Sylrae said:
It doesn't matter if theyre house rules or published rules. If they are not well defined, and the player cant judge what the outcome of trying an action/strategy is in their mind because you have to make a bunch of judgement calls, people will get peeved over it eventually.
There are judgement calls involving creatures knocked out, sleeping or that have surrendered [as per Intimidate], or other situations where they are effectively "out of the fight" but the encounter is still going.
At the same time, there are obvious uses that shouldn't be hard for a player and DM to agree on. You can't carry around a captured for and force them to fight your for blood sport AND consider them to be a credible threat. If a player is deliberately trying to "create" a bag of rats to use with the power ... tell them it doesn't work. Talk to players about the progression they plan to take, and if they want to take that power, go over what you aren't going to allow to be done.
In general ... a PC should not be the one saying "we are going into an encounter, roll for initiative." Now, a player can try to start a fight ... set up an ambush, or get into an argument at a bar, etc. However a DM has to decide that the other party actually wants to fight back. If the party attacks people that don't fight back [or who try to escape etc] ... it would be quite hard for the players to argue that they are fighting against a credible threat if the credible threat isn't fighting back.
If the players want to be an "evil" paladin ... they may need to change the power for flavor purposes ... a good or unalligned paladin COULD make a 'pre-emptive' attack against a threat ...
In general ... a DM that has players attempting to get "free infinite healing" out of the power, has to sit down with his players about the fact that they are attempting to pull a fast one on him and "break" the game.
Outside of the obvious abuse ... giving the opponent the ability to heal without a surge with that ability once in every encounter isn't that bad ... that is what the power is for. So, it becomes an issue of the DM deciding whether the
encounter is a credible threat. Unless they deliberately created encounters that are worthless XP wise [or that are intended for the players to realize that the monsters aren't fighting back or trying to hurt them and that sets up some story "moment"] ... odds are the encounters the DM "initiates" will be credible threats. If the PCs decide to go looking for a fight, it becomes a bit harrier ... but the DM can strongly hint through storytelling about the NPCs to indicate whether the PCs are getting into a fight, or just bullying some people that are of little or no consequence.
EDIT:
Quick summary on the Sunburst issue:
There is no rule saying that a player cannot use it every 5 minutes. Without Rule Zero'ing that rule, it can still be justified:
There is NO rule saying that a DM cannot simply have another encounter start during the period where the Cleric is spamming Sunburst and short resting over and over again.
At level 27 ... there are some high level opponent's going after the PCs ... those NPCs will have access to scrying rituals and similar tricks that would let them spy on the PCs ... at that tier, it is perfectly justified in your villains being at least partially aware of the PCs tactics.
Similarly ... you can up the danger WITHIN enounters ... forcing the healing surges to be used then. In general, because of the limited ammount of uses for healing surges WITHIN an encounter ... most encounters assume the players start with full HP, but can only be healed so much. While the number of healing surges is an attrition mechanic that will eventually force the players to take an extended rest [in addition to getting back your daily powers] ... it isn't like 3.5 where the idea was that an encounter is balanced against attritition that X encounters would use up the party's resources, so the last fight would be potentially deadly if they didn't do well over time. In a 4e fight, you can run out of healing IN an encounter, and still have healing surges left over ... but without ways to trigger them, you can't use them [ditto with encounter powers]. It doesn't matter that they can start each fight at full health without spending surges outside of combat ... they still have to survive the combat, and that will be when they spend most of their surges.
The "DM's aren't monkeys" thing doesn't mean "this has to be house ruled" ... it works per RAW ... but so does going back to town after every encounter and waiting 24 hours to go back out fresh the next day. At 27th level, while battling in the Astral Sea against demon lords going after gods and reality hanging in the balance ... if the players expect their enemies to just leave them alone while they have their half hour to hour long rest to allow them to be fully healed for their fight ... well, there is nothing in the RAW that says "A DM shall not interupt a player rest". Heck ... the whole concept of having watches is based on that principle. The "random encounter breaking up a sleep" is a D&D staple. Having an hour long rest is the perfect time for players to get attacked ... or for the enemies to get in position are be "ready" for the players ... they can be preparing their forces during that time.
Players will act as if they have an unlimited time between encounters if you let them. The "infinite healing between fights" is very similar to the old 5-minute adventure day. If a DM is going to make it easy on his players he can not just allow it but end up making the rules MORE lineient [you don't actually waste 24 hours, you do JUST do the 8 hour rest and get all your stuff back, even if you woke up not that long ago ... or in this case, they don't actually count out the time, they just have an arbitrary time for the rest, and treat all the characters as having full HP going into the next fight].
If a DM wants to run it that way they can. If a DM doesn't want to run it that way, they do not need to house rule anything ... they can simply make it clear to the players that they can't just sit around for an hour after every encounter.
They got hundreds of powers right, so I'm willing to forgive them several blunders and mistakes. In fact, it's due to those other blunders and mistakes that I'm willing to bet that Sunburst is unintentional too.
