Have you grown dependent on Challenge Ratings?

[GlassJaw]

How about the rest of you oldsters... have any of you grown dependent on CR to plan encounters?

Absolutely not. I have enough experience to know what an appropriate challenge for a party is. That said, CR is still a nice tool to have. I look at CR as like a second opinion.

EL, on the other hand, is utterly useless as written in the DMG. Sum of the squares method ftw.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Sort of...
Near as I can tell - I need to throw a CR 4 to 6 more than the average level of my party of 6.

It then tends to be a challenge for them Otherwise, it's a cake walk.

 

[DragonLancer]

How about the rest of you oldsters... have any of you grown dependent on CR to plan encounters?

Not at all. I stopped using the CR a long time ago. I look at a give monster or group of monsters stat block rather than the CR, because I can generate a better encounter or challenge that way.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I think CR is one of the most valuable innovations of third edition. Nowadays, when I run Ars Magica or Cthulhu or other non-d20 games, I find myself really wishing they had some equivalent system for planning encounters.

That said, I'm perfectly willing to swing much wider in the ELs of my encounters than the DMG advises. But at least the CR system makes it clear when I'm doing it, and I'm prepared for the ramifications in play. . . .

 

[S'mon]

"In AD&D1e, for example, there were rough guides akin to challenge ratings. Monsters were assigned "levels" unrelated to their actual Hit Dice."

Yeah, running 1e you can just use monster level (from I to X) instead of CR. If you're on the 4th dungeon level, Level IV monsters are appropriate.

 

[Li Shenron]

I certainly wouldn't drop a monster in front of the PC without taking at look at its CR.

 

[Hussar]

"In AD&D1e, for example, there were rough guides akin to challenge ratings. Monsters were assigned "levels" unrelated to their actual Hit Dice."

Yeah, running 1e you can just use monster level (from I to X) instead of CR. If you're on the 4th dungeon level, Level IV monsters are appropriate.

Did anyone actually play this way? I'm not flinging poo here, I'm just surprised. No module was ever designed this way - 10 levels equating to the DMG dungeon level thing. I certainly never played in any homebrew adventure that did this either.

From a 2e perspective, most of the 2e critters were so underwhelming in combat that it was never much of a worry in killing a party. Unless the critter had save or die attacks (and lots did) the chances that you could actually deal enough damage to PC's to kill them after about 4th or 5th level was pretty remote. If you hit double digit levels, there was very, very little that could actually threaten the party in a straight up fight.

 

[S'mon]

Did anyone actually play this way? I'm not flinging poo here, I'm just surprised. No module was ever designed this way - 10 levels equating to the DMG dungeon level thing. I certainly never played in any homebrew adventure that did this either.

From a 2e perspective, most of the 2e critters were so underwhelming in combat that it was never much of a worry in killing a party. Unless the critter had save or die attacks (and lots did) the chances that you could actually deal enough damage to PC's to kill them after about 4th or 5th level was pretty remote. If you hit double digit levels, there was very, very little that could actually threaten the party in a straight up fight.

I think if you ran 1e lowish-magic & strict on rolling classes (eg Paladins needing Cha 17) and didn't use Unearthed Arcana, it worked pretty well. Obviously double-digit PCs aren't likely to be threatened, hence why monster levels only go to 10! Level 10 PCs can take on demon princes, arch-devils & such. 2e tried to solve the too-strong PC problem by boosting giants & dragons; 1e had done it by introducing much tougher monsters in MM2.

I didn't run a megadungeon in 1e, but if I did a small dungeon for level 6 PCs I'd refer loosely to the Level 6 dungeon table, yes. But 1e was more about knowing when to run (from Demogorgon) & when to fight (the orcs); generally after low-level only really dumb PCs got themselves killed in 1 round of melee.

 

[S'mon]

"Unless the critter had save or die attacks (and lots did) the chances that you could actually deal enough damage to PC's to kill them after about 4th or 5th level was pretty remote"

For PCs in the 6th-10th range, the wilderness encounter tables could provide a challenge - 20 ogres or 300 orcs was runnable in 1e, and could be a threat, depending on circumstances. Squads of giants, or some of the demons, made good opponents. The MM2 Daemons did very large amounts of damage and could even threaten god-level PCs IMC. Dragons breathing for 80 hp damage/time was pretty nasty, too.

 

[Mark Hope]

Did anyone actually play this way? I'm not flinging poo here, I'm just surprised. No module was ever designed this way - 10 levels equating to the DMG dungeon level thing. I certainly never played in any homebrew adventure that did this either.

Sure, we played this way for many years. The AD&D1e "monster level" wasn't wholly related to character level, nor was it meant to be a one-for-one equivalent to dungeon level either. Just a guideline to judge relative strength between monsters. If you look at the Level 10 monsters, you are looking at things like liches, demon princes, arch-devils huge ancient dragons etc. In my games no 10th level party could handle one of those - they're meant to represent the top-level single-monster challenges. My feeling is that a 10th level party that takes one of those critters out is having an easy ride.

From a 2e perspective, most of the 2e critters were so underwhelming in combat that it was never much of a worry in killing a party. Unless the critter had save or die attacks (and lots did) the chances that you could actually deal enough damage to PC's to kill them after about 4th or 5th level was pretty remote. If you hit double digit levels, there was very, very little that could actually threaten the party in a straight up fight.

Again, this is wholly unlike my own play experience. I rarely ran combats that were toe-to-toe slugfests where each side was just hammering on each other until someone ran out of hit points. Powerful, intelligent creatures need to be run as such, rather than big bags of hit points that jump out from behind a rock and try to eat you. And even then, there were certainly plenty of 2e creatures that could hold their own in a straight up fight without a need for DM tactical shenanigans.

I do recall seeing complaints in old Dragon magazines along these lines, but I also recall several articles on running effective monsters in order to challenge powerful players. I guess I took those articles to heart - I never had real trouble challenging characters in 1e or 2e (or 3e, for that matter).

I'd also agree with S'mon's point about wilderness adventures. There was a strong paradigm in earlier editions that adventurers would "graduate" from the dungeon to the wilderness, where far more serious challenges could be encountered.