Can one PC choose not to take a rest? (Dark Spiral Aura and Rod of Corruption woes.)

So, let me preface this by saying that one of my players is a Level 3 Dark Pact Warlock, in case this is an issue that has come up often.

The player in question has this nifty Dark Spiral Aura ability. The ability, as I understand it, gives him a point to his Aura for every enemy that is reduced to 0 HP while under the effect of his curse. As an immediate interrupt when an enemy hits him, he can deal 1d6 damage per point of his Aura to the enemy that hit him (and it's all-or-nothing, so he has to use all his points at once). Any points remaining when he takes a short or extended rest are wasted.

Well, to complicate this, he has a Rod of Corruption, which, as I understand it, he can at any time choose to forego his pact boon on a particular killed enemy to pass on his curse to all enemies within 5 squares of the killed cursed enemy. This is kinda crazy, but okay, whatever.

So, we're going through a dungeon crawl, and the player in question wants to, after an encounter, choose NOT to take a short rest, because if he does so, he'll lose all of his Dark Spiral Aura points. (His hope is to save them up over several encounters and use a ton of points on the Big Bad Evil Guy.)

Of course this doesn't sit well with me. However, I hate to flat-out tell players something doesn't work unless the rules specifically call it out- so I tell him that we'll give it a try and see how it goes. I of course inform him that if he chooses not to take a short rest, he gains no benefit of doing so (so he won't regain any encounter powers, can't spend healing surges, etc.). However, he's very careful about using his encounter powers, so that's not really a problem, and since we have two leaders (who ARE taking short rests), he doesn't need to use surges, because they can just use their heals on him (and then take another short rest afterwards to get them back).

When we got to the final battle, he ended up dealing the BBEG a big chunk of damage (I think 15d6- it didn't turn the tide of battle, but it was still nothing to be ignored).

I didn't like it one bit from beginning to end, but that's more because I don't like when I feel rules are being abused, even though I really don't feel like anything was ruined because of it. It certainly could have gone very poorly for him- after all, he was essentially voluntarily turning his encounter powers into daily powers, and he willingly accepted any drawbacks of not taking a short rest. But, even still, the idea of choosing not to take a short rest just seemed so gamey and against the Rules As Intended.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? The issues here, really, are threefold: 1. Can you choose not to take a short rest when everyone else is? (The player in question was describing himself as constantly alert, running around the room, doing jumping jacks, etc.) 2. Is the Rod of Corruption broken? I know the main problem in the past was when it was coupled with the Rod of Reaving, but if I'm not mistaken, the Rod of Reaving was nerfed. And 3. Is Dark Spiral Aura broken? I'm sure I've heard of people having problems with it in the past. Is there a general consensus?

Overall, we all had a good time, but I'm seriously considering limiting it in the future. I'd greatly appreciate any input.

I think he can do this, but...

No short rest = no rejuvenation of encounter powers and no spending of healing surges to heal himself up between encounters.

Seems like a fair trade.

Yeah, the rules for taking a short rest imply that it is a choice to take one or not.

I can almost understand trying this if you knew you were going to want to go nova in the *next* combat. But not resting between more than two encounters seems like massively diminished returns to me.

1. I'm not sure if RAW has anything to say about it, as such, if someone doesn't want to take a short rest, it could be allowed. I've had situations where some of the party got to rest, while the rest were busy doing other things. But if anyone finds a loophole to abuse not taking short rests, I'll squash the loophole. And we kind of have a silent agreement on not to abuse the rest/superheal/rest mechanic.

2. Rod of Corruption is nearly standard issue offhand rod for a lot of warlocks I've seen. It's a very strong option. I shy away from it as player and DM because I like the challenge of moving around to get different enemies closest to you to curse them, but it doesn't seem game breaking.

3. Strangest thing... I thought Darkspiral had a cap of 5 points. Why did I think that? Anyway, I haven't seen the power used much outside LFR, and it didn't come off as super powerful in that context. Can't say for sure, how the no-rest method would change this.

Mengu said:

1. I'm not sure if RAW has anything to say about it, as such, if someone doesn't want to take a short rest, it could be allowed. I've had situations where some of the party got to rest, while the rest were busy doing other things. But if anyone finds a loophole to abuse not taking short rests, I'll squash the loophole. And we kind of have a silent agreement on not to abuse the rest/superheal/rest mechanic...

Click to expand...

It's pretty darn hard to abuse as the price for not taking rests is rather high - no encounter powers and no use of healing surges to heal up (the latter might have work-round, but not the former).

Yeah - I wouldn't say "not taking a short rest is against the spirit of the rules".

I'd let the guy do it, give him props for creativity, and wait for him to get bored of muddling through every other encounter with just his At-Wills.

Aside, do your players find the run-of-the-mill encounter too easy? That's how I'd interpret it if my players were forgoing Encounters and healing!

Thanks for the input, guys!

In retrospect, the tactic only worked as well as it did (and it wasn't game-breaking in any capacity) because the two encounters before the BBEG were very minion-heavy, and the group (5 level 3 PCs at the end of Keep on the Shadowfell) were a little higher-level than the adventure was supposed to be for. Also, the way KotSF is written, ALL of the enemies are melee-based, or at least suffer slightly when forced into ranged. As such, the Warlock (who was very careful to always be in the back lines) didn't suffer as much as he could.

As I said before, it could have gone a lot worse for him, and from the sounds of it, that's all of the balancing factor that we need. I'll just keep it going as it is, and with any luck the player will eventually get sick of never being able to use his encounter powers.

It still leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, but I'm sure I'll get over that.

I was rather surprised when I looked this one up to find that this power resets after a short or extended rest and not after the end of the encounter as most such powers do. Then there would be no issue -- all powers with that duration would expire when anyone takes a short rest because of the five minute limit on encounter powers. I wonder if this is one of the items due to get the nerf bat tomorrow?

Mika: probably not; it's something that was noted as an issue the moment the Dark pact came out in previews, and they didn't change it before they went to print.

So what was the warlock doing while the rest of the party took a short rest?