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Originally Posted by mearls

I could not disagree more.

Why am I not surprised?

What 4e does is push the mechanical repercussions more into individual encounters, than into a series of encounters. And I think it cuts both ways.

In 4e, players don't have the "smart bomb" of a sleep spell to escape one fight per day at low levels. On the other hand, they face far fewer save or die mechanics, but they also face far more durable monsters who can quickly overwhelm a party if the PCs are fool enough to draw too many opponents upon themselves.

While the short rest does provide some measure of reset, getting to that short rest, and taking it without interruption, can be a challenge, one that for foolish players can end in a TPK.

What I meant is that 4e focuses too much on damage as almost the only way to "punish" players, and the only way to end a combat is to drop all your enemies to 0 hp, blow by blow.

Surely, SoD sucks when it comes unannounced, and the pre-4e Sleep spell is almost a "win 1 encounter for free", but there has to be some sort of middle ground between that and the "from 40 to 0 in 1d8-steps" approach of 4e.

And, by the way, monsters are *too* durable in 4e. Half of the combat is actual combat, and the other half is a "are we there now, daddy?"

The key is that, as DM, you need to design your adventures that way. G1 is as deadly to a group that charges in on a frontal assault in 4e as it was in 1e.

Admittedly, you need to approach the game from a different POV, but I don't think the change is as radical as throwing out everything you learned about D&D.

Problem is, if 4e is your first D&D game, you pretty much have no clues on how to do it apart from "everything has to be balanced or Something Horrible will happen and you'll stop having fun". If you grew up reading Gygax articles, you already have all the baggage needed to bring "old school" to any game (Heck, I've even run Gygaxian Risus), but if you're just stretching your DM wings and don't know any other advice than the 4e DMG's, it seems like your only option is to purchase correctly balanced monster groups and locating treasure parcels of the right level.