These are all very real problems. I think a lot of us are surprised that they didn't get rid of short rests in the new playtest material because of this. I've struggled with this issue from the start of moving to 5e.
It has nothing to do with short rests, it's a problem with long rests -- if every class was designed to recover resources on a short rest (with, presumably, lower resource counts), the whole problem would go away because it would just remove the resource management aspect. The reality is, they've been trying to shove multiple encounters per day down our throat for at least four releases (3e, 3.5e, 4e, and 5e), and it has failed every time (the term 'five minute workday' was coined in 3e). At a certain point you need to accept that something is a bad idea.
These are all very real problems. I think a lot of us are surprised that they didn't get rid of short rests in the new playtest material because of this. I've struggled with this issue from the start of moving to 5e.
It has nothing to do with short rests, it's a problem with long rests -- if every class was designed to recover resources on a short rest (with, presumably, lower resource counts), the whole problem would go away because it would just remove the resource management aspect. The reality is, they've been trying to shove multiple encounters per day down our throat for at least four releases (3e, 3.5e, 4e, and 5e), and it has failed every time (the term 'five minute workday' was coined in 3e). At a certain point you need to accept that something is a bad idea.
I agree, it is a bad idea, or at least it causes a lot of challenges designing adventures.
I'm not sure it's a case of shoving multiple encounters since 3e, as much as it is the fact that 1e and 2e just had multiple encounters by default. But once they started introducing more and more abilities that were resources to be tracked, more players realized it was safer to rest more often and keep replenishing their pools. Add on to that shift in focus from dungeon crawls to more plot driven stories, and it got even worse. Most people just aren't interested in exploring 20 room dungeons with monsters in each of them anymore. And if they are, all of their characters now have abilities they replenish on rests (of any sort). So the smart thing to do is rest as much as possible.
Even if every skill and ability and spell came back on a short rest, they would just try to sit for an hour between each room. That's just as unrealistic and annoying. I'm not saying the current system is good. I was just proposing the solution I have found to work with it.
The problem is that the whole game is built around resources returning on rests. Whether the rest is 1 hour or 1 week, players will take them rather than risk a TPK. If you get everything back on a short rest, or per encounter, everyone goes nova each fight. They just use their best abilities right out the gate and the low level powers collect dust. I think Gritty Realism is useful if you want to encourage players to do more downtime activities, but not for discouraging rests or spreading out encounters so much.
So it looks like we either need to work with what we have now, and create enough encounters in a day to burn all those spell slots. Or the whole game needs a fundamental change in design to do what you suggest. At least if people really do want flexibility in number of encounters in a day. You'd have to make abilities scale, instead of multiply.
Right now almost every ability increases in number of uses per rest. Either you get them a number of times a day based on level, or you get more and more spell slots, etc. If you really wanted to fix it, you would need a set number of things a character could do no matter what, and they would only increase in power. We would need to apply the Warlock model to everyone.
For example, your wizard might have 3 spell slots per encounter, from level 1 to level 20. Maybe some rituals for utility. At level 1, a damage spell does 2d6 to a single target. At level 20 it might do 10d6 in a large area. The fighter might only get one action surge per fight, but the number of attacks increases. That way whether you have 1 encounter a day or 50, every class has the same pool every time, that scales as they level up. It's a good idea. It just means a complete rewrite of the game. (And that's how we got 4th edition) I would be willing to try it though.
There's an easy fix: fights where the only tension is "will I expend more resources than I want to" are boring and should not be run. Every fight should be one where the PCs, starting at full resources, are at least concerned about losing, at which point it's find and expected that PCs will rest enough to be at full resources.
It can work. But it can get old for players too. Stories have rising tension to a climax. If every fight is the most intense, you lose some of that. Players can get fatigued from every combat being life or death. That can feel like they don't get to really enjoy the power they worked so hard to gain, because it is never quiet enough to just win a normal fight. It can hurt your ability to build convincing worlds when every encounter has the same level of risk.
Combats aren't just about resource management or risk. They should be part of the story. They should show the world you created, explain the power structure of the enemy organization, give opportunities to capture weaker foes and get information, etc.
There's an easy fix: fights where the only tension is "will I expend more resources than I want to" are boring and should not be run. Every fight should be one where the PCs, starting at full resources, are at least concerned about losing, at which point it's find and expected that PCs will rest enough to be at full resources.
Whils tI do agree that the PCs should be concerned about losing a fight, if you have a single fight per long rest (as your statement implies, but I might be wrong), then they will be able to dump 100% of their resource on every fight. Wizards will never hold back their spells. Barbarians will always rage. Druids will always wildshape.
I think that detracts from the experience - I'd prefer for the danger to come from the party saying "oh, damn, I wish I'd kept my level 4 spell slot for this fight", rather than "damn, I wish I'd used a different level 4 spell first".
I think the balance comes from fights where if they expend no resources, they will lose, but if they expend too many, they will find themselves wanting later on. Not an easy balancing act at all, but I think it is the most rewarding.
So, for example, if those 5 orcs are not going to do anything but chip off a few Hp, then I agree that there's no point in running them. You need enough of a challege to make the party spend their slots and use their abilities to survive, and have to make decisions about whether or not to do so. I've seen a lot of people thoroughly enjoy debating whether to use their fireball now or wait until later.
These are all very real problems. I think a lot of us are surprised that they didn't get rid of short rests in the new playtest material because of this. I've struggled with this issue from the start of moving to 5e.
It has nothing to do with short rests, it's a problem with long rests -- if every class was designed to recover resources on a short rest (with, presumably, lower resource counts), the whole problem would go away because it would just remove the resource management aspect. The reality is, they've been trying to shove multiple encounters per day down our throat for at least four releases (3e, 3.5e, 4e, and 5e), and it has failed every time (the term 'five minute workday' was coined in 3e). At a certain point you need to accept that something is a bad idea.
The game has always had a variable number of encounters/day. Ranging from none to more than 8 - whatever the DM wanted to do. A dungeon crawl like DotMM can still have more than 8 encounters depending on how long the party wants to keep on pushing.
I find that how often the characters want rests and what they get back is the main difference in 5e.
In 1e, spells were the most common resource that refreshed in a "long rest". There were a number of other character abilities with a range of refresh times, a paladin lay on hands was once/day but their cure disease was once/week for every 5 levels of the paladin, summon their warhorse once/10 years, druid wildshape was 3/day and turn undead was unlimited.
However, in 1E if the cleric or the wizard was running out of spells then, just like in 5e, the party would often decide to go get a rest to get spells back because without the spells, the martial classes would have a lot more trouble. Clerics would often load up on healing spells, MUs would have AoE damage spells and a dagger in their back pocket.
The core abilities of the fighter/rogue/paladin/ranger did not require rests to function. Lay on hands was just an emergency heal for when the cleric was low on slots. If the characters weren't taking much damage the party could push on through lots of encounters until the casters were running low on spell slots. However, on a rest, the martials generally had little or nothing restored. They didn't get hit points back. Status effects weren't usually removed. Significant injuries didn't fix themselves. The party might spend a day or even two with every character in the party that could cast a healing spell, memorizing/preparing them, cast and spend the day or two on vacation until the party hit points were sufficiently restored to go adventuring.
In 5e, every class has more abilities that require a short or long rest to refresh, so there is more motivation for everyone in the party to take a rest. However, classes don't benefit equally from short rests, but everyone gets everything back on a long rest (except on 1/2 hit dice which seems like an odd exception) which motivates parties towards taking long rests when the opportunity comes up. One D&D goes even farther, also restoring max hit point loss and stat loss on a long rest.
Anyway, folks looking for "gritty realism" are usually looking for something closer to 1e where the characters were forced by circumstances to take time off to heal up and get ready before going adventuring again. The issue really comes down to 5e restoring everything on a long rest. Reduce the resources restored on a long rest and you end up with something closer to the "realism" of 1e.
I definitely remember many time in 2e where our whole party was out of commission back home afterwards. Resting for weeks to recover at 1-3 HP a day when we didn't have a cleric. Or doing exactly what you're saying about memorizing a full spell loadout of healing each day when we did have a cleric.
Whils tI do agree that the PCs should be concerned about losing a fight, if you have a single fight per long rest (as your statement implies, but I might be wrong), then they will be able to dump 100% of their resource on every fight. Wizards will never hold back their spells. Barbarians will always rage. Druids will always wildshape.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying. In practice this is not a large change from how the game actually gets played.
Anyway, folks looking for "gritty realism" are usually looking for something closer to 1e where the characters were forced by circumstances to take time off to heal up and get ready before going adventuring again. The issue really comes down to 5e restoring everything on a long rest. Reduce the resources restored on a long rest and you end up with something closer to the "realism" of 1e.
1e was just "by the way, here's yet another way martial characters are inferior to spellcasters".
I just don't find one boss battle a game to be much fun either. Critical Role does this, mostly because they have to make fancy terrain ahead of time, and spend most of their games in social situations. I got to the point when I was watching it that I would just skip the fights altogether. They rarely had any impact on the story and were just hours of burning down their spell lists from top to bottom. It also punishes those characters with short rest mechanics.
And my own players get fatigued from this approach. It's stressful, drags games out, and takes away from the impact of the real 'boss' battles. I much prefer an adventure like I gave as an example on the previous page. A series of unique encounters that build both the world and the tension slowly, leading to an exciting climax.
There's probably some middle ground. A way to write the rules so everyone can get the experience they want with no effort. It's just not the current rules we have.
And my own players get fatigued from this approach. It's stressful, drags games out, and takes away from the impact of the real 'boss' battles. I much prefer an adventure like I gave as an example on the previous page. A series of unique encounters that build both the world and the tension slowly, leading to an exciting climax.
There's probably some middle ground. A way to write the rules so everyone can get the experience they want with no effort. It's just not the current rules we have.
The way to make "one big fight" less fatiguing is to dramatically cut down on the resources characters have to spend. A tenth level spellcaster has fifteen leveled spell slots, so of course it's going to take a long time to burn them off. Cut that down to, say, 5, and it's a lot less messy.
I mean they also get fatigued from feeling like every fight is going to be 'do or die,' the highest tension. But that might be helped with a different system too. I'd be willing to try the 'Warlock' approach to more of the classes though and see how it works.
I mean they also get fatigued from feeling like every fight is going to be 'do or die,' the highest tension.
You're not actually doing any more 'do or die' fights -- you're just deleting most to all of the trivial fights.
Which means the only fights you have left are all 'do or die.' Is not about frequency, but the fealing that every fight they do encounter could be their last. They just want to be able to win easily sometimes. To feel like they actually did improve in power. They don't want every combat to have the fate of the world hang in the balance. It's back to the idea of building to a climax, not jumping from one climax to the next. Critical Role makes combat boring to me, personally, because the fights at either big boss battles, or occasional random encounters (that are also big boss battles.)
I guess I mean that fights don't have to be trivial just because they aren't dangerous. 5 orcs in an empty room waiting for the next adventurers to walk through is both a trivial encounter AND weak storytelling. Those should absolutely be removed from our games where possible
5 orcs patrolling the woodline of their camp, while the characters are trying to sneak from the cover of the bushes to the wall and climb in, are still a trivial fight. But it's ALSO fun, it adds to the growing tension of the story, it adds to worldbuilding to show how the boss's army is organized, it gives the players a chance to use their power and try to dispatch of them quickly and quietly, it offers the opportunity to overhear important info And, by expending resources, it raises the tension of the fights to come. It's all part of building up to the climax of the story. Many of the best adventure stories are exciting precisely because the heroes are in their last leg in the end. They are beaten and bruised and still fighting. Imagine how dull the LotR would be if Frodo and Sam climb Mount Doom with the same cheer and good health they left Hobbiton with.
Now I could see that it might not matter if they beat the orc patrol with full power, knowing they will be at full power the next fight too. If everything replenishes. They're going to beat them anyway. But it could hurt the overall story. And it could hurt the game world itself if every fight is an equal challenge, with every orc in the army just as strong as their boss Trivial encounters are only truly trivial if they are both easy to win AND don't impact the story. An easy fight isn't necessarily bad. It can actually make the game better
Which means the only fights you have left are all 'do or die.' Is not about frequency, but the fealing that every fight they do encounter could be their last. They just want to be able to win easily sometimes.
I don't mind the occasional easy fight, but they should be occasional. If there's two fights in a day and one of them is easy (by which I mean 'not deadly' in 5e terms)... fine. If there's five fights and four of them are easy... not fine. Because easy fights are boring filler content.
Which means the only fights you have left are all 'do or die.' Is not about frequency, but the fealing that every fight they do encounter could be their last. They just want to be able to win easily sometimes.
I don't mind the occasional easy fight, but they should be occasional. If there's two fights in a day and one of them is easy (by which I mean 'not deadly' in 5e terms)... fine. If there's five fights and four of them are easy... not fine. Because easy fights are boring filler content.
Clearly you read absolutely none of the post you just quoted.
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Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Clearly you read absolutely none of the post you just quoted.
I read it. I just disagree with it.
There's nothing wrong with ambushing an orc patrol that you could, in the abstract, beat trivially, but the reason that encounter is a challenge should be victory conditions, not resource expenditure -- i.e. your victory condition, which you can easily fail at, is "ambush them without being noticed".
There's nothing wrong with ambushing an orc patrol that you could, in the abstract, beat trivially, but the reason that encounter is a challenge should be victory conditions, not resource expenditure -- i.e. your victory condition, which you can easily fail at, is "ambush them without being noticed".
The thing about this is that it is wholly 100% your opinion. This view is DEFINITELY not shared by the majority of people who play D&D. If having limited abilities isn't fun, then why do so many people have fun managing resources? You're stating your personal preferences like fact.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny. Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
There's nothing wrong with ambushing an orc patrol that you could, in the abstract, beat trivially, but the reason that encounter is a challenge should be victory conditions, not resource expenditure -- i.e. your victory condition, which you can easily fail at, is "ambush them without being noticed".
The thing about this is that it is wholly 100% your opinion. This view is DEFINITELY not shared by the majority of people who play D&D. If having limited abilities isn't fun, then why do so many people have fun managing resources? You're stating your personal preferences like fact.
Judging by actual play, by how adventures are actually set up, and by the various advice you see on how to set up encounters... I would argue that the majority of players do not have fun managing resources, nor do DMs like running it that way. The pattern I've reliably seen is that people run one major encounter per day, with possibly some smaller encounters for setting the stage. And then DMs are puzzled when their 'deadly' encounter barely scratches the PCs.
I disagree. Easy fights are part of the rise and fall of dramatic tension. You can't have every encounter be a dramatic win-or-die challenge, it is exhausting, both in table top gaming and in media. Easy fights provide the players with a rest from the dramatic hard fights, as well as a chance to feel badass.
They also provide a meaningful choice. If the party is on their way to the lair of the EBG and they encounter bandits, what do they do?. Do they sneak around them, adding time to their journey? Do they engage them while using few resources, which might lead to injury? Do they nova them, taking no damage but spending resoufces they might need later?
Finally, they build the world using the "show don't tell" concept. If the GM says "the roads are filled with bandits" but doesn't actually fill the roads with bandits then their description is wasted.
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It has nothing to do with short rests, it's a problem with long rests -- if every class was designed to recover resources on a short rest (with, presumably, lower resource counts), the whole problem would go away because it would just remove the resource management aspect. The reality is, they've been trying to shove multiple encounters per day down our throat for at least four releases (3e, 3.5e, 4e, and 5e), and it has failed every time (the term 'five minute workday' was coined in 3e). At a certain point you need to accept that something is a bad idea.
I agree, it is a bad idea, or at least it causes a lot of challenges designing adventures.
I'm not sure it's a case of shoving multiple encounters since 3e, as much as it is the fact that 1e and 2e just had multiple encounters by default. But once they started introducing more and more abilities that were resources to be tracked, more players realized it was safer to rest more often and keep replenishing their pools. Add on to that shift in focus from dungeon crawls to more plot driven stories, and it got even worse. Most people just aren't interested in exploring 20 room dungeons with monsters in each of them anymore. And if they are, all of their characters now have abilities they replenish on rests (of any sort). So the smart thing to do is rest as much as possible.
Even if every skill and ability and spell came back on a short rest, they would just try to sit for an hour between each room. That's just as unrealistic and annoying. I'm not saying the current system is good. I was just proposing the solution I have found to work with it.
The problem is that the whole game is built around resources returning on rests. Whether the rest is 1 hour or 1 week, players will take them rather than risk a TPK. If you get everything back on a short rest, or per encounter, everyone goes nova each fight. They just use their best abilities right out the gate and the low level powers collect dust. I think Gritty Realism is useful if you want to encourage players to do more downtime activities, but not for discouraging rests or spreading out encounters so much.
So it looks like we either need to work with what we have now, and create enough encounters in a day to burn all those spell slots. Or the whole game needs a fundamental change in design to do what you suggest. At least if people really do want flexibility in number of encounters in a day. You'd have to make abilities scale, instead of multiply.
Right now almost every ability increases in number of uses per rest. Either you get them a number of times a day based on level, or you get more and more spell slots, etc. If you really wanted to fix it, you would need a set number of things a character could do no matter what, and they would only increase in power. We would need to apply the Warlock model to everyone.
For example, your wizard might have 3 spell slots per encounter, from level 1 to level 20. Maybe some rituals for utility. At level 1, a damage spell does 2d6 to a single target. At level 20 it might do 10d6 in a large area. The fighter might only get one action surge per fight, but the number of attacks increases. That way whether you have 1 encounter a day or 50, every class has the same pool every time, that scales as they level up. It's a good idea. It just means a complete rewrite of the game. (And that's how we got 4th edition) I would be willing to try it though.
There's an easy fix: fights where the only tension is "will I expend more resources than I want to" are boring and should not be run. Every fight should be one where the PCs, starting at full resources, are at least concerned about losing, at which point it's find and expected that PCs will rest enough to be at full resources.
So every fight is a boss fight essentially?
It can work. But it can get old for players too. Stories have rising tension to a climax. If every fight is the most intense, you lose some of that. Players can get fatigued from every combat being life or death. That can feel like they don't get to really enjoy the power they worked so hard to gain, because it is never quiet enough to just win a normal fight. It can hurt your ability to build convincing worlds when every encounter has the same level of risk.
Combats aren't just about resource management or risk. They should be part of the story. They should show the world you created, explain the power structure of the enemy organization, give opportunities to capture weaker foes and get information, etc.
Whils tI do agree that the PCs should be concerned about losing a fight, if you have a single fight per long rest (as your statement implies, but I might be wrong), then they will be able to dump 100% of their resource on every fight. Wizards will never hold back their spells. Barbarians will always rage. Druids will always wildshape.
I think that detracts from the experience - I'd prefer for the danger to come from the party saying "oh, damn, I wish I'd kept my level 4 spell slot for this fight", rather than "damn, I wish I'd used a different level 4 spell first".
I think the balance comes from fights where if they expend no resources, they will lose, but if they expend too many, they will find themselves wanting later on. Not an easy balancing act at all, but I think it is the most rewarding.
So, for example, if those 5 orcs are not going to do anything but chip off a few Hp, then I agree that there's no point in running them. You need enough of a challege to make the party spend their slots and use their abilities to survive, and have to make decisions about whether or not to do so. I've seen a lot of people thoroughly enjoy debating whether to use their fireball now or wait until later.
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The game has always had a variable number of encounters/day. Ranging from none to more than 8 - whatever the DM wanted to do. A dungeon crawl like DotMM can still have more than 8 encounters depending on how long the party wants to keep on pushing.
I find that how often the characters want rests and what they get back is the main difference in 5e.
In 1e, spells were the most common resource that refreshed in a "long rest". There were a number of other character abilities with a range of refresh times, a paladin lay on hands was once/day but their cure disease was once/week for every 5 levels of the paladin, summon their warhorse once/10 years, druid wildshape was 3/day and turn undead was unlimited.
However, in 1E if the cleric or the wizard was running out of spells then, just like in 5e, the party would often decide to go get a rest to get spells back because without the spells, the martial classes would have a lot more trouble. Clerics would often load up on healing spells, MUs would have AoE damage spells and a dagger in their back pocket.
The core abilities of the fighter/rogue/paladin/ranger did not require rests to function. Lay on hands was just an emergency heal for when the cleric was low on slots. If the characters weren't taking much damage the party could push on through lots of encounters until the casters were running low on spell slots. However, on a rest, the martials generally had little or nothing restored. They didn't get hit points back. Status effects weren't usually removed. Significant injuries didn't fix themselves. The party might spend a day or even two with every character in the party that could cast a healing spell, memorizing/preparing them, cast and spend the day or two on vacation until the party hit points were sufficiently restored to go adventuring.
In 5e, every class has more abilities that require a short or long rest to refresh, so there is more motivation for everyone in the party to take a rest. However, classes don't benefit equally from short rests, but everyone gets everything back on a long rest (except on 1/2 hit dice which seems like an odd exception) which motivates parties towards taking long rests when the opportunity comes up. One D&D goes even farther, also restoring max hit point loss and stat loss on a long rest.
Anyway, folks looking for "gritty realism" are usually looking for something closer to 1e where the characters were forced by circumstances to take time off to heal up and get ready before going adventuring again. The issue really comes down to 5e restoring everything on a long rest. Reduce the resources restored on a long rest and you end up with something closer to the "realism" of 1e.
I definitely remember many time in 2e where our whole party was out of commission back home afterwards. Resting for weeks to recover at 1-3 HP a day when we didn't have a cleric. Or doing exactly what you're saying about memorizing a full spell loadout of healing each day when we did have a cleric.
Yep, that's exactly what I'm saying. In practice this is not a large change from how the game actually gets played.
1e was just "by the way, here's yet another way martial characters are inferior to spellcasters".
I just don't find one boss battle a game to be much fun either. Critical Role does this, mostly because they have to make fancy terrain ahead of time, and spend most of their games in social situations. I got to the point when I was watching it that I would just skip the fights altogether. They rarely had any impact on the story and were just hours of burning down their spell lists from top to bottom. It also punishes those characters with short rest mechanics.
And my own players get fatigued from this approach. It's stressful, drags games out, and takes away from the impact of the real 'boss' battles. I much prefer an adventure like I gave as an example on the previous page. A series of unique encounters that build both the world and the tension slowly, leading to an exciting climax.
There's probably some middle ground. A way to write the rules so everyone can get the experience they want with no effort. It's just not the current rules we have.
The way to make "one big fight" less fatiguing is to dramatically cut down on the resources characters have to spend. A tenth level spellcaster has fifteen leveled spell slots, so of course it's going to take a long time to burn them off. Cut that down to, say, 5, and it's a lot less messy.
I mean they also get fatigued from feeling like every fight is going to be 'do or die,' the highest tension. But that might be helped with a different system too. I'd be willing to try the 'Warlock' approach to more of the classes though and see how it works.
You're not actually doing any more 'do or die' fights -- you're just deleting most to all of the trivial fights.
Which means the only fights you have left are all 'do or die.' Is not about frequency, but the fealing that every fight they do encounter could be their last. They just want to be able to win easily sometimes. To feel like they actually did improve in power. They don't want every combat to have the fate of the world hang in the balance. It's back to the idea of building to a climax, not jumping from one climax to the next. Critical Role makes combat boring to me, personally, because the fights at either big boss battles, or occasional random encounters (that are also big boss battles.)
I guess I mean that fights don't have to be trivial just because they aren't dangerous. 5 orcs in an empty room waiting for the next adventurers to walk through is both a trivial encounter AND weak storytelling. Those should absolutely be removed from our games where possible
5 orcs patrolling the woodline of their camp, while the characters are trying to sneak from the cover of the bushes to the wall and climb in, are still a trivial fight. But it's ALSO fun, it adds to the growing tension of the story, it adds to worldbuilding to show how the boss's army is organized, it gives the players a chance to use their power and try to dispatch of them quickly and quietly, it offers the opportunity to overhear important info And, by expending resources, it raises the tension of the fights to come. It's all part of building up to the climax of the story. Many of the best adventure stories are exciting precisely because the heroes are in their last leg in the end. They are beaten and bruised and still fighting. Imagine how dull the LotR would be if Frodo and Sam climb Mount Doom with the same cheer and good health they left Hobbiton with.
Now I could see that it might not matter if they beat the orc patrol with full power, knowing they will be at full power the next fight too. If everything replenishes. They're going to beat them anyway. But it could hurt the overall story. And it could hurt the game world itself if every fight is an equal challenge, with every orc in the army just as strong as their boss Trivial encounters are only truly trivial if they are both easy to win AND don't impact the story. An easy fight isn't necessarily bad. It can actually make the game better
I don't mind the occasional easy fight, but they should be occasional. If there's two fights in a day and one of them is easy (by which I mean 'not deadly' in 5e terms)... fine. If there's five fights and four of them are easy... not fine. Because easy fights are boring filler content.
Clearly you read absolutely none of the post you just quoted.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
I read it. I just disagree with it.
There's nothing wrong with ambushing an orc patrol that you could, in the abstract, beat trivially, but the reason that encounter is a challenge should be victory conditions, not resource expenditure -- i.e. your victory condition, which you can easily fail at, is "ambush them without being noticed".
The thing about this is that it is wholly 100% your opinion. This view is DEFINITELY not shared by the majority of people who play D&D. If having limited abilities isn't fun, then why do so many people have fun managing resources? You're stating your personal preferences like fact.
Look at what you've done. You spoiled it. You have nobody to blame but yourself. Go sit and think about your actions.
Don't be mean. Rudeness is a vicious cycle, and it has to stop somewhere. Exceptions for things that are funny.
Go to the current Competition of the Finest 'Brews! It's a cool place where cool people make cool things.
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat Off - Mod Hat Also Off (I'm not a mod)
Judging by actual play, by how adventures are actually set up, and by the various advice you see on how to set up encounters... I would argue that the majority of players do not have fun managing resources, nor do DMs like running it that way. The pattern I've reliably seen is that people run one major encounter per day, with possibly some smaller encounters for setting the stage. And then DMs are puzzled when their 'deadly' encounter barely scratches the PCs.
I disagree. Easy fights are part of the rise and fall of dramatic tension. You can't have every encounter be a dramatic win-or-die challenge, it is exhausting, both in table top gaming and in media. Easy fights provide the players with a rest from the dramatic hard fights, as well as a chance to feel badass.
They also provide a meaningful choice. If the party is on their way to the lair of the EBG and they encounter bandits, what do they do?. Do they sneak around them, adding time to their journey? Do they engage them while using few resources, which might lead to injury? Do they nova them, taking no damage but spending resoufces they might need later?
Finally, they build the world using the "show don't tell" concept. If the GM says "the roads are filled with bandits" but doesn't actually fill the roads with bandits then their description is wasted.