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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeph" data-source="post: 4198695" data-attributes="member: 6738">So, conventional wisdom has it that it's a good idea to pen up with your encounter powers. This makes sense: eliminate a couple enemies with focused, massive fire right away, and you'll be taking hits from a smaller number of sources for the rest of the fight. In general, it seems to be a good idea. However, Morrus' actual play report made me notice something...If you're facing off against a tougher enemy that's highly unlikely to lose half its hit points in one round of assault from the PCs, and that enemy has a power that makes it more dangerous when bloodied (for instance, it deals +5 damage on its attacks or gains access to a nasty area attack or something), you want to hold off on using your encounter powers. The reason being: a standard 4e enemy takes, what, four hits from a basic attack to take out? So a solo monster should take somewhere around 20 hits. Assuming attacks have a 50% hit rate, and encounter powers do about double the damage of at will powers, and you have five PCs attacking...If everyone opens up with encounter powers, that's 5 hits. Two more rounds of attacking with at-wills is another 5 hits, and the monster is bloodied. Four more rounds of at-wills finishes it off. So that's three rounds facing the unbloodied baddie, and four rounds facing the scary bloodied one.If you spend four rounds using at-wills until the enemy is bloodied, then use your encounters, then mop up with at-wills, that's four rounds facing the unbloodied enemy and three facing the scary bloodied enemy.One fewer rounds of scariness!Thoughts on other situations where the power use pattern that a group falls into might need to be adjusted? Using a bunch of different sorts of encounters, some where it's best to open up with limited use powers, some where you should space them out, and some where you should save them for the finishing blow, seems like it would add another dimension to a game's strategy and tactics.</blockquote>

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