Does limited resources affect a battle?

[Blue]

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.

 

[Sadras]

I feel as a DM you really have to work at it, especially the higher the level of the party, in order to exhaust their resources to affect play. Also the mechanic the table uses for rests is critically important - I cannot stress this enough.

I have fully depleted the party's resources once during an 8th-level game in the module MiBG where I planned 9 encounters throughout the city in one evening as the PCs followed the trail of blood to the BBEG. The last few combats were tense as the players started to feel the strain.
The other times the party was low level 3rd and 4th which is a lot easier to do.

So yes it can be done, but it is rare at my table and I usually save such efforts for the closing of a major story arc within the campaign.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

From my experience, players are unlikely to go nova in situations where they can't reliably rest afterwards. The effect of limited resources is that they don't nova in the first place, because they don't want to run out of resources later. At least in the games I've played and run, it's pretty obvious when it's safe to go all-out. The boss fights usually come after the fodder, rather than the other way around.

The last time I recall when resources were limited enough to change an encounter was back in a low-level 3E campaign, when the fighter got beaten up early in the day, and the bard ran out of healing juice to keep him on the front line. They had to let the rogue take point, while the fighter was reduced to second-string archer for the rest of the day.

 

[iserith]

I don't really understand the assertion you're saying the other person (people?) is making. Of course lower resources has an impact on the difficulty of a challenge.

In a recent game of mine, the characters were on their seventh combat challenge between long rests and bee-lining it back to town. This is a capable party of experienced players, most of whom are also DMs, some of the characters have higher stats than standard array (rolled them), and all of them have magic items (often weapons and armor). A random encounter came up - a number of veterans and berserkers who proceeded to wreck the party. After a very narrow PC victory, all the players agreed that if they'd had a couple of fireballs (light cleric and a war wizard) left, they could have mowed that encounter down. But they did not and it was only the sup'ed up barbarian that saved their skins.

In my last Planescape game, the PCs were on their fourth combat challenge between long rests when a dozen quicklings came calling. Due to the way the dungeon was laid out, they were able to get in, attack, and get out of sight while the PCs stood there holding their reactions for shield spells (so no OAs). Once they figured out that they should use Con save spells to get the little buggers (thunderwave, shatter), they were down to so few slots that they had to really think about whether they should use shield or cast those spells. Half the party was dying before the final quickling went down. After that, they were completely drained of resources and fled the dungeon to long rest.

These are just two examples of many, many times this has played out. I imagine if someone isn't seeing this in his or her games, there's a high likelihood that the DM is creating and running event-based adventures with set pieces and doesn't often employ time pressures. That would reasonably skew someone's view as to how often a party is depleted of resources.

 

[Satyrn]

My table runs low constantly. As players, we seem to abhor rests.

And this is without time pressures.

 

[Draegn]

My players have indeed run out of resources on occasion. At other times they have more than enough. Each situation is different. Take a siege, storming the castle can easily drain resources, but attacking to damage a section and withdrawing to resupply may not. Of course withdraw allows the defenders time to do other things, however, that is another story.

 

[Blue]

I don't really understand the assertion you're saying the other person (people?) is making. Of course lower resources has an impact on the difficulty of a challenge.

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.

 

[Jaelommiss]

I often play wizards. Sometimes I play clerics if I want to change things up. Right now I'm playing a multiclassed cleric/wizard. Managing resources is a core part of play for me.

With my current DM fights will often vary radically in difficulty. Sometimes the entire fight is just mopping up with minimal HP loss and non-HP resource expenditure. Other times it will push us to the edge and demand everything we can toss at it. Random encounters form enough of our combat (>60%) that we often do not know what sort of challenges we will fight in a single adventuring day. Sometimes we finish the day after two encounters and rest without having expended much at all. Other days we get stretched over a dozen fights and have to adjust our strategy so that we can handle four encounters with no spell slots and less than half HP.

My current approach is to conserve resources if using an at-will ability will only cost the party a few HP. This is especially true near the start of the day when everyone still has hit dice to spend. On occasion I will nova hard if I am in a position to abruptly stop an encounter (I like to show off sometimes) but this doesn't happen more than once or twice in a campaign, and it's usually the first couple of sessions when it does.

Most of the time I do not start to expend serious resources until the third encounter. I might change this for extreme situations (our party of four level 3 PCs fighting a green hag and a flesh golem at once is a recent example), but even then I like to hold onto at least a small reserve when I can.

Towards the end of the day I will look at how the party is doing overall on HP. I don't heal, but knowing who can take a hit and who can't is necessary to plan for fights. When the fighter is running on empty and the rogue hasn't been scratched that day, we'll prod the rogue to the front. If we withdraw and our adventuring day stops due to low HP and hit dice, any hit dice remaining on a back line character are wasted resources.

Often I will try to hold onto a moderate resources (3rd level spell for a 9th level caster, for example) after I anticipate the end of the adventuring day. An unexpected end-day encounter or night ambush is not impossible. Being attacked while asleep and drained from a day of adventuring is incredibly dangerous due to autocrits, and having something to rapidly reshape those encounters is often enough to prevent a PC death. A spell like Hypnotic Pattern can lock down a fight pretty fast, but it is far more valuable when used to swing a fight in the party's favour than to simplify a fight the party is already winning.

 

[Horwath]

If short rest would really be short then it would not come to that many 5min work days.

Because, if you can get away with 1hr break in safety, there is a pretty big chance that you can stretch it to 8hrs.

Short rest should be like in 4E, 5 min. or make it 15 max. Like half-time rest in a game.

You can even limit then short rests to 2 or 3 per long rest.

 

[Seramus]

I tend to run out of resources. I personally feel that auto-attacking is one of the most boring ways to play, and will usually throw out at least one slotted spell per encounter. And in the early levels, that can leave me empty very quickly.