Okay, let's come full circle.
Because, too often, I find that we talk about these things as components and not a whole.
I like the idea of effects that disable the player or make it difficult for them.
OF course, you also need to have a magic caster that can cast spells to remove this. Thus, a system that rewards the prepared player. Not sure about 4e, but i know 3e had knowledge rolls with every monster type associated with a particular roll.
I think by fleshing out more the monster roll (often i just tell pcs what they could espect if they roll a dc15) then adventureers can prepare themselves more. Essentially be more verbal by telling the dm hey if they roll this they get this information for a monster. I know the old 3.5 books each monster (the later books) had a knowledge roll.
So you don't need a wizard in the party, you just need to make sure you buy mirrors and stone salves. And you have a spell system were magic users still can cast any spell they have, but it takes a little extra (skill rolls, ability damage etc). And on any monster entry, you have a special ability and list the item or spell that can counter it).
I would like to see scaling attack and defense. However, the scale is not automatic, instead you receive them from abilities or feats with the rule being you can never use more than your level in bonuses. So even though cleave and greater cleave give you +4 to attack, you are 2nd level and can not use more than 2 of it. More on this later.
This keeps the quick combat notion in check, but still makes it rewarding. The other way around, combat gets longer the higher level you get, creating the kind of lag in levels that makes people want to reset the campaign at level 10. By using finite numbers and not random numbers (HP and Damage scaling) you can control the balance of the game better.
Yes, levels are suppose to level out. a 10 is average. On average a level 6 monsters should average a hit from a level 6 player. However, a level 6 player should have a higher probbility of hitting a level 2 monster. This math works. It also gives the player the idea of getting better, because you are.
Scaling HP and Scaling Damage, that's where the problem comes from. These are both random numbers. The bigger the number hte more randomness you have.
You end up with games that need a variety of spells, most of these spells exponentially increase increase damage from the last spell, which means monsters need high hit points to become challenging. To make things balanced now they develop other methods to make classes do more damage. All of a sudden we need to give the fighter 5 attacks the rogue 3 attacks and 10 sneak attack die. This whole system creates an incredibly disproportional system of a 2nd level character and a 12th leve character. You kinda get the illusion that a few months of adventuring turns you into superman. A sword swipe that once just maimed someone decapitates them in one hit.
So what you do is remove this randomness and institute controls over the things that scale. With Defense and attack only scaling, no matter where you get the bonus from, you can never receive more than your level from it. It's a trick a lot of European board games use to balance out a game and keep players within a string of each other. (Europ board games have a concept that tries to always make the game winnable, even if you are in last place with a few turns left).
