Expendable resources

[Red_Rob]

From the DMG:

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An encounter with an EL equal to the PC's level is one that should expend about 20% of their resources - hit points, spells, magic item uses and so on.

Whilst this dynamic sounds reasonable for casters, once the wands of CLW come on line hit points are pretty much fully refreshed between encounters. Since warriors don't use spells and may not have charged magic items, what are the expendable resources they should be using?

Put another way, a party consisting of a RoW Fighter, Paladin (for the wands), Dungeonomicon Monk and a Warblade has an encounter. Now, from what I can see either they win the encounter and heal to full for a negligible cost, or they lose the encounter and people die or they are forced to retreat.

It seems a party like this can continue to win encounters until their wands run out, which will be some arbitrary number of encounters depending on how much they spent on wands.

Admittedly currently a party with no casters is facing an uphill struggle due to the caster/warrior imbalance but doesn't this violate the basics of the CR system? Or does the system just assume a balanced party including casters and the party resting once all the spells are gone?

[virgil]

For non-casters, expendable resources include hit points, potions, ammunition, etc.

[Red_Rob]

For non-casters, expendable resources include hit points

With each wand of CLW curing an average of 250 hit points any mid-level party will be fully healed after each engagement. The only danger is if someone dies mid fight. This means challenges that are faced by warriors are pretty much a binary pass/fail thing rather than the attrition model described in the DMG.

potions, ammunition, etc.

Once bags of holding come on line ammunition is a moot point and potions aren't necessary for Warriors to win combat encounters like spells are for casters. By definition when a caster overcomes a problem they expend some of their resources, but Warriors can win the combat at 1hp and with a quick curing be up to full strength for the next encounter.

It almost seems that the difficulties warriors have at high levels are necessary to stop all-warrior parties from romping through the game. If a warrior can get past a problem at all it can get through any number of said problems. At least a caster has to use up spells.

[ubernoob]

Not having a class be defined by the four encounter workday is a good thing in my book. Almost every class I design has either at will or per encounter resources. Not like casters don't have rope trick to hardcode the adventuring day however they feel like it anyways.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, it's not even a "Warrior" thing to be able to take a bunch of challenges non stop.

The original "24 hours a day of pwning" is a Cleric Archer abusing DMM Persist for Fast Healing and baddass buffing.

The Totemist and Soulborn both have infinite uses, as do Spherelocks/Conduits. And some of them can even provide their own healing without wands.

It honestly doesn't matter if you can go for 4 encounter or four thousand, you still only have four.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Yeah, in Tome (and high level) games '20% of your resources' tends to be one out of five characters.

[PhaedrusXY]

Yeah, in Tome (and high level) games '20% of your resources' tends to be one out of five characters.

Now that's good times! I just did enough damage with an AoO in my Tome game to drop a PC (one of the other PCs has an immediate action ability that can save them, though). That made me think that, at least in my mind, that it's not a good combat if someone doesn't at least come close to dying. The best ones are where multiple people come close, but no one dies (at least permanently ).

[Judging__Eagle]

Yeah, in Tome (and high level) games '20% of your resources' tends to be one out of five characters.

Lawls, so true. Players should expect to lose a PC per adventure, even if it's a single session dungeon crawl.

[Thymos]

That 20% tells us very little to be honest.

It can range from an even spread to a single character. For example a group of five players can have let's say 20% of their resources knocked off each evenly spread among the players. This isn't too bad. It could also mean that 4 players have no loss and 1 player dies.

For this measure to be useful we need a ton more information, like how large the variations per combat can be or how the 20% should be spread and the like.

All this really means is that a CR of equal level to players pretty much turns into a cakewalk, and with the 1 encounter per day model which adventurers seem to like you should probably up all CR's by 2 and drastically lower the number of combats (with some variation).

[shadzar]

That 20% tells us very little to be honest.

Actually I think it speaks volumes, such as 4th edition when it says 10 encounters nets a new level.

It tells that the design of the game is meant to have at max 5 encounters in a day. 4 would be smarter, but after that you are treading on thin ice.

Of course, it doesn't say this is the norm, but just trying to set a pace based on the designers ideas of what a fun game is.

Also it does fail in reminding people outside of the simple math, that there should be time to regain these resources including things which require more than sleep.

So even 4 encounters per day would be too much as a max, and 3 more suitable for both rest and recovering spent consumables.

It in a way does force an ideal of playstyle onto you with the design of creatures based around this EL as built around the number of encounters.

It neglects that smarter play could net much less loss of expendable resources such as consumables.

Whether you believe it to be right, iit was designed with an intended playstyle in mind, which i think is what is the biggest thing said.

2¢