Kamikaze Midget said:
I bolded what I gather is the crux of that paragraph, and I can't help but disagree. In the real world, four people ganging up on one other person is drastically different from two people duelling. In D&D...
Well, first, because we aren't dealing with the real world. We aren't even dealing with a game system in which many against one makes a really big difference. We are dealing with D&D, and D&D has an abstract game system which only minimally cares how many combatants are in the system because a person's defence rating (AC) doesn't depend on how many times he's been attacked (no block or parry actions), whether or not he's wounded (hit points rather than wounds), and because at most multiple attackers get a 10% situational bonus (flanking, rogues get a bigger bonus but this generally balances out thier reduced combat skills in non-flanking situations). So even if four people ganging up on one other person is drastically different than two people duelling, D&D doesn't really model it.
D&D combats basically involve actors wearing each other down through attrition. The Stone Giant gets worn down faster if he's facing four foes, but not exponentially faster. More to the point, so does the 8th level NPC fighter and in basically every respect the Stone Giant is better situated to endure the sort of resource drain combat represents than the 8th level NPC. Again, the situation isn't apples and oranges or meters and curies here.
...the diverse skill set of rogues, wizards, fighters, and clerics is quite a world away from a single fighter.
No, not really. Each of them will approach the contribution to the combat in a different way, but by and large its going to work the same way - an attrition of hit points at some rate per round from the opponent (or in the clerics case countering the attrition of the stone giant by adding hitpoints at some rate per round). The sole exception will be 'save or die' effects from the wizard, and a Stone Giant is better equipped to survive these than an 8th level fighter.
More importantly, with the exception of the wizard getting lucky with a 'save or die' effect, the fighter is better equipped to face Stone Giant challenges than any other character class. Fighters (and fighter 'sub-classes', that is to say anything with full BAB progression) devote almost all of thier skills to surviving combat challenges. The other classes that you mention probably actually increase the difficulty of a Stone Giant combat challenge because a large portion of thier abilities are designed to aid them in other kinds of challenges (traps, undead, puzzles, diplomacy, whatever). Arguably, a party of four fighter types will do better here than a mixed party. The giant doesn't have alot of tricks to play. A fighter is on his ground in this sort of challenge.
Read Firelance's post again. It demonstrates pretty admirably that the equipment makes a significant difference.
I didn't say it didn't. I said that the fact that equipment makes a significant difference is proof that the CR system can only be a very rough guideline.
Now, certainly if the call for CR rating is between "high end of 7 and low end of 8," the CR system isn't wildly inaccurate and useless; rather, it is a good guideline, regardless of where you may personally put that capability.
1) I think you are arguing with someone other than me dispite the fact that you are addressing me.
2) There is a vast range of possibilities between 'useless' and 'good'.
3) My argument was never that the CR system was useless. My argument was that the CR system was only a rough guideline and that it was wrong more often than it was right. But I never said it was useless and that's not the same thing as saying it was useless. It is far better than choosing a random number, for example, which would be nearly useless. In combat situations I typically produce as the result of my games, it's off by a point or two as often as it is IMO correct but even if I ignored this problem it would still 'only' be off by a point or two.
Exactly how accurate CR is, is a matter of some debate.
Sure. But the fact that it is not accurate at least in some circumstances is not IMO a matter of much debate, and I don't have much respect for anyone that says otherwise. If you want to argue that its right more often than not, and even when its not right its not wildly wrong, that's fine. But I would like to note that a point or two off on a logrithmic scale is alot more wildly off than you are giving credit. If the CR system can misassign values of 8 to encounters which more accurately vary from EL 6 to EL 10, that might not seem like a big deal but according to the system EL 10 is about 4 times as difficult as EL 6. A niave DM who doesn't take that into account is in for a world of hurt, and so are his poor players.
I'm merely saying that calling it copmletely useless or wildly off-base or pulled out of a hat or other such statements are needless exaggerations that do nothing to help the case of thoe who feel that CR is not as accurate as it should be.
Maybe, but if that's what you are trying to say, why are you saying it to me?
If you feel that an 8th level NPC fighter should be CR 7 instead of CR 8, I suggest that such a demarcation is not some egregious miscalculation on some massive scale, so the hyperbole is unwarranted.
EL 8 is 50% more difficult than EL 7, say 6 Ogres rather than 4. The problem I have with terms like 'egregious' and 'hyperbole' is that they are subjective. Someone may consider being off by the difference of 6 Ogres rather than 4 is a pretty considerable difference. Others may not. I'm not at all interested in whether you do or not. I'm only trying to show that the CR system is a rough guideline and frequently generates the wrong numbers for common situations (mulitple opponents, templates, advancing monsters, NPC classed individuals, monsters with classes, PC classed NPC's, etc.)
I'm making no defense of CR myself, merely pointing out that claiming they were "pulled out of a hat" or somesuch is pointless hyperbole.
Ok fine. Just understand that if that's all you are saying, I find it a very weak argument of very little relevancy and I don't see why you are bothering getting so verbal and excited about it.
In other words, it seems to me that you are misunderstanding what CR actually measures. A stone giant may be able to kill 6 8th level NPC fighters, but could it kill 1 8th level PC fighter, 1 8th level PC rogue, 1 8th level PC cleric, and 1 8th level PC wizard? Or would it just consume some of their rescources and then be dead? CR was never meant to account for monster-on-monster (or NPC-on-NPC battles), so it's no surprise that you think it's wrong if you've been using it as such.
Of course CR doesn't directly measure any given single character class one on one. Of course the CR system doesn't directly measure any given monsters ability to kill anything, although I would argue that for the CR system to measure anything well at all, the higher the CR of the monster the better chance it would have of killing a character of nth level. Very obviously, a monsters ability to challenge a party indirectly influences its ability to kill monsters and defeat single characters. I am NOT however using CR to measure EITHER the monsters ability to win against a PC one-on-one (I haven't done solo adventuring in 3rd edition), NOR am I using it to measure whether it could kill a 8th level fighter, 8th level rogue, 8th level cleric, and 8th level wizard. I am assuming that if the CR system is accurate on average we can expect encounters of a given EL to be correct, that against a mixed party they will on average consume about the same ammount of resources. And both experience and running the numbers demonstrates that that is not the case. The fact of the matter is it doesn't matter whether the Stone Giant kills a PC. As you point out yourself, that's not what CR measures. What matters is that we clearly can't expect the fight with the 8th level fighter to consume as many resources (on average) as the fight with the stone giant, and further that we can't expect any two fights with different 8th level fighters to consume the same number of resources.
As I said, from my experience, an PC classed NPC usually has an effective CR between ECL - 4 and ECL - 1, depending on the level, the build, the amount of min/maxing, and the equipment selected. Very rarely is a NPC classed PC as tough of an encounter as a monster with the same suggested CR. Because of this, the CR system should be used as a rough guideline, with the understanding that if you do something other than just pick a single opponent from the monster manual (and sometimes even then) you probably should use your experience to hand adjust the EL if you expect to get 'fair' results and the challenges you expect.
The substance of your argument is done no justice by gratuitous exaggerations and hyperbole. This isn't intended to insult, but to inform: you can criticize the CR/EL system (or whatever) without belittling it.
Is the CR system getting its wee little feelings hurt? Look, I've said many times before that I think that the 3rd edition designers did a bang up job. I'm not belittling anyone, and if I or anyone else is belittling a bit of ink and paper then I think its going to survive.
