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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6640091" data-attributes="member: 996">Again, that's only a very basic understanding of the dynamics of a system with more tactical depth.   'Grind' is when you get a combat with a long 'tail' of uninteresting rounds in which you whittle down an enemy who is already, in essence, defeated.It's more often the result of applying damaging powers inefficiently, than of lacking overall damage potential.  All classes have plenty of damage potential, even the non-strikers.  Some of that potential is in encounters & dailies, and some comes from party synergy.A Striker/DPR/burn-your-encounter-early strategy, while it optimizes white room DPR, and can be fairly consistent in play, can end up being inefficient or missing out on synergy when it comes to actual damage throughput.   Of course, that's only if you stick to it dogmatically.  If you don't use it as an excuse to eschew flexibility and tactical depth, it's just a solid baseline. That'd be 'balance' in a PvP or DM vs Player mode, sure.  In 4e, you got that sort of 'balance' somehwere north of Level+4 encounters. Which wouldn't work with a game that intends for characters to develop over time, create story arcs, or emulate the heroic fantasy genre.  It'd be fine 'balance'/fairness for a single-session boardgame or wargame, though.The Alpha strike can be a good tactic.  It can also be a losing tactic.  It depends on the nature of the encounter.  As an aside, it's interesting to consider the distinction between the 4e Alpha Strike and the 3.x Nova.  In 4e, the way powers and the action economy were designed, you couldn't do a true Nova in which you just flushed all your most powerful resources up front, and reduced the entire encounter to an Initiative contest. That was a great improvement, but one that a lot of folks had trouble accepting.  What they came up with as a 4e Nova was the Alpha Strike: leading with an action point (preferably in some synergistic comb) and blowing through high-damage encounters ASAP.Some encounters are all but trivialized by a good Alpha Strike, though, IMX, it's usually the Controller, not a team of Strikers, who can deliver on that potential.  OTOH, a poorly conceived or executed Alpha Strike or an encounter with an unexpected twist can result in the Alpha Striking party severely disadvantaging themselves.  A winnable encounter can even become a TPK as a result.   Once again, you're being overly simplistic in your analysis.  Yes, the way hps work make focus fire arguably the best of available simple tactics in all versions of D&D.  But that doesn't make them the best tactic, every time, and sometimes, they turn out to be a terrible tactic.That said, 4e monsters /are/ designed to start encounters strong.  They'll have Encounter and Recharge powers that hit hard and put the party at a disadvantage.  The party, though, will typically have resources, in the form of surges, Second Wind, a Leader and Controller, to recover from that initially barrage, and additional offensive resources left win the fight.  It's they stereotypical, almost melodramatic, heroic fantasy battle trope.   Leaning too heavily on early-round offense depletes the party's offense resources at a time when they may be at a disadvantage, and leaves them nothing but plinking with at wills to grind down the monsters.D&D has it's roots in wargaming, and can certainly be played as a small-scale skirmish wargame with two sides (Players vs DM) equally matched.  That is not the only way to play, and many less open-minded gamers would say it's "not really roleplaying," but it is one option.</blockquote>

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