The_Gneech
Explorer
So all you need to do to have a "budget" approach to 3.5 is look at table 2-6. Each row is a mini-table telling exactly what each CR monster costs for a party of that level. That's pretty easy!
Kind of a hugemongous table, but I see what you mean. I wonder if it would work being broken into categories of, say level 1 - 3, level 4 - 6, etc.
-The Gneech