EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
At the very least, I respect the courage to not only admit that a previous effort fell short, but to try to make it better.
Cheers James! I appreciate the kind words. It's just what has worked for me with my eccentric intuitive approach. Hope it's helpful to you.Just wanted to say- this is brilliant, and is extremely good advice. This should be in the DMG!
What if the real secret is that encounters don't need to be balanced
A) That video is really, really well done. I recommend.Ooh, I'm interested to see where this ends up going in the future.
I'm curious, by any chance, have you watched this video, and if so, what are your thoughts on it? I made it last year, and it was very positively received, and it's also about trying new approaches to this little math problem.
This comment caused another thought to percolate up: Not everyone uses D&D Beyond or online encounter builders. Whatever replaces CR needs to be something that can be used without a computer/phone or calculator to be truly useful.Your method, and what Mearls is working on, will be invaluable, but again, especially if incorporated into DDB and the encounter builder.
A) That video is really, really well done. I recommend.
B) I use the encounter builder on DnDBeyond, but as far as I can tell it just generates CR according to the basic method or, as you aptly describe it, "hopes and vibes." More or less, anyway. Since it's a digital resource and we don't have to do the math ourselves, I hope they adopt something like your much more accurate, simulation-based method.
Right now, CR is fine in the sense that it gives me a very basic idea of an encounter budget, and I have decades of experience to contribute, so that occasionally my encounters work out as intended. Vaguely.
Your method, and what Mearls is working on, will be invaluable, but again, especially if incorporated into DDB and the encounter builder.
Agreed! That's why I think the simulation-based method that Trekiros has built is so good.One of the major problems that online encounter calculators run into is that they assume every monsters contributes to the encounter's XP multiplier. If you are only ever using monsters of similar CR then this shouldn't pose much of a problem, but if you try to build an encounter with say a CR 9 monster and two CR 3 monsters then it's going to massively overestimate the adjusted XP total. Until online calculators add in some method for intelligently picking which monsters contribute to the XP multiplier and which don't this will continue to be a problem.
Definitely easier to use than the current system and I think it's a good start. However, I am definitely skeptical of the numbers at the upper CR range. CR + 5 = deadly encounter for a party of 6? We just know that this isn't the case. Perhaps the number of points per player could be adjusted a bit per level. a single CR 6 monster might be deadly for 6 people at level 1, but it's a near certaintly that a single CR 16 is not a deadly encounter for a level 11 party.
I will soon! Doing this in part to re-activate my programming skills, but as I post stuff I definitely hope people review the work and find ways to improve it. A point scheme like this is a useful community resource. Having it locked up in one person or company's hands wouldn't help.Are you looking for any assistance with any aspect of this? I'm a software engineer with a math degree so working on a software tool to help fix one of my biggest frustrations as both a DM and a math nerd would be a ton of fun!