Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ExploderWizard" data-source="post: 6837660" data-attributes="member: 66434">This is how things turn out most of the time in our games as well. Encounters per day vary wildly depending on where the party is and what they are doing. I much prefer a fewer number of combat encounters that feel natural in play to a greater number of trivial encounters that only exist to provide some kind of balance for rest cycle abilities. The types of adventures being run have an impact on how much adventuring a group will undertake before taking a long rest. If the adventure consists mainly of combat encounters one after another then the PCs will naturally want to recover after their top tier resources have been expended. An environment providing more opportunity for exploration, and interaction can extend the adventuring day. If the party is exploring a cave complex, there is no reason to call it a day after the wizard expends his only fireball. Exploration can continue and the party can make more progress before needing to rest. Of course if the DM packs the dungeon densely with unavoidable combat encounters, the players will quickly catch on and seek to rest after every significant combat. One aspect of old school style campaigning that tempted players into doing as much as possible before stopping to rest was the threat of losing out on treasure to other adventurers if they didn't keep pressing on. In this style of campaign, multiple groups of adventurers would explore the same dungeons during different play sessions. Stopping to rest too often could mean having the good treasure looted by another party before you could find it. That dynamic kind of put a bit of time pressure on the players without needing a plot related gimmick to constantly spur them on. This element can useful even in single party campaigns. NPC parties will need to stand in for rival adventuring groups but it can be done. Rest too much and another group will make off with the prize while your party sleeps. Once the players realize that the dungeon isn't their exclusive playground then they might be a bit more conservative with resources and will want to rest less often.</blockquote>

Verification