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Jun 2, 2011 -- 3:06PM, FFSAA wrote:

Jun 2, 2011 -- 2:44PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Because there is a meta-game that revolves around resource allocation over the course of the whole day? An encounter which drops each PC by one surge is indeed unlikely to present a threat of death in and of itself, but you may well want that surge in the next fight. You might also need to consider the tradeoff of resources. Is it better to blow an AP now and finish this guy off before he inflicts some damage, or save it for the next fight? Likewise with daily powers in particular. Which daily is it better to use now vs save for later?

 
  That arguement doesn't work.  There is no real support for that sort of fine tuning of multiple encounters in the game.  There is also good evidence that it isn't supposed to work that way, one of the prime functions of the leader role is to provide healing.  Fights of such trivial difficulty render a defining portion of the leader's role as irrelevant for most fights.  They're called heroic, paragon and epic tiers, not the "mostly inconsequential", "usually irrelevant", and "best feat is durable as resources are the most important consideration" tiers.

Jun 2, 2011 -- 2:44PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Every encounter need not be a threat by itself.

 
  Then why do it?

Jun 2, 2011 -- 2:44PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

In fact I would venture to say that pacing the story would tend to dictate that some should be relatively trivial, maybe even contributing little at all to the party's resource use.

 
  You don't tell a story by rolling a d20.  If your idea of pacing is to interrupt the story for half an hour to do an inconsequential fight whose only purpose is to determine if the party spent zero or one healing surges while they fought their way down the stairs, then you have a pretty god aweful story going there.

Jun 2, 2011 -- 2:44PM, AbdulAlhazred wrote:

There are also story considerations. I might simply want to introduce a new monster or demonstrate the nature of the threat the PCs face. That doesn't always require beating them to an inch of their lives.

 
  Again, introducing a threat and having the players micromanage resources are not the same thing.  The one detracts GREATLY from the other.

The game is designed to have you fight multiple encounters in a day the purpose of which is to wear down resources. I also don't see anything in the post you quoted where the only resource that a fight would consume is one healing surge. It may consume consumables, APs, or dailies as well. 

You also need to look at it from the player's perspective they don't know when the encounter will be over and they may over commit resources to ending it fast and then when they get to the BBEG and his crew it might actually be a bit of a challenge when they don't have every resource available.

So many posts on these boards imply 1 encounter/day and that's just not how this current edition (nor any edition)  of D&D were designed.

Jun 3, 2011 -- 12:45PM, slayn777 wrote:

5 rounds feels much too short to me.  The last encounter I sent against my players was something like 15 rounds and was great.  The only encounters that are 5 rounds are filler encounters that didn't really pose any kind of challenge.  I try to avoid them as much as possible.  My view, however, is probably skewed by the fact that we play via maptools where I usually write scripts to automate everything so that the only 'downtime' is player decisions and I try to make battles dynamic so that the situation is dramatically different every few rounds.  edit: re-reading the op I don't think I'm qualified to answer the question as asked actually.  To the question, "I'm asking about standard fights, between PCs and an equal number of standard monsters."   My answer is: I don't use those

Maptools is great. I cannot stress that enough and that skews my opinion as well. The system is great it's just the paperwork is a pain in the butt lol. I can almost guarantee that with proper electronic aids no one would complain about combat length.