How often does your group stop to rest?

[kaomera]

So, an encounter with an EL equal to the average level of a 4-character party is supposed to require the expenditure of approximately 25% of the party's available resources to overcome. As a result an average party is supposed to be able to handle roughly four encounters before needing to rest to recover spells, hit points, etc. What I'm wondering is: how often do the party(s) you play in and/or DM for actually stop to take a break?

Now, the group I've been DMing for is larger than recommended, I've had up to 10 players at times. (I'm taking a break from DMing over the Summer, and when we get back together I'm expecting to have 4 or 5 players, possibly 6.) As a result they can take on more and/or tougher (well, usually just larger) challenges. However, I've noticed that they have a tendency to push on for “just one more encounter”, even when it seems like it should be abundantly clear that they really should stop. A lot of this seems to be the result of a lack of communication: specifically on several occasions I've had players state that they felt that it wasn't worth bothering the other players with the information that their character was out of spells or low on hit points. Also I think I had a few players who where so convinced that their character sheets needed to be kept secret from the other players that they extended this to things like hit points or spells remaining... The result has been a lot of adventures where the party burns through every backup item or emergencies-only resource, often to the extent that they where spending every spare gp (and xp in the case of casters with item creation feats) on healing items and still not keeping up with the demand.

However I think a lot of this just boils down to the fact that my group simply don't want to pause the action. They are already often dragging several encounters into one-another, and they seem to revel in such chaos. They show a definite preference to rest at the end and/or beginning of sessions, and obviously if there's a significant break between encounters they will hunker down. But if there's another fight to be had within easy reach their usual MO is to kick down the door first and check their hit point totals later...

 

[Moon-Lancer]

at night.

so far the dm has not pushed us to a point where we were forced to rest before dark, although their was one time everyone was really hearting for hp when night came and we got ambushed. It was almost a tpk

 

[shilsen]

Never. I don't run dungeon crawls and when the PCs in my game have a combat encounter, it's usually the only one in the game day. Much more rarely, they have two, and perhaps once every dozen sessions there are three or more.

 

[Kurashu]

Depending on how eventful the day's activities were, we might rest once a session or many times. We've had periods of gaming where the entire day's activities were PC 1 is making a weapon, PC 2 is shopping, PC 3 is studying, and PC 4 is sucking it up at pickpocketing. And then we rest. The next could bring something eventful, or we move on because we stopped so PC 1 could finish his weapon and he's done now.

 

[kolikeos]

So, an encounter with an EL equal to the average level of a 4-character party is supposed to require the expenditure of approximately 25% of the party's available resources to overcome. As a result an average party is supposed to be able to handle roughly four encounters before needing to rest to recover spells, hit points, etc. What I'm wondering is: how often do the party(s) you play in and/or DM for actually stop to take a break?

The players in my game are the opposite of yours. They'll rest after every single encounter if given the chance, even if they they used only a small part of their resources and even if it has been only a few minutes in game after their last rest.

 

[Jack99]

Adventures - How often does your group stop to rest?

At night. They know the risks of wandering monsters if they play chicken and rest before its dark

 

[Jack99]

The players in my game are the opposite of yours. They'll rest after every single encounter if given the chance, even if they they used only a small part of their resources and even if it has been only a few minutes in game after their last rest.

Are they playing a videogame or DnD?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

We usually rest at night, after we're up and about for like 16 hours.

We introduced a house rule that makes extra rests useless, as everyone gets back his powers once per day. That means wizards regain their spells once per day, no more, even if they empty themselves within 5 minutes of waking up (and preparing their magic) and then just go back to sleep.

It's not that often that we have so many encounters that we're in danger of running empty, and we've learned to preserve our resources.

I also saw players that would exhaust their powers within a short time and then demand to rest.

In our current group, we had one or two incidents where the spellcasters just let fly with all they had (using all spells of 8th and 9th level) and then saying that they needed to rest. Since the circumstances allowed it, the DM let it slide, but we couldn't - and wouldn't do this all the time (sometimes, you'll just have to hit the afterburner).


Another player (who was also a very serious powergamer) had a psion one time, and during a dungeon crawl, he'd just let fly with fully augmented energy powers from round one, and after 30 minutes in-game time, and three (not that engaging) fights, he was empty, started demanding that we rest and sulked when we wouldn't, going on about how useless he felt.
It was after that when the DM at the time introduced the once-per-day rule across the board, and since I liked that, I brought it over to my gaming group (the current one).

 

[Aeric]

When we played RttToEE a few years ago, we had a motto:

"We do more before 10am than most adventurers do all day...and then we go back to bed."

There were 6-7 people in that group and we still managed to blow all of our spells and daily abilities by the end of the second or third encounter. And since it was RttToEE, that meant clearing roughly 4-5 rooms per day in game time. It was a miracle (read: poor DMing) that our characters weren't caught and killed early on, camping for days in the enemy's stronghold.

My hatred of dungeon crawls came from that campaign.

 

[Jhaelen]

Never.

Whoa?! Are they all undead or something?

My group typically rests twice a day when traveling and once while stationary. Most of my adventures happen outdoors. I typically roll 1d6 / 4 hours for encounters. An encounter happens on 1-2, so there's an average of 3 encounters per day (with an EL of -2 to +5 compared to the party's effective level). Not all of these encounters are combat encounters and those that are, are often easy to avoid if the party isn't overly careless.

And the important part: I roll & decide on the encounters before a session.

Generally my players don't like to rest. They're more likely to press on even if they already expended a significant amount of resources.