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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6374575">Which was precisely my point.  I don't understand why it was difficult to grasp, but I do tend to ramble."Light", "weak", "quick", "short", "fast", "easy" or whatever you want to call encounters that aren't "full blown" are fine when they are used to serve a purpose such as to further the story (you're attacked by a few low-rate assassins hired by the local warlord you pissed off when you saved the princess), or when they're used for pacing (your travels are slow and dangerous because you are deep in the goblin woods).  Those are fine purposes for "easy" encounters.  While a side-result of them is potentially burning resources that is not the goal.  The goal is to achieve something, to move the game forward, to present a certain feeling.My perhaps poorly worded objection was to burning player resources for NO REASON.  While resource management is important, it's different in every game and the players will learn in time how their resources should be managed to best serve their adventuring experience.  Burning resources for NO REASON is simply the DM's way of saying he doesn't like how powerful the players are, doesn't want them to have what they've earned, and is unable to present otherwise meaningful content.In an MMO we often call this stuff "trash".  Trash doesn't need to be meaningful (though it is always better when it is), it can serve many purposes, provide a variety of rewards and yes, without it you often get a very strange world that is somehow only full of big-bads.  The thing is, trash ought to be meaningful, it out to be useful, and should serve to present a specific world-imagery, a specific feeling to the game, or bring about specific plot advancement.What I dislike in any game are things that serve no purpose.  Burning resources for the sake of burning resources is IMO poor DMing.  Things with purpose WILL burn resources, but they will also achieve other more interesting things.  It is that achievement of interesting/important things that matters, not the specific amount of available resources.If you're going to just burn resources with no rhyme or reason, you might as well just strip any plot you pretended to have out of the game and do it Gygaxian-dungeon style where the only motivation is loot and the combats just facilitate or gate more loot.  And hey if that's your kick, have fun with it.  But don't try to tell me that's a living world or an epic story-telling adventure.</blockquote>

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