Hywaywolf wrote:A DM could solve this problem by simply adding more healing potions to their game. If you want your Cleric to stop being the guy that applies band-aids then let others carry some band-aids and the cleric can use his power for higher level stuff.
In my experience most groups will still prepare healing spells so that they can take even more abuse before stopping. The reason is pretty simple. Even if prevention is better than the cure, (no pun intended) healing is a very versatile way of preventing death if alternate death rules are used, and is always a way of extending the depth they can delve.
Going through the first level list:
Cure Light Wounds heals 2-7 hp to any party member, which is a significant amount for any level one character.
Detect Evil provides information that
might prevent death.
Detect Good is situationally useful probably won't prevent death.
Detect Magic provides information that
might prevent death.
Light disables
one opponent (if they remember that it can be used that way).
Darkness is potentially useful if enemies can't see in the dark, and the party has some way of fighting in the dark. Also works as light.
Protection From Evil requires that the enemy is evil (different discussion), but is otherwise good at what it does for
one person.
Protection From Good pretty much villains only.
Purify Food and Water prevents death if starving, and is a (long term) way of extending their stay, but requires that the party have no food, or be on a *very* long trip.
Remove Fear prevents an ally from being forced to flee. Requires that the enemy is causing fear somehow.
Cause Fear forces
one enemy to flee.
Resist Cold Significantly reduces damage, but doesn't prevent it, and only if that damage is cold.
Without alternate death rules CLW loses some usefulness, specifically when the character is at 0 hp, but it will still be used on low health allies, because it can take a lot of time to regain health, and the other spells are still maybes.
I'm not trying to say that the other spells are too weak, or that CLW is too strong, just that the other spells require more information to be useful, and CLW allows players to make more mistakes.
Note: Poison is a common save or die effect which has no early level spells to help prevent it. If the GM wanted to add detect poison it would be a strong contender, but again it still "only"
might prevent death. Similarly Bless/Bane was traditionally a first level spell (maybe a different discussion), Bless allows the party to kill things faster, while bane make enemies kill things slower. All +/-1 to attack or AC is effectively a change in
average damage of 5%.
In regards to the issue of how many uses:
5E gives a paladin 5 hp divided as chosen per level per day. They may expend 5 hp of healing to neutralize poison or disease.
I think "clerics can heal [level]d6 hp per day dividing the # of d6s as desired with full restore of all d6s when the cleric normally prepares spells, and remove all cure spells" sounds perfectly fair.
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