I've seen a lot of references to the game being designed around HP being only, say, a resource in fights, not between fights; i.e., that the players should spend some time and resources (like healing potions, healing spells etc.) between encounters where they take damage that reduces them below 80%-ish HP. Essentially, that characters should pretty much always take between 10 and 30 minutes to heal up if they were damaged (and at-least 10 for Focus Spells). It certainly does seem intended that players take a few hours before adventuring to heal up if they haven't fully healed after a rest, due to the fact you don't heal back to full HP on one.
From what I have read and reading between some lines on encounters, that makes sense, and people have given some good arguments that fights that happen closely together should have their XP added together, as they are essentially one 'combat', e.g. fighting guards in a castle might begin with a trivial encounter of a few guards, but it could become a severe one as other guards are brought in. And I already knew that the game is pretty different from 5e, and if this is all intended then that sounds like a huge reason why 5e players struggle with the game.
However.
I have not found an actual page, paragraph or reference to the text of the core rulebooks that explain this.
Where is it written in the CRB or Gamemastry Guide that it is generally expected that the players be full or close to full HP between encounters?
I am not precluding, in my question, the idea that I have missed something; I have definitely confused some rules that were actually simple due to formatting (counteracting is a LOT easier to understand if you simply break up the paragraph its in and remember level is added to profiency) or that my experience with 5e is blinding me to where the game states things. But I would like to read it in the book itself or in the words of the writer, to better understand whether this is simply common knowledge or what the community has decided is the best.
(I also want to double check that this applies to HP only, and that it's okay for players to say go into a severe encounter missing spell slots from fighting low and moderate encounters previously).
I would also like to know what are the risks of say, the party finishing a moderate encounter, and then going on to fight a trivial encounter without taking a ten minute rest, and then fighting another trivial encounter without resting after that, without all the players being on full HP. Does that definitely make that combination an Extreme Encounter - whereas if the players rested between each it'd make them more like a session of Moderate to a Trivial to a Trivial encounter?
Although I assume this to be the case, should I take special care that if players don't get Trained in Medicine and take Healers' Tools, etc., to include a good amount of Healing Potions - or should I set up encounters so that they're more spread out and of a lower difficulty?
Finally, I guess I should remark that I haven't yet had experience with the system, but that I would love to run it (particularly RAI) and that this does sound like a great way to space out combat and downtime naturally - but I do ask how this affects dungeons. What is the best way to ensure that narratively, it makes sense that the PCs have the ten minutes to brace themselves between fights? Should I have them go back a bit into safer zones, and only use random encounters if they attempt a risker time frame? Or for the stories I want to tell, should I treat that breather more like a 5 minute break, where it's more realistic that more intelligent creatures won't necessarily have combined together into a powerful encounter or have set up a particially nasty ambush?
From what I have read and reading between some lines on encounters, that makes sense, and people have given some good arguments that fights that happen closely together should have their XP added together, as they are essentially one 'combat', e.g. fighting guards in a castle might begin with a trivial encounter of a few guards, but it could become a severe one as other guards are brought in. And I already knew that the game is pretty different from 5e, and if this is all intended then that sounds like a huge reason why 5e players struggle with the game.
However.
I have not found an actual page, paragraph or reference to the text of the core rulebooks that explain this.
Where is it written in the CRB or Gamemastry Guide that it is generally expected that the players be full or close to full HP between encounters?
I am not precluding, in my question, the idea that I have missed something; I have definitely confused some rules that were actually simple due to formatting (counteracting is a LOT easier to understand if you simply break up the paragraph its in and remember level is added to profiency) or that my experience with 5e is blinding me to where the game states things. But I would like to read it in the book itself or in the words of the writer, to better understand whether this is simply common knowledge or what the community has decided is the best.
(I also want to double check that this applies to HP only, and that it's okay for players to say go into a severe encounter missing spell slots from fighting low and moderate encounters previously).
I would also like to know what are the risks of say, the party finishing a moderate encounter, and then going on to fight a trivial encounter without taking a ten minute rest, and then fighting another trivial encounter without resting after that, without all the players being on full HP. Does that definitely make that combination an Extreme Encounter - whereas if the players rested between each it'd make them more like a session of Moderate to a Trivial to a Trivial encounter?
Although I assume this to be the case, should I take special care that if players don't get Trained in Medicine and take Healers' Tools, etc., to include a good amount of Healing Potions - or should I set up encounters so that they're more spread out and of a lower difficulty?
Finally, I guess I should remark that I haven't yet had experience with the system, but that I would love to run it (particularly RAI) and that this does sound like a great way to space out combat and downtime naturally - but I do ask how this affects dungeons. What is the best way to ensure that narratively, it makes sense that the PCs have the ten minutes to brace themselves between fights? Should I have them go back a bit into safer zones, and only use random encounters if they attempt a risker time frame? Or for the stories I want to tell, should I treat that breather more like a 5 minute break, where it's more realistic that more intelligent creatures won't necessarily have combined together into a powerful encounter or have set up a particially nasty ambush?
