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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tormyr" data-source="post: 6385483" data-attributes="member: 6776887">Is the level of granularity really necessary?  Does it really make a difference?CR1 200XPCR2 450XPCR3 700XPSo if a creature had an XP range, say halfway between the average CRs on the low and high side, does it make a difference?  In that scenario, a CR2 creature could range from 325XP to 575XP.  Does it really make a difference to have an intellect devourer have 575XP instead of 450XP? As it stands in the current encounter building guidelines, 1 intellect devourer (450XP) is a moderate challenge for a 4 person level 2 party, and 2 (1,350XP) are beyond deadly.  Any other CR2 creature from Ogres to Saber-Tooth Tigers are the same.  1 is moderate, 2 is deadly.If the intellect devourer was at 575XP, It would be hard for the level 2 party of 4 and 2 of them would still be deadly, but is an intellect devourer really hard for the level 2 party?  It has lousy AC and low hit points for a CR2 creature, on par with a CR2 wizard.  The party of 4 is going to take it down in 1 round, and the creature will be fortunate to get 1 shot off.  The claws are not very powerful for a CR2 creature.  Devour Intellect requires a failure on a DC12 saving throw or take (11) 2d10 psychic damage and roll 3d6 to meet or exceed the target's intelligence or the target's int goes to 0.  Most of the time, the level 2 wizard (10hp) has to worry about being one-shotted by a CR2 ogre.  This time the fighter has to worry about being one-shotted.As it stands 2 CR2s (1350XP) cross the moderate threshold going from a level 4 (1000XP) to a level 5 (2000XP) party.  at 575XP each, 2 intellect devourers (1725XP) would be cross the threshold from hard to moderate as the party went from level 4 to level 5.  So what is the difference?  The intellect devourer is not really more deadly than any other CR2 creature, so why complicate encounter building?  To steal and modify a phrase from something else entirely, the encounter building guidelines should be, "As simple as possible; as complex as necessary." The simplicity comes in all creatures of a CR having the same XP.  The complexity comes from the difficulty not scaling linearly with the number of creatures.Now with calculators in phones and spreadsheets in laptops, calculating XP budgets when monsters of the same CR have different XP is only mildly more work, but I would argue that, while its uber attack is more of a pain to deal with than other CR2 creatures, the intellect devourer is not really more deadly than other CR2 creatures and does not really need a modest bump in XP over other CR2 creatures.Obviously, the intellect devourer is just one example, but I think this example would mostly hold true for just about any creature compared to other creatures of its CR with just the numbers changing.</blockquote>

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