Pathfinder 1E My players ask about CR...

[PnPgamer]

...should I reveal it? They are kinda scared of enemies currently as they have previously dealt with only ogres, mushrooms, goblins and hags. Now they have opportunity to duke it out with a behir but they are scared shitless.
Should i reveal the cr to give them an idea? I think its kinda meta, so how can i give hints how powerful a creature is overall?

 

[ninjayeti]

I wouldn't give them a CR, but I do think the PC's would be able to generally assess the strength of a foe in-game. So I think it would be fair to tell them something along the lines of "this looks like a dangerous foe, but you think you could probably best it after a difficult fight."

 

[payn]

Sign posting is always difficult with a CR system thats more like a guideline than a standard. My reservation would be the players asking often for the CR and maybe in keeping the challenge of the game alive. I guess I dont have a good answer so I'll keep an eye on this thread as I still really like PF1.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I think there are certain skills that should help PCs assess monsters they're up against. During 3e, I was also even a fan of letting people roll a d20 + their level just to see if they'd even heard of some of the weirder stuff. To me, it's that whole Baader-Meinhoff thing of... 'Holy crap. I'd never heard of behir until the other day at the bar and now we're covered up with them!'

 

[TwiceBorn2]

Nah, I wouldn't reveal the CR. Too meta gamey, it would kill the atmosphere IMO. Good descriptions of the creature and it's behaviour should be sufficient... and if the players have learned that sometimes running is the smarter choice, so much the better.

 

[Philip Benz]

I sometimes reveal a creature's level (or "CR" in PF1/DD3.5 parlance) during the post-game banter. But never in advance. At best I will drop hints at how overwhelmingly powerful a given creature is, but in narrative form.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

I'm cool with providing players accurate information about things like CR (not before the encounter, unless they get to scope out the opposition first through information gathering, but certainly once the encounter starts), but CR in 1e isn't the best gauge of difficulty, so I'd be more straightforward than that if I notice any qualities of the encounter that punch above CR (like devils and spell abilities...)

 

[aco175]

Maybe with a skill check they heard about another adventuring group having defeated one. The stories of the group suggest they were more powerful than you, or less than depending on your group.

Of course, one player can just look it up. Also there is some DM bias that may come in where you push one way or another and the PCs get killed.

 

[Philip Benz]

The player can only "look it up" if you're using stock monsters straight out of the bestiary. More and more, I find myself modifying creatures and raising their level.
We played PF1 for many years, and I will certainly agree that CR is only a very rough measure of critters' power in terms of encounter strength. PF2 is a bit better at that, but there are still wild exceptions of creatures hitting above their strength, mostly due to extraordinary powers.
PF2 has also provided us with a quantifiable way to test PCs' knowledge of various things, be it creatures, spells, items or whatever. Assign a level, take into account relative rarity, and you have a target DC.

 

[glass]

I will not directly state a monster's CR/level, but I will tell the PCs if it is significantly different from the PCs' level in either direction. So I might say something like:

"You know that dragons grow as they age and gain both phyical and magical abilities as they do so. This one is much bigger than you have ever seen, implying it must be much older and more powerful than any dragon in your experience."​

​

"You are pretty sure that a single kobold would not be a threato you, although something about the way this one moves suggests that they might be more powerful than a typical kobold (much as you are more powerful than typical humans (etc)".​

_
glass.