F5 said:
Ari, why do you say that? What other parts of 3.5 would have to be rebuilt to make a CR system like that work? It would require a complete rebuild of the creatures in the Monster Manual from the ground up, but I don't see how a better-streamlined CR system would neccessarily impact the rest of the 3.5 ruleset. Or am I mis-interpereting what you said?
Well, I was referring mostly to the fact that it's a complete rebuild of a major and integral subsystem, as opposed to a minor rules change. That said...
If one were to rebuild monster design this way, there
would be a ripple effect throughout the game. For instance, if level = HD = CR, then you have to calculate balance with an equal level of magic items throughout. (This is already a problem in the game as written, since PCs and NPCs have such widely varying degrees of magic, yet level is ostensibly supposed to equal CR.)
Your options for doing so are either to completely equalize the expected wealth by level between PCs and NPCs, and then make the same amount available to any encounter of the same CR and/or EL--but doing this would swiftly throw off the system, because PCs would gain too much treasure too quickly--or you have to assume a CR baseline of zero magic. In other words, a 9th-level PC and a 9th-level NPC and a 9-HD monster have to be equal assuming the complete absence of magic items.
And once you do
that, you then have to include rules for how the addition of magic items
increases a creature/character's threat level above the baseline. After all, if (pulling a random monster as an example) a troll in the new system is 7 HD and the equivalent of 7th level and CR 7, what happens if that troll has a few magic items? What happens if he has magic items equivalent to an NPC? To a PC?
Some of these problems are easier to solve than others, but
all of them have to be considered from the word "go," as opposed to patched over after the fact.
