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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Crichton" data-source="post: 371198" data-attributes="member: 4779">As a DM and a player, I don't like PC death.  When I DM (which is what I mostly do) the encounters are fair but deadly.  I use CR as a guideline.  I'll usually fall back on my old 2e habit of balancing HD and special powers/item of the party with the HD and special properties of the enemy and go from there.If a PC does something stupid or just acts carelessly then it's fair game.  They leave their fate up to the dice.  When I plan something out I expect the PC's to be paying attention when we play.  That is the surest way to get killed.  But gearing an encounter against the PC's is the easiest way to get them all killed.  In the adventuring career of a PC, they will have many more chances of something unlucky happening to them so I feel that I don't have to make something overly deadly.So on that note, I don't believe CR's are "broken" or that D&D has become too nice or docile.  3e is just the best system that has come out so far and has had the most documentation for it.  It's only natural to have a better description of how to hand out XP than in previous incarnations.  But as an earlier poster stated, all the rules are basically guidelines.  The DM must modify them to fit certain situations.  There are many grey areas and the rules while they may seem it, are not all black and white.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />This consequently means having a good grasp of the rules is a must.  The DM should be a person with a strong understanding of the rules so he can bend them to fit his adventure properly.  If a DM doesn't have time to learn the rules the PC's will either never come close to dying or be wiped out too quickly.  Additionally, players with a knowledge of the rules will know the DM is "just fudging it" and will have less fun.So, in closing, I think CR is a good tool.  Especially for beginning DM's.  It also helps establish some kind of conformed method of determining how hard a sitution is to overcome across different games.</blockquote>

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