Thanks a lot for the quick replies.
I think you guys nailed it: We're very far from 6-8 encounters in between rests. It's usually more like 1-2 :/
I lack the experience to wear the characters down and force them to develop strategies to save their strengths.
On the other hand, when I think about it, they also lack that experience: I almost lost the whole group in the cult's secret temple, when they just explored it in one go without ever resting. The last encounter would have been deadly hadn't I decided the creatures were young and therefore naive in their strategy...
Now to address an advice you gave me: I have a tool on a French D&D website to simulate encounters so I use that to evaluate them. I suppose there's just not enough fights all in all, except for that secret temple scenario but in any case we're really not used to play dungeon crawling style.
In our last game I just got caught off guard when the players ran into 3 NPCs and half a dozen soldiers: the damned sorcerer (or whatever it's called in English... not the one with a pact or a book, the one with innate magic) vaporized 85% of my strengths in the blink of an eye, with a fireball :'(
I realized I found it hard to evaluate the strengths of the NPCs because they don't fit in my webtool to simulate encounters...
Ah well, I suppose I have a long way to go to learn how to be a good DM.
Thanks again for the help and tips.
Cheers !
t.
edit: since we're not used to play multiple battles in a row, it may actually help and fit our gaming style if we change the resting rules as you suggested. I need to ponder the options and maybe discuss them with my players. We'll see. Kudos