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<blockquote data-quote="g4m3kn1ght" data-source="post: 7361361" data-attributes="member: 6932509">I largely if not actively ignore CR. It seems like it is more balanced for monsters you run multiple of, hordes of humanoids like orcs and goblins and such. 'Boss' monsters (dragons and such) tend to be underwhelming unless you build in some environmental gimmic for the players to contend with in addition to the monster.&nbsp; I have had better luck throwing high level evil characters against my players than generating a challenge with monsters as is.It might just be my play group but I have found CR and its equivalents to be an ineffective metric to design encounters and random encounter lists from.My advice: Image what you want an encounter to be, look up monsters for examples of mechanics you can use during the fight. Give them rough values for attack, dam, ac, and other stats and fudge those as needed. It keeps players off balance and keeps things interesting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="g4m3kn1ght, post: 7361361, member: 6932509"] I largely if not actively ignore CR. It seems like it is more balanced for monsters you run multiple of, hordes of humanoids like orcs and goblins and such. 'Boss' monsters (dragons and such) tend to be underwhelming unless you build in some environmental gimmic for the players to contend with in addition to the monster. I have had better luck throwing high level evil characters against my players than generating a challenge with monsters as is. It might just be my play group but I have found CR and its equivalents to be an ineffective metric to design encounters and random encounter lists from. My advice: Image what you want an encounter to be, look up monsters for examples of mechanics you can use during the fight. Give them rough values for attack, dam, ac, and other stats and fudge those as needed. It keeps players off balance and keeps things interesting. [/QUOTE]

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