D&D 5E Serious gamers and new CR formula

Wolf118 said:

So you agree with the RAW?

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I personally do not 100% agree with what is written in the DMG (RAW or not - I am not really sure these guidelines count as RAW in the normal sense of the world). I personally use my own judgement, but I do find what is written in the DMG a useful resource and reference, and as far as guidelines go, it is good.

If however, you mean to say "Do I agree that what is written is DMG does not mention using PC level vs CR as a guide for excluding the XP of monsters?" Then, yes, I agree the DMG does not say that. So what? You still *might* want to exclude xp when PC level >> Creature CR. So thank you for trying to correct 1a, but it was unnecessary as it doesn't need correction. I wasn't quoting RAW, I was giving advice.

Mistwell said:

It's been a while since I looked at it, but I thought two different creatures with the same CR may have different XP?

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All monsters with the same CR have the same XP -- you can confirm this based on the list of monsters by CR in the DM Basic Rules. However, that doesn't mean that two encounters based on the same XP total will have the same challenge, according to the system.

Say you have a party of 5 14th level characters, and you decide you want to build a hard encounter for them. Based on the guidelines in the DM's Basic Rules, you should target 19,000 XP for that encounter -- 5 x 3800 XP listed in the 'XP Thresholds by Character Level' chart.

So you figure you can do a single adult red dragon (CR 17 = 18,000 XP), but that might be boring. Instead, you decide to go with a pack of 11 trolls (CR 5 = 1800 XP). Except that, according to the system, a pack of 11 trolls is actually significantly more challenging than a single adult red dragon; you're supposed to multiply the XP times 3 to determine the XP difficulty for a group of 11-14 monsters, and doing so results in a difficulty calculation of 59,400 XP, which should be considered a deadly encounter for a group of five 19th level characters.

Except, if you've played much, you already know that a group of 11 trolls isn't anywhere close to a deadly encounter for 5 14th level characters, much less 5 19th level characters. So in that sense, the OP's complaint is accurate -- the CR system for building encounters doesn't really work as a measure of potential challenge (though it works fine for pacing your group and making sure they only hit certain levels after a certain number of encounters).

On the other hand, the complaint also seems misguided, because the definition of 'challenge' appears to be defined as 'the party might get killed'. Even the definition of a 'deadly' encounter in the DM's Basic Rules doesn't define it as 'TPK', but rather 'could be lethal for one or more characters'. If you are trying to build a campaign where any individual encounter could result in a TPK, then you are not running a 5E campaign as the game was designed to be run. If that's the game you want to run, then go ahead and ignore the CR system for building encounters, because it doesn't do what you want to do -- a 'medium' encounter is defined as 'the characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them *might* need to use healing resources' (emphasis mine), which I'm guessing is what the OP is referring to as a 'cake-walk'.

Pauper said:

Except, if you've played much, you already know that a group of 11 trolls isn't anywhere close to a deadly encounter for 5 14th level characters, much less 5 19th level characters. So in that sense, the OP's complaint is accurate -- the CR system for building encounters doesn't really work as a measure of potential challenge (though it works fine for pacing your group and making sure they only hit certain levels after a certain number of encounters)..

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Thanks, you stated it more eloquently than I. My discussion with [MENTION=72051]Wolf118[/MENTION] centered on my similar observation that when PC Level is much greater than CR (PCs 14th level vs CR 5 trolls, for example) you might not want to count it for XP (I suppose you could reduce it). The point being the system doesn't really work for CRs "far" outside the PCs level and its best to use those creatures with a grain of salt (and adjusted XP).

AaronOfBarbaria said:

Why you gotta imply that people who think CR works for what it is meant to do aren't "serious gamers" and that they don't want "a real challenge"?

Here's how I suggest analyzing difficulty if you are looking for more potent challenges:

Step 1: Look at CR as being the highest level at which the party should face that creature if they outnumber it.
Step 2: Go to the encounter building section of the DMG, see that "Deadly" encounters are the only ones that are meant to come with a serious risk of losing the fight and of some characters dying, and in response use the XP budget for "Deadly" encounters as your "should be around this amount, or higher, for each encounter."

The numbers already in the game tell you exactly what you want, if you just use them the way 5th edition explains they are meant to be used.

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Have to second this. The thread title is poorly worded, at best, inflammatory at worst.

Brass tacks, people have been complaining about CR since 2000, and mostly because they're not using it right.

I have two remaining questions pertaining specifically to the DMG encounter building formulas:

1) How would you scale the encounter budget by the number of PCs?: The DMG recommends adding a 1.5 multiplier if 6+ PCs. I am thinking +.25 per PC over 4. That means 8x L10 PCs would have an xp budget for a "hard" (slim chance of a PC death) encounter of 30,400, or basically 2 Balors. That seems about right. And 8x L1 PCs would have a budget of 1200 xp, just about enough for 2 gargoyles.

2) How would you scale the encounter budget based on less than 7 encounters a day? I am thinking 40% extra per encounter less than 7, so +240% if its the only encounter of the day (and the PCs know it and can use all their yum-yums). That means if I sent 8 L1 PCs in on an encounter that was clearly going to be the only encounter of the day, I would have them face a stone giant, and the same party at L10 would face a kraken. Now that's where the rub comes in - L1 PCs are much more brittle, so the scaling is a lot different in low levels vs. high. That stone giant could 1 shot PCs at L1 and its a lot more likely to be a TPK than the kraken vs the more durable L10 guys.

And please - there are a lot of nihlists out there that want to keep pointing out that other variables in the CR system, like relative skill levels, magic items, feats, incorrectly rated monsters, etc, make any kind of meaningful analysis of encounter building useless (ie dont worry about it and just wing it). That's just not scientifically sound reasoning. As I said at the beginning, I have fixed those other variables at constant levels for purposes of this analysis - ie equal skill levels, DMG recommended magic item levels, etc. It's just like algebra guys - if you have multiple variables in an equation, you need to isolate individual variables and solve them individually.

So if you don't have something to contribute to this analysis, and just want to defend the CR system, pls go to one of the innumerable threads on the subject and do so there.

I'd actually have preferred if XP was more granular than CR. Sometimes two monsters with the same CR seem to be already quite different in terms of difficulty.

Rya.Reisender said:

I'd actually have preferred if XP was more granular than CR. Sometimes two monsters with the same CR seem to be already quite different in terms of difficulty.

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It is nice to be able to look at a CR and know the corresponding XP value when totaling up XP for a session or encounter. I'd find it a headache to have to track those numbers separately.

Also, with all the challenges in creating a more precise CR, I don't know how you could make the XP even more granular. I think, if we wanted something more granular, we'd have to break out the subsystems of a monsters CR. Give them a Defensive Rating, an Offensive Rating and maybe a Special Rating. (The Special Rating just indicating extenuating circumstances that adjusted the CR, like immunities and resistances.)

I guess I'm a "nihilist," though, in that I consider the whole exercise to be a little futile. A sufficiently rigorous algorithm for mathematically calculating encounter difficulty would be far too much work. What we have is already more than I'm interested in using very frequently. I have a spreadsheet that I use for creating NPCs, and that's about it.

Serious gamers only.

Dausuul said:

Consistency requires the following:

• Two monsters of the same CR present the same threat. Two encounters of the same calculated difficulty present the same actual difficulty (even if calculated does not match actual).
• For a given group of players, it should be possible to determine a "player skill adjustment." If you determine that your group, fully rested, can handle a "Deadly" encounter with a small loss of resources, you should be able to extrapolate that "Deadly times X" will be tough but manageable and "Deadly times Y" has a significant risk of PC death.
• Player skill adjustment is independent of PC level. If a "Deadly" encounter means a small loss of resources when the players are playing 4th-level characters in the Tuesday game, then a "Deadly" encounter should mean a small loss of resources when they're playing 17th-level characters in the Saturday game.
• Monsters in the Monster Manual are on par with the custom monster building guidelines in the DMG.

So, the question for 5E: Are CRs consistent? That's a real question, I have yet to run a long 5E campaign--just a few short adventures with different people. It sure doesn't look like the DMG monster building system is consistent with the MM, but do the other points hold, at least?

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IME, the first point does not hold. As an example, a Rakshasa is CR 13 and it is not nearly the same threat as a Storm Giant or an Adult White Dragon. I could dig up other examples, but there have been plenty throughout the various threads. Edit: I see that [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] already gave this example.

Pauper said:

All monsters with the same CR have the same XP -- you can confirm this based on the list of monsters by CR in the DM Basic Rules.

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Because the first two answers were not enough?