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May 7, 2010 -- 4:57PM, dslatimore wrote:

Spending a healing surge is a mechanic.  It can be fluffed (via second wind) as healing yourself, or it can be fluffed (Healing Word) as being healed by another.  You shouldn't assume someone spending a surge or healing as if they had means they are healing themselves.  It simply isn't the case.

If it were as you say, Healing Word wouldn't benefit from healer's lore either, because the target is spending the surge, therefore they are healing themselves, not the cleric power.

That's fine; it's not really important who is the actor in the hypothetical.  What's important is that a cleric healing power is not the actor in the hypothetical.

Healing Word works either way you want to think about it though.  Healing Word is a power that allows the target to spend a healing surge.  Healer's lore reads "When you let a creature spend a healing surge to regain hit points with one of your cleric powers that has the healing keyword..."  This is something that's happening with Healing Word regardless of how you want to consider the "ownership" of surge expenditure to work.

Again, here's how I read it: cleric power allows you to spend a healing surge to regain hit points, you gain additional hit points from Healing Word.  No healing surge spent, not additional hit points.

Cure ___ Wounds lets you regain hit points as if you spent a healing surge (essentially, regain X hit points, where X = healing surge value), but does not actually allow you to spend a healing surge, so no additional hit points gained, because you didn't spend healing surges, only regained hit points as if you spent one.

I believe one side insists that Cure ___ Wounds should let you benefit from Healer's Lore because they believe the "gain hit points as if you spent a healing surge" means gaining the benefits of healing surge spending, without actually spending a healing surge... which is true.  However, Healer's Lore specifically states that the creature that is to be healed by the cleric power has to spend a healing surge in order to benefit from it; they specifically removed its effect on all heals that don't let you spend healing surges... so while Cure ___ Wounds would normally get most of the benefits of feats, items, etc. that improve healing surges, Healer's Lore only works when the creature being healed spends a healing surge, and thus doesn't apply here.

Now even without Healer's Lore working with all surgeless healing -- including those that let you regain hit points as if you spent a healing surge which, seriously, ought to be errata'd to "you regain hit points equal to your healing surge value", for further clarification -- Clerics (even Strength [Battle] Clerics, who are said to be on the worse side of things with regards to Clerics) still do better at healing than any other leader class, without having to be optimized for healing.

May 7, 2010 -- 5:31PM, dslatimore wrote:

Under the old rule, you were being healed once.

You've created an interpretation of your own that no one else would ever consider using.  Why?

 

I'm using your interpretation of the new rule and applying it to the old rule.  The healing surge is being spent as if it were being done by a cleric power, so Healer's Lore applies to that surge (this is what you are saying happens under the new rules; however, given that the wording hasn't changed with regards to situations where surges are being spent, it applies equally under the old rules if it works under the new rules).

But this healing is also actually healing done by a cleric power, which means that Healer's Lore gets tacked onto the healing the power does as well (this is something old rules definitely did in all circumstances).  So two healer's lores under that interpretation with the old rules.