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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 3758708" data-attributes="member: 710">I once ran an adventure that was a dungeon crawl where the NPCs (soldiers of an Underdark Empire that has discovered an ancient teleportation system they tried to reactivate and used to launch assault on various enemies) acted on their own.Basically, the group entered the dungeon, fought several guards, and eventually retreated, when their spells and hit points were low. During this time, the remaining guards repositioned, put up some better ambushes, and they were certainly aware of intruders. The party repeated this tactic. The guards seeing their assembled an assault team that was supposed to kill he PCs. They failed (naturally). The remaining guards requested further assistance from the military command they got, but it took some time. So they abandoned the first floor of the dungeon and retreated back, fortifying their positon further.The group attacked again, fought, and retreated. The guards had gotten some assistance, but that was it. They tried and hope for the best, until the characters attacked again, mostly succesful. Eventually, the leader of the troop approached the party and declared that they were willing to stop the raids (which they couldn't do anyway since the party arrived) and was even willing to come to a peaceful solution.The scenario certainly worked, but the repeating clearing of the same levels was pretty tedious, and I am not sure I would do it again.What is also important: Will a DM ever be so harsh to put the parties in an ambush or attack at night that they don't have a reasonable chance of winning? I wouldn't do it, unless I knew the PCs would flee before it came to close to a TPK. Because, versimilitude aside, I want the PCs to be important and succesful. They will have to sweat getting to an succesful end, but I will never put them in a situation where they will fail, no matter what. Because I don't want to DM a group of losers, I want to run a group of world-shakers and heroes. So, the only thing that I can really do to change the "Resting at 9:05 PM" syndrom would be to have adventures that are simply so short that they can be ended before all resources are spent, or where they can't rest due to time constraints (and hoping that they will survive)What I don't want to do is throw in meaningless encounters that will cost no resources but are boring, or that will become repetitive fast, just for the sake of lengtehning the adventure day. (One Puzzle is okay. Two, Three? Not really.)There is also another side to daily resource management in contrast to encouner management.Daily resource management applies mostly to spellcasters and usually means "I can choose between casting a spell or not acting" (you can substitute "not acting" with firing a crossbow in most cases). Resource Management can be fun, but in this case, the fun is negated by all the times you don't get to have fun during a encounter. Which means that spellcasters need something fun to do, even if they are not spending their most precious resources. Okay, so the Wizard will not cast his Overpowered Fireball this encounter, but he can at least fire a few Magic Missiles or Scorching Rays...</blockquote>

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