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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bigkahuna" data-source="post: 6882738" data-attributes="member: 6808141">The general rule of thumb with 5th edition as far as I could tell (as was the case with previous editions )is that if you use the CR rules as written, you are safe.  Another words, you wont create an encounter that will accidentally kill your entire party as long as you are within the guidelines.  As for challenge, its my experience that the term is miss used and misunderstood by players which I think it WotC's fault because they call the balancing variable of the system "challenge rating".   Its very confusing but the CR does not determine how challenging an encounter will be, it defines the level of the encounter so you have a rough idea of what level characters can face it.  Actual "challenge" of an encounter depends on oh so many factors from the environment the encounter takes place in, weather or not you surprise the characters, what equipment they have gathered, what spells and resources they have remaining and that's just a short list.  Not to mention the tactical difficulty the GM decides to add, I mean are you just throwing the enemies at the PC's or are you actually trying to win the fight as the GM using the monsters to the best of your tactical ability?  Even the dice themselves... how well you roll can determine how challenging an encounter is.I guess my point is that I think a lot of people look at the CR system and are disappointed to find that its not reliable, and of course they would be right, its not reliable and its physically impossible to create a system that is.  You can calculate odds of dice but you can't predict how well or poorly a GM or players will roll dice.  You can predict how much damage a monster can do, but you can't predict how well a GM will leverage that damage (will he take out the wizard first?, Does he knock out the healer to diminish the parties longevity in a fight?  ..  So much goes into it that in the end the CR is ultimately useless without the experience of the GM.The only thing the CR system is good for is to let you know if you are far off or if your in the ball park.  If you exceed the CR regularly, you will eventually kill your PC's on accident or you will end up having to cheapen the encounters by going easy on them, fudging dice etc.  If you throw a "easy" or "average" encounter at them you should be able to go completely out of your way to try to kill the group and still fail, another words, at those levels the monsters are at a pretty big disadvantage no matter what circumstances you put them in (usually... not always).  Unless your players are inept, they should be able to overcome the challenges.There are exceptions to all of these sort of generalities, case in point, I nearly KO'ed a party of 5th level characters with a single Kobold.  You would be surprise what an imaginative GM can do when he knows his players.</blockquote>

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