Back to the Grind

If we hadn't determined this already, my tastes don't align with a lot of people. In a lot of things I'm behind the curve; just take my laptop if you really need an example. Other things will just tickle my fancy for no apparent reason. And of course, I think about other things way too much.
One of the things in video games that I actually kind of enjoy is grinding. I don't mean farming quests like "Collect 10 of the widgets that sometimes drop when you kill a certain type of enemy." I mean good old-fashioned Final Fantasy-style level grinding: beat the crap out of randomly spawning enemies to beef up your character.
There are games that do it well, and some that do it poorly. So, what's the difference?
The games that do it poorly smack down the player who doesn't grind. I'm talking one-hit total party wipe; the only way to get past the point is to reload an earlier save file and level up a few dozen times before you can even hope to damage the boss.
In part, this is tied to a mechanic that's referred to as "binary damage"; either an attack does full damage, or it does either one point or no damage at all, depending on the system. Usually binary damage is based on the attack stat (or whatever the mechanical equivalent in your game is called). If ATK is less than a certain level -- usually the defense stat of an enemy -- you're lucky if you do a single point of damage per round/attack; if you hit at all instead of getting the "Miss" animation. Binary damage can be thought of like you're in a D&D-like pen and paper RPG; you have a "to-hit" or attack roll to see if you hit or miss, and a separate calculation determines damage.
The games that do the grind well -- at least in my opinion -- are the ones that reward, but don't require. These are the games that if you play straight through the story mode, you may not be able to go toe to toe and trade blows with the end boss; but... if you manage the fight well, with a little luck you will win. In these games, grinding makes the fights easier, rather than making the fights winnable. And that's a thin distinction, but I think it's an important one.
A lot of these games work around "scaling" damage. To extend the pen and paper metaphor, it would be a system where attack and damage were determined a single roll. If you don't hit; you still have the Miss animation, but a character whose attack is barely more than the to-hit minimum will be doing a lot less damage than the character whose attack blows the defense out of the water.

We're not talking "elemental affinity"; where certain enemies are strong or weak against specific types of attacks. As a mechanic, "Elemental" affinities are a staple of RPGs in general, and really the backbone of strategic or "tactics" RPGs. These usually take the form of a rock-paper-scissors contest: Axes are strong against Spears are strong against Swords are strong against Axes. Some games take type-pairing to the extreme, like Pokemon's 17 types of moves, each of which is either deals normal, half, an extra half (1.5x), or no damage to the other types. Again, there is a difference in a game mechanic that makes certain units/styles ineffective by their nature, and one that penalizes you for not being strong enough to be in an area.

Now, it's a fine line to walk for a game designer. How much work (or time, same difference to the consumer) is the gamer going to be willing to put into your game? Games like the Disgaea series bank on the fact that their consumers already know what they're getting into; grinding not only individual characters but also weapons are a selling point of the franchise. I don't have the answer. Until I do, I'm going to keep playing the games I like to play, and celebrate when the random encounters I struggled so hard to beat my first time in a new area are running up against the same binary damage wall I put the time in to avoid.