Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I've played with, but unfortunately have actually "played with", a number of variations on this, while still trying to honor the idea that plentiful in-combat healing extends combats.
The two "surviving " ideas that I could potentially make a house rule (either/or, not both) were:
1. When affected by magical healing you may spend a reaction to spend HD. You may spend HD up to the number of dice of healing the spell does, assuming you have them. For static heals (like lay-on-hands or Heal), you may spend one HD per 5 full points restored.
The breakdown behind this was that ti was the same total potential healing in a day, and since it took your reaction that it gives a strong reason for healing someone while they were still up, instead of whack-a-mole healing. The # of dice was a nice compromise such that a Mass spell is less dice than a single target healing spell of the same level.
2. Cure Wound and Mass Cure Wound spells use your HD size instead of d8s (even when less). Healing potions replace 2d4 with HD size. Other d8 healing features also replace with HD size.
This was just to make Cure Wounds be a bit more proportional to your total HPs, though lacking the CON adjustment on each one. For d6 characters it's less while for characters more likely to be front-liners it's more. I never thought about how to scale it for Lay on Hands, Heal, Mass Heal or things like that. It might be overpowered with a raging barbarian, never playtested.
This didn't attempt to address the whack-a-mole, but with the groups I play with it hasn't been a fun-impacting problem.
This keeps HD for out-of-combat use only, it doesn't spend them.
The two "surviving " ideas that I could potentially make a house rule (either/or, not both) were:
1. When affected by magical healing you may spend a reaction to spend HD. You may spend HD up to the number of dice of healing the spell does, assuming you have them. For static heals (like lay-on-hands or Heal), you may spend one HD per 5 full points restored.
The breakdown behind this was that ti was the same total potential healing in a day, and since it took your reaction that it gives a strong reason for healing someone while they were still up, instead of whack-a-mole healing. The # of dice was a nice compromise such that a Mass spell is less dice than a single target healing spell of the same level.
2. Cure Wound and Mass Cure Wound spells use your HD size instead of d8s (even when less). Healing potions replace 2d4 with HD size. Other d8 healing features also replace with HD size.
This was just to make Cure Wounds be a bit more proportional to your total HPs, though lacking the CON adjustment on each one. For d6 characters it's less while for characters more likely to be front-liners it's more. I never thought about how to scale it for Lay on Hands, Heal, Mass Heal or things like that. It might be overpowered with a raging barbarian, never playtested.
This didn't attempt to address the whack-a-mole, but with the groups I play with it hasn't been a fun-impacting problem.
This keeps HD for out-of-combat use only, it doesn't spend them.