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I think DMs need to really set expectations up front. The way I explained it to my table was that each week is treated as 1 encounter (mechanically) but within that encounter there will be many scenes. None of the scenes will pack the punch of a normal 4e encounter, but it’s reasonable to expect that by the end of the session the PCs have expended the same resources that they would for a typical 4e encounter. For those who have played Lair Assault they were already familiar with the idea of multiple scenes but only one big encounter.

Yes some classes are defined by their encounter powers but I don’t see the way things are set up this season really impacting that in a negative way. Clerics can still heal twice each night. On nights when there are multiple combat encounters it’s unlikely that everyone will need healing and even less likely that they’ll need healing during one of the really short fights. This season players will have to show some restraint before deciding when it’s the right time to use their big-gun, class-defining powers.

Looking at week 1 there were at most two fights. The first was either against 1 Stirge or 2 Orcs. The Stirge only had 20 hit points and the Orcs were both minions. In either case it’s unlikely a party of five PCs needed more than a round or two to defeat their opponent. Neither battle should have hurt the party too much. The second fight was against the Imp. I think he had about 40-50 hit points, but the entire party was facing him together. All of the PCs likely had daily powers or kick-ass encounter powers left so this fight probably didn’t go more than a few rounds either. By the end of week 1, even without the benefits of short rests none of my PCs were even bloodied and some didn’t even get to use all their encounter or daily powers.

Looking at week 2 you have the quick fight against the Orc minions. If run as written the PCs have only two rounds to fight before they get overrun. Unless they all rolled poor initiatives or all five minions ganged up on a single PC, the party shouldn’t have taken too much damage before they fled. The only other combat is in the Pit and it’s only one PC fighting. Obviously if one of the PCs took a lot of damage vs. the Orcs you shouldn’t choose him to be the champion. Pick a PC with lots of hit points left.

I’m not really sure what the players are complaining about after these two sessions. The only reason I can think of why they’d be so drained that they feel they NEED a short rest during the session is that they did something stupid – really stupid. Either that or they just like to complain. If that latter is true then they have to decide what’s more important: playing D&D on Wednesday nights and having a good time or complaining about what they don’t like and leaving the group.

Nov 8, 2012 -- 5:30AM, cave2626 wrote:

I’m not really sure what the players are complaining about after these two sessions. The only reason I can think of why they’d be so drained that they feel they NEED a short rest during the session is that they did something stupid – really stupid. Either that or they just like to complain. If that latter is true then they have to decide what’s more important: playing D&D on Wednesday nights and having a good time or complaining about what they don’t like and leaving the group.

Yeah, unfortunately the player we have thats doing the complaining is also the one that always seems to be the one willing to derail the adventure (this week he wanted his pixie to raid the abandoned tavern in Winters Edge rather than help in the evacuation, then started a fight with another pc during the orcs feast after the challenge)

The group were told on session 0 that the season would include no rests and the weekly sessions would be structured differently, I think he's just one of those players thats only happy when he has something to complain about.

The only issue we had with healing was when the kobold cavalier used his power to take the volley of arrows instead of Rhuup, dropping him to negative hp and therefore they had to use the Tears of Helm to revive him as they had elected to take no healer other than the skald.

On the other hand our earlier group had no problem accepting the style change this season.

Whats that famous line of Lincoln's "please some of the people......."