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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 4739825" data-attributes="member: 2011">I think you have this off a little.Because you make every encounter tough, by definition you are limiting the number of encounters until the endgame.Because you make every encounter tough, an even tougher encounter at the end might be too tough, or at least in the eyes of your players low on surges.The concept of making every encounter tough in order to challenge players and avoid the easy grind is a flawed concept. It is just as much a grind to face tough encounter, tough encounter, tough encounter as it is to face: n, n, n+1, and n+3.Both are grinds. You are just finding out one of the consequences of grinding your way.There is nothing wrong with narrowing the bandwidth. Many n+1 and n+2 encounters instead of a wide diversity. There is a problem with going in either direction, mostly n encounters, or mostly n+3 encounters (or even mostly n+2 encounters before an n+3 encounter). The game was not really designed for those and either one will be both grindy and will expose other flaws in the game system as you are finding.The multiple n encounters are grindy by being repetitive and boring and not a challenge. The multiple n+2/n+3 encounters are grindy because they force lengthy many round encounters and a single mistake on the part of the players can be extremely costly, especially in resources such as healing surges or daily heals.You've avoided the former one and walked straight into the latter one.And other people are not experiencing your issue because they have not done what you have done, or at least to the degree that you appear to have done it.And finally, your world appears to be set in stone. If the players take an extended rest, the BBEG is still there waiting for them just as he was. As DM, you should have him attack in the middle of the extended rest, or set up a bunch of traps, or call for reinforcements, or kill the hostages, or attack the town, or simply move on.If the PCs do not press forward, the BBEG should change the scenario, making it unlikely that the PCs succeed as strongly as they would have. The BBEG paid another tribe part of the treasure that the PCs would have gotten in order to get reinforcements. The BBEG simply left the area and took those magical items with him.The way to incentivize players is not to necessarily change the rules. It's to supply them with information that gives them a choice. Rest and lose out, or don't rest and press on and possibly be heroes.Your healing surges per encounter solution is actually removing the choice from the players. It really sounds like you are a bit of a controlling DM here. The players are not playing the game the way you want it to be played.That's because you as DM are forcing the issue by throwing so many tough encounters at them. Of course they are going to react as they are reacting. You want to do the tough encounters AND have them react in an atypical fashion.</blockquote>

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