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Message: <blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 4592190" data-attributes="member: 12377">I think the point is to discourage PCs from just hunkering down and fighting defensively until enough rounds go by for the DM to get bored and drop a Mop Up bomb on the enemies.  By taking away XP if the PCs dally, they are encouraged to take out the enemies quickly rather than rely on the incoming Mop Up bomb.  Note that the other options (Overtime and Sudden Death) increase the damage of both the PCs and the opponents, speeding up combat without making it any easier.  Mop Up does make the combat easier, hence the XP penalty.Here's another idea for Overtime and Sudden Death Overtime.  If every member of the party is out of encounter attack powers or out of daily attack powers, go into Overtime.  If the whole party is out of both, go into Sudden Death.  This gives the PCs more control; if they want to get to Overtime, they can deliberately blow through their encounter powers.  If they don't, they can have one party member hang onto one power.  It also means that the damage bonus will typically apply to at-will powers, making them (the at-wills) seem a little less lame.This idea was based on the realization that a fight is only going on for too long if the players have run out of powers and must resort to the grind of repetitively spamming at-wills. -- 77IM</blockquote>