What would happen if all magical healing and healing potions did not increase hitpoints, but only created temp HP? I can think of a few impacts:
- Clerics, Paladins and Druids might think of using spells to buff characters before they go into a fight
- If a character is downed, magical healing will not get them up for the fight
- D&D as a society would have less cleric types healing people of cuts, bruises and other physical ailments
- Allowing a PC to have only one "lot" of temp HP puts a cap on buffing, and strongly encourages upcasting/using higher level heal spells
- Might affect player psychology and PC behaviour going into a fight with a large temp HP pool
- Might still be used in combat
- Makes magical healing less appealing overall
The inevitable question for all these posts is
"why?" which apart from just for fun, I think the intention behind this would be:
To make magical healing less immersion breaking (for me), and to change the incentive from clerics to being healbots to being precombat buffers.
I like the idea of a cleric or paladin conducting a rite before a battle and buffing up the party, or a druid conducting some kind of ritual to do the same. It both feels more thematic to me, and also I'm hoping it would disincentives the choice that many healing classes have to either get to act on their turn, or to heal someone else in the party. For some players that's not a problem, for others, it feels like a tax.
Secondly, and this is my personal preference, i'd like to see mundane healing get more focus. I like the idea of a cut down healer's feat where a use of a healers kit and a successful medicine check could restore 1d6 hitpoints flat with the same caveat that a PC/creature can only beneft from this healing once per rest. The healer feat would still be a boon because of the +4+hit dice bonus to healing, as well as being able to restore a dying creature to 1 hitpoint which would with the above ruling make this the only way to get someone back in the fight in the middle of combat. This to me opens up more possibilities for any character to being a healer and I like that.
I suspect some of you would not like this at all. But whether you do or you don't, I'd be interested in your thoughts as to what you think it'd change.