The problem is, to use the feat, the cleric HAS to take 2 short rests in a row (minimum). Otherwise, he begins the next encounter with no healing powers, clearly not an acceptable situation if fighting is expected.
4E basically only gives healing powers for use in combat. Noncombat, short rest healing is assumed to handle things. Not very surprisingly, the designers have found that this is not how people play; they want to continue to use healing powers out of combat, like you did in all earlier editions. So the implement the option to do so.
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[this feat] requires a series of short rests to work, which to me breaks one of the implied rules of 4E; you always take one (and only one) short rest between encounters.
Thank you for clearly expressing the problem.
I though short rests was to be the time between encounters. A time when you don't adventure, don't use up resources, don't track time on a round-by-round basis.
Essentially, short rests carried the promise of no book-keeping. Simply use up healing surges to get to full health and get on with the adventuring.
It looks like an increasingly more difficult job for me as the DM to keep it that way if even the designers have abandoned this great idea.
If you look at it that way it may sound silly. But there is another way to look at this. If the players are more wounded then a single short rest is not going to be sufficient to bring them to full health again.
If you are more wounded than what a short rest can give you, that means only one thing: you're out of healing surges.
But I know that isn't what you're thinking of. You're thinking a short rest provides a single maximized use out of a healing power, which then means you need another short rest before you can use that power again.
But you're thinking in terms of powers, rounds and encounters.
To me, short rests promised to do away with all of that.
The definition was simple: after one short rest, you will be as rested as you can be without taking an extended rest.
In other words, taking more than one short rest should not give any additional benefits whatsoever. This simple ideal would have been beautiful - shame the designers backed away, and so soon...