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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7008320" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my play experience, this is an extreme underestimate, especially at paragon tier and above.I'm also not sure why you are suggesting that a player must spend a HS to recover encounter powers. In my experience, losing healing surges via environmental factors, in skill challenges, etc can already be fairly brutal on the non-defender/low CON PCs. But in those circumstances the players, at least in principle, have the capacity to spend resources to distribute the burden unequally (eg the fighter gives the mage an extra share of food and starves; or carries the mage and so loses two HS to exhaustion while the mage loses none; etc).Maybe I'm just confused about the starting point: to me, an "encounter" in 4e is the action that occurs between two rests. How that action is divided up within the (imaginary) time of the gameworld is secondary, except that - as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] points out, and as I think I may have mentioned upthread - a series of fights against one opponent at at time is easier than a single fight against all of them at once.Consider the following 3 encounter set-ups:(A) 6 level 6 creatures, which makes for a 7th level encounter for 5 PCs (6*250 = 1500). (B) 2 6th level creature, which makes makes for a 1st  level encounter for 5 PCs (2*250 = 500). (C) Three "waves" of 2 6th level creatures between rests.(C), which is three lots of (B), is - in encounter budget terms - no different from (A); although it will actually be easier for the players because they don't have to fight all 8 all at once.Before introducing a lot of house rules, I would suggest experimenting with variations on (C) to get a sense of what sort of mixing and matching works, what sort of pacing works, etc. And instead of reworking everything for bounded accuracy, you can sub in minions (eg one (C) encounter is a actually a 5th level standard with 6 5th level minions - say, a leader and 6 followers).I've got nothing against house ruling, but it just seems that for this particular issue there might be an easier pathway readily available.As to how you ensure that the PCs don't rest between "waves" - make your short rest time longer; make the requirements for a short rest stricter (eg can't do it while heart's are racing in the dungeon); or something of that sort. Similar to how many 4e GMs rule that extended rests can only be taken in a Rivendell-style "haven", or some similarly salubrious location.</blockquote>

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