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Encounter/CR Rules An Artform
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<blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 7846001" data-attributes="member: 6801845"><p>Another quick note on CR: the original monster manual was released before the DMG and the final rules for how to determine CR were still being finalized. I find that monsters created after the DMG was created are a little closer.</p><p></p><p>However, there is still no way that CR will ever be more than a general guideline. One group may have high overall ACs but poor dexterity saves for example. So those hell hounds, whose CR is based in large part on their breath weapons, will be more effective against some groups than others. Doubly so if the group has time to prep.</p><p></p><p>I remember way back when having a conversation with one of the WOTC devs working on 3E* how hard it was as a DM building encounters or custom monsters for 2E. No real guidelines, just take a gander at the monsters and hope for the best. No guidelines for XP for custom monsters. I had my own crude guidelines taking into consideration damage, AC, HP but nothing as comprehensive as what we had now. Most of the time we just winged it.</p><p></p><p>Which is all to say the current guidelines are far from perfect, but I find they still work fairly well. I still have to take into consideration a bunch of variables that can't be put into a spreadsheet. D&D isn't a board game with identical pieces, it's the best we can hope for.</p><p></p><p><em>*My brother-in-law lives in Seattle and he won a charity contest to play with a dev at WOTC HQ not that long after they'd bought TSR. It was quite fun even though my PC died a valiant death.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Oofta, post: 7846001, member: 6801845"] Another quick note on CR: the original monster manual was released before the DMG and the final rules for how to determine CR were still being finalized. I find that monsters created after the DMG was created are a little closer. However, there is still no way that CR will ever be more than a general guideline. One group may have high overall ACs but poor dexterity saves for example. So those hell hounds, whose CR is based in large part on their breath weapons, will be more effective against some groups than others. Doubly so if the group has time to prep. I remember way back when having a conversation with one of the WOTC devs working on 3E* how hard it was as a DM building encounters or custom monsters for 2E. No real guidelines, just take a gander at the monsters and hope for the best. No guidelines for XP for custom monsters. I had my own crude guidelines taking into consideration damage, AC, HP but nothing as comprehensive as what we had now. Most of the time we just winged it. Which is all to say the current guidelines are far from perfect, but I find they still work fairly well. I still have to take into consideration a bunch of variables that can't be put into a spreadsheet. D&D isn't a board game with identical pieces, it's the best we can hope for. [I]*My brother-in-law lives in Seattle and he won a charity contest to play with a dev at WOTC HQ not that long after they'd bought TSR. It was quite fun even though my PC died a valiant death.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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