Friday, July 24, 2026
The Resting Game
In Dungeons & Dragons, spellcasters have a certain number of spells (based on their level) "per day". They recover their spells when they take a long rest. The result of that is that a group of adventurers is strongest right after a rest, when they have everything, and are weakest just before the next rest, when they have spent most of their spells and other "daily" abilities. Clever players thus ignore the implied day / night cycle and rest frequently. As many other RPG and CRPG systems have been heavily influenced by D&D, this recovering spells and powers by resting is a feature in many of these games.
In Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous I just finished Act 2, after about 40 hours in the game. And the last 10+ hours of Act 2 are spent at a large event, called the Siege of Drezen. While in most of the game you can usually rest as much as you want (there is a section with time pressure at the start of Act 1), in Drezen a different rule applies: You need to find a location of crusader supplies to rest, and resting consumes those supplies. That forces the player to make do longer between rests, which is an interesting twist.
Having said that, how much you want to rest depends a lot on your party composition. If you have mostly non-magical melee and ranged characters, maybe supported by a healer/buffer or two, you don't consume a lot of spells in each combat. With the help of alternative healing methods, like potions, you can last very long without needing a rest. My current Wrath of the Righteous party has several spellcasters. My main is a crusader, a hybrid melee / healer, and I have both a witch and a wizard in my group. So I used nearly all the crusader supplies I found during my Siege of Drezen. And the limitation forced me to watch my "daily" powers and not waste them, as a wizard throwing fireballs and a wizard ineffectively shooting a crossbow from behind are not the same power level.
I will now take a break from the main campaign of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, but only to play the separate DLC stories Through the Ashes and Lord of Nothing. In an unusual design decision, it isn't the main campaign which affects the DLCs, but the other way around. I already "missed" some minor content in Act 1 and 2 because it would have appeared after playing Through the Ashes. So I want to play the DLCs now, so I don't miss whatever else they add to the main story.
And as far as I know before starting, especially Through the Ashes is a story in which your group is more resource constrained than in the main story. So it will be interesting to see how resting is handled there. What are the restrictions put into place to prevent the player from resting after every fight?
