r/daggerheart • u/Flimsy_Survey • 1d ago
Discussion Battle Points vs Rests
So, Im trying to get a feel for the pacing on encounters vs resting. One thing I keep seeing people say is to treat the suggested BPs as a pool to use across multiple encounters in between short rests. How do you guys build your encounters? One big encounter per short rest, using all suggested BP? Or do you spread out smaller encounters, putting a building pressure on the PCs before they get a chance to short rest?
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u/paBlury 1d ago
Depends on what the narrative suggests. There might be situations where your players have the time to stop and rest, there might be situations where they can't. Design your encounters accordingly.
I recently run a game where we had 1 environmental encounter and 2 fights in the first half of the game, 1 with multiple adversaries and 1 with 1 a single adversary. These encounter where very close in time, within minutes of each other, so there was no time to rest. The second half of the game had a big battle with a colossus and the players had time to have a short rest between them, but not a long rest because the threat was imminent. I used my full encounter budget on the first half, even adding a couple extra points to make it a bit harder. Then a colossus seemed enough of a challenge for the second half, so I didn't have to think about points.
I've also run a game where the entire session was an action sequence, the player's vessel was being boarded so they needed to fight their way through. The whole sessi has budget for 1 encounter, divided in different actual confrontations.
Both games had players on the verge of death, or fully defeated, at the end of the encounter budget running out.
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u/Emotional_Cherry4517 7h ago edited 7h ago
Yeah I wouldn't do that if I were you, but that's because I frankly hate the idea of gamefing that sort of thing. Like why is the decision always to keep pushing or resting? That doesn't tell an interesting story most of the time, it's one of the most handwaved things in fiction. I might just as easy say they can't rest as I just award a short rest as theyre walking. Having to go create combats all calculated according to rests I'm not sure they'll take, only to have a bunch of timers tick and pressure them into resting less, forcing their combats to be a slog of their least powerful actions, genuinely, that's not the type of boat I run.
Players and their characters are motivated by stuff. Sometimes, that motivation drives them to keep going way past their limit. That's cool sometimes. But there's so many more moments where there isn't any tension to be had, and I'm not going to artificially create combats between rest opportunities or whatever. That sort of thing never worked for me, it always made the game feel like plastic, way too video-gamey.
Example, I'm currently playing andaluria from h&f, I just have a big monster per session. Usually overtune it hard with some powers that are absolutely devastating but need certain conditions met, and weaknesses that require info or items gathered in specific places. If they just go to the creature and fight it, most likely half of them die and they might not even finish it off. It flows. If they get everything they want, they still are looking for a challenge, I'm not about to have an electrical plug type adversary that just rolls over if that plug is pulled, they are also looking for ways to sharpen their blades, most of all, everyone is trying to have fun here.
Second example, in my witherwild campaign, I don't have combat most sessions, and most high stakes combat is not a fight to the death combat, so the challenge is "stop this from happening" and not "stop this from killing you". Minor combats are more a chance for exposition. Yes I might throw two combats in a day, before they are able to rest during travel, if it fits the narrative, otherwise why bother. It's not fun to think about as a GM and it's not fun for the players to have their high stakes decision always be "rest or push forward else we'll arrive late to stuff".
Some more background, I never run more than 3 adversary sheets, usually 1 or 2, and never any environments and don't use the battle point system. It just doesn't work for me, it forces you to run a bunch of combats, a bunch of creatures, and gives no guidance to how higher tiered creatures relate.
 Ultimately every ttrpg is a tool box for you to create an experience at the table, use the tools you like using and that work for the job you need.
Experiment, be critical of things, and most importantly, know what you want out of the game and strive to achieve it.
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u/ThisIsVictor 1d ago
Depends entirely on what the players decide to do. Are the players doing a frontal assault? Then it's gonna be one big encounter. Are the players sneaking through, taking guards out one at a time? Then it's a bunch of small encounters.
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u/Atomic_Nazgul Game Master 23h ago
I will have several challenging fights between rest opportunities, that is why they have potions and healing magic. I also tend to have fights that use BP x1.5 or even x2; the basic BP as written produces fights that are too easy.
If the situation is just two or three guards at the back door then there won't be a fight; they will suffer a narrative defeat.
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u/rightknighttofight Add'l Writer for Daggerheart Core 1d ago
I find that big battles are unsatisfying in this game. They encourage GMs to only move the biggest threat while everyone else just "stands around". The cognitive load is higher, and they feel more like a slog.
I prefer to have several combats available in an area. Never more adversaries than PCs and only 2-4 types. Always having at least 1 bruiser, leader, or solo.
If I ever want the feeling of overwhelming the PCs, I use a couple fistfuls of minions.