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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5685357" data-attributes="member: 996">You don't have to get all elaborate to handle a single-encounter day.  You do have to consider how the relative value of resources changes, and you have to consider your party make-up, and your player's styles.First, what changes:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Healing Surges don't really matter - the players won't be able to spend 'em all before they die.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Surge /triggers/ do.  Non-surge healing, normally very valuable, is not particularly better than triggering a surge.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Encounters are Dailies and Dailies are Encounters.  You get to use Encounters /once/.  You get to use Dailies /once/.  Monsters are already built this way, they typically exist for only one encounter, anyway.  If your style leans heavily towards single-encounter days, expect PCs to lean towards Daily utilities over encounter ones.  PCs (like certain Essentials subclasses) who lack dailies or who horde them will underperform, perhaps radically.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">'Until the end of the Encounter' is forever.  Powers - PC or item or monster - that last 'until the end of the encounter' might as well be always-on.  They become much more valuable. </li> </ol>Second, that doesn't really matter (much).  PCs still get a mix of dailies and encounters - they can't trade in encounters for dailies (except utilities, assuming dailies are available at a given class/level).  PCs still have more surges than triggers.  PCs still have to worry that there might be a second encounter.  All you really have to do is up the challenge enough that it's tough, even with dailies flying around like crazy.  You don't have to compress a days worth of challenges into a single encounter to do that.  You don't absolutely have to use waves (though it can be a fine aproach, keeping things from feeling too grindy and keeping the early rounds from being too lethal).  IMX with this, a party can certainly handle double it's usual experience budget (which is comparable to level+4).  Breaking it into waves allows the party to handle more.  Giving the enemy any terrain or tactical advantages makes it much harder. (Lair Assault, for instance, is a level+5 encounter, in waves, with very nasty terrain.)<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Surges are generally thought  of as resources - you really can't think of them that way in a single-encounter day.  Surge-triggers are resources.  Encounters & Dailies are aproximately equivalent resources.  Hit points are resources.  Aside from that, yes, you can make a very challenging, resource-depleting, single-encounter day. </li> </ol>No worries, there.  However much you tap them out in a single encounter, they'll be OK after a short rest.  Not 100%, but back to full hps, encounters re-charged, and able to handle modest (at level) challenges.</blockquote>

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