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<blockquote data-quote="The Oracle" data-source="post: 38567" data-attributes="member: 1633">I agree with the other posters about your DM not giving you appropriate challenges. But I also agree with your DM that the CR system doesn't work either. I just figure out what the experience cap for a given evening should be (about 1/3 the average party level times 1,000, so for an average party level of 5, I would aim for an evenings experience max of about 1,600 or so). This works just fine, and also discourages parties from killing eveything needlessly - they can get killed trying that anyway. If they can sneak in and snatch the bauble or rescue the princess or whatever without fighting anything, they deserve the experience anyway. Of course, some parties are just bloodthirsty and will fight even for no additional experience...What has worked for me is to take the party level, say 5, times the number of PC's in the party, lets say 5 again, and multiply that to get 25. That's the total # of CR's they can encounter in an evening. So your DM is way over that, and that's not going to work. Any individual CR monster should be about 1.5 times the average party level, so a CR 7 or 8 would be okay, but you couldn't run into more than 3 of those in an evening before the risk of party deaths...As to PC deaths, since 3rd edition came out, I have had about 8 deaths, and every single one was because the PC did something really dumb, like charge into a group of hill giants alone, try to cross a slimy bridge in full plate without a rope tied on, or stand alone completely surrounded by orcs and fight it out. No deaths yet because I chose to kill the party...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Oracle, post: 38567, member: 1633"] I agree with the other posters about your DM not giving you appropriate challenges. But I also agree with your DM that the CR system doesn't work either. I just figure out what the experience cap for a given evening should be (about 1/3 the average party level times 1,000, so for an average party level of 5, I would aim for an evenings experience max of about 1,600 or so). This works just fine, and also discourages parties from killing eveything needlessly - they can get killed trying that anyway. If they can sneak in and snatch the bauble or rescue the princess or whatever without fighting anything, they deserve the experience anyway. Of course, some parties are just bloodthirsty and will fight even for no additional experience... What has worked for me is to take the party level, say 5, times the number of PC's in the party, lets say 5 again, and multiply that to get 25. That's the total # of CR's they can encounter in an evening. So your DM is way over that, and that's not going to work. Any individual CR monster should be about 1.5 times the average party level, so a CR 7 or 8 would be okay, but you couldn't run into more than 3 of those in an evening before the risk of party deaths... As to PC deaths, since 3rd edition came out, I have had about 8 deaths, and every single one was because the PC did something really dumb, like charge into a group of hill giants alone, try to cross a slimy bridge in full plate without a rope tied on, or stand alone completely surrounded by orcs and fight it out. No deaths yet because I chose to kill the party... [/QUOTE]

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