Whern exactly does an Encounter end ?

[Dice4Hire]

Sometimes I run two encounters together, on purpose (and once a rogue caused two ro run togeher, but that is another story), but in general, I do not worry about the 5 minutes, or such. When the combat is over, such as the last foe falls or runs too far away, the combat is over. If the encounter or daily is a regenration effect, then it runs 50 rounds, generally healing the recipiant to 50% or 1900%, and creatures save on all effects, unconscious ones miraculously rolling a 20 on their next roll.

It is just mroe fun that way.

If my players tried to rush to the next encounter a couple times to keep their end of encounter powers running, I would just tell them to not try and abuse the rules.

 

[VannATLC]

In general, I've been fairly interpretative with regards to encounters.

A chase scene, for instance, might spark 2 or 3 seperate fights, but happen over one encounter. I'll deliberately create it to be challenging, but not, if sensibly done by the party, lethal.

When they attack a hold or fort, If they fail to stop the guards alerting, they'll be in for a *long* encounter. Likely to leave some of them down, unless they are very clever/lucky.

I refuse to pander to the MMO/Idiocy of guards 50 metres down a corridor not hearing the sounds of a pitched battle.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I think it pretty much goes without saying that the DM has ultimate flexibility with respect to rests and encounter limits. There are cases where I've granted the party a short rest when they took a 30 second breather simply because it made the next fight more fun and from a story pacing point of view it didn't make sense for them to be able to rest for 5 minutes. Extended rests can and should be handled in a similar fashion, the 'day' can be understood as an 'act' in the play, and an encounter is a scene. The players get to use each of their really extraordinary abilities once per act and manage their resources over that act. Usually its a day, but that really depends on the situation and in some types of games you may want it to be a week or a month or something else.

 

[Istar]

What the Players says

I agree that a short rest is of 5 minutes duration of No Strenuous Activity: You have to rest during a
short rest. You can stand guard, sit in place, ride on a wagon or other vehicle, or do other tasks that don’t
require much exertion. PHB pdf pg263

However, my point was and still is, if you ARE exerting yourself then you are NOT resting.
Hence rushing on to the next room is not resting. See 'End the encounter': Repeat steps 5 and 6 until the
the combatants on one side are captured, fleeing, unconscious, or dead. The encounter ends when the
other side then takes a short rest or an extended rest. PHB pdf pg267.
So, again, if you choose not to take a short rest then the encounter is continuing and you do not regain encounter powers but activated effects continue.

If a power specifically states that it only lasts 5min regardless of the end of the encounter then for an encounter that lasts longer than 50 rounds the power would stop.

If the party decides to continue on after the typical 10rounds of an encounter to the next room in order to make maximum use of their daily powers (at the expense of not regaining encounter powers) then that is allowable under the rules.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

If the party decides to continue on after the typical 10rounds of an encounter to the next room in order to make maximum use of their daily powers (at the expense of not regaining encounter powers) then that is allowable under the rules.

If you don't like that possibility - house rule it away.

Before you house rule it away you may as well let your players (and you) try and see how it works out to do encounters w/o short rest. Maybe they realize that healing is important among other things and that this tactic won't always work.