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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quasqueton" data-source="post: 3638324" data-attributes="member: 3854">A big problem I'm seeing with judging an encounter's challenge is the sheer foolishness of Players. (I'd use a term stronger than foolishness for some situations I've seen.) Foolishness before a battle and foolishness during a battle.PCs go into a major battle with no info on the BBEG, all because they didn't think to question (or take) captives before heading into the BBEG's lair. A party can increase its own CR/EL by one or more with proper preparations.PCs repeat proven mistakes many times, like hitting a fireproof monster with fire spells, over and over. When the mage is doing nothing effective the entire fight, it's like not having a mage at all.PCs run through a mass of enemies and get killed by AoOs, for no reason I could see or they could state. Willingly allowing the enemy free attacks on you is like giving them extra rounds in the fight.PCs get bunched up and take repeated AoE blasts over and over, in the same fight. This makes the enemy spell casters much more effective than their levels would calculate.PCs don't plan before a battle or support each other during a battle. This dumbs down the PCs' effective level.In all my years of DMing, I've seen some immensely stupid decisions in battles.In my last game session of D&D, the party was in three battles. The first was against a green dragon. The party knew it was a green dragon---their employer told them; to kill the dragon was their main goal. Did they buff and protect themselves before the battle? No. They started the buffing and protection once initiative was rolled the the battled started. Fortunately, no one was killed in this fight. But it was also 2 CR under their level.The third battle had a PC take actions that were directly hurting (hp damage) another PC, repeatedly (like 10 times). And then the mage rolled four 1s in a row for his caster level check to over come the monster's SR (he only needed to roll a 4+). One of the PCs died in this battle. Some big foolishness combined with severe bad luck made an equal-level CR deadly.I like CR and EL. I'm glad the game designers created this measuring stick. I understand how it works, and how it can be "knocked out of whack" by certain circumstances. I have enough experience with the game to know how to allow for most circumstances that I create when setting up an encounter. What I can never seem to "calculate" for is the foolishness of Players.Quasqueton</blockquote>

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