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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ffy" data-source="post: 5479168" data-attributes="member: 6667124">usually we dont necessarily take the short rest = 5 minutes rule as it is written. i am more partial to the prospect of a little bit of downtime being enough for the heroes to catch a breath. but if the do something that is straining during the downtime they wont have a chance to catch a breath - for example looting corpses and getting into the next room in a dungeon is enough time for our heroes to have taken a short rest, while running from enemies at one castle gate to another to fight the enemies breaching through there is straining and will not give them the time to catch a breath.when i put my players through an arena fighting championship that was essentially a test of their endurance and showmanship, we went through something like 7 or 8 encounters (lvl-1 to lvl+2) in a row. we all enjoyed it, even though they didnt have any time to rest. though they had the ability to regain their powers during the fight. for example, if a barbarian leaps down from a pillar to decapitate a duergar with an avalanche strike, the crowd goes wild and that spurs him on - he can use that encounter power again. meanwhile, a warlord gets thrown across the arena to relative safety away from the fight, and while he is down there he can catch a breah (stay down for a turn, roll endurance to see how much that helps, for example he gets to use one surge and get back one encounter power) before charging back in. playing to the crowd and imagining what just happened to their character were important aspects of staying alive in that long long fight.in a long chain of encounters like this (7 or 8) it is definitely important for the PCs to have a chance to regain surges, powers and hit points, or it will probably get boring and dissolve into an at-will spam, after which they will die. for a shorter chain of encounters (3 or 4) i would say it is important to know what the PCs can do. if all the PC strikers are built for single target damage, throwing 3 encounters lvl-1 at them that are filled with mobs of enemies is still bound to get boring. what use is one-rounding a monster if theres still 20 more to come? it will still dissolve into an at-will spam and get boring before the end.i read somewhere that the 'die hard' effect is important for planning enjoyable encounters and adventures. what the 'die hard effect' means is that the PCs are heroic if they are beaten, bloodied, hanging to life by a thread against overwhelming odds and then win. getting into the climactic action sequence of the movie, a hero that is bloodied and without healing surges, with a couple of dailies and encounter powers up his sleeve and armed with an action point (in die hard that would be the bloody, dirty-wifebeater-wearing john mcclane armed with a desert eagle) is much more heroic than a hero with almost full surges, relatively unharmed, yet without his 'teeth' (in the movie that would be a well-groomed john mcclane straight off a taxi, going up against the boss armed with a walking cane). both have a good chance of dying in that climactic fight, but if the second guy dies he might feel cheated by the DM for putting his character in a situation like that.stringing encounters together without the chance to rest there is a good chance you will have a fight to remember on your hands. but there is also the chance of it becoming a boring slugfest in which the players might feel cheated at some points. it comes down to how the DM organises it, and that organisation comes down to how well the DM knows the players. it will definitely be more work than just taking three random encounters, throwing them in one after the other and going with it. in my eyes there is no clear-cut answer on what exactly a DM is to do.</blockquote>

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