With a class/level system, a vague expectation of how expert a player of a given level is and how much loot they have, D&D4 can present the DM with defaults to build encounters around. It's aware of the PCs in a way that a point-buy system like Exalted can't match. The DM's judgement is still there, but they have a good base state that they can improvise from in a more informed fashion.
This is old, hoary stuff, but D&D4 does it very cleanly. There's a couple of things I'd like to see though:
- A more formal means for the PCs to ante up and go for a harder encounter for more XP. There is a feedback mechanism in place - expert players can take on harder encounters, level faster, and progress more quickly through the learning curve of new abilities. However there's nothing in the system that explicitly lets them bid up (or down, for less expert players) - obviously many groups can handle it easily at the table, but I think a hardcoded approach would be neat.
- A better awareness of rest. Encounter difficulty usually scales with how long it's been since the PCs have taken a long rest; in my opinion, more significantly than Action Points can offset. The decision on whether to rest is thus strictly story based - you should do it unless the fiction prevents it. In Agon, the PCs can rest at any time, but doing so increases the GM's budget for creating adversity, creating a clear incentive for pushing through where possible. Increasing encounter budgets in D&D4 may not be appropriate, but I feel it'd be more fun if the decision to rest was similarly strategic.
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