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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gribble" data-source="post: 4716963" data-attributes="member: 12430">This is all based on my experience playing and running 4e, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.1) Running 4e is very different from running earlier versions of D&D. Because, as you say, attacks are no longer just swing for damage, there are a lot of fiddly little modifiers, riders and conditions imposed that need to be tracked. There are lots of methods for doing this, from notes on a piece of paper, to cards, to tokens. The point is that regardless of what system(s) you use to track this information, it has to be done in 4e. I've found you can't get along just winging it with a single piece of paper (as a player or DM) like you could in earlier editions.I think points 2) & 3) are related - two sides of the same coin. With 4e moving away from swinginess to a more balanced and predictable style of combat, I've found that combat in 4e tends to be inevitable. If the combat is too easy, it quickly becomes inevitable that the PCs will win, at which point the players don't feel challenged and the combat becomes about grinding through the enemy HP and trying to minimise your HP/resource expenditure. If the combat is too hard, it inevitably becomes a player deathfest and/or TPK. In either situation, there is little the players can to to change things, because there is no longer the possibility of a miracle turn which swings the combat back one way or the other.The problem is the above combined with the fact that determining whether an encounter in 4e is "too easy" or "too hard" isn't as easy as the DMG makes out. Encounter design in 4e is very much an art. Despite everyone's praise for the system, you can't just take the numbers the DMG gives you and expect them to work. A DM also has to take into account the optimisation of their party (in terms of individual characters and the party composition/tactics as a whole). As ProfPain points out - this has been true for every version of D&D.So yeah - my advice? Take the advice given by others like Mearls and Lancelot and combine that with knowledge about your player's characters and try to create more tailored encounters. It isn't anywhere near as easy as the DMG makes it out to be, but if you manage to do it, it makes for a much better 4e experience.If that fails for you, try introducing more swinginess into your games via houserules - that should make things more dangerous and less grindy - though be aware of the negative consequences... E.g.: crits do double instead of max damage, rolling a natural 1 on the save makes a condition last until the end of the encounter, etc (note that I haven't personally playtested these options, so they may be horribly broken).</blockquote>

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