The Three Styles of D&D Resource Management

Author: Audere

When playing D&D, you may find yourself thinking:

“Should I spend this spell slot here, or save it?”

“Should I spend my Action Surge here, or save it?” 

“I wish I hadn’t used my sorcery points!”

“I should have used polymorph earlier!”

How much to spend in each encounter need not be a mystery, and regret need not be inevitable. There are many ways to decide how to use your resources. It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

Impact Maximization

An impact maximizer asks themselves: 

• “If I use [x] here now, will I miss a chance to use it in a bigger way later?”
• “Is now the time when [x] will make the biggest splash?”
• “If I don’t use [x] here now, will it go to waste, unused?”

Many players are impact maximizers, especially new players. It’s a natural way of thinking. After all, don’t you want to have an impact? Impress your friends? Feel cool using that big spell, or doing a ton of damage in a round?

Here are a couple examples of impact maximizers and how they play:

• Evan plays Nave, an Oath of Vengeance Paladin. He rolls a critical hit against a skeleton, so naturally he uses Divine Smite! After all, smiting when you crit is how you get the most damage out of your smite slots.
• Kyle plays Elyk, a School of Evocation Wizard. His party comes upon a horde of zombies. They fit neatly into a 20-foot radius sphere, so he smokes them with a fireball! After all, blasting when there are a lot of enemies in an area is how you get the most damage out of your fireballs.
• Elyk’s party comes upon what he imagines is probably the last encounter of the day. He has his 5th level spell slot left, so he makes sure to cast a cone of cold. Leaving the slot unused would be a waste, so why not?

Resource Conservation

A resource conserver asks themselves:

• “Is using [x] necessary to win this encounter?”
• “If I don’t use [x], how much damage do I expect the party to take?”
• “If I don’t use [x], what other resources might that cost the party?”

Resource conservers are often players that have been burned before. A player who learns what it’s like to be helpless as the party falls around them might learn to become a resource conserver. However, anyone who’s concerned with the party’s survival can be one.

Here are a couple of examples of resource conservers and how they might play:

• Sibyl plays Lybis, a Light Domain Cleric. Her party is ambushed and surrounded by a group of hobgoblins, and she’s the only one with a high enough passive Perception to not be surprised. The hobgoblins have no chance of defeating his mid-level party, but if they’re left to act freely they could do a fair bit of damage, and the party is low on hit dice. Lybis’s Channel Divinity comes back on a short rest, so she uses Radiance of the Dawn to kill most of the hobgoblins. Her party cleans up without issue and takes a short rest.
• Snyder plays Redyns, a School of Divination Wizard. His party comes upon a horde of zombies. He considers casting fireball, but he realizes that his party can defeat the zombies simply by staying out of melee while using ranged attacks. It’s a bit of a pain, but after a couple rounds of this it becomes clear to the party that the zombies aren’t a threat and the DM narrates the rest of the encounter.
• Snyder is always on the lookout for opportunities to use his Portents, but they go unused most days. If there’s another way to win, using his trump card would be a waste, so why do it?

Progression Maximization

A progression maximizer asks themselves:

• “How long will this encounter take if I don’t use [x]?”
• “Will using [x] solve the encounter quickly?”
• “Can I afford to use [x] so that the party can move on and level up sooner?”

Progression maximizers tend to be players who are confident that their party can prevail in the end and are eager to see that happen. They want to see more cool things, or fight more cool monsters, or get more magic items, or get access to higher level spells and abilities by leveling up. Progression maximizers tend to have a lot in common with both impact maximizers and resource conservers—they want to keep back enough resources to win in later encounters, but past a certain “safety threshold,” their primary concern is winning encounters quickly. 

Here are a couple examples of progression maximizers and how they might play:

• Victor plays Rotciv, a Battle Master Fighter. His friend, Snyder, plays a Wizard who always has plenty of spell slots, so he’s confident that his party can pull through in a pinch. When an encounter looks like it might take a while, or he thinks her party can short rest soon, he goes ahead and uses his superiority dice and Action Surge to help things along.
• Mary plays Yram, a Tempest Domain Cleric. Her party encounters two powerful elementals, but she knows just the spell for the job. A 5th level banishment ends the encounter in a single action. Clean. Efficient.
• Yram’s party encounters a huge group of bugbears flooding through a choke point. She could cast destructive wave, which would kill most of them instantly, but it’s only the second encounter of the day, and she might need it later. Instead she casts spirit guardians, since the ongoing area of effect damage will kill the bugbears coming through the choke point in only a few rounds.

Most players are a mix of the three types, but it’s likely that some of the questions and examples resonated with you more than others. 

What’s your top priority? Making the biggest contribution? Being prepared for when things go wrong? Or accomplishing the party’s goals quickly?

Do your actions in play line up with your priorities? Do you find yourself spending resources to have a big impact, and then regretting it when you encounter more powerful monsters later? Do you find yourself saving your resources, but feeling bad when they go unused?

All three are equally valid and effective, of course.

Just kidding. Some styles are more effective than others, especially in more difficult games. Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Impact Maximization:

• Feels good.
• Impresses your friends.
• Lets you roll the most dice.
• Can leave you without resources in critical moments.
• Can lead to wasting resources when their apparent impact seems big, but the expenditure isn’t actually necessary.
• Can sometimes cause other players to feel overshadowed.

Resource Conservation:

• Keeps you and your party alive.
• Keeps your options open.
• Lets you rest cast more.
• Takes a lot of thought.
• Can lead to slower encounters.

Progression Maximization:

• Leads to faster level ups.
• Helps prevent combat from becoming a slog.
• Moves the game along.
• Takes a fair amount of thought.
• Doesn’t keep you as ready for an emergency as you could be.

From an optimization perspective, there’s a clear loser here. Impact maximization superficially seems to let you contribute the most, but doesn’t actually maximize your party’s chance of victory. That’s not to say that impact maximization is an invalid way to play, or that your fun is wrong if you’re an impact maximizer. Impact maximization can be tons of fun, especially in low-stakes, less tactical games. We all know the joy of getting off a perfect high-rolled fireball. It’s fine to indulge. D&D is a game, after all.

However, if you’re in a more challenging game, or if you’re interested in optimizing your play, you should strive toward resource conservation. Here at Tabletop Builds, we tend to optimize around a blend of resource conservation and progression maximization. Progression maximization helps keep the game moving, and resource conservation is what best minimizes your party’s chances of losing and maximizes your party’s chances of winning. Good DMs can also make a tactical game more engaging by narrating “cleanup” phases in combat after the party has established overwhelming tactical superiority, instead of playing them out round-by-round.

But isn’t being overly stingy bad for the party?

Yes, this is correct. If you don’t use your resources well, your party might take large amounts of damage or waste other resources. The party’s resources are also a part of resource conservation. Hit points are a resource worth conserving like any other. You can often spend hit points to avoid spending other resources, or vice versa. The crux of the matter is judging which represents the smallest expenditure.

If there is a risk to resource conservation, it is that you might get too focused on certain resources like spell slots, and in holding them back, waste other resources like hit points. But this is not a flaw in resource conservation as a goal, merely a mistake in execution. If you adopt the mindset of resource conservation, then over time, you will grow more skilled at knowing when to cast hypnotic pattern and when to let the Fighter take a few hits.

But what about all those spell slots going to waste?

So long as your party survives the day and accomplishes their objectives, there’s no benefit in having done so using more resources rather than less.

Even if you think that this is the last encounter, there could always be another. If you waste your resources thinking that this is the last encounter and you’re wrong, the party could die. If you act as though there could always be another encounter and are wrong, the party is fine.

Ending the day with unused resources isn’t a waste in any useful sense. Spending more than is necessary to accomplish your goals is the only true waste of resources. If you can internalize this mindset, you will find yourself performing much better in challenging games.

If you play a spellcaster, we suggest that you try to end the day with one-third to one-half of your spell slots remaining. Still, you might have lingering feelings of sadness about them going unused. As mentioned earlier, rest casting can be a great way to translate good resource management into additional defenses for the next day.