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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 9151752" data-attributes="member: 1465">You know what... I've read your encounter summary, and before I read your other posts I was unable to determine whether you were complaining that it was too easy or too hard, or if otherwise you were happy that it met your expectations.This tells me, that if you just describe how an encounter went at the table, different people will interpret it as anything between "it went horribly" to "it went perfectly". To complicate everything, while some people demand the game to meet their expectations, other people demand it to surprise them in order to be entertained, or perhaps we could say that their expectations is for the game to resolve in unexpected way.All I could tell from your description, is that one PC had a lucky day and another had an unlucky day with the dice (both of which are in fact expected, and kind of cancelled out), while since you don't mention for the other two I suppose the dice rolls felt more average, and that you chose to use the 'big weapons' instead of saving them up for later, but because of this you actually won the encounter in only two rounds. That it would have become a deadly encounter if you didn't do it is only speculation.From you other post I get it more clearly that for you this was tougher than expected. You blame the whole CR system for that, but I can't say if instead there's something wrong with the Roper's specific CR being underestimated (which is very different than saying the 'system' is wrong). Just saying here, that it's too complicated to draw conclusions for many reasons: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">what do people expect from a 'medium' encounter in the first place (many gamers believe they're so good at the game that 'medium' is an insult, and it should have barely scratched their HP)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">how much the environment restricts or enhances the PC's possible choices of action</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">how good the players actually are in knowing the rules and playing well with their PC abilities, as well at tactics</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">how good the DM actually is at directing monsters to fight, and how much the DM is willing to play monsters to their full potential vs downplaying them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">how rigid control does the DM pretend to have on the results (some DMs want to control so much, down to how many HP and spell slots the encounter should grind away from the party)</li> </ul>In theory CR is a simple safety number that a DM who is afraid of being too hard on the players can look at, and maybe decide not to use a monster like that yet.</blockquote>

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