Is a DM supposed to ensure level appropriate encounters, by the RAW?

[TheAuldGrump]

I wonder how many DMs actually use that?

Personally yes I do, but I usually take an approach that will avoid an inescapable TPK, after all 1st level adventurers may not be all that interesting to a BBEG.

Me at the very least. I find it a very useful tool, and have used the mix suggested, at least roughly, nearly every time. It makes it much easier to balance things aout and avoid the TPKs that I have inadvertently created in the past. (Though nothing can prevent a Total Party Sepuku as the Gneech put it.) And I often have the BBEG not be the biggest, baddest, evilest thing in the advnture. Sometimes he is just the best at getting other people to do what he wants.

3. In my experience, the CR/EL system is just as broken as the old HD+special abilities system. You can still have a TPK with a suppossedly easy encounter & a cake-walk with a suppossedly tough one. & such anomilies seem to happen just as frequently.

I have had rather the opposite experience, there have been a lot fewer 'accidental' party massacres under the 3.x system. AD&D really didn't have a good way to judge encounters, though I used to use the Monster Mark system from White Dwarf issue 1 and 2. (Anybody else remember that system?)

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* The other advantage of using the guidelines is that afterwards I can be reasonably certain that I can let somebody else run what I have written and not hear the tragic ballad of the 'Sad Demise of Party X.'

 

[S'mon]

As far as accuracy of the CR/EL system goes, my impression is that at low level monsters & NPCs tend to be stronger than their CR suggests - in 3.0 a CR 2 ogre could easily slaughter a 2nd level party, while a DMG-standard Fighter-3 NPC was much better equipped (and thus tougher) than a typical Fighter-3 PC. At high level monster CRs are as likely to be rated too low as too high, ie on average they pretty much work out, whereas NPCs become progressively weaker at higher levels due to relative lack of wealth, a DMG-standard Fighter-15 NPC is far weaker than a typical Fighter-15 PC.

Generally I find that 3e CRs tend to underrate the "damage hulk" types of melee monsters (not NPCs) and overrate the "spell ability" types of monsters. Dragons of course are consistently underrated (partly deliberately); eliminate their spellcasting abilities entirely and the CRs of the larger dragons are about right. Dragons that can Buff and cast Heal are unbeatable by melee PCs of similar level, the PCs' only chance is spells, mostly spells that don't rely on damage like Poly Other/Baneful Poly.

 

[MonsterMash]

Me at the very least. I find it a very useful tool, and have used the mix suggested, at least roughly, nearly every time. It makes it much easier to balance things aout and avoid the TPKs that I have inadvertently created in the past. (Though nothing can prevent a Total Party Sepuku as the Gneech put it.) And I often have the BBEG not be the biggest, baddest, evilest thing in the advnture. Sometimes he is just the best at getting other people to do what he wants.

I do find that it can be useful like this as a tool rather than dictating what I should do.

I have had rather the opposite experience, there have been a lot fewer 'accidental' party massacres under the 3.x system. AD&D really didn't have a good way to judge encounters, though I used to use the Monster Mark system from White Dwarf issue 1 and 2. (Anybody else remember that system?)

The Auld Grump

I remember using the Monster Mark system (and the XP system that was published - I think it was the Asbury system or something similar IIRC)