Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sacrosanct" data-source="post: 7209764" data-attributes="member: 15700">This is really what it comes down to, IMO.  In over 35 years of DMing, every experienced DM I know always create encounters by feel.  Especially when DMing your own group, because you know your group and you know how they play and the style they play and their effectiveness in being a team.  The only time I (or others I know) use the CR guidelines are when we're writing something for AL, because you sort of have to.In my own experience, many times the challenge has nothing to do with if feats were used, or multi-classing, or any other optional mechanical feature of the game.  In many cases, what makes an encounter challenging is how me as the DM run the monsters.  If it's just an arena style battle in a vanilla environment then it's probably less challenging.  But if the monsters interact with the environment in a way that makes sense for them (depending on intelligence, etc), the same monsters can be extremely challenging.IMO, it's part of the DM's job to be prepared.  That's not just knowing rules.  That's running NPCs and monsters in accordance with what their natural behavior would dictate, and it's knowing my players and creating a game that fits their style so they can have the most fun.  Those other two things are just as, if not more important than knowing the rules.Not only has D&D always been this way, but in 5e it flat out tells you on page 1 that the DM "breathes life into monsters" and chooses which rules to follow and which to change depending on your gaming table's preference.  That's the DM's job.As I said in the other thread, any DM who refuses to do those two things because they just don't want to is lazy.  I mean, it's right there in the job description, and any job in the world, if you refuse to do part of it, it's lazy.  You certainly can't blame the game if you're refusing to follow the guidelines.  That's totally on you.</blockquote>

Verification