tasonir wrote:Games where you found a wand of heal wounds and had a few recharging scrolls to go with it were just a whole additional level of "safe". Dying was much less of a concern, you had to *really* mess up to die.
So while I miss them, it's probably better off to not have them.
I'm not quite so sure. In order though, I have to admit the recharging scrolls were really powerful by themselves, and then you stack up various choices of wands beside them.
Healing per se was nice but I didn't find it so much of a silver bullet. If you don't know so perfectly how to gather the right collection of stuff to prepare, kill or escape whatever is the most shocking threat to your build at each level, being able to heal a few more times still won't save you. It just drags out the sinking trend. Or such was my experience. Now, if you know most of everything inside and out and you're just super good at setting up to deal with it, sure another six to 20 heals will protect you from many of the remaining -- and very few -- situations where you get actually half surprised. I think it's the less experienced or more casual people who will really have cause to miss healing, though. They may still often die, but it's a few less battles at the edge of their ability range that they'll get to learn from in each run of the game.