D&D 5E Serious gamers and new CR formula

[iserith]

Who cares if it's a real challenge or not, what matters is what the players think it is. The goal is everyone having a fun time after all.

I follow a principle of "Always say what honesty demands." So if the players want real challenges, I'm going to give them real challenges (again, regardless of difficulty), not make them think something is a real challenge when it is not. That's fine if other people want to do that, but it's definitely not for me. Anything that potentially causes the DM to diminish the players' trust is something I will not knowingly do.

 

[jrowland]

5-7 individual encounters with solo CR 14 rated monsters

ok, that makes sense that 4 Level 10 PCs can do that 5-7 times a day. Maybe not new D&D players, but certainly veterans. The monsters are seriously outnumbered.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Wolf118]

1. CR says if PC Level<<Creature CR, warning before use (it is not de-facto "hard" but can be)
1a. PC Level >> Creature CR might not even count XP towards difficulty
2. XP budget and relative number of combatants determines difficulty (plus terrain, tactics, etc)

Correction on your #1a; the DMG says "When making this calculation (Adjusted XP), don't count any monsters whose challenge rating is significantly below the average challenge rating of the other monsters in the group unless you think the weak monsters significantly contribute to the difficulty of the encounter." (p82)

You compare the CR to the average CR of the other monsters to determine if you should count their XP, not player level.

 

[iserith]

Honesty demands that a DM lets the dice fall where they may. Honesty doesn't demand that the DM regularly TPK the party because they need a challenge.

There's a term called "revealed preferences." By analogy, a person might state a preference for something, but the only way to determine their actual (revealed) preference is through observation. My observations indicate that people state a desire for challenge, but they do not have a desire for TPKs. Your observations might differ.

You may not have noted upthread where I stated that a TPK is not the only possible failure condition. To be a real challenge in my view, success or failure must be possible, regardless of difficulty and regardless of what success or failure actually mean in context.

As far as "revealed preferences" go, I take people at their word. If they wish to revise that later on, that's fine.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[iserith]

Well, I happen to fall into the "people having fun playing a game" camp. Which seems to have worked pretty well for a few decades. I'm sure your method works for your table as well.

My method being what exactly, in your view? Because I'm not sure you're reading me correctly as I have certainly not called anyone terrible or dishonest nor indicated that I am not interested in people having fun.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[shoak1]

Goodness. Stay focused people. I can use input from other tactical gamers out there re the DMG formula for CR/XP budget:

First, the DMG suggests a scaling multiple of .5 if 6+ PCs. I would say the scaling multiple should be 0.25 per PC > 4. So if 7 PCs, 1.75. In effect that means if you have 7 PCs, your XP budget would be 300% what it would be if you had 4 PCs (at 1st level, 4 PCs would have a deadly budget of 4x100=400 xp, while 7 PCs would have 7x100=700x1.75=1,225).

Secondly, the DMG provides no recommendation for encounters where the PCs know they can use all their resources. I would suggest giving +40% the normal XP budget per encounter less than 7 that there was in the day. So +240% xp budget if there is only 1 encounter that day.

Those 2 modifications seem to together square with my experience. For instance, 7x L10 PCs killed a Kraken (CR23, 50k exp) in what the DMG would consider to be a "hard" encounter, but the PCs knew it would be the only encounter of the day and were fresh off a long rest. Based on the DMG and my adjustments, the XP budget would be 7x1900=13.3k, x1.75 for 7 PCs=23.3k, x2.25 for a 1-shot encounter=52.4k exp.

btw the Daily adventuring budget guidelines seem useful only in balancing easy/med./hard encounters, not in significantly reducing the number of encounters per day and spending more per encounter. In other words, a party facing only 1 encounter and able to use all its resources still cant handle 6-8 times the xp budget.

 

[jrowland]

Correction on your #1a; the DMG says "When making this calculation (Adjusted XP), don't count any monsters whose challenge rating is significantly below the average challenge rating of the other monsters in the group unless you think the weak monsters significantly contribute to the difficulty of the encounter." (p82)

You compare the CR to the average CR of the other monsters to determine if you should count their XP, not player level.

Which is effectively the same thing once you determine an XP budget based on PC level and assign creatures (with CRs). In other words, the "Average CR" is a function of PC level.