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<blockquote data-quote="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 8850698" data-attributes="member: 93631">I don't really do &quot;story&quot; -- it's whatever the PCs do -- but I guess...both? First, it made combats last longer, because characters were spending action economy on healing or because direct damage dealers were exhausted. Second, it meant the players weren't willing to push as much as they otherwise would have. And they became really conservative, more than I would have thought, because they're making decisions amidst uncertainty. Like, I knew that if they knew what was in front of them, they would have pushed on even on the wrong side of a death spiral. But they didn't know, so they erred on the side of caution. And that was the right approach, because I do sandbox my campaigns, and they knew from hard experience that the world wasn't necessarily tailored to their level or the levels of exhaustion they were carrying.And then, if the &quot;story&quot; is whatever the PCs do, it made the story slower because the story often became about going back to town (or whatever) to rest the exhausted front-liners rather than pushing deeper into the dungeon, or exploring deeper into the wilderness, or going to confront that potentially hostile antagonist.The casters can control their resource expenditure, and the game wants them to do that, but the front-liners can't necessarily control getting reduced to 0 hp, even if the party is expending resources to keep them up. It just made the whole thing worse.Yeah, that's cool. If I had players who enjoyed healing in combat, I'd also look for ways to make healing in combat more important. I think that's good DMing.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Greg Benage, post: 8850698, member: 93631"] I don't really do "story" -- it's whatever the PCs do -- but I guess...both? First, it made combats last longer, because characters were spending action economy on healing or because direct damage dealers were exhausted. Second, it meant the players weren't willing to push as much as they otherwise would have. And they became [I]really [/I]conservative, more than I would have thought, because they're making decisions amidst uncertainty. Like, I knew that if they knew what was in front of them, they would have pushed on even on the wrong side of a death spiral. But they didn't know, so they erred on the side of caution. And that was the right approach, because I do sandbox my campaigns, and they knew from hard experience that the world wasn't necessarily tailored to their level or the levels of exhaustion they were carrying. And then, if the "story" is whatever the PCs do, it made the story slower because the story often became about going back to town (or whatever) to rest the exhausted front-liners rather than pushing deeper into the dungeon, or exploring deeper into the wilderness, or going to confront that potentially hostile antagonist. The casters can control their resource expenditure, and the game wants them to do that, but the front-liners can't necessarily control getting reduced to 0 hp, even if the party is expending resources to keep them up. It just made the whole thing worse. Yeah, that's cool. If I had players who enjoyed healing in combat, I'd also look for ways to make healing in combat more important. I think that's good DMing. [/QUOTE]

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