Disciple of Life does add a little extra boost to Healing Spells, and they will become more effective with higher level spell slots, but overall it's still not much more effective than potions that can be thrown across the board at allies.
Because they are trying to make the healer somehow valuable, they've made it so that their healing is super powerful.
I have a little problem to fit those two sentences into single mindset ...
Can you choose, please?
Either potions are striping Life Clerics of their purpose, or LIfe Clerics are ridiculously powerfull healers ... both is litteraly impossible.
Actually, at first glance, I'd agree with you. It seems that both are untrue. But, if you dig deep enough, you can see how both actually are possibilities that do, in fact, exist.
We're talking two very interesting extremes. On the one hand, Bonus action potions and throwing potions make any healer class no longer necessary. This is the reason I am pushing for Action potions, not Bonus action potions, and to remove throwing potions.
See, in Tabletop 5e RAW rules, the cleric is valuable as a healer BECAUSE the other characters can't fight and heal at the same time. They can't throw a potion from a distance to heal an ally. Only the cleric can cast Healing Word to heal from a distance. They can't use a potion AND attack in the same round. They can EITHER heal or attack. If they attack, they then trust that their healer will heal them. It requires more strategy and teamwork because they need to rely on their healer to heal them while they focus on dealing damage - or they need to drink a potion and sacrifice attacking, if they are in desperate need of healing. If you know the healer is healing someone else, then you have to sacrifice dealing damage so you can heal yourself. Then, to boot, the healer can revive a fallen comrade by casting a spell. Ah, the 0 HP companion now is on their feet again, but they have at least 5-12 HP, or something like that. That's better than using a Medicine check to revive them with only 1 HP. Cleric is much more valuable and necessary to the team because they alone can revive a fallen companion and give them hopefully enough HP that they'll be able to either withdraw to a safe distance and use a potion to recover more completely, OR use a potion right there, OR hope they don't get hit for an entire round until the healer can heal them even more.
In BG3, the clerics are stripped of this very important role because, well, anyone can heal themselves and still keep fighting, both in the same turn. Aradin and his two friends don't need a cleric in their party. Aradin is low on health, so he uses his Bonus action to drink a potion for 8 HP healing. Then he bashes the goblin captain. Then he uses Action Surge and bashes him again. Then, because Aradin's still low on health, his buddy throws a potion and heals him another 7 HP. Ah, but his buddy is low on health too, so he drinks a potion as well, healing himself and Aradin in the same turn.
Thus, a healer is no longer ESSENTIAL to the party at all. Party members just need enough potions to heal themselves constantly. Besides this, ANYONE can literally click a button and revive a fallen comrade. No Medicine check at all. Help instantly brings them back to 1 HP so they can get back up and continue. Not only that, but they can get back up, drink a potion as a Bonus action, and viola. Back in action. Then their buddies can throw potions and heal them even more. So, we have that extreme which makes it so healers aren't NECESSARY at all in the party. Then, to boot, they made it so revivify can be cast by anyone, so even moreso, even if a person dies completely, ANYONE can bring them back to life. And, as if that wasn't enough, they give you Withers as a total safety net. Pay him 200 gp and you're good. As long as you've got 1 companion left alive in a battle, everyone can be brought back.
So, one of the main points I'm trying to make is that clerics, and other healers, aren't necessary. Their value is stripped by all of these homebrew mechanics.
But then, the second point ALSO applies. To compensate for the fact that clerics, and other healers, aren't necessary, they've BUFFED cleric abilities so that they can cast both Cure Wounds AND Healing Word in the same round. So, though not necessary, they still have value because they are much more effective healers than people with just potions. Instead of healing only 7-14 HP using Cure Wounds, and that's all the healing you get in one round unless you sacrifice your action to drink a potion, now you can have a cleric heal you 7-14 HP using Cure wounds and 7-10 more using Healing Word, AND then they can use a potion to heal another 4-10 HP, AND they can still take a swing at an enemy. Well, hot dang! A character can have 1 HP left and have a cleric heal them up to 24 HP in a single turn, and if that's not enough for the character they can still heal up to another 10 HP. They can literally go from 1 HP to 35 HP in a single turn AND still attack.
So, to summarize, tabletop would only allow someone to go from like 1 HP to maybe 15 via a cleric's healing in a single turn, and if they drank a potion, they'd heal maybe another 10 at the most to a max healing of 25. This would be at the sacrifice of BOTH not being able to attack. BG3 makes it so the cleric can heal someone up to 10 HP using Healing Word, and they could still cast Guiding Bolt to deal 4d6 damage to an enemy. Then the character being healed could drink a potion and heal another 10 HP (using maximums for comparison purposes) for a total of 20 HP healed and then still fight. So, in BG3, they can heal almost the same as in tabletop but they don't even need to sacrifice attacking at all.
Now, add to this that at level 5 some classes get extra attacks whenever they use an Action to attack. So, what this looks like is the Cleric heals and attacks, and the Fighter uses a potion for extra healing and attacks twice - as opposed to in tabletop how the Cleric would heal and sacrifice their attack to do so, and the Fighter would drink a potion, and sacrifice doing 2 attacks to do so. Suddenly, the Cleric being the healer in tabletop has WAY more value because if he can keep the Fighter from having to use her action to drink a potion, the Fighter gets to make 2 attacks, dealing potentially WAY more damage.
The main point is this: By allowing Potions as a Bonus action, and by allowing Throwing potions, the Life Cleric is no longer NECESSARY. Therefore, to compensate, they've buffed Life Clerics so they can do LOTS of extra healing, especially when one considers the Preserve Life power. So, are they needed? No. Do they have value? Yes... well... sort of. They certain are now more OP when it comes to healing.
But what does that mean in the game? It means that in order to make encounters more challenging, they now must extremely buff the amount of damage an enemy can do. THIS, I think, is why we have Phase Spider Mama teleporting around the map and spitting globs of poison onto party members instead of having phase spiders being up close and person melee fighters. It's a chain reaction. Because Life Clerics and other healers are now able to cast both Cure Wounds and Healing Word in a single round, and because potions are Bonus actions and can be thrown for additional healing, parties can heal for gobs and gobs of HP each round. So, in order for enemies to be challenging, they have to homebrew them and make them heavy damage dealers as well. So, I think this is why the Phase Spider Matriarch was able to reduce my Level 4 Battlemaster from her max health of 40-something to 0 HP in a single round. In order to make her tough, she needed to be able to deal 40+ points of damage to a character in one round (and this was without doing a critical hit).
What is the end result? If you don't win initiative, you're screwed. It all hinges are the RNG of initiative order rather than on strategy.
So, I'm once again suggesting more true to the 5e rules classes and action allowances and such. Why? Because the unbalance leaves too much to chance. Why are people so upset by the RNG in BG3? Because RNG plays a MUCH bigger role now. That's how it goes when you start pushing things to the extreme.
Take Shove. (Please!) Larian determined that 5 feet is lame. So they went to the extreme and made it a much bigger push; 15=30+ feet you can now shove people. The end result? You lose initiative, and you lose the contested Athletics roll, they can shove you 30+ feet off a cliff for a 1-Hit KO. All RNG. You got unlucky, so it doesn't matter where you position yourself on the map, you die because you were unlucky. 5e limits the distance to 5 feet (1 meter), so that doesn't happen as often. Unless you're standing on the very edge of a cliff or wall, you can't get 1-Hit KO'd by RNG at level 4+.
It's the same thing here. Because they lifted the restrictions of one rule, and then compensated, and then compensated again, and then compensated again, you can now lose 40+ HP in a single round before you even get to go - unless you're lucky. THIS is the whole reason I'm pointing all this out. I've had it happen too many times in BG3. The luck of the dice kills me before I even get to go.
And THAT is the whole reason for the limits and restrictions of 5e. It's to balance it all and tame it down. An enemy deals maybe 15 damage in a round, 30 if Critical was done - not 30 in a round and 60 if a Critical was done like in BG3. Healers heal for maybe 5-10 HP in a single round - not 15-20 HP in a single round like in BG3.
The more extreme, the more volatile and the more RNG matters. Lock down the limits and achieve more of a balance, and RNG isn't as important as it is currently in BG3.
