How to handle scarce encounters and expendable character resources?

Hi everyone,

I'm not a huge fan of random encounters, which is why I'm not really rolling for those (except dungeons, where wandering monsters/guards are more likely). I like to design my encounters to fill the story in a suitable way and somehow link them to the story. I like to think of them as side quests with a few steps to get it finished and then it links back to the main story.

The problem is that with the limited amount of encounters per day while the party is out there adventuring, they're practically always fully rested with all their expendable resources available. I'd want my party to think about resources from time to time outside dungeons, but I'm not sure how I would go about with this. Any help? I'm very open to suggestions. And to be clear, I'm mostly thinking of combat encounters at the moment. I could just make the single encounter a bit more difficult by adding monsters or swapping them for more dangerous ones, but I don't find it logical that every single "random" encounter would have the party face off against a difficult monster.

One solution I already found was to limit long rests to when the party has actual lodgings, so villages, towns, and cities, possibly some safe rooms in a dungeon, etc.. In the wilderness they would only be allowed short rests, even with a good night's sleep in a tent. This could work, but at the same time I'm worried if that is a bit too punishing for the players. For instance, if it's a warm night and they find a perfect campsite (with a nat 20 survival check for example), they set up their camp properly and would still be denied a long rest sounds very harsh.

I know I mentioned I'm thinking of combat encounters, but I'm more than happy to receive advise for non-combat encounters as well. I already found this old thread with 100 non-combat encounter ideas, which I can use for inspiration, but that doesn't really help with the limited amount of encounters per day.

UPDATE: As mentioned in my next message in this thread, the actual question is how to properly limit the amount of long rests?

If you want to burn resources, then get the party to think that there is a time clock ticking down.  They have to hurry so no time for rests.

Don't underestimate low quality high volume encounters.  A group of 20xCR 1/2s can burn more resources then a single CR10.  But vary the the big group and have a few "leaders".  The party may feel the leaders  are more dangerous and concentrate on them 1st which allows the masses/swarm to squeeze in and do some damage.

If you want to burn resources, then that is the end goal, not winning/losing an encounter.  So put out encounters not to challenge or even come close to being a win, but only to do a few damage points and suck up spells.

I mean, it's simple math of long rests vs encounters. Either you have to increase the number of encounters or decrease the number of long rests. One thing you can do beside making the wilderness in hospitable thus preventing long rests, is to give the party many healing potions / items and add a ticking clock so they are less tempted to take a long rest.

I've been thinking about doing something similar with my long rests, and I don't do random encounters unless they are exploring a specific place, like wandering in the woods looking for goblin camps. I've found that the encounters in between major event will really only be filler, and honestly, doesn't matter that much except for broadening the world and dropping some hints for nobody to pick up. I'll throw a medium encounter in their way (the key is that bigger groups, not bigger monsters, make better encounters) every couple of days where it makes sense, drop in some gold and maybe a parchment with orders or perhaps a cryptic holy symbol, and let that be it. They won't remember those encounters. I then focus my efforts into making the fights that matter, matter. Those are the ones they'll remember. 

Quote from WolfeCriedPup >>

I've found that the encounters in between major event will really only be filler

 This is exactly the reason why I'm not a huge fan of random encounters.

Thanks for the tips. So far they haven't really had critical time pressure, but the world calendar is moving forward, so they know events in the world will happen at certain points. Currently it means that they know they can't stop to hang around in a city for a month, because the evil guys are not sitting idle waiting for the party to do something, but I haven't added elements which require them to do something right now.

I'm aware it's a maths problem between the amount of encounters and the amount of long rests. I guess the real question is that if I don't want to increase the amount of random encounters, what suitable/functional methods there are to limit long rests?

I'll keep in mind the "hordes > one big monster" design when planning my encounters. Not all my "random" encounters include a big monster, but I'll make sure that even the ones that do also include some cannon fodder.

Like the OP, I don’t really care for random encounters. They take time, don’t advance the story, and if a character dies to random ogre No. 4, it’s really anticlimactic.So I do the usual of a big set piece with interesting terrain and s fight that’s, per the xp budget, really overturned.

But when I want to really tax them, as others said, I use a rocking clock, but In terms of if the ticking clock, I think in more short-term. I just ran a dungeon crawl in a volcano that was about to erupt. They had 3 or 4 fights but knew they’d really only have time for 1 short rest in there. And on the way out, they were racing against rising magma, and couldn’t stop so a couple of them ended up taking exhaustion levels. The one last fight as they exited was, according to the xp budget, on the low end of moderate, but boy was it a close thing. No one died, but one character dropped and others were in single digits (really the sweet spot for a tense series of encounters, imo).

I find that when I do those type of days, I can actually use the xp budget as intended, there was 1 low end of hard fight, a couple easy, a couple moderate, but it really did push their resources. But when doing that dungeon crawl, it’s good to telegraph the idea that there’s going to be more than 1, so they need to budget their powers.

If you want to deal with resource tracking but also don't want common encounters, the simple solution is to change how long rests occur -- for example, you can say that a regular night's sleep gives you a short rest, and getting the benefit of a long rest requires something additional (exactly what that additional thing may be is dependent on campaign details).