And shall do so again!
I'm never sure if you're talking about your own preferences, or offering universal prescriptions. If the latter, than I think your prescriptions are shown to be mistaken by the existence of other GMs, and other campaigns, which are running perfectly well despite doing what you say cannot or should not be done!
In 4e, the function of the encounter design rules is to tell you how to take the game elements provided in the rulebooks - monsters, terrain, basic fantasy tropes, etc - and turn them into mechanically-defined situations that will produce compelling play experiences. In my experience they are remarkably successful at this. Part of this includes advice on adjudicating an open-ended game (this is what Page 42 is all about).
It is if you use the 4e guidelines.
Not at all. Here are four RPGs I'm familiar with whose encounter-design guidelines encompass both combat and non-combat situations: D&D 4e; Burning Wheel; HeroWars/Quest; Maelstrom Storytelling. And I'm sure that there are plenty of others - especially more indie RPGs - with which I'm not familiar.
Which ones? And by whom? I don't ignore the 4e guidelines. I use them every session I GM. For example, in my last session I had to sketch out a situation in which the PCs were negotiating with some duergar and devils - a skill challenge at the outset, but with combat potentially in the offing. I knew who the principal NPCs would be, but after adding up their XP value made decisions about what other, less NPCs to throw into the situation based on the encounter-builidng guidelines (for my 18th level PCs, I wanted 21 levels worth of XP - several of the PCs have no daily powers expended, all have an action point and full daily item uses available, and I want the combat, if it happens, to be more than a cakewalk).
One feeds into the other. Mathematical reliabiity supports predicatability in encounter design. For example, I recently sketched out an encounter that will involve some demons. If this encounter occurs in my game, it is likely to involve 18th or 19th level PCs. There was a demon skirmisher I liked the look of, from the Demonomicon - the Jovoc. In the rulebook, the Jovoc is 10th level - not mathematically viable agaist 18th level PCs. So I added 8 levels to turn the Jovoc into an 18th level skirmisher, thereby giving it a sound place in my overall conception for the encounter.
I do this a lot - many of my 16th and 18th level duergar are heroic tier duergar with 8 or 12 levels stacked on! That 4e makes stacking on levels very easy is part of its appeal to me.
I hope I've adequately explained what I mean. They support me in building mechanically-defined situations that produce compelling episodes of play. In the context of combat encounter design, the means they use to do that are a combination of monster XP, encounter XP budgets, terrain advice, roles advice (roles and terrain are closely connected), etc.
The mechanics are transparent, and the metacommentary on the sorts of experience the mechanics will produce is transparent too.
I've read criticism on RPG.net that, compared to the Pass/Fail cycle in HeroQuest revised, 4e's guidlines are hopelessly complex and convoluted. In a sense that's not unfair, but then 4e is trying to deliver a mechanical experience, in play, that is far far "heavier" and more intricate than HQ revised. Given that constraint, and therefore the inapplicability of a straightforward pass/fail cycle, I think 4e does a reasonable job.
I think it's weakest part is where it suggests that a failed skill challenge might typically be followed by a harder combat encounter, and vice versa. This is contrary to pass/fail logic, and in my view bad advice. Failing a skill challenge should, in my view, be followed by something easier but of narrower scope - whereas succeeding at a skill challenge should be followed by something harder, but of broader scope - thus maintaining the pass/fail dynamic that Laws talks about in HQ revised (and also in the cut and paste of those bits of HQ revised into 4e's DMG 2).
I have never played or GMed Savage Worlds, but I agree with the general sentiment. It's interesting to look at a system like Burning Wheel, which has excellent resolution guidelines but, in its core rulebook, quite limited encounter buildig guidelines, and see the extra advice given in their much more recent "Adventure Burner". (In the bibliography to the Adventure Burner they mention 4e, and in their encounter-building advice they talk about how to design satisfactory epic fights using the BW mechanical resources - I have little doubt that 4e play led them to rethink how their game could handle "solo" encounters.)
Well, I would characterise "adventure design" as the design of multiple scenes/encounters, plus the imposition of a "plot" (or, in the case of a dungeon, a flowchart) over the top of them. Generally a bit railroady for my taste, but much the same process.
If you look at c 1980 D&D design advice - in Moldvay Basic, in White Dwarf, in "What is Dungeons 7 Dragons" (published by Puffin around that time) - you will see that they treat adventure design as dungeon design, treat dungeon design as primarily room design, and treat each room as a "scene" or "encounter" (though without using the modern-day terminology).
If my memory is correct, you tend to run at (low?) Heroic - where (at least in my experience) encounters of a given level relative to the PCs are more challenging, just because the players don't have the same depth of resources to draw on. But also, I get the impression that your players may not be quite as tactically hard-headed as mine often are. (Alternatively, you may be a more tactcially hard-headed GM - I'm certainly not as strong in that department as my best players!)
It's hard to comment on this sort of experience without more information to go on, but I would suggest that your GM needs to put more creatures into his/her encounters! And possible also do more to increase their mobility and exploit terrain.
Does your party have a composition that is particularly conducive to grind (eg too many leaders and controllers/defenders, not enough strikers)? If so, it may be as simple as seeing if the player of a leader wants to retire that PC and bring in a striker - increases both PC and monster damage output in one fell swoop!
It really brought home the importance of terrain - I think the majority of my TPKs/near TPKs have been due to terrain obstacles restricting PC freedom of action. Another one I recall was a 10' cliff leading into a large cavern full of orcs. The orcs could defeat the PCs in detail as they climbed into the cavern.
