How many consequtive encounters without short rest to tax party to the limit?

[Pinjata]

As a DM I'm kind of scared to face my players with too strong a group of opponents, so they steamroll most encounters, then rest. Still, as I saw in DMG, party should be able to handle seven medium or hard encounters per day. Thus I'm preparing an encounter that should stress my party as predicted by DMG. They are four of them, going against lizardfolk, lizardfolk warriors (i'm taking bugbear stats for this) and some lizardfolk chiefs (bugbear warchief stats).

They are to find lizardfolk outpost in the swamp, engage it and kill enough of enemies for them to disband and flee. Sort of lizardfolk human-waves tactics. What I'd like to know is how many hard encounters (900 xp each) should I face them with in order to make them burn throught all of their resources? No short rests inbetween. Once Lizardfolk are alerted, they start piling up under smart leadership of lizardfolk warriors and chiefs.

thanks

[MaxWilson]

If you really want to terrify players, keep it random. Send out some kind of alert (loud drums through the jungle?), and as long as those drums are going, there's a 1 in 3 chance every 5 minutes of a random encounter. Make each random encounter pretty easy (e.g. a search party of 1d4 lizardmen and 1d3 giant poisonous snakes), and roll all the dice right in front of them.

Instead of trying to control exactly how many encounters they have before the finale, let them control it. Draw a map of the village, and give them a chance to end the situation by e.g. taking out the drums, or killing the village headman. But they don't know exactly where he is--he could be in buildings A, B, C or D, and they have to pick one, kick down the door, and hope they got the right one.

If you do it this way, there is a chance the players will skip right to the headman and have an adventure which is "too easy" by your expectations--but that is okay! The players will feel awesome for guessing right. And there is a chance they will guess wrong several times in a row and wind up fighting the headman when they are drained of resources, and maybe they will lose and get captured. If so, that is also a consequence of their choices, and that's okay too.

D&D is a game about getting to make decisions that matter.

[DireSickFish]

How many players? What level is the party? Classes? If it's a bunch of short rest reliant classes they can't handle a lot, if it's long rest classes they can handle almost a full days worth.

And Kobold Fight Club can help you with the math on each wave. Found here: http://kobold.club/fight

Edit: I'm guessing if a Hard encounter is 900 xp then they are 4 level 3 players?

If so 4 Lizardfolk is an 800xp Medium Challenge.

[Slipperychicken]

Depends on the encounters. If the party can autoattack the encounter to death, it won't consume as much. If it's a ludicrous amount of fighting, then they might be done after one or two.

It also depends on the players. Some players aren't very interested in conservation (or may be unaware of the issue), so they might blow their load on the first two encounters. On the other hand, some are a lot more conscious about conserving their dailies and short-rest powers, so they might not use as much.

[MaxWilson]

As a DM I'm kind of scared to face my players with too strong a group of opponents, so they steamroll most encounters, then rest. Still, as I saw in DMG, party should be able to handle seven medium or hard encounters per day.

BTW, if you do the math using the DMG tables, you'll see that the DMG doesn't actually recommend using that many Hard encounters per day. If the previous poster is correct and you have four 3rd level PCs, your daily adventuring day XP budget is 4 * 1200 XP = 4800 XP. So if you were using 800 XP Medium encounters (4 Lizardfolk), you'd only get six of them before hitting the cap where the DMG predicts PCs will need to take a break. The only way to hit eight would be to use eight barely-Medium 600 XP encounters (3 Lizardfolk).

In other words, it's possible you might already be following DMG recommendations without realizing it. How tough are the fights you're using already?

[DireSickFish]

BTW, if you do the math using the DMG tables, you'll see that the DMG doesn't actually recommend using that many Hard encounters per day. If the previous poster is correct and you have four 3rd level PCs, your daily adventuring day XP budget is 4 * 1200 XP = 4800 XP. So if you were using 800 XP Medium encounters (4 Lizardfolk), you'd only get six of them before hitting the cap where the DMG predicts PCs will need to take a break. The only way to hit eight would be to use eight barely-Medium 600 XP encounters (3 Lizardfolk).

In other words, it's possible you might already be following DMG recommendations without realizing it. How tough are the fights you're using already?

Thank you for giving the 4800XP daily. I'm away from book and couldn't find a table for it online. In the OP's encounter I'd recommend having a daily encounter under the DMG recommended as he plans on having no short rests and I find my party usually needs 1 and if the rolls go bad need a second one to make it through the day. The DMG assume 2 short rests in an "adventuring day".

[Pinjata]

. How tough are the fights you're using already?
In current fights they deal with 3-5 before taking a short rest and still having some stuff. Party is lvl 3 and has wizard, ranger, bard and rogue.

[MaxWilson]

In current fights they deal with 3-5 before taking a short rest and still having some stuff. Party is lvl 3 and has wizard, ranger, bard and rogue.

It sounds like you're already following DM guidelines, maybe exceeding them. (Not that that's a bad thing--the DMG guidelines are pretty easy.)

Your players may already be playing on Hard mode from what you describe.

[DireSickFish]

In current fights they deal with 3-5 before taking a short rest and still having some stuff. Party is lvl 3 and has wizard, ranger, bard and rogue.

3 Lizardfolk (300xp)600XP adjusted
3 Lizardfolk & 1 Lizardfolk Warrior (500xp)1000XP adjusted
2 Lizardfolk & 2 Lizardfolk Warrior (600xp)1200XP adjusted
1 Lizardfolk Chief & 1 Lizardfolk Warrior (900xp)1350XP adjusted

This leads to 4150 xp worth of encounters for the day which is under the 4800. It scales up as each group becomes more difficult. Although the second to last group might end up giving the party a harder time than the Chief. With no short rests to finish this they should have to use some consumables.

If this looks to hard you can shave down the difficulty by going

3 Lizardfolk (300xp)600XP adjusted
4 Lizardfolk (400xp)800XP adjusted
3 Lizardfolk & 1 Lizardfolk Warrior (500xp)1000XP adjusted
1 Lizardfolk Chief & 1 Lizardfolk Warrior (900xp)1350XP adjusted

This gives you 3750 xp for the day. Much more doable with no short rests. This also gives you the option of throwing another 3 Lizardfolk group before they face the Chief if they're steamrolling. I used the aforementioned Kobold Fight club to get these values.

Edit: Daily xp for a party of 3 lvl4 PCs is 4800, mine is lower to account for no short rests.