Challenge Rating Replaced With...What?

[Scholar & Brutalman]

If you consider the Saga system, saves and defence pretty much scale with level directly alongside BAB and other stuff (although force attacks can be much nastier at low level and weaker at high level).

That force attack problem is due to skills scaling at a different rate than defences. I've been thinking along similar lines as you, and I think that the new math may be something like this: Attack, Defences, Skills, Damage Bonus all scaling at the same rate, probably +1 per level or 0.5 per level. Characters of the same level are differentiate by attribute, talent, feat and skill picks.

 

[Li Shenron]

Someone somewhere said something about "adding up XP values" of critters to get the total you want, and that critters had set XP rewards again. It may be on the info page somewhere (no time to look); and I may be misremembering.

If so, I love the simplicity of that - if it can work.

That would be simpler than 3ed to calculate Xp.

But it doesn't make it simpler for immediately checking if a monster is an appropriate challenge for a party. CR is immediate, Xp would require checking at table, although they could be designed to be more immediate (like "1000 per party level is adequate").

In fact, we're not going to use Xp only, but some sort of "level" in 4e. I don't see the reason for too much excitement tho, it's mostly a change of name from challenge rating to monster level, but the idea is the same (except of course how they combine to generate Xp, which sounds easier in 4e).

 

[Wormwood]

DMs will have to use some trial and error. Amazingly I, and others, have been able to run successful campigns lasting over a decade without needing CR.

Some of us don't have time for trial and error. I'm no longer a dorm-rat with 20+ hours to lovingly hand-craft encounters. I'm a fat married wage slave with a couple of hours a week of game-prep time. The last thing I want to do is bore my friends with boring/frustrating encounters because I misjudged a monster's in-game effectiveness.

ANY help that the game system can provide is greatly appreciated.

edit: this post is now snark-neutral

 

[helium3]

One is the guideline itself. If I know that a level 3 monster is a little bit tougher than a level 2, and I know how my party did against a level 2, I have a rough idea how they'll do against a 3.

Which is just fine, as long as I'm not trying to start a game off at level 10. There still needs to be an objective standard I can measure the party's "worth" against to handle encounters that I can't immediately judge with my own prior experience because they're too different from what I've run before.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm sure this objective standard will exist.

Part of it has to do with the new XP system. My understanding (which could be as flawed as anyone else's; I have no inside info here) is that each monster is worth a flat XP amount, as they were in older editions, and that's also a measure of difficulty.

I was pretty comfortable with the CR system in 3.X, but even I got confused by it at times. Mostly that happened when I tried to put together an encounter that consisted of a fairly wide range of CR's. So, modifying how it works in order to make it easier to put together a complex encounter is a good thing in my book.

I'm not enough of an old timer to answer this question myself, but maybe someone else can. Why did the designers of 3.X go to a system where the amount of XP per monster scaled depending on the level of the party fighting it? Scaled XP is a pretty significant increase in the level of complexity from flat XP, so there had to be a pretty solid reason for making that sort of change.

 

[helium3]

Do you remember the old days of White Dwarf magazine when it used to be about D&D and other rpgs?

Heh. Uh. No, actually I don't. I started playing D&D in 2001, though I DID start with 2ED.

Basically, Turnbull worked out how long it would take a 1st level fighter with a longsword doing average damage to kill the creature (based on its AC and hit points), and then calculated the expected damage that the creature would do to an AC5 (chainmail clad) foe in the rounds that it had alive. This 'expected damage' figure was the Monstermark, and reflected a standardised average dangerousness.

That's a really cool idea. In the past I've wondered if a system along those lines would allow you to get a "quantitative" handle on whether on what the CR of a monster was for design purposes, but I never could think of an objective way to handle things like spells and spell-like abilities.

 

[helium3]

The monster level basically tells us: The attacks and spells of this monster can reasonably affect typical members of a party of its monster level. The party can also reasonably effect a typical monster of its level with its attacks and spells.
But the level won't tell me how dangerous its attacks and spells actually are. Maybe it is firing Melf's Acid Arrows, or it is firing Fireballs. Maybe it's cast Charm Person, maybe it casts Dominate Person. Maybe its attacks hit for 1d6+3 damage, or they hit for 2d10+15 damage. The point is just: it will hit, it can be hit, its spells have a chance to not be resisted by the characters, and it has a chance to fail to resist against spells cast by the characters.
(chance means "reasonable" chance, like around 50%)

The last couple of posts, particularly this one and the one about the monstermark, got me really thinking about how you could determine from a design point what a monster's "level", "CR" or "pie" is.

The most rational way to do it is through a "monstermark" system like the one detailed above. In that system you'd figure out the average amount of damage an average opponent could dish out to an average party and make sure that the hitpoints of the "brute" character in the party was AT LEAST equal to that amount, if not significantly greater. Why the "brute?" Well, because a reasonably competent party would always make sure that it's the "brute" that's absorbing as much of that damage as possible.

Unfortunately, a system like this breaks down in 3.X because it's really difficult to judge how to compare non-martial classes to martial classes. How much damage an average wizard or cleric does on a per round basis really depends a lot on what an individual player has chosen to do with their character.

How would you even begin to factor concepts like an enchanter that likes to dominate opponents into a scheme like this? You really couldn't without engaging in extensive handwaving that would ultimately result in a system riddled with exceptions to the rule that could cause major balance problems for your customer.

But what if you gave every class an at-will attack that they could use every round that was roughly equivalent to the at-will attack that all the martial classes already posses in the form of swinging a weapon? It suddenly becomes a lot easier to compare martial to non-martial classes when determining the "pie" of an opponent because your base case becomes "everyone plinks away at the opponent with their at-will attack until its dead." All you have to do at that point is make sure that the special abilities of the opponent are significantly weak that they won't decimate the entire party when used.

In the end, all I'm saying is that I think this might be the design rationale for giving the classes the at will abilities that the designers have alluded to. It makes it easier to balance things out in the game so everyone has fun.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The last couple of posts, particularly this one and the one about the monstermark, got me really thinking about how you could determine from a design point what a monster's "level", "CR" or "pie" is.

The most rational way to do it is through a "monstermark" system like the one detailed above. In that system you'd figure out the average amount of damage an average opponent could dish out to an average party and make sure that the hitpoints of the "brute" character in the party was AT LEAST equal to that amount, if not significantly greater. Why the "brute?" Well, because a reasonably competent party would always make sure that it's the "brute" that's absorbing as much of that damage as possible.

Unfortunately, a system like this breaks down in 3.X because it's really difficult to judge how to compare non-martial classes to martial classes. How much damage an average wizard or cleric does on a per round basis really depends a lot on what an individual player has chosen to do with their character.

How would you even begin to factor concepts like an enchanter that likes to dominate opponents into a scheme like this? You really couldn't without engaging in extensive handwaving that would ultimately result in a system riddled with exceptions to the rule that could cause major balance problems for your customer.

Side Track: Domination is a problem in and on itself. Basically, a dominate spell does two things - take someone out of the fight, and "summon" you an ally that is just as strong as the guy you just took out. I think that is next to impossible to balance or adjucate fairly, unless you limit the actions the caster can take while his dominated monster takes action)

But what if you gave every class an at-will attack that they could use every round that was roughly equivalent to the at-will attack that all the martial classes already posses in the form of swinging a weapon? It suddenly becomes a lot easier to compare martial to non-martial classes when determining the "pie" of an opponent because your base case becomes "everyone plinks away at the opponent with their at-will attack until its dead." All you have to do at that point is make sure that the special abilities of the opponent are significantly weak that they won't decimate the entire party when used.

In the end, all I'm saying is that I think this might be the design rationale for giving the classes the at will abilities that the designers have alluded to. It makes it easier to balance things out in the game so everyone has fun.

Yes, that's certainly a possibility. It limits the margin of error if only some abilities of the spellcasters are wildly variable, and these are those that are the most limited.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The most rational way to do it is through a "monstermark" system like the one detailed above. In that system you'd figure out the average amount of damage an average opponent could dish out to an average party and make sure that the hitpoints of the "brute" character in the party was AT LEAST equal to that amount, if not significantly greater. Why the "brute?" Well, because a reasonably competent party would always make sure that it's the "brute" that's absorbing as much of that damage as possible.

I don't think you would find this worked (it certainly wouldn't have worked with the 1e and earlier Monstermark, particularly since it took as it base and endless line of chainmail clad fighters with no attack or damage bonus moving up one at a time to strike their foe... the MM value couldn't be meaningfully compared to a 5th level characters hit points, it was only of use for working out a comparative, relative value.

Or are you thinking of a notionally CRx creature against a CRx party? It would mean more (and more complex) calculations, and it takes CR as its starting point which might not work out well.

Cheers

 

[Samnell]

I'm not enough of an old timer to answer this question myself, but maybe someone else can. Why did the designers of 3.X go to a system where the amount of XP per monster scaled depending on the level of the party fighting it? Scaled XP is a pretty significant increase in the level of complexity from flat XP, so there had to be a pretty solid reason for making that sort of change.

Off the top of my head, I'd say it was to fix the problem with fixed XP where a horde of inferior foes could give vastly more XP than was proper for any challenge they posed the party, and also put the cap on the possibility of a lucky party killing something quite beyond them and getting enough XP to gain several levels at once.

 

[helium3]

Side Track: Domination is a problem in and on itself. Basically, a dominate spell does two things - take someone out of the fight, and "summon" you an ally that is just as strong as the guy you just took out. I think that is next to impossible to balance or adjucate fairly, unless you limit the actions the caster can take while his dominated monster takes action.

Oddly enough, WotC accidentally solved this problem when they published the XPH and left out the rules verbiage that pertained to augmenting the power so that the duration could be anything other than concentration. Of course, then they went and published eratta that allowed it to emulate the version in the PHB.