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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spunky_mutters" data-source="post: 932209" data-attributes="member: 5426">I'm having a problem getting my head around a particular issue in determining ECLs for monster races, and since this is going to affect my next game, I need some help.I know a lot of this has been discussed before, but I can't seem to find any opinions in previous threads to help me clear up my confusion.The problem I'm having is buying into the whole method used by WotC in Savage Species. I need some convincing that the method they use has any merit or consistency. My big issue is comparing ECLs given in Savage Species to that other method for determining relative power of a creature, the CR. CR should be equal to the character level of an NPC, according to the   DMG. This would lead me to believe that ECL should pretty much be equal to CR for a monster race, and could in fact be used in place of ECL for races where it is provided. I am apparently erring in my understanding here.A Stone Giant (CR 8) is a whopping ECL 18. If played from 1st level, the player will have a CR 8 character to show their efforts when everybody else in the party is really level 18. The shadow (CR 3 ) has been equated to a 10th level character, and so on.I can understand that they are trying to balance two different ideas here (challenge against players in combat versus balance/exploitability of monster abilities by players), and that is probably the reason for these disparities. What I can't seem to get my head around is how both of these systems can work. It seems like one of them must be very wrong.  How can something be equivalent to a 10th level character for character playing purposes (i.e. a Shadow who is being likened to a CR 10 character), and yet only be a CR 3 creature?I can see where you might want to adjust monster CRs individually if you feel they are off, but it seems that the whole system is off if you need to scale character power separate from monster power.Any thoughts?</blockquote>

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