Quote Originally Posted by Elkad View Post
Is it possible they'd just like some non-combat encounters?

Or maybe even just more RP time?

6 encounters in a session seems a very fast pace, unless your sessions are 12 hours long. My sessions are a bit on the short side (3 hours of actual play, plus time spent on greetings, breaks, pizza ordering, etc), but actually completing 2 entire combat encounters in a single session is pretty rare for us once we get past 5th level or so.
I wish. I actually would prefer a generally less combat intensive game, but I have never had the pleasure of running for a group where the "kick in the door" style was not the preferred method of play.

Not that I actually dislike combat mind you, I would just prefer a game with more of a focus on social encounters and downtime activities.

Quote Originally Posted by ngilop View Post
I am not sure if you run a too difficult game.. but I feel your obsessive need to finish the day at 80% resources used for the players probably makes the game feel un-rewarding for them.
You might be reading a bit too much into it.

This is just the balance point I shoot for when designing adventures, and am practiced enough at doing so that the average adventuring day comes pretty close to that, but there are a lot of individual fluctuations on any given adventuring day, I don't quite see how you get "obsessive need" from that.

I am curious though, about why it might feel unrewarding. For me, rewards come from XP, treasure, and social recognition, and I don't see how resource expenditures really factor into it.



Quote Originally Posted by Quertus View Post
Point is, if you are very successful at aiming for "80% resources consumed" difficulty, as you claim, then you are necessarily mashing the encounters (or encounter days) very samey, from a difficulty PoV.

Whereas, if you look at my encounters, they are not nearly so well balanced. Some days, the party uses almost no resources; other days, they burn through over 100% (ie, they supplement resources with consumables, they retreat, or they TPK).

To take an earlier suggestion and expand on it, the characters can really feel like they've grown if they go back through the Goblin Caves - which used to consume 80% of their resources per visit - and come out with over 50% resources remaining.

The existence of variations from day to day - which your player(s) complained was absent (granted, for likely munchkin reasons) - help to differentiate different parts of the campaign in the minds & memories of the players.

Similarly, the difference in difficulty in dealing with recurring foes (which I still haven't gotten a good answer regarding how often your players are facing familiar encounters - especially with what were once "gotcha" monsters) helps demonstrate how the PCs have grown.
Well, in my most recent game I was running a semi sandbox, and so the players had the option of choosing to go to a dungeon that was balanced for higher or lower level characters, so they could do that.

But as a general rule, my players would run riot if I threw a mission at them where the expected difficulty with significantly higher than normal (or where the difficulty and corresponding rewards were lower level), they are obsessed with balance and fairness and frequently accuse me of running dungeons that are "too hard" as is.

Also, please, for the love of all the is holy, don't bring the "G-word" into this thread.