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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 3146261" data-attributes="member: 141">Suppose we look at that list of monsters and say that the question is what to scale the CRs by.  I.e. Should we keep the numbers as they are, or should we multiply by 2/3, or 1/2, or what?Your remarks indicate your belief that a very old gold dragon can't possibly be CR 50, because 50th level Matt is guaranteed to dominate the dragon in a single round.  According to this reasoning, Matt isn't CR 50 either, since his saves and SR aren't anywhere high enough either; if Matt encountered his double first thing in the morning (or after a mordenkainen's disjunction) he'd be able to dominate his double a lot more easily than he would a dragon.Basically, Matt is a guy with a gun.  A guy with a gun can kill another guy at the cost of a single bullet.  Even if the other guy is the same level as he is.  His main problem is not in dominating the gold dragon; it's in not being dominated (or energy drained, polymorphed, petrified, blasphemied or imprisoned, or any number of other things) when some other 50th level character decides to come after him.But that's OK.  Let's say that CR is the ability to withstand bullets, and the dragon comes up short.  Maybe if Matt retires, a very old gold dragon would make a great PC to replace him; all that shows is that ECL is different from CR.  It matters what side of the trigger you are standing on.Now, before we decide on criteria for determining what the scaling factor should be (whether to multiply that list of CRs by 2/3 or 1/2 or leave it as it is), I want to make sure we agree on a certain philosophical stance.  Should have done it about 7 pages ago, but better late than never:The basic assumption of the WotC system is that adventuring occurs in a very narrow band of CRs.  If something's is your level +8, your party is going to be mincemeat.  But if your level is 8 above something's CR, you shouldn't even get any experience from stomping all over them.  Such a system assumes that power is exponential; one creature at CR X+4 = 4 creatures at CR X.  And the WotC system also assumes that a character's power curve is similar.Upper_Krust says this isn't so.  He says that 1 creature of level 2X is equal to 4 creatures of level X.  He believes that the power curve is quadratic.  Whatever scaling factor you use (i.e. whether you multiply by 2/3 or 1.5 or whatever) it is still quadratic.Which system do you think is true?  Or, given the ability to craft the rules, which system would you like to make true?I'm hoping that you are with UK on this.  Then we can use that table even if it means using a different scaling factor (2/3 of the listed values, perhaps.  Or 1/2, if you find that epic characters can fight above their weight class).  I think you are, but I know I'll feel silly that we've worked on this for two months and we still haven't gotten one of the basic presuppositions settled.Anyway.  If we use the dominate monster criterion to say that dragons and similar creatures are 2/3 or one half the CRs listed, then we are implicitly expecting that casters will use most of their AMCs for Heighten Spell, at least when there is a saving throw involved.  That means no AMCs for Empower Spell or other feats.  Which means that our efforts in working on the additional damage factors for [blast] and [destroy] is totally misguided.  We should have been using polar ray and melf's acid arrow as the base spells from the beginning.  Or recognize that the damage curve for [blast] is base 10d6 +1d6/2SP.  And that [destroy] does 5d6, but is useful for bringing down force effects.All this would be OK; but it would mean that we were putting our work in the wrong place. Epic spells are going to look quite different if we assume high saves.</blockquote>

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