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Message: <blockquote data-quote="spunky_mutters" data-source="post: 934108" data-attributes="member: 5426">Most of these comments deal with the reasons for ECL and CR to be the way they are. I'm still waiting for someone to tackle the issue of trying to balance combats when you have high ECL race PCs? Majoru and Thirdwizard are not incorrect in their claims, and when I first read SS I managed to convince myself that things would work. Now I am trying to see how they will work. I do understand how CR and ECL work, and how CR is supposed to represent a certain level of challenge when compared to a 4 person party CR-equal level. The DMG says that you can calculate CR to be equal to NPC character level, though. This should mean that two characters of equal character level would be equivalent CR. It should not mean that a Shadow/Rog5 would be a CR8 monster using the CR + level method, and a 15th level character using the level = CR method. The comparison I make between the stone giant and the 18th level fighter is because these two are equivalent character level by the SS rules.I do believe ECL should equal CR. If real character level = CR, so should the ECL for a race. The fact that certain abilities will skew things in certain directions just means you need to be very careful about allowing them. They've basically opened the door up for everything that you could think of trying, it's up to you as a DM to decide what you actually want in your game.Majoru: A CR 8 creature should not necessarily take out a level 8 character one-on-one. It should be a 50-50 fight (most likely decided by the details of the particular matchup).  What's the CR for an 8th level fighter?Thirdwizard:  I know I'm repeating myself, but I'm afraid I'm not making my point clearly enough. As long as ECL is part of character level, and character level is directly equated to CR for all that CR is used for, any inequality in how they are calculated damages that system. If I am going to rely heavily on +ECL races with class levels as villains, I am going to need to balance things out some other way, because the system as provided makes no attempt to do this.</blockquote>

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