Dragonlance Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen shows up in the wild!

[dave2008]

Considering the official CR system is famously…laughably busted, I’d go with Micah’s assessment over the rulebook. The monster books don’t even follow the DMG’s guidelines. CR really is a joke.

I'm with @MonsterEnvy , the vast majority of monsters follow the DMG guidelines, particularly after the MM. The CR system isn't broken, but the encounter building system is bit out of the expectations of most people (or at least most people on this website).

The bigger problem is many people don't understand how to apply the CR guidelines or what the encounter guidelines are really saying.

 

[Reynard]

I use it as intended; if a creature's CR is equal to or less than the party level, the fight will most likely not be lethal. As CR increases beyond the party level, the odds increase that one or more party members could drop.

That's only true if the CR is an accurate representation of difficulty. Which it NEVER is, because there are literally millions of combinations of PCs for any given level. CR is primarily gauged by AC, HP and DPR -- which is only a useful metric in a whiteroom battle with no consideration of non damaging capabilities. It takes experience and skill to gauge actual "CR" against a specific party and 5E gives GMs no help in this regard.

 

[darjr]

 

[darjr]

 

[Reynard]

I'm with @MonsterEnvy , the vast majority of monsters follow the DMG guidelines. particularly after the MM.

The bigger problem is many people don't understand how to apply the guidelines.

The bigger problem is that the guidelines don't take anything besides damage output into account and so you end up with creatures with completely inaccurate CRs like the shadow (too low) and dragons (too high). The 5E system is entirely too variable for anything so simplistic as the DMG CR system to provide useful data.

 

[Maxperson]

That's only true if the CR is an accurate representation of difficulty. Which it NEVER is, because there are literally millions of combinations of PCs for any given level. CR is primarily gauged by AC, HP and DPR -- which is only a useful metric in a whiteroom battle with no consideration of non damaging capabilities. It takes experience and skill to gauge actual "CR" against a specific party and 5E gives GMs no help in this regard.

This.

 

[overgeeked]

The bigger problem is many people don't understand how to apply the CR guidelines or what the encounter guidelines are really saying.

Okay. I’ll bite. Explain it to me.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The bigger problem is that the guidelines don't take anything besides damage output into account and so you end up with creatures with completely inaccurate CRs like the shadow (too low) and dragons (too high). The 5E system is entirely too variable for anything so simplistic as the DMG CR system to provide useful data.

Dragons seem more dangerous then their CR's imply to me. Just cause of all the AOE damage they can spit out.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I don't care about that legacy stuff at all. It's irrelevant. He is the BBEG so his statblock should evoke an epic battle that keeps players engaged the entire time that is the sole reason he exists. You build enemies to satisfy play, not story.

The Dragon Highmaster Kansaldi is actually the BBEG. Soth is just another big villain. Soth also can easily provide an epic battle against a mid level party going by his statblock.

 

[dave2008]

The bigger problem is that the guidelines don't take anything besides damage output into account and so you end up with creatures with completely inaccurate CRs like the shadow (too low) and dragons (too high). The 5E system is entirely too variable for anything so simplistic as the DMG CR system to provide useful data.

That is not completely true, but I don't disagree with the general point I think your trying to make. Monster CR takes a lot more into it than just damage, but they do try to boil it down into the ability to inflict damage and the ability soak damage. However, IME it generally does a good job of measuring relative difficulty amongst monsters. Which, IMO, is all it should really do. There are, of course, outliers.