What is 20% of your resources, anyway?

[Noumenon]

At first it seems like the DMG is saying each encounter should take 20% of your hit points, 20% of your spells, et cetera. My party is level 9 so that would work out to to about 16 hp apiece, plus about 85 points of fire damage from the sorcerer and 85 points of cure spells from the cleric.

So what, a party with no spellcasters has one-quarter the "resources" of a normal party? Should hit points really count as resources when they don't heal by themselves? What about nonrenewable resources? A party can't use 20% of its total wealth each combat, but are they expected to use any wands or potions at all?

 

[justanobody]

Encounter resources, as I understand it.

So if you have 5 healing surges then the encouter should require one to be used to take you back to your full HP.

For the entire party, you would take 1/5th of the total number of surges to be expected to be used during an encouter.

That is one of the 20%.

Also you would assume it to take the same amount of powers away form the party. Oddsa re this is not that hard depending on your group and they may blast through powers rather quickly. So for 5 party members you would expect one daily per encounter to be used if each Pc has one.

I don't think wealth really comes into play, but it is mainly focusing on what you have per encounter. Of course encounter powers are made to be used up during the encounter, and at-wills are well...at-will so also don't count.

 

[Starbuck_II]

Encounter resources, as I understand it.

So if you have 5 healing surges then the encouter should require one to be used to take you back to your full HP.

For the entire party, you would take 1/5th of the total number of surges to be expected to be used during an encouter.

That is one of the 20%.

Also you would assume it to take the same amount of powers away form the party. Oddsa re this is not that hard depending on your group and they may blast through powers rather quickly. So for 5 party members you would expect one daily per encounter to be used if each Pc has one.

I don't think wealth really comes into play, but it is mainly focusing on what you have per encounter. Of course encounter powers are made to be used up during the encounter, and at-wills are well...at-will so also don't count.

3.5 was the one who mentioned 20%/encounter.

You seem to be mixing it with 4.0.

 

[Arnwyn]

Are we talking about 3.x?

If so, then the answer to the OP is "yes". It's 20% of all resources that can be "used up" - hp, potions, wands, spell slots, etc. But note that this 20% number is a simple statistical average, and you cannot possibly break it down on a per-encounter basis. Or even within a few encounters... It will wildly vary with party make-up, player competence, encounter situations, and more.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Are we talking about 3.x?

If so, then the answer to the OP is "yes". It's 20% of all resources that can be "used up" - hp, potions, wands, spell slots, etc. But note that this 20% number is a simple statistical average, and you cannot possibly break it down on a per-encounter basis. Or even within a few encounters... It will wildly vary with party make-up, player competence, encounter situations, and more.

I'll go farther and say that resource usage estimations are BS in any edition. Lucky die rolls, and the way things actually play out makes such assumptions meaningless enough to not worry about them.

You can work backwards and see what resources were used in hindsight but such an exercise does little to aid in planning future encounters.

 

[Remathilis]

I'll go farther and say that resource usage estimations are BS in any edition. Lucky die rolls, and the way things actually play out makes such assumptions meaningless enough to not worry about them.

You can work backwards and see what resources were used in hindsight but such an exercise does little to aid in planning future encounters.

Which 3.5 even acknowledges; its just the baseline assumption that makes the CR system possible (much like how rarely does ability scores total up to 25 point buy, but something had to be the "default"). It kinda assumes an non-possible 10.5 dice average with optimal spell use and magic item use.

That said, 20% represents different things to different classes. A 1st level barbarian who rages uses up a huge chunk of his power, while a fighter with power attack is good until he's seriously injured. Hp is a universal resource, but hp restoration is purely the role of cleric/healer-type classes. A wizard goes through BOOM spells much faster than a sorcerer can. In fact, assuming you build them properly, a favored soul, and sorcerer can faces much harder challenges before reaching that mythic 20% than a cleric and wizard can just because they have more healing/boom ju-ju to throw.

Thirdly, that 20% isn't distributed evenly. The entire party isn't at 80% hp, more likely the fighter was pounded into the dirt (and the cleric is patching him up one CLW wand charge at a time) and the wizard is smelling like a daisy having never gotten close to melee. (for one example). Perhaps the cleric is out of all spells, but the sorcerer is rocking nearly all open spell slots. You get the idea.

So that 20% is a gross approximation, it doesn't really represent any quantifiable number AFAICT.