I am surprised I don’t see many people complaining about this, but the current state of this mechanic is very much broken. Turns out Astarion and Gale are the best tanks in the game as long as someone can constantly rise them up. They can soak ridiculous amounts of damage by drifting between the two states: being alive with one HP and being knocked out. And this doesn’t have any meaningful cost, just one action point. Many fights turn out being this kind of a whac-a-mole game when all fire being concentrated on Gale and you effortlessly return him back to life. This should be fundamentally reworked.
+1
Downed PCs should only be brought back into the fight with healing: potions, scrolls, spells, or class abilities. The "Help" action should stabilize them, not bring them back into the fight.
It's fine if, after the fight, any downed PCs get up with 1 hp without requiring healing.
I'm an impossible cynic and I do not like the whack-a-mole routine either. Whenever I play BG3 EA with friends, I remark "welcome to 5e" in voice chat, whenever silly stuff like that happens.
Chaotic Neutral Tiefling Paladin - welcome to 5e
Cantrip spam replacing ranged weapons - welcome to 5e
Healing word related remote whack-a-mole - welcome to 5e
One character's action bar consists of only push, jump and Eldritch Blast - welcome to 5e
Can't use healing word this round because I used my bonus action to push a duergar off a cliff even though I still have an regular action - welcome to 5e
Other than that the game is mostly fun in EA
This issue is not a part of 5e afaic
Feel free to correct me
+100. Also, current mechanics again negate certain true game elements. Help in current state makes Medicine practically pointless, and why isn't there a way currently to use potions on others characters?
It should be Help forces character to use Action to perform Medicine to see IF they succeed in stabilizing. Potions should allow 1 characters to heal another. This makes clerics so much more valuable because suddenly their ability to heal a fallen companion is much more effective than just using Medicine to keep them from dying.
This type of thing CAN happen in base 5e due to how the game is balanced around the concept that healing will instantly raise someone up. However, the help action right now is completely wrong in BG3 and allows for this up and down game where the enemies target the weakest person who soaks up all the damage and then gets up as if nothing happened.
I've been bringing this up every chance I get.
"Help" as a means of essentially unlimited magical healing is the final cheese in BG3 combat. Even if enemies manage to down the PC's, they still need to be able to deal with you bringing them back for no cost over and over again. It can be easily exploited if you outnumber the enemies. They keep downing a PC, another PC is helping the downed PC up every turn, and the remaining two PC's keep attacking while this circus is looping. And the enemies can also miss the recently revived character and they get to heal more or attack. All of this makes "help" an incredibly overpowered ability.
What's magical healing even for, actually? Since it's not needed to bring an unconscious PC back into the fight anymore. Anyone can just go poke an unconscious dying character in the middle of combat and they wake up with 1HP and full ability. I guess same as Rogues were robbed of their mobility by giving it to everyone, Clerics, Druids and Paladins are now robbed of their battle healing ability by giving the most important aspect of it freely to everyone. This watering down the classes by handing their schtick to everyone is beyond irritating and it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of a class based system. Even if "help" did require magical healing, everyone could still accomplish it with a healing potion, of which there is an abundance of. I just can't begin to understand the reasoning behind making "help" that strong. It was never needed!
Not to mention a PC getting downed 7 times in the same fight is just stupid. They should be maimed beyond healing.
It's unimmersive silly stuff like this that is keeping BG3 from becoming the greatest D&D RPG of all time. By all means, let casual players do stuff like this at the appropriate difficulty setting. But let me play a grown up RPG that makes sense and plays like D&D, please.
It, again, makes all sorts of things pointless.