[RPG] Which healing methods work on Nimblewright player characters

There are several basic means of healing:

• Short rest - you can spend hit dice (or "HD," short for "hit point dice"—c.f. Player's Handbook page 12) here and get back HP. This is sort of your battle field patch up type healing.

• Long rest - Restores all your HP and half your level in HD. This is sort of your natural bed rest type healing.

• Magical healing - potions/spells etc

• Non-magical healing. This is a bit trickier, and can only be accessed by a character with the healer feat. If you use this you gain a small amount of HP back when you are treated with a healer's kit (and it expends a use of the kit).

That's pretty much it, outside of some other adventure specific things (for instance there was a barrel of spirits in the starter set that would restore 1 hp if you had a drink). There are some other class features (second wind etc), that allow specific classes to heal, but that's the limit of what's available to the general populace.

The Cure Wounds spell would have restored hit points and consciousness to the Rogue. A dying creature isn't prevented from regaining hit points in any way. In fact, on page 197 of the PHB, under the Falling Unconscious section:

This unconsciousness ends if you regain any hit points.

Stabilizing is an entirely different process, which does not immediately give the dying creature any hit points, but prevents them from having to make death saving throws and causes them to regain consciousness and 1 hit point after 1d4 hours. Stabilizing is specifically listed as a weaker alternative to healing under Stabilizing A Creature on the same page:

If healing is unavailable, the creature can at least be stabilized so that it isn't killed by a failed death saving throw.

To put it slightly differently, you don't have to stabilize someone before you can heal them; it's a backup option if you haven't got any healing handy.