That said, I do believe the current climate of the game is limiting imagination. Like Henry said, players brought up only under the new system tend to see the rules as more credible than DM arbitration. If a DM makes an antithetical call or chooses not to use a newly published option/rule, it may appear as if they know "better" than the professional designers at Wizards. Someone else mentioned needing real balancing guidelines. I'm sure Wizards has these developed even though much of it is an art, as they say. But there are definite reasons why they do not release these spreadsheets and rules of thumb. Having the best balanced rules is a big selling points in an OGL market. Unfortunately, the idea "only Wizards has extensively balanced rules" contributes to the mindset of DM's not being the preferred arbiter of what is allowed.
Actually, I would disagree with this slightly. It's not that Wizards has the only balanced rules, but, rather, there are so many DM's out there who couldn't find their bottom with both hands and a flashlight. Arbitrary, ad hoc DM's fiat decisions cause far more angst around gaming tables over the years than any number of arguments over attacks of opportunity.
When the DM simply says, "This is the way it is, because I say so." and the rules back him up on this, I have a serious problem. No, I'm sorry. Just because it's your campaign does not give you the right to be the ultimate arbiter when perfectly acceptable rules exist. I had one DM who, after my wizard character in 2e had been created and played for a couple of levels, decide that the rules for magic spell creation weren't good enough, so, he cut the chances of success in half. Now, he didn't inform me of this decision until after I had played the character for a while and amassed the necessary materials to research new spells. In his mind, creating new spells was something for legendary mages, and to heck with the rules.
It's DM's like that that has fueled the Player Revolt. Many, many players are simply fed up with completely arbitrary decisions by idiot DM's. The role of DM does not carry any sort of requirement for being intelligent. The role of being a GOOD DM does. Unfortunately, there are lots of stupid people out there and, sometimes, they get to sit in the Daddy chair and run DND games. 3e and particularly 3.5 has created a ruleset that governs as much of the game as possible. Elements that used to be completely arbitrary are now routinely covered by the rules.
An average DM can run a pretty good DnD 3e game. A poor DM can run an ok one. In earlier editions, it required a good DM to have a good game. Well, if you've got a good DM, it doesn't really matter what game you play, it's fun. Unfortunately, the number of good DM's out there has never been all that high and has been far outnumbered by the piss poor DM's out there. 3.5 has enabled DM's to play decent games with a minimum of fuss regardless of a lack of ability. The rules work pretty well as training wheels to keep DM's on an even track. Earlier editions lacked the safety of balanced and encompassing rules, which meant that derailments were common and quite often spectacularly bad.
On another note - CR.
CR is simply a codification of what we did as DM's in previous editions. Before CR, you used your experience as a DM, your knowledge of the group and a fair bit of Kentucky windage to create encounters that you thought were a challenge for your group. It no more takes away from the power of DM's than saying using a hammer takes away from the ability of a carpenter. It's a tool, nothing more or less. It's use as a tool varies from game to game, because the assumptions inherent in CR may or may not apply to your particular group. IME, CR tends to be fairly underestimated. I routinely pummel my party with encounters that should be cakewalks. I'm not sure if I'm simply playing the creatures too tactically or my players aren't tactical enough. Perhaps a little of both. But, in any case, I can take a look at CR and make an educated guess as to how tough the encounter should be for my group.
It's a shorthand method for adventure design. I'm not really sure where the problem is. If you have a fairly typical 5th level party, then a CR 5 creature such as a troll should be a reasonable challenge for them. In earlier editions, you'd have a 5th level party and toss a couple of trolls at them with the expectation of a stiff fight but certainly no fatalities.
All CR and Encounter Level did was give DM's a shorthand method for designing adventures. If you were writing a rough draft of an adventure, you could simply make a decision tree with applicable CR encounters plunked here and there. Heck, I recently designed a random encounter table based entirely on CR. 2d10, similar to the older edition random encounter tables, with a CR= Character level -1 at the common numbers, CR=Character Level at the less common numbers and CR=Character Level +1 or +2 at the top and bottom. I then went over to the
World Of Sulerin Encounter maker, plugged in the CR's, got lists of creatures based on the books I own, and picked the creatures that worked best in my adventure. Poof, instant random encounter table that makes sense, and I know won't obliterate my party with insane challenges. All done in about 5 minutes. If I had to go through my 2 Monster Manuals, 3 Creature Collections and my Sandstorm book to sift through creatures I thought would work, it would take me an hour. I'd much rather spend 5 minutes of prep time to get the same result.
That's how you use CR.
. Like I said in der_kluge's epiphany thread:
