then I probably don’t want to do it if I need that heal.  How much does it heal?  Well, then I probably don’t want to do it if I need a big heal.I would personally imagine that if you absolutely positively must get a big heal to someone right now, you’re not going to be doing anything else (except maybe moving) in that round.Under that assumption, it’s not so much decreasing the danger as increasing the range of possibilities.  Now you can do damage for 1.0, or damage for 0.75 and heal for 0.75, or heal for 1.0 in a single round.  If you don’t need healing, you can do straight up damage.  If you need a crap-ton of healing, you can do straight healing.  If you need a mix of the two, your efficiency actually goes up (you’re able to put out more damage and healing than if you were alternating one round healing and one round attacking), but your overall throughput goes down.And the final thought is: If the party can do more stuff, doesn’t it stand to reason that the enemy will be built to take that into account?  If healing can be done more easily on the fly, while combat continues, then the enemy will probably be putting out damage more consistently.</blockquote>

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