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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Davelozzi" data-source="post: 1594057" data-attributes="member: 771">It's true, CR is not much of a designator, especially if you have a non-standard party, as Kormydigar mentioned above. My advice is to try to ignore CR and just look at the monster's abilities vis a vis your PCs. It's especially tough if your party is large, as an encounter with creatures of CR close to their level is usually a breeze, but if you go too many CRs higher you sometimes get monsters who can take out a character with one shot. The best thing to do is make sure that the BBEG has plenty of minions and good tactics.Here's an example from my game this week:The session was all about a final battle with the BBEG - a devourer. Our party has eight PCs (avg. level 6). The devourer was accompanied by a bearded devil, cult priest (Clr7), 5 gravehounds (from MinisHB), 6 desecrated skeletons, 2 desecrated zombies, four bandits (Ftr4) and 3 orcs.The scene was a large temple, raised altar on one end accessible only via a balcony wrapping around from the other end of the room. Party is entering in two teams of four, one from the main entrance directly opposite the altar, the other from a door on the side wall under one of the balconies. Devourer, cult priest, and devil are on the altar, but only the cult priest is visible because one corner of the altar is in total darkness. Orcs on one balcony, bandits on the other (both armed with crossbows), undead are on the floor level.The party buffs up a bit, then coordinating through a Mindlink, both groups bust in at once from each side, the group at the main door leading with a centrally placed fireball that took out most of the zombies and skeletons and wounded some gravehounds, a couple of bandits, and the cult priest. Gravehounds rush in, orcs & bandits start shooting and soon most of the party is busy dealing with the enemies they can see. Having recently lost a party member to Hold Person, there is some focus on the cult priest and he quickly goes down. After wasting a round with an unsuccessful summons attempt, the bearded devil then starts teleporting around and slashing at the party wizard and psionicist with his glaive of wounding. Meanwhile, from the cover of the darkness, the devourer starts using his spectral hand to do long range energy drain on the wizard and psion (whichever the devil is not currently dealing with) and a couple of other characters.Finally, several rounds in, with most of the underlings taken care of, someone throws a torch up on the altar, exposing the devourer. A Mind Blast, Freezing Sphere (cold version of Flaming Sphere), and a bolt of Searing Light take him down in a couple of rounds and then the lone survivor (an orc) surrenders.All in all, I was fairly pleased as it was a pretty good climatic battle that took most of the session and finished up an adventure that's been going for a long time and seen two of the three party deaths in the campaign. Even so, I heard a couple of players mumble that the devourer wasn't so tough (since it only took a few rounds once they started focusing on him), though most of the party thought the battle was plenty challenging (3 PCs ended up with a negative level, and another ended up with 2).The thing is that just about anything goes down quick when eight people are focusing on it, so that's why the diversions were necessary - the underlings, the darkness and the layout all contributed to making the battle tougher and longer, without having to use a creature that could simply kill at will.Also, because the bad guys were holed up in the temple for a last stand, they were expecting the party, but didn't know when they were coming. The party delayed a few hours; all of the baddies buffs wore off, then the party moved in with their own buffs fresh. Had they not gone in with that advantage, things could've been tougher still.</blockquote>

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