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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 3821018" data-attributes="member: 710">Very interesting read (especially for the historical perspective <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=":)" /> )A few points: 1) CR/EL GuidelinesI know that the CR/EL guidelines are just guidelines, but the problem is that I find it very hard to go beyond these guidelines and "guesstimate" the appropriate challenge if I diverse to much from the typical ratings. I am very happy with the fact that so far, I seldomly seem to underestimate the challenge of encounters, and I think I also have rarely overestimate it. There are a few things I know will not not work as powerful as suggested (any "big brute" monster that is not a dragon against a party is rarely worth its full CR, for example)2) MooksIf mooks are only the weak monsters of the beginning of your career, you're probably correct that D&D will never be able to get them dangerous.If mooks are just defined as "considerably weaker and appearing in high numbers to compensate", I think there is a larger window of what is possible. If you reduce the amount the numbers increase each level, monsters stay viable longer. They might deal a damage points and suffer hard from area affect attacks, but I think that's okay for mook fights. The important point is that there hit/success chances must be noticeably higher than 5 % (20-30% are probably enough). If monsters can even inherently be designed to be mooks (=> minions in D&D 4?), the system works even better. They might have a CR/Level/Rank equal to that of the PCs, but they are still inferior in the damage dealing or survival department, so they pose a threat only in great numbers. 3rd Edition has no real mechanics suited for this, though you might be able to replicate it if you arbitrarily give monsters low constitution scores and very weak attacks, yet keep the HD comparable to that of the PCs. Or you just decide to arbitrarily half damage and hit points of a monster.</blockquote>

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