I see quite a few posts on a variety of forums stating that a 'typical' session can be 3 or more encounters per day. Seriously? My players typically get into a brawl and then afterwards will take at LEAST a short if not a long rest. I might have them encounter something during that time but much of it is situational. Crawling through enemy territory is very hazardous and you might not GET to rest. However, if they're just traveling through a place then I don't think that rates more than one encounter a day.
My players would simply back out of a mission if they started to get in over their heads and really needed a rest. Do other players simply NOT do this or are the DMs simply throwing stuff at them to create a challenge?
So far I've had no complaints about my combats being challenging but I'd rather have one big one than set up 3 or more little ones.
What's the consensus out there as to a good balance?
There is no consensus beyond doing what fits your group's preference.
But yeah, some of us have tons of encounters in a day because our players are simply playing like people that have goals they want to accomplish - you do what you can in a day, rather than being extra cautious at the expense of time. So they have 1 encounter, rest if they really need it, move on to another, repeat, and rest when it's that time of day or they've gotten down to just their last few daily resources (to cover the possibility of an encounter occurring during their long rest), and repeat the next day until their goal is completed (and then they take some downtime if possible before a new goal arises).
Just like the CR mechanic and others... it is just a guideline. Nice starting point for beginning DM's. Soon you'll know how the game works and what your group wants. Then you throw all those guidelines out the window. Also YOU, as the DM, decide when there is an opportunity for a rest.
The players can say they would like to rest, but if you say no then that is that. My group wanted to rest every 2 encounters as well. Can be understandable if the group is only 3 with encounters scaled to 5-6. However if they were to rest every time then its time to come up with a plausible reason why they can't. Constantly resting really breaks up the pace of the game and narrative as well which I don't like.
Pace is really important. There are no rules for it since you have to learn that for yourself. Throw in social encounters, puzzle traps and not just combat encounters. Don't only create challenging encounters that drain the players resources. If you only have 1 or 2 combat encounters with long breaks in between... sure. Otherwise have some easier fights as well and find a good rhythm/flow. When do you want the tension to rise and when do you want your players to feel good and get overconfident...so that you can tear them down with suspense and danger afterwards. When you get this down it might come to a point where you don't have any combat encounter for a few sessions. Instead just have cool dungeons with puzzle traps and instead of killing everything experience social encounters to manipulate the groups/tribes and kill each other. Or something out of the box thinking your players come up with.
In my group they only rest if at least 2 spellcasters have run out of their spell slots. Otherwise they keep pushing and find ways to cope with situations in creative ways. They always have some spell scrolls saved up for example. As well as not just running into any situation and taking time to scout it out and find a way to deal with it. If they constantly want to rest... well that is also more time the bad guys have to achieve their goals, That should teach them to hurry up a bit next time. The world doesn't revolve around the party. Everyone is living and has their own motives and resources. One of the reasons we love DnD is because it isn't like a videogame where everything is geared towards the players.
If your players keep backing out...then they're not really cut out for an adventurous life style :P
Fair points. Since my party is just getting started (they'll all hit lvl 5 next session) they haven't gotten access to all of the cool stuff yet. I've been a bit stingy with the magical treasure so far, erring on the side of caution, but they just completed a shopping trip in the city so now several of them are sporting shiny new things like Bracers of Defense or Cloaks of Protection. In an upcoming adventure I plan on giving them some great useful party items like an Immovable Rod and a few character-specific items. However, they're not into the big money yet so they haven't been buying or finding many scrolls or potions other than Healing.
I think the comment that “they are doing it because you allow them to do it” is correct. Currently there’s no reason not to top off after a scuffle and it makes sense to. I wish I could not do anything until I’m at 100%, but in life things always get in the way or needs pile up.
So they are in the habit of taking a break after combat, if this is a problem, then find a way to ease them out of the habit. You can inturrupt their short rest, and get them moving. This can be done by having an NPC that’s super eager to move on or unsafe conditions where the combat took place. They could be given a time limit to complete a quest, one that has harsh penalties (either to an NPC they like or the party).
It doesn’t have to be a problem though. Why gauge what you should be doing on someone else’s template? Besides, not all encounters have to be combat. It doesn’t make much sense to take a break after a social encounter.
I agree with the other comments about if you let them rest, they will. You are the DM, and you can create situations where resting isn't an option. If a dungeon is inhabited by monsters, they can't rest unless they can properly barricade a room - which may require a check or series of checks, plus they'll want people on watch. If the baddies figure out where they are, they may try to break down the barricade-- How well did they make it? Do they feel confident sleeping while the hobgoblins take a battering ram to the door? I once had about 4 sessions that went through just a bit of night. They fought a bunch of ghosts and nearly died, went back to the place they were supposed to be and got too curious about an old attic. When they went in, they activated something bad and were attacked by flying sharks made of glass (don't ask) and chased around the house, they couldn't rest. Then they figured out how to escape underneath and had to sneak and fight their way to a cult with monsters at their back, and their front... Needless to say, all of the class features for the whole party were completely expended. There were no spell slots, sorcery points, lay on hands, ki points, anything. And suddenly, everything was harder. Just with 2 big encounters and the threat of another. So then when they had to fight one of their main nemeses, all of a sudden a conversation sounded much more appealing, and they made some deals.
By the same token, this doesn't need to be, and shouldn't be, the case all the time. However, it is good to entice your players with a reason not to take a rest, even if the reason isn't a monster chasing them. Right now my players are in a series of city/social sessions, and there's no reason to encourage them forward, so they're blowing their resources on frivolous things-- Also a good way to train them for outside of safe places
Remember: Your players by RAW should only have one long rest per day, and a day might be one session-- Or it could be 4! Really depends on what kind of craziness is happening with the plot. My party has had almost 30 sessions that have gone over 15-17 days. Short rests take an hour, so if they're short resting, the time passes and the situations around them may change, that's also good to keep in mind. Also with short rests... Remember that after a long rest they only recover half of their hit dice (so 2 if they're level 4, etc.) so if they're short resting so much and blowing their hit dice, they might not have them all back the next day.
My point is that, as a player, I hate being dragged through a scenario or railroaded through an adventure. Okay, so we're supposed to find a ruin and search it for the magical whatever. We might have things happen along the way or we might not. Once we arrive, if the very first encounter beats our ass, we're going to back outside to camp (since most 'inside' monsters don't come 'outside'). If the DM continuously tosses stuff at us to prevent us from resting, we're likely to call shenanigans on him or begin abusing spells like Rope trick and Tiny Hut.
I don't agree that you can ALWAYS find a reasonable excuse to keep your party from resting. This is particularly true for Clerics who ONLY recover spells on the long rest. If my DM were constantly urging us forward to rush through things and keep going into fights with little to no prep then I'd call him on it. That's HIM trying to make US play at HIS pace and I don't like that very much.
If the party thinks that the middle of the wild is a safe place, I imagine the DM hasn't done a good job creating a world that seems threatening. If my players traveled through the wilds to a dungeon, got beat up, then decided to go into the wild to camp and didn't expect that something might attack them-- Then I've done a bad job as a DM. It's not railroading to have your party in an unsafe location experience why that location is unsafe.
Also-- There's lots of 'inside' monsters that can come 'outside'. If you go into a Hobgoblin stronghold, have a tough first encounter, and then leave and rest up-- They'll know you've been there, and they'll prepare for your return, if they don't just come out and ambush you while you're trying to rest. It's not railroading for the world to be dangerous, and it worries me a little that you equate it as such.
There are safe places to rest-- But the party has to actually take care to get to that safe place. The party's decisions are what create safe or unsafe resting environments. If you decide to rest inside of a dungeon, you're not safe from something finding you. If you go fight some guys, make yourself a known threat, and then camp outside the door, you're not safe from something coming out to get you. However... If you're in a dungeon and you hole up a room, spend time covering your tracks, blocking the door, and being quiet/stealthy, you might have a safe place for a short time. If you fight something in goblin stronghold, realize you're in over your head, and retreat to the woods to find a hiding place where you can regroup, you might be able to set up a safe place. Heck, if you have a Circle of Dreams Druid you can set up a safe place more confidently. ...But if the party is silly enough to think that 'if we're trying to rest and the DM throws an encounter at us we're being railroaded' then either the DM has failed to create consequences prior to that moment that makes the party realize they can't just claim 'time-out', the DM *is* actually railroading and not allowing the players' good choices and well-made plans to stand, *or* the players are complaining because they haven't planned their resources accordingly, and they know the game is going to get harder.
A little bit of your post feels like you think your DM is against you guys, but a normal DM is just trying to tell a story with you and create interesting conflict along the way. Now, your DM may have been very adversarial, in which case I totally see where you're coming from. But-- I promise you that most of us are not. I want my party to have fun, to feel like they've overcome (or failed) challenges on their own merits, and like their decisions matter. If I haven't done those three things, I feel like I've failed as a DM.
Take my example above. The party had a difficult combat with some ghosts that they had chosen to go and do as part of one party member's individual interests, then went back to the place they had been staying before. The party mistakenly thought that the attic, which they had been interested in earlier, was going to relatively safe. They chose to go there-- Their choice-- and ended up moving the plot a giant step forward, to where the entire manor they were in became overrun with these dangerous creatures. It made no place safe, so the party had to rush through the manor, doing a bunch of skill challenges to avoid further combat until they could get underneath the manor where they could creature an effective blockade of a few miles of dirt. They, as a party, decided it wouldn't be safe to stay in one place because this underground facility belonged to the enemy which meant that they could be being watched, or any members of the cult they were fighting could come down to where they were, since it was a hub for them. So the party stealthed through the facility, moving forward, and found themselves in some small encounters where they could take out singular guards easily. Until they encountered one of these nemeses, who they could probably wipe the floor with if the Sorcerer had her higher level spell slots, or the Monk still had all his ki. Instead, they knew it would be a tough battle (possible, but tough!). They could still fight it-- But the nemesis didn't know they were short on resources, and knew the party would wipe the floor with them, so the nemesis asked for a parlay. The party, knowing that this was a chance for a rest, agreed, and they entered a social encounter instead. And with deals made-- the party finally got their desired long rest! They had survived! And none of this was because I forced them forward. They made choices based on the dangers they knew existed. Some of those dangers may not have ever come to apply. Some of them might have. But the player's choices ended in their survival and success, and so they felt proud of themselves, and proud of their tactical decision-making. Your players aren't going to be proud of overcoming a challenge if they never have to face a challenge -- just as they're not going to be proud to succeed if they're hand-held or railroaded into succeeded. When success and failure are real, players get excited and can't wait to play each week, and that feels absolutely amazing as a DM (plus it's less work for me! They make the decisions, and then give me the credit for the story that they made!)
Honestly the best combat I've run in a while was 2-3 weeks ago after the players used most of their big resources to stealth through an entire dungeon, trying to not be seen. They got to where they wanted to go, got the thing they wanted to get, and realized that they didn't have the resources to stealth back, and they were pretty sure that one of the guards had seen them... (High Insight check from the Monk) So they knew time was likely short, and if they took a short rest that it was possible they'd be found. It ended in a combat that was tough for the players, but they thought creatively, used the environment to their advantage, and kicked ass. They felt so proud of themselves because they had gone into that down on spells, wildshapes, potions, and ki-- And came out on top. You can't create that sense of accomplishment without the challenge that expended resources provide.
The players and the DM should be working together to have the most fun. How your group has fun is up to you. In the beginning it feels like you were worried that you were doing something wrong. That's literally impossible as long as your focus is creating events that you believe your group will find fun. But, what you describe (fairly constant resting) closes off some options (the tone can never really become "frantic" and the players are not put under pressure). It's your choice whether those options are okay being lost. Not everyone wants to live in a world with ever present danger.
If this is becoming a problem (if the players are making fun of the fact that they can always take a nap, or that they are complaining that nothing ever happens, if they are taking ridiculous risks and expecting no consequences, etc), then there are defiant ways to address it, adn the DM must make the first step. I think everyone here is under the impression that this constant resting is a problem you're trying to address. If it is, then the DM has to make changes as the players have no incentive to.
However, it is the DM's place to set the pace and control the tone. We decide what's around the next corner. We decide if that guy coming up the road is friendly or malign. The players get to decide how they face the challenges, but we probably put it there. Yeah, the DM should be listening to the players. The DM should be ensuring that they are still having fun and not overwhelmed. But this a game of compromise. The DM over plans, and nothing actually goes the way they expected. The players can only control themselves (and the tools the guy sitting across the table gave them), and must react to what's around them. We have to trust that together we can have more fun than individually.
The difficulty of the encounters matters a lot for this. Throwing a couple 3 kobold easy encounters is very different from hard or deadly encounters.
Also, remember- An encounter doesn't mean combat happens. An encounter could very well be something with the potential to become combat that your players avoid, and then they wouldnt need the short rest.
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I see quite a few posts on a variety of forums stating that a 'typical' session can be 3 or more encounters per day. Seriously? My players typically get into a brawl and then afterwards will take at LEAST a short if not a long rest. I might have them encounter something during that time but much of it is situational. Crawling through enemy territory is very hazardous and you might not GET to rest. However, if they're just traveling through a place then I don't think that rates more than one encounter a day.
My players would simply back out of a mission if they started to get in over their heads and really needed a rest. Do other players simply NOT do this or are the DMs simply throwing stuff at them to create a challenge?
So far I've had no complaints about my combats being challenging but I'd rather have one big one than set up 3 or more little ones.
What's the consensus out there as to a good balance?
There is no consensus beyond doing what fits your group's preference.
But yeah, some of us have tons of encounters in a day because our players are simply playing like people that have goals they want to accomplish - you do what you can in a day, rather than being extra cautious at the expense of time. So they have 1 encounter, rest if they really need it, move on to another, repeat, and rest when it's that time of day or they've gotten down to just their last few daily resources (to cover the possibility of an encounter occurring during their long rest), and repeat the next day until their goal is completed (and then they take some downtime if possible before a new goal arises).
Just like the CR mechanic and others... it is just a guideline. Nice starting point for beginning DM's. Soon you'll know how the game works and what your group wants. Then you throw all those guidelines out the window. Also YOU, as the DM, decide when there is an opportunity for a rest.
The players can say they would like to rest, but if you say no then that is that. My group wanted to rest every 2 encounters as well. Can be understandable if the group is only 3 with encounters scaled to 5-6. However if they were to rest every time then its time to come up with a plausible reason why they can't. Constantly resting really breaks up the pace of the game and narrative as well which I don't like.
Pace is really important. There are no rules for it since you have to learn that for yourself. Throw in social encounters, puzzle traps and not just combat encounters. Don't only create challenging encounters that drain the players resources. If you only have 1 or 2 combat encounters with long breaks in between... sure. Otherwise have some easier fights as well and find a good rhythm/flow. When do you want the tension to rise and when do you want your players to feel good and get overconfident...so that you can tear them down with suspense and danger afterwards. When you get this down it might come to a point where you don't have any combat encounter for a few sessions. Instead just have cool dungeons with puzzle traps and instead of killing everything experience social encounters to manipulate the groups/tribes and kill each other. Or something out of the box thinking your players come up with.
In my group they only rest if at least 2 spellcasters have run out of their spell slots. Otherwise they keep pushing and find ways to cope with situations in creative ways. They always have some spell scrolls saved up for example. As well as not just running into any situation and taking time to scout it out and find a way to deal with it. If they constantly want to rest... well that is also more time the bad guys have to achieve their goals, That should teach them to hurry up a bit next time. The world doesn't revolve around the party. Everyone is living and has their own motives and resources. One of the reasons we love DnD is because it isn't like a videogame where everything is geared towards the players.
If your players keep backing out...then they're not really cut out for an adventurous life style :P
Fair points. Since my party is just getting started (they'll all hit lvl 5 next session) they haven't gotten access to all of the cool stuff yet. I've been a bit stingy with the magical treasure so far, erring on the side of caution, but they just completed a shopping trip in the city so now several of them are sporting shiny new things like Bracers of Defense or Cloaks of Protection. In an upcoming adventure I plan on giving them some great useful party items like an Immovable Rod and a few character-specific items. However, they're not into the big money yet so they haven't been buying or finding many scrolls or potions other than Healing.
I think the comment that “they are doing it because you allow them to do it” is correct. Currently there’s no reason not to top off after a scuffle and it makes sense to. I wish I could not do anything until I’m at 100%, but in life things always get in the way or needs pile up.
So they are in the habit of taking a break after combat, if this is a problem, then find a way to ease them out of the habit. You can inturrupt their short rest, and get them moving. This can be done by having an NPC that’s super eager to move on or unsafe conditions where the combat took place. They could be given a time limit to complete a quest, one that has harsh penalties (either to an NPC they like or the party).
It doesn’t have to be a problem though. Why gauge what you should be doing on someone else’s template? Besides, not all encounters have to be combat. It doesn’t make much sense to take a break after a social encounter.
I agree with the other comments about if you let them rest, they will. You are the DM, and you can create situations where resting isn't an option. If a dungeon is inhabited by monsters, they can't rest unless they can properly barricade a room - which may require a check or series of checks, plus they'll want people on watch. If the baddies figure out where they are, they may try to break down the barricade-- How well did they make it? Do they feel confident sleeping while the hobgoblins take a battering ram to the door? I once had about 4 sessions that went through just a bit of night. They fought a bunch of ghosts and nearly died, went back to the place they were supposed to be and got too curious about an old attic. When they went in, they activated something bad and were attacked by flying sharks made of glass (don't ask) and chased around the house, they couldn't rest. Then they figured out how to escape underneath and had to sneak and fight their way to a cult with monsters at their back, and their front... Needless to say, all of the class features for the whole party were completely expended. There were no spell slots, sorcery points, lay on hands, ki points, anything. And suddenly, everything was harder. Just with 2 big encounters and the threat of another. So then when they had to fight one of their main nemeses, all of a sudden a conversation sounded much more appealing, and they made some deals.
By the same token, this doesn't need to be, and shouldn't be, the case all the time. However, it is good to entice your players with a reason not to take a rest, even if the reason isn't a monster chasing them. Right now my players are in a series of city/social sessions, and there's no reason to encourage them forward, so they're blowing their resources on frivolous things-- Also a good way to train them for outside of safe places
Remember: Your players by RAW should only have one long rest per day, and a day might be one session-- Or it could be 4! Really depends on what kind of craziness is happening with the plot. My party has had almost 30 sessions that have gone over 15-17 days. Short rests take an hour, so if they're short resting, the time passes and the situations around them may change, that's also good to keep in mind. Also with short rests... Remember that after a long rest they only recover half of their hit dice (so 2 if they're level 4, etc.) so if they're short resting so much and blowing their hit dice, they might not have them all back the next day.
My point is that, as a player, I hate being dragged through a scenario or railroaded through an adventure. Okay, so we're supposed to find a ruin and search it for the magical whatever. We might have things happen along the way or we might not. Once we arrive, if the very first encounter beats our ass, we're going to back outside to camp (since most 'inside' monsters don't come 'outside'). If the DM continuously tosses stuff at us to prevent us from resting, we're likely to call shenanigans on him or begin abusing spells like Rope trick and Tiny Hut.
I don't agree that you can ALWAYS find a reasonable excuse to keep your party from resting. This is particularly true for Clerics who ONLY recover spells on the long rest. If my DM were constantly urging us forward to rush through things and keep going into fights with little to no prep then I'd call him on it. That's HIM trying to make US play at HIS pace and I don't like that very much.
If the party thinks that the middle of the wild is a safe place, I imagine the DM hasn't done a good job creating a world that seems threatening. If my players traveled through the wilds to a dungeon, got beat up, then decided to go into the wild to camp and didn't expect that something might attack them-- Then I've done a bad job as a DM. It's not railroading to have your party in an unsafe location experience why that location is unsafe.
Also-- There's lots of 'inside' monsters that can come 'outside'. If you go into a Hobgoblin stronghold, have a tough first encounter, and then leave and rest up-- They'll know you've been there, and they'll prepare for your return, if they don't just come out and ambush you while you're trying to rest. It's not railroading for the world to be dangerous, and it worries me a little that you equate it as such.
There are safe places to rest-- But the party has to actually take care to get to that safe place. The party's decisions are what create safe or unsafe resting environments. If you decide to rest inside of a dungeon, you're not safe from something finding you. If you go fight some guys, make yourself a known threat, and then camp outside the door, you're not safe from something coming out to get you. However... If you're in a dungeon and you hole up a room, spend time covering your tracks, blocking the door, and being quiet/stealthy, you might have a safe place for a short time. If you fight something in goblin stronghold, realize you're in over your head, and retreat to the woods to find a hiding place where you can regroup, you might be able to set up a safe place. Heck, if you have a Circle of Dreams Druid you can set up a safe place more confidently. ...But if the party is silly enough to think that 'if we're trying to rest and the DM throws an encounter at us we're being railroaded' then either the DM has failed to create consequences prior to that moment that makes the party realize they can't just claim 'time-out', the DM *is* actually railroading and not allowing the players' good choices and well-made plans to stand, *or* the players are complaining because they haven't planned their resources accordingly, and they know the game is going to get harder.
A little bit of your post feels like you think your DM is against you guys, but a normal DM is just trying to tell a story with you and create interesting conflict along the way. Now, your DM may have been very adversarial, in which case I totally see where you're coming from. But-- I promise you that most of us are not. I want my party to have fun, to feel like they've overcome (or failed) challenges on their own merits, and like their decisions matter. If I haven't done those three things, I feel like I've failed as a DM.
Take my example above. The party had a difficult combat with some ghosts that they had chosen to go and do as part of one party member's individual interests, then went back to the place they had been staying before. The party mistakenly thought that the attic, which they had been interested in earlier, was going to relatively safe. They chose to go there-- Their choice-- and ended up moving the plot a giant step forward, to where the entire manor they were in became overrun with these dangerous creatures. It made no place safe, so the party had to rush through the manor, doing a bunch of skill challenges to avoid further combat until they could get underneath the manor where they could creature an effective blockade of a few miles of dirt. They, as a party, decided it wouldn't be safe to stay in one place because this underground facility belonged to the enemy which meant that they could be being watched, or any members of the cult they were fighting could come down to where they were, since it was a hub for them. So the party stealthed through the facility, moving forward, and found themselves in some small encounters where they could take out singular guards easily. Until they encountered one of these nemeses, who they could probably wipe the floor with if the Sorcerer had her higher level spell slots, or the Monk still had all his ki. Instead, they knew it would be a tough battle (possible, but tough!). They could still fight it-- But the nemesis didn't know they were short on resources, and knew the party would wipe the floor with them, so the nemesis asked for a parlay. The party, knowing that this was a chance for a rest, agreed, and they entered a social encounter instead. And with deals made-- the party finally got their desired long rest! They had survived! And none of this was because I forced them forward. They made choices based on the dangers they knew existed. Some of those dangers may not have ever come to apply. Some of them might have. But the player's choices ended in their survival and success, and so they felt proud of themselves, and proud of their tactical decision-making. Your players aren't going to be proud of overcoming a challenge if they never have to face a challenge -- just as they're not going to be proud to succeed if they're hand-held or railroaded into succeeded. When success and failure are real, players get excited and can't wait to play each week, and that feels absolutely amazing as a DM (plus it's less work for me! They make the decisions, and then give me the credit for the story that they made!)
Honestly the best combat I've run in a while was 2-3 weeks ago after the players used most of their big resources to stealth through an entire dungeon, trying to not be seen. They got to where they wanted to go, got the thing they wanted to get, and realized that they didn't have the resources to stealth back, and they were pretty sure that one of the guards had seen them... (High Insight check from the Monk) So they knew time was likely short, and if they took a short rest that it was possible they'd be found. It ended in a combat that was tough for the players, but they thought creatively, used the environment to their advantage, and kicked ass. They felt so proud of themselves because they had gone into that down on spells, wildshapes, potions, and ki-- And came out on top. You can't create that sense of accomplishment without the challenge that expended resources provide.
The players and the DM should be working together to have the most fun. How your group has fun is up to you. In the beginning it feels like you were worried that you were doing something wrong. That's literally impossible as long as your focus is creating events that you believe your group will find fun. But, what you describe (fairly constant resting) closes off some options (the tone can never really become "frantic" and the players are not put under pressure). It's your choice whether those options are okay being lost. Not everyone wants to live in a world with ever present danger.
If this is becoming a problem (if the players are making fun of the fact that they can always take a nap, or that they are complaining that nothing ever happens, if they are taking ridiculous risks and expecting no consequences, etc), then there are defiant ways to address it, adn the DM must make the first step. I think everyone here is under the impression that this constant resting is a problem you're trying to address. If it is, then the DM has to make changes as the players have no incentive to.
However, it is the DM's place to set the pace and control the tone. We decide what's around the next corner. We decide if that guy coming up the road is friendly or malign. The players get to decide how they face the challenges, but we probably put it there. Yeah, the DM should be listening to the players. The DM should be ensuring that they are still having fun and not overwhelmed. But this a game of compromise. The DM over plans, and nothing actually goes the way they expected. The players can only control themselves (and the tools the guy sitting across the table gave them), and must react to what's around them. We have to trust that together we can have more fun than individually.
The difficulty of the encounters matters a lot for this. Throwing a couple 3 kobold easy encounters is very different from hard or deadly encounters.
Also, remember- An encounter doesn't mean combat happens. An encounter could very well be something with the potential to become combat that your players avoid, and then they wouldnt need the short rest.