Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 165131" data-attributes="member: 1149">The three most important things when assessing CR for encounters are... situation, situation, situation. Situations key elements i find are prep level, intelligence, and terrain.First case is Prep level. For each encounter, what was the prep level for the two sides? Full assault (spelled up and potioned up with even short term combat spells), general combat mode (long term combat spells up but not the short ones) or safe mode (not even many of the hour spells up. Expectation of safety.) Prep level is more significant with greater magic resources like multiple casters and items (even weak ones like potions) than it is for raw brute force groups.Second case in intelligence.While this obviously can mean "how smart are they" and thus how much advantage they can take of an ambush or surprise, it more importantly refers to how much do they know about what lies ahead. If they know its a cold drake, their elements spells will be keyed correctly, for instance. If they know its undead, protection spells will abound and clerics up front for turnin.Third case is terrain.The general terrain, specific terrain like traps or bottlenecks and starting range all have a severe impact on the fight. Against a flyer, if its open so he can take to the air, the fighters get seriously degraded, especially if the flyer has ranged attacks like dragon's breath. In some cases even if the terrain is relatively neutral, knowledge of specific elements of terrain like "down this way it narrows to 5'"While the DMG goes into some detail about the effects of situation on CR, in my experience, they downplay it. it plays a huge role.</blockquote>

Verification