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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cheiromancer" data-source="post: 3430006" data-attributes="member: 141">This rule has very dramatic implications when the CRs are a long ways apart.  According to the chart, if a CR8 creature squares off with a CR18 creature, the CR8 creature will end up dead and the CR18 creature will have used up (16/512)[sup]2[/sup] = 1/1024 of its resources.  E.g. for CR 18 take a Nightcrawler with 212 hp, AC 35, DR 15/silver and magic, and two attacks: +29 bite (4d6+21/19-20, avg 35) and +24 sting (2d8+11/19-20 plus poison, avg 20).  Plus haste, which would give it a second bite. If it hits with its bite it can swallow a Huge or smaller creature whole.  Grapple +45For CR 8 take an Athach with 133 hp, AC 20, and four attacks: Morningstar +12/+7 melee (3d6+8), and 2 morningstars +12 melee (3d6+4), and bite +12 melee (2d8+4 plus poison).  Grapple +26.Given that an Athach can only hit a Nightcrawler on a 20, it would make sense for it to Power Attack for 10 (its BAB).  However, I'm not sure how it could best use its 3 hands to maximize its damage.  In any event, the Nightcrawler could also power attack for 10 and still hit except on a 1. The damage reduction of the Nightcrawler is a formidable obstacle to the Athach's attacks, and the swallow whole ability is difficult to overcome; when it swallows a creature its energy drain ability gives it 5 hp per round.  The Nightcrawler can only hold 2 Huge creatures (like an Athach) in its gullet, though.  I wonder if, once the swallowed opponent is dead, it can regurgitate it and swallow another one?Anyway, with just the standard tactics, an Athach will hit a Nightcrawler once every five rounds (because of DR the average damage is a little over 2 hp), while the Nightcrawler will kill an Athach once a round or so (with the extra attack from haste, and using cleave when an Athach is dropped).  It will take almost 500 rounds for a line of Athachs to kill a Nightcrawler, in which time the Nightcrawler will have disposed of more than 400 Athachs.  That's without the summoning of incorporeal undead, which the Athachs have no defense against.A different pair of monsters might yield different results; there are some scissor-paper-stone combos where, for example, one creature can't harm another (a flier vs non-flier, an incorporeal creature vs one that doesn't use magic, etc.).  But the Athach/Nightcrawler example illustrates how dramatic the combat disparities can be between monsters in D&D.On the other hand, when the extremes of the d20 play less of a role, the WotC system is less accurate.  A playtest between 3 young adult brass dragons (CR 10 each) and an old white (CR 15) found them to be very nearly equal, while the M-scale (and table 3-1) suggests that you'd need 6.  The cubic formula was more accurate in that case.</blockquote>

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