Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 4735908" data-attributes="member: 46713">Except that if the DM is following the guidelines from the 3E DMG, 5% of the encounters will have an EL of 5 or more higher than the effective party level and are NOT supposed to be doable.To the OP: The 3E CR system worked well enough about 90% of the time. It's the 10% that cause worries. The 4E XP budget system seems to work a bit better, say 95% of the time. That still leaves a lot of encounters for which it doesn't work well.Anyway, both systems serve as a good starting point for judging how hard an encounter will be. If the DM has a good idea about what the party is capable of and where their strengths and weaknesses lie, she should be able to adjust encounters to get about a 99% certainty. It's of course impossible to account for (bad) luck or exceptionally bad/good tactics.Calculating DPR, however, is a very limited concept that doesn't really work well outside of CRPGs. It can be a useful tool to optimize solitary characters but not much more. It ignores both synergies within the party and their opponents and movement/terrain features.</blockquote>