Does limited resources affect a battle?

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I'm with you. But after several back-and-forth comments I suggested a poll to see what others thought. When they were for it but a bit laggard (that they'd create it tomorrow) I figured I'd just get the ball moving.

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.

 

[Bitbrain]

From my personal experience as a Player, it seems like after the first encounter, everyone was always running on fumes.

This (in my opinion) is because the two DMs at whose tables I've played DnD (before I started DMing myself) never explained at Session 0 that Short rests are primarily intended to refresh certain class and sub-class mechanics, not just regain some hit points. As a result, every player believed that taking a short rest meant they were being selfish, and not helping out the group.

I didn't like this perception, and so decided to correct it, at least at my own table.

I houseruled that short rests is only about a minute or two: you're basically just catching your breath before you go back into action.
The result of this is that everyone at my table has realized Short rests = them regaining some of their best mechanics.
Now, they feel confident as players to regularly ask if and when they can take a short rest so the fighter can get back "The Action Surge".

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Rather, it is that lack of resources very seldom causes character deaths.

Well, let's see. In all games I've ever DM'd there was only one TPK and one single character death.

The TPK was at the "final boss". My group did a battle beforehand but still had more than half their resources left before the battle. The players employed really bad strategies combined with one character going stupid suicidal because he was convinced the battle is unwinnable. With a good strategy they could have won the battle even with their resources. Of course if they were fully rested their odds would have been better, so it's definitely related to lack of resources.

The single character death was when the party was fully rested, but they fell for an obvious trap and ended up being surrounding by a whole cult. Two managed to escape, one died and another one got taken prisoner and was rescued later. In this case, it was completely independent of lack of resources.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I houseruled that short rests is only about a minute or two: you're basically just catching your breath before you go back into action.
The result of this is that everyone at my table has realized Short rests = them regaining some of their best mechanics.
Now, they feel confident as players to regularly ask if and when they can take a short rest so the fighter can get back "The Action Surge".

I feel that allowing short rests after every battle strongly imbalances some classes. Especially warlock.
If you have say 6 encounters on a day, then you'd end up with 5 short rests with your houserule. The cleric and wizard might use too much spells on the first few encounters and are stuck with 1-2 low level spell slots for the remaining ones, while the warlock can cast 2-3 powerful spells every battle.

 

[Bitbrain]

I feel that allowing short rests after every battle strongly imbalances some classes. Especially warlock.
If you have say 6 encounters on a day, then you'd end up with 5 short rests with your houserule. The cleric and wizard might use too much spells on the first few encounters and are stuck with 1-2 low level spell slots for the remaining ones, while the warlock can cast 2-3 powerful spells every battle.

Two of my players are a father and his son. Once I explained the idea behind the warlock to him, the father asked me not to include the warlock at my table, so that class isn't available in my games.

Also, the most number of combat encounters that I ever run at any one session is 1 encounter of Medium difficulty and 4 encounters of Hard Difficulty.
I rarely run more than 4 combats per session: 1 medium and 3 hard.

I read somewhere (I think it was Xanathar's, but as I am away from the book I could be mistaken) that the encounter expectation in 5e intended for something like 6 medium-difficulty encounters plus 2 hard-difficulty encounters.

As for possibly imbalancing classes, I've playtested the entirety of Storm King's Thunder using my system of running combat encounters, and it works perfectly. The only classes that seemed to fall behind IMO were the Sorcerer and Beastmaster Ranger, and I fixed that by 1) increasing SPs to Sorcerer Level + your proficiency bonus and 2) using the Revised Ranger UA instead of the PHB version.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

5e scifi game

PC are on their own mission to stop raiders and free hostages. They know where the raider camp is and head in.

They encounter a raiding party in the wild and combat erupts. That's not to tough and they get gear to spot other raiders. They hit one group only to realize its boss and super-tough. Touch and go, most slots expended but they win.

Now they see the others know boss taken out and are scrambling- each choosing to bug out or seize in their own way some but of power.

The PCs are not at max health, not a lot of slots left, etc but if they stop and rest the hostages may get killed, taken away, etc

What follows was rapid pace chaotic engagements and plans between a very low resource party and groups of minions as they moved to disable ship and get control of hostages.

Loads of fun.

 

[clearstream]

5e scifi game

PC are on their own mission to stop raiders and free hostages. They know where the raider camp is and head in.

They encounter a raiding party in the wild and combat erupts. That's not to tough and they get gear to spot other raiders. They hit one group only to realize its boss and super-tough. Touch and go, most slots expended but they win.

Now they see the others know boss taken out and are scrambling- each choosing to bug out or seize in their own way some but of power.

The PCs are not at max health, not a lot of slots left, etc but if they stop and rest the hostages may get killed, taken away, etc

What follows was rapid pace chaotic engagements and plans between a very low resource party and groups of minions as they moved to disable ship and get control of hostages.

Loads of fun.

Did any characters go down and make at least one death saving throw? If so, did any of those characters die?

 

[5ekyu]

Did any characters go down and make at least one death saving throw? If so, did any of those characters die?

In the early boss fight, one PC went down and into death saves but was quickly helped by allies. My PC/players treat down and saving as a high priority risk and tend to react accordingly.

In the later chaos, the PC who was disabling the takeoff got cut off for a bit and got dropped trying to get back but was still in death saves as again their was quick response to keep them alive. He had stretched out that fight by a lot of solid defensive play as others were coming in but got dropped to zero as they showed up.

No PC actually died in the events - that prioritizationof their on man down situations is part of the key.

 

[5ekyu]

Another case, a bit more of a dungeon crawl, they were moving thru a derelict ship that was taken over by generally non-hostile myconids with some other real bad guys on central decks. They were serking the main control room to pull data and such.

Once the left the fungi deck, it was more of an Aliens type situation with enemies around and coordinating.

At one point, a PC got cut off by wall of steel and went toe to toe with a boss. The others were engaged and made some poor choices about how to help get to them.

After a long fight on defense that pc was dropped and hauled away for use to plug the suspended leaders persona into... Literally one round before the others got there.

With their partner taken, the tired group chose to push on to get to him and then the control room.

They wound up as group making some good choices and that fonal fight was less dramatic than the previous cut off, since boss was lower on resources too.

They recovered the PC but there were serious complication after that.

In the hall fight - one group member went down but got covered (in addition to the one who got cut off, dropped and captured.)