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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 6835533" data-attributes="member: 20323">Well, for determining the CR of spellcasters, mostly you're looking at raw damage output and guesstimating how many creatures are trapped in area of effect spells. You can also find approximations for some spells on the DMG monster features table p.280-281. For spellcasters who exert a lot of control effects, it's sometimes more helpful to think of those globally in the same terms you'd think of setting an entire encounter in knee-deep water that acts as difficult terrain; in other words, shift the entire difficulty of the encounter up a step if their control is really good. Anything beyond that and you're firmly in the realm of DMing art, not mathematics. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Yep, sounds like you've got a good approach. I ran the numbers on your NPC Fighter, because I wanted to illustrate the "margin of error" on my rule of thumb. Simply by giving a 9th level warrior-type NPC higher ability scores, good equipment, and Action Surge, I ended up with CR 6 (which is 2/3rds levels, rather than 1/3rd which would be CR 3). That's a pretty big variation, isn't it?To be fair, there's tons of variation (surprise, terrain, magic items, play style, house rules, etc) built into 5th edition's challenge system, and lots of people report experienced tactical-minded players who work well together taking on opposition way beyond what the rules would suggest.Besides keeping in mind your group's skill as players, I would also advise paying attention to how fresh their PCs are. The encounters they can handle when they're fresh can be a lot more difficult than the ones they can handle when they've already been taxed by a few encounters.</blockquote>

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