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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gothmog" data-source="post: 311476" data-attributes="member: 317">I think the CR system is good in theory, but in practice it falls short of being accurate.  In order to take the CR numbers "as is", there have to be too many considerations made.If the party has average levels of equipment, and if the party has the standard spread of stats, and if the party has 4 characters, and if there are no environmental conditions that might make the encounter harder or easier, and if you assume average dice luck, then the CR system yields expected results about 60% of the time (from the hundred of battles we have played).Throw out any one of those "ifs", and the whole CR thing becomes much less accurate.  I personally like to run somewhat grittier games (less magic), so you have to scale the encounters down for the PCs so they can survive.  On the other hand, since CR determines experience directly under the standard rules, it means in the long term, the PCs are earning less XP than they should for a typical encounter.  This is fine with us since we like somewhat slower character advancement than 3E advocates, but I know a lot of people disagree.I know I might get lynched for saying this, but I almost wish the CRs were just a rough guide to how tough the monster is, and that each monster was simply assigned an XP value, ala 2E.</blockquote>