Out of combat healing slander (kinda)
I wanted a fun title because it isn't a complex issue I have with 2e, just something I dislike about it. Been playing since playtest, GMed most APs to completion, 1-20 homebrew games and many more, over 1000 sessions. One thing I grew to dislike is the out of combat healing. TL;DR at the bottom.
The game does want the PCs to have near full health for most combats, forcing at least one PC to pick Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. I have always disliked "mandatory" feats, sure the game can work without it but it is not that great. Then you have Treat Wounds, with those feats, it makes so easy to just recover out of combat. Not a lot of situations require time pressure, meaning you can just heal to full after every fight. Add stuff like Fresh Produce (which can be done before and after Treat Wounds), Robust Health (which also becomes almost a mandatory feat nowadays), makes it even easier. If you played long enough, I am sure you know what I mean.
My problem with this isn't how easy it is to heal out of combat, but how mandatory it is to pick up some feats for it, then you can just handwave it. At this point, at level 5ish+, after every combat, I just tell everyone to heal to full and add 1 focus point (except time pressure situations, which are quite rare, and should be rare I think, not every dungeon and place should have a time pressure).
Worse yet, in my opinion, this makes casters feel meh, because martials are almost resourceless. Sure they have 1/day abilities but they can still function without them, while casters can't function much without their spells; relying on cantrips only isn't fun.
I don't think "Adventuring Day" from other systems is any better though. I rather have what 2e has than "need to have X fights to make sense". But I am a GM who tries a lot of different systems, and let me tell you that the Recovery system from Draw Steel is the solution for me.
While I have a few opinions about some Draw Steel mechanics, the Recovery system is super nice in my eyes. Each class gain X amount of Recoveries, which recovers 1/3 of their maximum Stamina (HP).
But I do think porting only this might make martials suffer and not "fix" the issue I have, even if I give, say, the Guardian 12 Recoveries per rest while giving the Wizard 6. And maybe if I mix Team+ Essence Casting with Recoveries... could work out.
At the same time, Essence Casting can make Recoveries feel a little pointless since you can then spam heal and similar, so I don't know. We tried without Essence Casting for a few sessions, and it was very interesting, still need some tweaking (like healing items and such needing to be changed otherwise becomes a necessity to stock on them for OoC healing).
Most of my games don't run with a lot of homebrew but I do have a good group of 2e veterans who try my complex homebrew, and most of them have been very successful, such as making all cantrips have variable actions and be on par with electric arc, make almost all spells have variable actions as well, including reactions etc (made me understand why they don't do it, it requires a lot of pages, but man does it feel good. And with the right balance, nothing is broken, been playtesting for a long while and I am a pain in the ass when it comes balance in 2e).
I will keep trying it out and hopefully it works well. Just wanted to share some opinions. Nothing too deep.
TL;DR: I think out of combat healing should be limited and feat tax for medicine feats shouldn't exist (feat tax in general to be fair). A Recovery system like the one from Draw Steel would be nice. Nothing deep though, just sharing an opinion.