GM Advice: Number of encounters before resting

[5th Earth]

Hello everyone!

I'm in the process of planning a Pathfinder game. This will be my first time GM'ing, and it's my first time with Pathfinder (though I've played D&D 3.5). The Pathfinder books contain a lot of good information for making encounters, and so on, but there is one thing I'm not really sure about.

How much can I put my party through before I give them a chance to heal up, rest and and restore spells, and so on? Obviously this is all pretty dependent on what sorts of encounters I'm using, but assuming everything is roughly party-level CRs, roughly how many encounters can an average party get through without a chance to seriously recuperate?

[Madfellow]

The general assumption is that a full party of adventurers can get through around 4 level-appropriate encounters in a day without dying, because each encounter uses up around 20% of a party's daily resources (primarily spells, but also HP and magic items and stuff like that). A 5th encounter in a single day would likely kill the party.

That said, the party will rest whenever they want to, which will usually be right after a big fight or other dangerous encounter, or whenever the wizard starts running low on spells, or whenever the party starts to run low on health.

[tyckspoon]

2 to arbitrarily large, depending on your players' skills at optimization and their grasp of good D&D tactics. The designed length of a fighting day (not necessarily the same as a length of an adventuring day or an actual sun-up-to-sun-down day, mind) was about four encounters of 'average' difficulty, but CR is no more than a rough gauge at best, and it goes completely out the window when you start dealing with the huge variety of options characters have in 3.5 and are developing with all the sources now available in Pathfinder.

[Frog of War]

As Madfellow said, the party will usually rest when they feel like it. This usually works out fine unless a party goes to one extreme or the other and either starts resting after every encounter or refuses to ever rest. The former is a more likely scenario, especially with newer players. A good solution to a party over-resting is to make things time-sensitive. A solution to a super-party barreling through without resting is built into the game (exhaustion)

[Kol Korran]

I disagree with the "Party will rest when they fee like" concept. That only happens if there is no pressure (mostly time pressure, but there are other methods) on the party. However, I understand the OP's dilemma. Even knowing my group of players, whenever we start a new campaign we usually either change rules, introduce new ones, or a totally new mix of characters' abilities.

My suggestion is this: In the first adventure or two, plan for FEWER "essential" encounters than "needed by the book" for the party to face, ones that actually advance the game. I'd go with 3 equal CR encounters as a very, very rough scale. perhaps one of them 1 CR more. If the struggles through this with difficulty, then you're ok, if they skim it easily, you can add "reserve encounters" if you feel like it. (Only if you need to make the place "tough" or the players want more challenge. Nothing wrong with having it a bit easy once in awhile)

In a few sessions you will have a much better understanding of what YOUR party in YOUR game can deal with, and can plan much better.

Also, two more dirty tricks that can quickly increase or decrease the power of an encounter: reinforcements arrive, or some troops run away to call for help. And- tactics. plan a place that might be used tactfully to a great advantage by the opponents, or used quite badly by them. these can make encounters, and players love to face different combat savvy of enemies.

At least my opinion, but except for rare cases- DON'T let the party just rest whenever they want. Pressure and other motivation are your friends...

[nedz]

It depends upon how hard the encounters are.
If they are really trivial, then there is no limit.
If they are really hard, then probably one.
It really all comes down to resource usage: spells, HP, etc.
This also depends upon how efficient your players are. i.e. If the wizard keeps blowing 3 spells on an encounter where they are not required then he may be reduced to plinking away with a crossbow, which is neither fun nor useful.

[valadil]

It varies. You need to keep the group on their toes. Sometimes they can have a rest between every fight. Sometimes the challenge will be doing 10 fights in a row.

[DrBurr]

How ever many encounters I can get into a session, typically when it gets past midnight they'll have cleared 2 or 3 encounters and I'll pull out the big story one after which they usually will get to an Inn or find a cave to sleep in.

Really I find its just a matter of figuring out a group's pacing

[5th Earth]

Thanks for all the advice! General consensus seems to be "about 2-4, pending the infinite variations available to the GM and the unpredictable dynamics of the party itself". Which is as good an answer as I was expecting to get--I know all bets are off once the dice hit the table.

My main concern was just trying to set things up so that, hopefully, the party wouldn't need to spend a night sleeping in the middle of a zombie-infested house or something.

[BowStreetRunner]

Keep in mind that the pace of encounters can actually be a tool the DM uses to help set the tone of the adventure.

In Battlestar Galactica season 1, the episode titled "33" the cylons attacked every 33 minutes and this created a powerfully tense period for the heroes. If done right - providing the party with some 'red shirt' NPCs at the beginning of a long series of encounters, making sure the design the encounters to be winnable even with significant drain of resources, possibly providing a source of partial replenishment of supplies by looting the enemy corpses, etc. - a series of encounters like this can help to build up a lot of tension in the story.

On the other hand, you can do the reverse - give the party a few weeks with no encounters to help the players to let their guard down a bit - and due to the difference between real time and in-game time, accomplish it within a single session.

Sometimes needing to spend a night sleeping in the middle of a zombie-infested house is just what the campaign needs to set the right tone. Just beware that if you are breaking the 2-4 encounter pattern, you need to make sure to take into account the rate of resource depletion so that you do not unintentionally kill off the party.

[killem2]

Depending on the dungeon, how much they have compelted, if the monsters through out it are more like bugs, animals, swarms, rather than tribe like goblins in a stronghold, generally if you clean out humanoids they are gone, but vermin, or even undead like ghosts, you just have no clear way of knowing if they are truly gone.

Then i roll random for every hour they would be asleep. with a small % of getting into trouble.

If there is no threat, I'll let them rest.

[nedz]

I've never worried about this. If the party are pooped then they will rest up when they want to. Its their call.

Don't forget to hit them with a few encounters in the night too, they do set watches don't they ? Well they will quickly learn to. Bear in mind that the party is at a slight disadvantage when half of them are asleep, best to go for the atmospheric noises in the night kind of thing rather than have something charge the guards.