Quickleaf
Legend
Great article, thanks Stalker! Could I put this together into a nice looking pdf for you? I think with a little editing you should submit this to Dragon! 
A couple questions...
Are you suggesting doing away with encounters of higher level than the PCs entirely? For example, the "average adventure" according to the DMG is made up of 8 encounters (L-1, L, L, L, L+1, L+1, L+1, L+3). How would you suggest increasing an encounter's difficulty, more terrain or something else?
Do you think there is a problem with core maths? Your monster & terrain advice implies grind comes from the DM, while your "tactics to avoid grind" implies it's the core math that creates grind.

A couple questions...
Are you suggesting doing away with encounters of higher level than the PCs entirely? For example, the "average adventure" according to the DMG is made up of 8 encounters (L-1, L, L, L, L+1, L+1, L+1, L+3). How would you suggest increasing an encounter's difficulty, more terrain or something else?
Do you think there is a problem with core maths? Your monster & terrain advice implies grind comes from the DM, while your "tactics to avoid grind" implies it's the core math that creates grind.