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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Caliban" data-source="post: 7121867" data-attributes="member: 284">Well, the DM also controls "Encounter Complexity" and "Encounter Deadliness" that can significantly impact how many resources are used.A complex encounter involves a lot of moving parts (either multiple opponents with different abilities, significant terrain or environmental features, possibly a puzzle aspect that takes place simultaneously with the combat).  It may not be inherently more deadly, but it forces the PC's to consider more options and possibly gives them extra resources, or new ways to use their current resources.  (Perhaps a crevasse with lava at the bottom - pushing an opponent into it may be a lot more deadly than simply attacking them.  Perhaps there is a magical device that can temporarily empower an ally if you use an action and a successful Arcana check, perhaps one of the enemies has a magic item you can immediately use once you take them out, etc).   Or you can adjust the deadliness of an encounter upward to force the party to use more resources, or downward to require less resources as the situation demands.   The trick is to do it without letting the players know you are adjusting things for or against them on the fly, as that can make them feel like the DM either 'won't let them win' - which is frustrating, or 'won't let them lose' - which can rob them of a sense of accomplishment.   The idea isn't to softball a combat for them, but to keep it from dragging on and draining more resources than you think it should so they can have some fun stuff left for the big fight later. <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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