Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="cthulhu42" data-source="post: 6590396" data-attributes="member: 6792361">That's generally what I do. I've been DMing long enough that I can usually scan a stat block and know what my PC's can handle. However, this being a new edition for us, I've been trying to get a handle on some of the minutia rules, as well as trying to see just how well a CR"x" creature stands up to my group of 4 PC's. It seemed like a good test of the system, not to mention pretty eye opening. But rather than have them fight just a single creature of their CR, I thought it'd be good to throw multiples at them, but therein lay the problem of determining how many of what kind of creatures added up to the target CR. One thing I'm finding interesting is that the monsters scale pretty quickly, and generally speaking, even a single creature of a given CR is proving it can hold it's own against the PC's. I've been running them on a sort of power leveling game in order to familiarize ourselves with the rules, so I've run them from 1st to 7th pretty quickly, with 2 to 3 encounters between levels. The idea being to get them to 20th, then start from scratch and begin an actual campaign. Anyway, I've been mixing it up a bit, but in general I've been tryign to get as close to the party's CR as I can, and I've been surprised to the monsters kicking some PC butt. I'd say in at least 75% of the fights at least one PC goes down, and sometimes two of them hit the floor. I don't really know how that compares with earlier editions because I usually ignore CR's, but I seem to remember that the few times I did throw a CR appropriate monster at my 3.5 group, they mowed it down pretty quickly. Not so, this time around. In fact, every time they level my group crows like crazy about all the cool new kick butt abilities conferred on them by the level gain, and I always think, "Wow, they're going to start crushing these beasts!" But then a Bullete pops up out of the ground and drops the cleric with his first bite, or a cyclops knocks the warlock into next week with a tree trunk. Honestly, I've always thought the CR system was flawed anyway. Terrain and strategy make such a huge difference. I threw a pair of chuul at my group (one max hp, the other average), which was actually more than double the party's CR level, but it was on flat ground. It was a tough fight, but I wasn't too worried, and they eventually beat the chuul down. The very next encounter (after a long rest) was with a single barbed devil who attacked them from a 30' high balcony. He put the warlock down not once, but twice, then knocked the fighter out, and had the sorcerer at single digit hit points before the cleric managed to finish him off. Anyway, that's a long way of saying, I was just curious if the math was out there. I'll probably just wing it like I always do. It's worked for 20+ years, after all.</blockquote>

Verification