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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZSutherland" data-source="post: 3888420" data-attributes="member: 7638">Correct, but those are the sorts of abilities that I hope they shy away from by and large.  A few such abilities as per day powers instead of per encounter might be fine, but abilities that effectively remove a combatant or combatants from the encounter on a regular basis strike me as problematic and not terribly fun for either DMs or players (depending on who gets hit with them.)I think abilities like that also become very difficult to balance.  If the default assumption about combat encounter design is approximately one opponent per PC, and the controller (wizard or otherwise) is built around the ability to temporarily remove one of the opponents, they have to take that into account when calculating the offensive power of each oppenent, or the average 4 PCs to 3 opponents (+1 controlled/stunned/mezzed/whatever) potentially becomes trivial.  On the other hand, if the do balance them like so that 3 active opponents truly challenges 4 PCs, then groups without a controller may face unnecessary difficulty....Actually, maybe that's the point.  D&D has always been built around the assumption of an average 4 PC party, 4e will be no different, and you need one PC covering each of the 4 roles.  Anything past that may just be gravy.</blockquote>