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<blockquote data-quote="zakael19" data-source="post: 9341641" data-attributes="member: 7044099">There's a few problems with the CR system: how it takes defenses into account, how swingy hits can be, and how it can't account well for party composition. For the first, things like resistance to damage are given heavy weighting in the math for CR - look at a werewolf for instance. CR3 (threatening to a level 5 party), but with a paltry +4 to hit &amp; low damage. All the threat is from its resistance to weapon damage, with the idea that martials can't be counted on to have magical weapons. The play culture and in fact most modules gives you a +1 NLT level 5, so you have a wet blanket monster.Now, switch to immunity / resistance to spell damages that happen to aim well at the group makeup and you can 1-round certain players with ease. The notorious Berez fight in Curse of Strahd is a great example of that, with the Hut the real threat with its deep resistances + massive DPR + huge pool of health. So now you've got something that can casually TPK a standard party not played well, likely to do a non-martial's pool of HP per round in damage.Finally, spell casters tend to have the ability to trivialize a lot of things - hence legendary resistances. But that's entirely swingy/dice dependent. If you don't have a strong/well played spell caster, things might get a lot more difficult. If the encounters don't resource deplete, parties can nova and make everything trivial. The core rules don't do a good job with doing a baseline limitation on resting and making anything else a variant rule, so you can then do proscriptive challenges around that.Again, there's advice out there on this, tons of 3rd party content that smooth math, etc etc - but ya gotta work for it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="zakael19, post: 9341641, member: 7044099"] There's a few problems with the CR system: how it takes defenses into account, how swingy hits can be, and how it can't account well for party composition. For the first, things like resistance to damage are given heavy weighting in the math for CR - look at a werewolf for instance. CR3 (threatening to a level 5 party), but with a paltry +4 to hit & low damage. All the threat is from its resistance to weapon damage, with the idea that martials can't be counted on to have magical weapons. The play culture and in fact most modules gives you a +1 NLT level 5, so you have a wet blanket monster. Now, switch to immunity / resistance to spell damages that happen to aim well at the group makeup and you can 1-round certain players with ease. The notorious Berez fight in Curse of Strahd is a great example of that, with the Hut the real threat with its deep resistances + massive DPR + huge pool of health. So now you've got something that can casually TPK a standard party not played well, likely to do a non-martial's pool of HP per round in damage. Finally, spell casters tend to have the ability to trivialize a lot of things - hence legendary resistances. But that's entirely swingy/dice dependent. If you don't have a strong/well played spell caster, things might get a lot more difficult. If the encounters don't resource deplete, parties can nova and make everything trivial. The core rules don't do a good job with doing a baseline limitation on resting and making anything else a variant rule, so you can then do proscriptive challenges around that. Again, there's advice out there on this, tons of 3rd party content that smooth math, etc etc - but ya gotta work for it. [/QUOTE]

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