D&D (2024) Challenge Rating (CR) and the 2024 /25 Books

[Reynard]

CR in 2014 game explicit benchmarks for things like HP and damage output. it was not perfect but at least it was something. LevelUp examined that and tried to make it more useful and explicit. Out of that the real useful elements popped out: the top CR reasonable for a specific APL. If you were to get rid of CR and just go by XP value, you would end up with GMs choosing way too powerful solos a lot of the time.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

You could eliminate CR if you made a table of "Proficiency Bonus by XP Value". That's totally doable, but I think a lot of people fail to understand the important of proficiency bonus in monster design.

 

[Xeviat]

It also feels odd that the XP gaps between rows of the CR to XP table (MM page 8) and those in the XP Budget per Character table (DMG page 115) work out the way they do.

For example:
CR 4 = 1100 / Level 5 high = 1100
(and then going down)
CR 19 = 22000 / Level 20 high = 22000

But in between....
1100 / 1100
1800 / 1400
2300 / 1700
2900 / 2100
3900 / 2600
5000 / 3100
5900 / 4100
7200 / 4700
8400 / 5400
10000 / 6200
11500 / 7800
13000 / 9800
15000 / 11700
18000 / 14200
20000 / 17200
22000 / 22000

The weird jumps in certain places is because PCs have levels where their power significantly jumps, like level 5. I have no idea where they got this progression from, but that's my assumption.

 

[Larnievc]

I don’t have the new books, but didn’t the old ones base all the math parts on XP and also mostly ignore CR as well, CR is the ball parking thing for people who aren’t precise. I’ve never looked at or used any of the rules on encounters. I just attack the party and dial up or dial down depending on how it’s goes; if I’m designing encounters to fit the party. Or adjusting encounters to fit the party. If I’m not, well then it doesn’t matter, they get what they get. I know all these rules matter to others, I just don’t see the point, I eyeball/ballpark stuff and it goes fine.

That’s exactly what I do. I find CR of about half the party level is a good base for an encounter but I dial it up of down by eye.

I certainly don’t think about XP budgets or worry about anything more granular than damage output and AC.

As long as a creature won’t drop a warrior type in two hits or less it probably fine.

 

[Li Shenron]

Pages 114-116 - Combat Encounters: The encounter building is all XP budget and doesn't mention CR except it notes to use CR 0 creatures sparingly and has a quick note that including a monster with CR higher than the party's level might one shot characters or have powers the party can't overcome.

This is the relevant part which explains the entire meaning of CR, and it's not difficult.

Except for one thing... both one-shotting a PC (e.g. with potential damage-per-turn higher than max HP) and having powers that cannot be overcome (e.g. by spells that the PC may have access to, at the current level) are very much things that relate to the level of an individual PC. So mentioning that a monster's CR is calculated on a party of four PC is bogus!

CR has nothing to do with the PCs chances of winning the encounter. Having a party of 20 PCs of level 1 means they will very likely kill a CR 3 or 4 monster, but doesn't remove the fact that the monster can still one-shot-kill one of them.