Dragonlance Dragonlance Shadow of the Dragon Queen shows up in the wild!

[overgeeked]

Right. Something easy does not test your ability. To test it, it has to be difficult. A challenge. For example. Give the world record weightlifter a 2 pound weight to test how strong he is. It's going to be easy and not a challenge. It's also not going to test how strong he is. To test how strong he is, you need weight near or at his max ability to life. THAT is a challenge for him.

I gotta say, of all the pointlessly silly arguments I’ve seen on here, this is definitely top five.

Right. Currently CR is useless for figuring out what challenges a group. It might as well not even be there.

It’s in the ballpark if you divide it by two. So it’s sort of useful.

 

[Scribe]

Right. Something easy does not test your ability. To test it, it has to be difficult. A challenge. For example. Give the world record weightlifter a 2 pound weight to test how strong he is. It's going to be easy and not a challenge. It's also not going to test how strong he is. To test how strong he is, you need weight near or at his max ability to lift. THAT is a challenge for him.

Not debating the definition of 'challenge', but if we went by the metric of 'it must actually test max potential' then we cannot say that is a design goal of 5e.

The intent of how the game is designed is not to provide a coin flip challenge.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'm old enough to remember when this was a dragonlance thread.... Perhaps take this somewhere else, so those of us that want to read about DL can....

 

[Maxperson]

Not debating the definition of 'challenge', but if we went by the metric of 'it must actually test max potential' then we cannot say that is a design goal of 5e.

The intent of how the game is designed is not to provide a coin flip challenge.

Near or at. Not at. To be a challenge you must be able to lose. For one on one, the individual has to be able to lose. Said weightlifter would not find a college weightlifter to be a challenge, but would find another top weightlifter a challenge. For teams, which the party is, the entire team has to be able to lose for it to be a challenge. That doesn't mean that it has to be 50/50, but it can't be a cakewalk, either.

 

[dave2008]

Then they need a different term. Challenge Rating implies that a 19 should be a challenge for a 19th level group, not a pushover. Not that CR would be accurate even then, since party abilities vary so greatly.

Then you have to get into negative numbers or serious fractions, and who wants that!

In all seriousness. I used to have the same issue you are having, particularly having just played 4e for 4+ years. Once I realized to let go of my preconceived notion of what CR is everything made a lot more sense and it was much less frustrating.

 

[Scribe]

Near or at. Not at. To be a challenge you must be able to lose. For one on one, the individual has to be able to lose. Said weightlifter would not find a college weightlifter to be a challenge, but would find another top weightlifter a challenge. For teams, which the party is, the entire team has to be able to lose for it to be a challenge. That doesn't mean that it has to be 50/50, but it can't be a cakewalk, either.

Everything about the games math points to an overwhelming chance of success in any given task.

 

[dave2008]

Near or at. Not at. To be a challenge you must be able to lose. For one on one, the individual has to be able to lose. Said weightlifter would not find a college weightlifter to be a challenge, but would find another top weightlifter a challenge. For teams, which the party is, the entire team has to be able to lose for it to be a challenge. That doesn't mean that it has to be 50/50, but it can't be a cakewalk, either.

On a per encounter basis that is not how the DMG encounter guidelines are constructed. The serious challenge comes over the course of the adventure day. I think that was the correct call generally, but I do wish they gave clear direction on how to make single encounter a serious challenge. It is there if you look at the numbers, but the book does not guide you to the solution.

 

[dave2008]

Everything about the games math points to an overwhelming chance of success in any given task.

I personally don't have any problem with that being the default. I do wish they gave guidance on how to tweak the game to make it more difficult and how to compensate for groups with magic items or simply better tacticians. I don't think it would even take up that much space.

 

[Scribe]

I personally don't have any problem with that being the default. I do wish they gave guidance on how to tweak the game to make it more difficult and how to compensate for groups with magic items or simply better tacticians. I don't think it would even take up that much space.

I do have a problem with it, but having them break it out and make it really clear in the DMG or something would be great. As it is, it all leans way too far towards the player by default, and if there is any kind of optimization, the 'default' assumption of difficult dissolves and its a walk.

 

[dave2008]

My party of 9th level characters just took a dragon with double Soth's hit points. One PC went down but recovered quickly.

Everyone's group is different. I trashed my lvl 10 party (5 PCs) with a Balor (also CR 19). That is the wonderful thing about RPGs and in particular D&D, different people have different experiences.