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Encounter/CR Rules An Artform
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7845987" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I think CR has been a step forward from the much vaguer situations in 1e or 2e, but it should not be treated as a hard and fast rule. In other words, I fully agree with you that producing fair and interesting challenges still remains more of an art than a science.</p><p></p><p>The following always remains true:</p><p></p><p>1) CR is often wrong. Assigning CR in the first place is an artform, and it's often wrong in published material by +/-1 or in some cases even +/-2. </p><p></p><p>2) Even when CR is not wrong, the range covered by a single CR is fairly large. If you take any arbitrary number, say CR 5, you will be able to find some monsters that are CR 5 which are almost but not quite CR 4 and others which are almost but not quite CR 6. That means within the same CR range you can have monsters which are 150% or more as deadly as other monsters with the same CR. Similarly, if you are RBDM, you know that you can make small tweaks to a monster that are insufficient to alter it's CR but which make it 10% or 20% more effective. A good example is a default Ogre has primitive weapons like a club and makeshift hide armor. But an ogre working as a mercenary might have a two-handed sword and mail. That change makes the Ogre much more dangerous, but not so much more dangerous that it bumps it up a full CR.</p><p></p><p>3) Every campaign and every party is different in its assumptions and in its composition, and as such different challenges will be of different difficulty to different groups. Some parties I've had were tightly focused on melee combat, and anything that they could close with and surround would get beat down quickly. Other parties I've had focused on battlefield control and ranged combat, and anything that couldn't close quickly with them would be easily dispatched. Those two parties will have very different challenges with a burrowing ambush predator that achieves surprise. Likewise, I've had a party focused on undead slaying that could handle masses of undead that would have been lethal to a different party composition of the same level.</p><p></p><p>4) CR never takes into account tactics. In particular, the terrain that a fight takes place in massively alters the effective CR of something. If the monster is fighting in its favored terrain and circumstances, it will tend to be massively more dangerous than when it is not. As a very simple even comical example, a giant shark is a very different encounter when encountered on land, encountered in a boat, and encountered when the party is in the drink with it. The effective CR of a monster depends a lot on the lair the DM designs for that monster, and double or half the encounter difficulty all by itself. Any lair that the monster can make better use of than the party is a massive advantage that should be accounted for but often isn't. Coming from the opposite direction, challenge rating almost always assumes that the party will adopt the most effective tactics to counter and defeat a monster. But if the party doesn't understand the weakness of what they are facing or adopts the wrong strategy, the challenge can go up enormously. That party that is good at surrounding things and beat them down, if they adopt that strategy against a monster whose CR is based on the assumption the monster can and should be kited, will massively up the lethality of the monster.</p><p></p><p>5) CR never takes into account synergy. Synergy happens when two monsters are more than the sum of their parts, because each is able to cover for the others weakness. For example, a troll and spellcaster working together are more dangerous than either alone, because the spellcaster can give the troll resistance to fire while the troll can tank for the spellcaster and use it's reach to provide battlefield control. Synergy also happens when you alter an existing monster in a way that the rules for altering a monster consider to normally be minor, but which in this particular case cover up for a monsters weakness tremendously. An example might be a small or medium sized grappler tends to have low CR on account of the weakness of its main attack - grappling. Normally increasing a monster by a size category has only a minor increase in its effective CR, but increasing a small or medium sized grappler by a size category tends to have synergy and increases CR by more than the normal degree.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7845987, member: 4937"] I think CR has been a step forward from the much vaguer situations in 1e or 2e, but it should not be treated as a hard and fast rule. In other words, I fully agree with you that producing fair and interesting challenges still remains more of an art than a science. The following always remains true: 1) CR is often wrong. Assigning CR in the first place is an artform, and it's often wrong in published material by +/-1 or in some cases even +/-2. 2) Even when CR is not wrong, the range covered by a single CR is fairly large. If you take any arbitrary number, say CR 5, you will be able to find some monsters that are CR 5 which are almost but not quite CR 4 and others which are almost but not quite CR 6. That means within the same CR range you can have monsters which are 150% or more as deadly as other monsters with the same CR. Similarly, if you are RBDM, you know that you can make small tweaks to a monster that are insufficient to alter it's CR but which make it 10% or 20% more effective. A good example is a default Ogre has primitive weapons like a club and makeshift hide armor. But an ogre working as a mercenary might have a two-handed sword and mail. That change makes the Ogre much more dangerous, but not so much more dangerous that it bumps it up a full CR. 3) Every campaign and every party is different in its assumptions and in its composition, and as such different challenges will be of different difficulty to different groups. Some parties I've had were tightly focused on melee combat, and anything that they could close with and surround would get beat down quickly. Other parties I've had focused on battlefield control and ranged combat, and anything that couldn't close quickly with them would be easily dispatched. Those two parties will have very different challenges with a burrowing ambush predator that achieves surprise. Likewise, I've had a party focused on undead slaying that could handle masses of undead that would have been lethal to a different party composition of the same level. 4) CR never takes into account tactics. In particular, the terrain that a fight takes place in massively alters the effective CR of something. If the monster is fighting in its favored terrain and circumstances, it will tend to be massively more dangerous than when it is not. As a very simple even comical example, a giant shark is a very different encounter when encountered on land, encountered in a boat, and encountered when the party is in the drink with it. The effective CR of a monster depends a lot on the lair the DM designs for that monster, and double or half the encounter difficulty all by itself. Any lair that the monster can make better use of than the party is a massive advantage that should be accounted for but often isn't. Coming from the opposite direction, challenge rating almost always assumes that the party will adopt the most effective tactics to counter and defeat a monster. But if the party doesn't understand the weakness of what they are facing or adopts the wrong strategy, the challenge can go up enormously. That party that is good at surrounding things and beat them down, if they adopt that strategy against a monster whose CR is based on the assumption the monster can and should be kited, will massively up the lethality of the monster. 5) CR never takes into account synergy. Synergy happens when two monsters are more than the sum of their parts, because each is able to cover for the others weakness. For example, a troll and spellcaster working together are more dangerous than either alone, because the spellcaster can give the troll resistance to fire while the troll can tank for the spellcaster and use it's reach to provide battlefield control. Synergy also happens when you alter an existing monster in a way that the rules for altering a monster consider to normally be minor, but which in this particular case cover up for a monsters weakness tremendously. An example might be a small or medium sized grappler tends to have low CR on account of the weakness of its main attack - grappling. Normally increasing a monster by a size category has only a minor increase in its effective CR, but increasing a small or medium sized grappler by a size category tends to have synergy and increases CR by more than the normal degree. [/QUOTE]
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