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Message: <blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 9161095" data-attributes="member: 72555">Oh, you don't want to play D&D.  That is ok.D&D is an attrition game.  Spell slots, HP, etc.  In a fight, the only attrition is (living allies) and (HP of characters).  Outside of combat, HP and Spell slots (and reuse abilities).This allows for danger to accumulate over more than 1 encounter.  Without such a mechanism, you'd either need players to regularly lose encounters (as they run out of resources), or combat to create the illusion of the possibility of losing, or combat becomes an automatic win.With attrition mechanics, how well you do in a fight matters.  If you barely win, you'll lose a bunch of resources, and it will feel like a hard victory.  Players will feel that they almost lost.  And if they blow through the encounter the opposite is true -- they'll feel their characters are fully recovered and undamaged.There are games that don't have any attrition whatsoever.  And you can emulate it in D&D with long rests between each and every fight.But what I'm talking about is characters having a pool of resources for each chapter and scene - they have HP, HD, Spell slots, short and long rest abilities.  Each fight and danger chips away at these.  Players, when they exhaust their resources, either risk their PCs death or back off and risk "losing" the scene or chapter."Losing" a scene or chapter just means that a less than optimal (from the perspective of the Character's goals) result occurs.  This isn't by DM fiat, just due to the Player's and PCs choice.  So if they are trying to save a village, and they retreat part way through the Scene, they don't manage to save absolutely everyone.  Some NPCs die or are captured or whatever.Each scene/chapter (and encounter!) has more than one possible outcome this way, and everything isn't presumed total victory by PCs.  And players have a way to make choices about their PCs actions that is informed by the resources they have lost up to this point.OTOH, if all resources are refreshed after each encounter, there is no meaningful information to be gained from how well they did in the previous encounters.  A win by the skin of one's teeth is equivalent to an encounter that was trivial.  The past is erased.  And the only way an encounter can feel at all dangerous is if it risks defeat as a solo encounter divorced from everything else.  Which either requires illusion (lies), or actual risk of failure, which means PCs don't last very long.  An encounter with a 5% risk of failure means your adventures last about 20 encounters before a TPK.Secondary, when the dramatic structure is the Scene, three fights in the same day are just an extended encounter.  This means that when balancing encounters you need to take this into account.But, if you want this mechanically in 5e, you just make healing potions free, or add in a potion that incapacitates and heals 1d4 HP/round until full HP.  Now out of combat healing is trivial, as requested, and other resources remain depleted.HP isn't (only) a single-fight resource.  Losing 30 HP in a fight when you have 100 HP matters when getting it back isn't free.Wizards lose spells, Fighters lose HP.Clerics can trade spells for other PCs HP.  In 5e initially this wasn't very efficient.</blockquote>

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