Does limited resources affect a battle?

[5ekyu]

In my games, the situation and choices drive the results.

If there is little reason to push and the,resource level is concerning, they rest. Those cases happen frequently.

But just as frequently, there are reasons, necessities and circumstances that make chosing to rest costly.

So, the mix of options and challenges seems to keep things fun.

 

[CydKnight]

I think it depends on the campaign. I am running Out of the Abyss right now and, for at least certain stretches of the campaign, such resources are supposed to be scarce.

 

[FrogReaver]

Having a discussion in another thread about chance of character death in an encounter. I've put forth that with your average party, there's a big difference if you have a series of encounters with no rests or if every encounter separated by a long rest.

The idea of running out of resources over the course of the day seems to be foreign, not something that actually happened. A poll can help us see what other's experiences are.

Please respond to this from actual play.

But the question wasn't if being slowly whittled down resources makes battles at the end of the day "harder",(it obviously does), instead it's about what the more likely cause of PC death is. Is PC death caused in most groups by being seriously deprived of resources or is it instead more often caused by in battle circumstances where a single player takes too much damage too quickly (either due to good monster rolls, bad party rolls, good monster tactics, bad party tactics, or some combination of such things).

How many PC deaths would you attribute to lack of resources and how many do you attribute to avoidable in battle causes. It seems to me that most people admit that more resources might have helped avoid a PC death in circumstances where they are moderately deprived of resources, but more importantly they also admit that better party decisions in the battle even with their current allotment of resources would definitely have prevented PC death.

 

[Blue]

I said I would create it today and you had no reason to doubt me. The questions in this poll can't prove or disprove the hypothesis being debated. The hypothesis is emphatically not that managing resources has no experiential effect on play (I would be quick to say that it does.) Rather, it is that lack of resources very seldom causes character deaths.

There could be multiple explanations for this. One is the notoriously short encounter day that many posters still discuss. Another is that resources are manageable: players are able manage them so that they don't in the end cause character deaths. Another is that causes of death are overwhelmingly more often to do with the strength and abilities of their foes, and their own choices in the encounter, not what happened to resources across encounters.

I'll post a relevant poll in a few days, to avoid poll fatigue.

First, I was the first to suggest a poll, I don't consider it out of line that I put one up. You had been on to reply and had not done so, so I figured I'd put one up instead of waiting.

Second, I think this clearly already shows that the "notoriously short encounter day" isn't as common a factor as you claim.

Third, Polls on ENworld get a lot of activity. I wouldn't worry about "Poll Fatigue".

 

[clearstream]

First, I was the first to suggest a poll, I don't consider it out of line that I put one up. You had been on to reply and had not done so, so I figured I'd put one up instead of waiting.

Second, I think this clearly already shows that the "notoriously short encounter day" isn't as common a factor as you claim.

Concretely, we have a hypothesis that is something like "earlier encounters will - through depletion of resources - significantly affect the chance of death in later". Entailed is a confound that could require more complex analysis. Then there is a counter-hypothesis that is something like "resources aren't significantly correlated with lethality, because other factors have an overwhelming role in character death". Mitigating the confound.

The poll here doesn't do a good job of addressing such hypotheses. The counter-hypothesis does not pivot on the length of adventuring days, and if it did then this thread is not the sole or best source of evidence on that factor. There's been extensive back and forth in other threads.

 

[5ekyu]

My view on the death side of things is that the big difference between always resting and pushing on styles is that the latter drives charscters to hold back.

If its "we get everything back after" no reason to not heal or to not blast or to not buff etc etc etc.

The pushing on means we may delay healing if it doesn't seem pressing or go thru without a buff or let the fighter and rogue finish it off instead of burning another spell... and those choices can backfire if things go awry.

But, while that risk is a factor, one that matters, it's not as big a factor as how they play thru when things go awry.

I have seen players drop fog clouds over whole swaths to cover getting down teammate back up with minimal risk and not as a one-time either.

 

[TigerStripedDog]

Balance is clearly the key here. If resources are meaningless, the game isn't nearly as exciting - and a lot of the details cease to matter. There is a difference between a long and short rest in the books - it is meant to be played out.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There could be multiple explanations for this. One is the notoriously short encounter day that many posters still discuss. Another is that resources are manageable: players are able manage them so that they don't in the end cause character deaths.

I would argue that it's less about short encounter days, and more about having too many resources available. The design expectation of six encounters in a day is an unreasonable one, so players end up with more resources than they need, even if their encounter day is of a reasonable length.

In my experience with running high-level campaigns, characters have a lot more resources than they can use, even if there are six encounters in a day and the wizard casts a big spell in every encounter.

 

[FrogReaver]

Balance is clearly the key here. If resources are meaningless, the game isn't nearly as exciting - and a lot of the details cease to matter. There is a difference between a long and short rest in the books - it is meant to be played out.

No one claims they are meaningless. The claim is that resource deprivation doesn’t significantly increase PC deaths. Unlucky die rolls and bad combat decisions are usually to blame for PC deaths.

 

[WaterRabbit]

IMHO, balancing classes around the concept of a long/short rest cycle has to be one of the worst design decisions in 5e.

I also dislike races/class features that gimmick rests (like elves and now warlocks with Aspect of the Moon).

Rests should add tension to the game or they should be a non-event. With the above they become neither. The decision of when to rest and under what conditions have always been a big part of the game. It created a dynamic tension between different classes (spell casters vs fighters) and story.

Now we get constant arguments about how many encounters there need to be in a day to balance a Warlock vs other classes. It is silly.

On the other hand, making spells usable as rituals to preserve resources was one of the better design decisions. It allows parties to meaningfully engage in exploration without feeling they are wasting spell slots that could be used in combat.