Does limited resources affect a battle?

[5ekyu]

IMHO, balancing classes around the concept of a long/short rest cycle has to be one of the worst design decisions in 5e.

I also dislike races/class features that gimmick rests (like elves and now warlocks with Aspect of the Moon).

Rests should add tension to the game or they should be a non-event. With the above they become neither. The decision of when to rest and under what conditions have always been a big part of the game. It created a dynamic tension between different classes (spell casters vs fighters) and story.

Now we get constant arguments about how many encounters there need to be in a day to balance a Warlock vs other classes. It is silly.

On the other hand, making spells usable as rituals to preserve resources was one of the better design decisions. It allows parties to meaningfully engage in exploration without feeling they are wasting spell slots that could be used in combat.

I do think that the SR vs LR classes is a higher complexity than it appears choice because it is impactful very differently from one campaign to another.

I think I would have preferred a mechanic which a.lowed HD to be spent for more short rest recovery of class features and most of the features being long rest without that.

Example - let fighters spend HD during st to recover their second wind or action surge (at some varying cost perhaps). Lwt warlocks use them to recover their slots at a flat low value. Let wizards spend more HD to recover their slot (maybe 1 HD per dpell level) etc.

Anyway you get the point.

The key being you still allow for variable SR recoveries for classes, you still enable some classes to get more out of short rests BUT every class has a limit to it (HD) and a cost to it as well and **all** classes have a SR option.

I think that sort of approach serves to help mitigate the campaign differences impact.

Right now you could have a day of six short rests or none as common and there is nothing raining in the short rests gains **mechanically**.

But the I strongly prefer for *limits* that scale on some charscter trait instead of ones that font.

 

[Cornpuff]

I'm playing in a level 11-13 game right now where the sheer number of resources we have available makes it hard to run out. Like, just doing some quick back of the napkin math here...

-Sorcerer with 15 spell slots and 10 Sorc Points (Plus 1 slot or 2 Sorc Points back on Short Rests due to a Warlock dip), but has cantrips that roll 3 damage dice.

-Bard with 16 spell slots and 5 Bardic Inspirations, with BI that regens on Short Rests--most likely member to be "tapped."

-Monk with 13 KI points that regen on Short Rests plus easy access to multiple attacks per turn.

-Paladin with 9ish spell slots, but has Improved Divine Smite for an extra d8 per hit.

-Ranger with 10 fixed spell slots for utility, but multi-attack and whirlwind attack if surrounded.

-Rogue with 6d6 Sneak Attack

Now, because our DM tends to operate on the 5 minute workday timetable, we can have fairly ah, expensive fights, but especially now that we've all made the leap to Tier 3, we can probably last a while if we (i.e. the Bard and me, the Sorcerer) play smart.

 

[Blue]

Concretely, we have a hypothesis that is something like "earlier encounters will - through depletion of resources - significantly affect the chance of death in later". Entailed is a confound that could require more complex analysis. Then there is a counter-hypothesis that is something like "resources aren't significantly correlated with lethality, because other factors have an overwhelming role in character death".

That is NOT the counter-hypothesis. Going back to the c+bi, that spectrum implies that c can't be the course of death - when of course it can be. That's never been a question. Sufficiently deadly encounters can always be a course of death. The question is can lack of resources push a non-lethal encounter into a lethal encounter.

Asking about an encounter that would be lethal anyhow is counter-productive and hides the data we want to collect. That's looking a c only.

Finally, we're looking for chance of death per encounter - we may not have a large enough sample to show it, we may have to extrapolate from "lack of resources put a character close to death, which wouldn't have been true with more resources".

 

[clearstream]

That is NOT the counter-hypothesis. Going back to the c+bi, that spectrum implies that c can't be the course of death - when of course it can be. That's never been a question. Sufficiently deadly encounters can always be a course of death. The question is can lack of resources push a non-lethal encounter into a lethal encounter.

Asking about an encounter that would be lethal anyhow is counter-productive and hides the data we want to collect. That's looking a c only.

Finally, we're looking for chance of death per encounter - we may not have a large enough sample to show it, we may have to extrapolate from "lack of resources put a character close to death, which wouldn't have been true with more resources".

The proposed extrapolation feels like a tautology. Can you better explain what dynamic(s) you are envisioning to exist and have significant impact, that result in confounds requiring complex numbers to explain probable mortality over encounters from level 1 to 20?

One perspective seems to be that what happens in an encounter is adequately explained within the encounter: strength of foes, clutch abilities, player choices. "Adequately" is noted here because accuracy and insights are sought over precision, which isn't available anyway. It means there could well be other things going on, but they aren't significant enough to matter for what we want to know.

Another perspective is that what happens in an encounter can only be adequately explained by looking across encounters: resource depletion, narrative arcs. My experience chimes better with the first perspective hence I raised it. The second perspective seems dissonant to me.

 

[Blue]

The proposed extrapolation feels like a tautology. Can you better explain what dynamic(s) you are envisioning to exist and have significant impact, that result in confounds requiring complex numbers to explain probable mortality over encounters from level 1 to 20?

One perspective seems to be that what happens in an encounter is adequately explained within the encounter: strength of foes, clutch abilities, player choices. "Adequately" is noted here because accuracy and insights are sought over precision, which isn't available anyway. It means there could well be other things going on, but they aren't significant enough to matter for what we want to know.

Another perspective is that what happens in an encounter can only be adequately explained by looking across encounters: resource depletion, narrative arcs. My experience chimes better with the first perspective hence I raised it. The second perspective seems dissonant to me.

At this point, I am unsure if you are trolling me, since I've explained it so many times already.

Neither of your statements above are correct. COMBINING them is correct.

A lethality of an encounter has to do with BOTH (a) the foes you fight, terrain, hazards, and all the rest that are inherent to the encounter, and (b) the resources you have for the encounter.

Let me try another example. Picture that a primary damage dealers for one group is a paladin and a full caster doing direct damage, going against a series of tough-but-survivable encounters.

Case A: They know they only have one to two encounters per day. The paladin can Divine Smite on every hit. The caster can use their highest level slots and not worry about it.

Case B: They don't know how many encounters they will have before they can long rest, say 4-6 on average but occasionally going out of it. At this point they are more the conservative in using resources. The caster might pull out more cantrips to preserve spell slots, and will definitely be using lower level slots, based on their judgement of the toughness of a particular encounter. The paladin either runs out of slots to smite or is more careful about using them (maybe only on crits and vs. glass cannons), which either reduces her damage for all encounters or keeps it high for a few and then much lower. The same encounters, because the party does less damage, leaves the foes with more actions and more chance to kill. Chance of a death goes up.

Case C: The group from Case A is happily going along, and suddenly the DM unexpectedly throws a single 10 encounter day at them. They have used up all of their resources early on, and encounters that would normally be trivial for them they don't have the resources to bring to play. Both the paladin and the caster are solely using their at-will options - weapon attacks and cantrips. But their damage is a fraction of what it was before (especially no AoE) and they are out of other options (fly, greater invis, Smite spell conditions) that they could use to enhance themselves.

Before we go on, if you don't understand this, reread it. I'll wait. It's showing reduced resources reducing party effectiveness. Even when the reduced resources are "saving some for later".

Really, this is the part you seem to keep asking questions about and it seems to me doubting really exists. If you don't agree with this don't bother with the rest of the post, it builds on it.

...

Now, if you run the same 10 encounters past the same group, you get:

Case A: Split across 6-7 long rests. Lowest chance of character death.

Case B: Split across 2-3 long rests. Not-as-low chance of character death (but still low, it's hard in 5e to kill characters)

Case C: No rests from the start. Highest chance of character death.

If you put them against an overwhelming encounter with a high chance of death:

Case A, B & C: All three can die - it's not just resources left.

On the other hand, if the last of those 10 encounters is quite hard, with a decent possibility of a character death, you get:

Case A: The party goes in at full efficiency and has a decent chance of character death.

Case B: The party goes in with reduced efficiency but still has been keeping some resources in reserve. They have a greater chance of character death than in A.

Case C: The party goes in with a greatly reduced efficiency since they blew through everything early. They have the greatest chance of character death.

 

[clearstream]

Now, if you run the same 10 encounters past the same group, you get:

various cases

I understand your argument. I have thought through the same cases. I don't agree with your conclusions. Let me see...

Say group A is reliant on their casters and a Beholder suppresses their magic in a choke point while its servants start killing them with ranged weapons (this happened a few months ago at my table). It doesn't matter how many spell slots group A has expended or conserved: the central eye ray prevents them using those slots to impact the result.

 

[5ekyu]

I understand your argument. I have thought through the same cases. I don't agree with your conclusions. Let me see...

Say group A is reliant on their casters and a Beholder suppresses their magic in a choke point while its servants start killing them with ranged weapons (this happened a few months ago at my table). It doesn't matter how many spell slots group A has expended or conserved: the central eye ray prevents them using those slots to impact the result.

Which only proves that there are cases where its overwhelming.

In play balance has always been (in my experience) the intersection of need and capability.

If resources are not used in an encounter (by beholder ray, holding back or depletion) the capability side is lowered and more risk is obtained.

 

[Shiroiken]

As a player, I'm very old school. You never know what's coming next, so you measure out your resources carefully. Going nova, even against the BBEG, is a terrible idea, because you never know if something else may happen.

In 2E, we played an adventure where we needed to kill an ancient dragon. We worked our way through the lair, holding onto as many resources as we could for the dragon. We got to his inner lair to find him asleep! We whispered a plan to unleash all our most powerful spells and abilities on him simultaneously. We moved into position, and the DM gave us a surprise round where we unleashed Hell. After the dust cleared the dragon looked up at us and said "turn around." It was a programmed illusion, and the dragon was right behind us! He then unleashed his breath weapon upon us with his own surprise round. Not only were we severely down on HP, but we'd already wasted our best spells.

In a different RPG, I started an adventure with a demon attacking the inn the party was staying at. The players unleashed all their resources, assuming they would sleep afterwards. Unfortunately for them the adventure was an all night affair that didn't end until dawn. About half the party died over the course of the adventures, since they couldn't recover their abilities.

Just last adventure, my 4th level divine soul sorcerer carefully spent his spell slots. I used my first level slots for Bless spells to help against those pesky lycanthropy saves. I used my second level slots for Spiritual Weapon and Dragon's Breath against what I thought was the BBEG. Afterwards, I had my sorcery points, but there was another area to be checked. The first monster we face is a carrion crawler, and the others were begging me to give them another Bless using my sorcery points, but I was worried about what was after, so I didn't. Fortunately for us, there wasn't anything else, but I wasn't going to commit unless it was desperate (which it almost was!).

 

[Blue]

I understand your argument. I have thought through the same cases. I don't agree with your conclusions. Let me see...

Say group A is reliant on their casters and a Beholder suppresses their magic in a choke point while its servants start killing them with ranged weapons (this happened a few months ago at my table). It doesn't matter how many spell slots group A has expended or conserved: the central eye ray prevents them using those slots to impact the result.

You claim to understand what I said. If that was the case, this would have gone under the example where there is an overwhelming force that would kill the party no matter what.

I've reiterated this several times for you, please go back and read what I said. Not what you think I said.

 

[clearstream]

You claim to understand what I said. If that was the case, this would have gone under the example where there is an overwhelming force that would kill the party no matter what.

I've reiterated this several times for you, please go back and read what I said. Not what you think I said.

I have rather the same feeling, so certainly I have empathy with your frustration. For the sake of argument, say it were a proven fact that the internal factors significantly impact lethality while the external (spanning) factors were present but insignificant. In that case, an informative model would be predictive of outcomes (at a statistical level) without needing to include the external factors, because - for the sake of argument - those are insignificant. In case of doubt, by insignificant I mean something like including them does not improve predictive power. They're doing something, but nothing that bears on the lethality. Thinking about the MDA model of play, maybe they're only experiential.

I understand that you resist this proposition, and you might well be right. My example was an attempt to prompt intuitions about how resources could turn out to be not significant. It was an extreme example because I hoped to drive those intuitions. You took it quite the wrong way... which I guess is more on me than you.

I believe the design intent of 5e chimes with your picture. At this point, I'm unconvinced that the design intent has been successfully carried out. For the last two years I have run a campaign that - so far as I understand from other DM's testimonials - is fairly bloody. Of 11 characters generated, 8 died; 4 permanently. It's a combat-heavy campaign and we're at session 66: we've seen a lot of fights. I have taken steps to press resources - our long rests are 24 hours, short require a 4-8 hour sleep or trance, and there are half-to-one hour breathers for spending HD. Recently, I have imposed a curse that makes recovery of short rest features a d20 roll - with the feature refreshed on a 10+.

So I have seen a lot of play with characters at low resources, and every time it is what the bad guys bring to the table that impacts the fight the most. There were the whack-a-mole priestesses. There was the beholder. There were some really nasty arbalesters. There was a wraith in a confined space. I've never heard a player say anything like "My god, if only I had resource X now, we'd be fine, but sorry guys... we're screwed." Whereas I have heard "OMG we definitely don't want to fight X... guys, it can do Y... we're screwed." Yes, they've had to get creative. Sometimes they have simply fled. As a DM, I am not at the point of disallowing flight... although, now that I think of it...

Even so, I don't take the case as proven. Please don't confuse misunderstanding with disagreeing. Some of the most interesting discussions happen when one groks that another can understand what you are saying and still disagree. It just means one has to accept - I freely accept - that one might not be right. Lewis Carroll wrote a really great, short, article apposite to that point, about the modus ponens.