Same here, I’m always debating with myself:
“Should I use this? Should I save it for later? I’ll save it.”
Then I never use it…
Use it the first time it’s needed. Always use it. As a DM I often expect people to use their stuff. Besides, having low resources makes for interesting decisions. And the DM will know if you’re all out of resources anyways.
Disagree. If the party just uses Fly to get over the cliff instead of coming up with an interesting solution, that’s kind of boring. It also makes it harder for non-casters to shine.
Second, I don’t really like when the world scales with the party. The DM changing the world because the wizard blew all his slots stupidly feels bad. Why even have the choice of spending resources over a long period if everything is just going to scale with us?
Also it kind of sucks when you do get to the big boss and the wizard is tapped out because he’s been real loose with his slots
Barely making it through is more fun than casually strolling through
As a DM I usually make things to utilize my parties resources to the fullest so when they decide to hoard abilities and not use them it usually makes things harder than it has to be
Today my party will be encountering a creature with an aura of silence (like the spell but a bigger area) which will basically put half the party on survival duty (managing the layout of the encounter) while the other half are on combat duty (as they’re the only ones able to do damage)
It’s going to be rough but some encounters I make primarily focus on the abilities of some party members over others and it shifts about for who that is
Hell a few weeks ago I had an encounter where no one was very effective and it was super intense where a party member jumped in front of another shielding them and keeping them alive for the remainder of the fight even though they knew it would probably put them into death saves (didn’t by 2hp)
Basically what I’m saying is that sometimes the best tool for a power fantasy is having powerless moments, it helps to make the world more alive and encourages out of the box thinking
Barely making it through is more fun than casually strolling through
The way D&D is designed, you’ll very often stroll through the first couple encounters of the day. You have way more resources than you need to handle them, since a medium encounter is only designed to take like 1/6th out of you. The last fight or two in the adventuring day might be extra tense, but you have to do some filler first. I don’t like that. I’d rather have all the conflicts be meaningful.
Now, in 5e you could just run all deadly encounters, but this quickly creates several problems. Short-rest and no-rest classes don’t get to shine, for one thing. Secondly, if you’re doing a lot of long rests you can’t really have time sensitive plots.
You could instead run a different rules system that has the desired feel from the start instead of putting the round peg in the square hole. But as I said elsewhere in the thread, D&D is so mega popular it sucks all the air out of the room. It’s hard to find players for other games. Hard to find community discussion for other games. Plus, if you take someone who’s only ever played D&D and plop them into another kind of game, that’s often a difficult transition.
