Did I miss something

[Saeviomagy]

Then why would they? Rest.

As others have pointed out - not always possible, and often a bit bizarre. But even discounting that, the fact that one PC is down all his surges and the others are just fine tends to indicate one of a few things:

1) The PC who is down all his surges is being extremely reckless.
2) The NPCs are targeting a certain player excessively - there may be a good reason for this, but there may not.
3) The other PCs are being extremely conservative.
4) Something funny is happening.

It's also a suboptimal way to do things - if instead of the paladin using 9+ surges, each party member had spent 2 surges apiece (more or less), then they would be ready to continue on for the day instead of stopping after their first fight.

However, my vote is that number 4 is what occurred - the paladin seems to have used an awful lot of surges for a single fight, and is right on the verge of what is possible (and considerably past what makes a good paladin).

 

[theNater]

Also it's worth noting that if your party fights a second encounter, the paladin is down to his last surge, meaning he will most likely go down early and stay down, leaving the party defenderless, which is a very bad thing.

This brought to mind another point: how many of their daily powers did the party use?

A party that uses all of their daily powers on a single level-appropriate encounter should win without being in danger of dying. If the party consumed one fourth of their total allocation of healing surges and all of their daily powers, the fight was a very tough one. The party may look healthy(by being at full hit points), but a short string of bad luck in a second level-appropriate encounter could destroy them.

Then why would they? Rest.

Whether or not they are able to rest, the fact that they need to rest indicates that they have been in a difficult combat.

 

[Nightson]

Solo doesn't mean that you have to run the monster by itself. Throw in more monsters, environmental hazards, traps, or whatever for a more exciting and challenging encounter.

 

[Evilusion]

Thank for all the replies. As for the question of how many daily's the party went through, well..ummm I forgot to even remember to count. I know the warlock was out, not sure about the rest of the party.

I will have to recheck the paladin's numbers myself. May have done the numbers wrong.

What I was getting at though for a solo monster the black dragon weak compaired to the players as far as damage.

I did manage to surprise them as I rolled a 5 for it breath recharge and they bloodied it in the same round. Of course my dice said no you can not have that and one hit one character per breath weapon.

Once I have recheck the palys numbers I will repost.