Healing is too easily come by in the early game

[Derakon]

On the one hand, as long as CSW/CCW are available, items of Curing (including Fast Recovery) are basically useless. On the other hand, if you take away status ailment curing from CSW/CCW, you're basically just mandating the creation of Potions of Curing and the occupancy of another inventory slot for same (or Rods of Curing / Staves of Curing / etc.). Status ailments are too dangerous to simply endure; the player must have a way to deal with them.

[Zikke]

rare as rocking horse shit

This is gold.

[artes]

Yes, I've noticed that potions of Cure Light Wounds are abundant. I hardly ever use them though. The first levels goes so fast that they are useless within minutes. I usually end up with a big pile of them that I finally sell or just drop. Since there is not much use for them I don't think it matters much if they are abundant or not.

[Derakon]

Rather than sell or drop them, chug 'em the next time you're low on hitpoints even if it's not the middle of the fight. That's what I use staves of CLW for too. Helps keep things moving.

[artes]

That's a good idea. They are good against confusion too, I think.

[Raxmei]

CLW reduces your confusion but doesn't eliminate it, same with bleeding. I just drink one whenever I'm in the middle of a fight, not at full HP, and have nothing better to do at the moment. For instance, fighting an orc pit and the next one in line hasn't made contact yet. It does me more good than just standing still for a turn and it's no big deal if I run out of CLW. Multiply 15 hp by the size of a small stack and you'll see it can do wonders for your endurance in drawn out battles. Two CLW is about as good as one CCW for hitpoint recovery as long as you have the actions to spare. I also use it to recover after fights because I don't like resting.

Splitting status curing out of the HP curing series would certainly make things harder. Not sure if it's a good idea.

[EpicMan]

Splitting curing from healing would not only make recovery more time-consuming (and so harder to accomplish in battle, but it would split monsters that cause status effects into two groups: those who inflict statuses on the player, forcing a turn of curing (or posession of the resistance), and those who inflict both bad statuses and heavy damage (Titans)
. The latter might then require two turns to recover from, or one turn + risk.