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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 4743414" data-attributes="member: 12731">Thank you everybody who have replied. The active discussion is something I really appreciate! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Let's see if I can give each one of you at least a short reply, beginning from the end...:@Skallgrim: I understand what you're trying to say. But this doesn't change the fact that a party with surges left and a party without surges left are in two extremely different situations. Which I happen to feel is crude game design.As for your main point, what you are suggesting is various story-based reasons for why they cannot or should not take extended rests. However, when you think about it, what this amounts to is nothing else than the GM controlling the players. Why? Because by the rules as written, there simply is no choice when you're running low on surges. You *have* to rest.Now what you're saying is that players should be conservative in using their powers in anticipation of hitting this brick wall too soon. And if they, for example, frivolously used daily Healing Words instead of "free" Second Winds (because they don't want to lose a round's attack), you'd be right. But it's awfully hard to generate any tension just from seeing a number tick down, when you might not know how many encounters there is left for the day.One solution, then, would be to give the players an overview of what's expected of them. If they know they need to infiltrate the castle and find the princess today, that might give them some sense in how to ration their dailies. But often this simply isn't the case. In fact, I would say it's the exception to the rule. Generally, adventures descend into the depths without knowing if it is a three or thirty room dungeon. Any resource management there becomes a charade, an illusion, where you don't have any real facts to base meaningful decisions on."I still can't see any fundamental difference between a group that runs into a combat and uses ALL of their healing surges in one fight (how do they even DO that?) and a group that runs into a combat and uses all of their daily powers."Ah. Yes, this would cause a lot of misunderstandings. Okay then, here's the deal:* Running out of daily powers is not a catastrophe. You're still fairly effective. Sure, you've used up powers that are nice to have, but getting into another fight is far from suicide.* Running out of healing surges, on the other hand, is a catastrophe. You suddenly become effectively unhealable, for crissake! Suddenly even a minor skirmish can kill you if you're unlucky or the monsters decide to focus on you. You can't use Second Wind and your allies Healing Word doesn't work. Not even Healing Potions work. This is a major drop in character power that invalidates a lot of strategies and options (not to mention any healing surge-fueled items you might have). If the party decides they've had enough for today, even at the expense of failing their mission, I can hardly blame them.Sure, they could press on. But the risk of encountering the BBEG gets only higher, and what is the point of throwing away your lives when acting under such a disadvantage. Put plainly, the game stops being fun at zero surges. And now I mean that it isn't fun to feel forced into yet another encounter when you see overwhelming reasons not to. I don't mean it isn't fun to play a vulnerable character - in fact, I would ideally want every encounter to pose a threat of healing ceasing to work, so the characters actually feel they're in real (not illusory) danger.And hopefully I don't need to remind you that I am the source of my own problem by saying "no thanks" to several initial fights where any danger is non-existent or illusory (thanks to everybody being at full surges).</blockquote>

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