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<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6754283" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>It's possible, I've only run the game at low levels so it's hard to tell. Mostly I have heard people complain that the CRs are higher than they should be, however.</p><p></p><p>Let's keep in mind that CR is said to serve two (related) purposes:</p><p></p><p>1- to decide if a single monster is too risky</p><p>2- to determine the XP</p><p></p><p>IIRC somewhere already in Basic says not to use monsters with CR > party level, unless you are willing to risk some death. This is supposed to be independent on <em>how many</em>, so the focus here perhaps should be on specifically what kind of abilities does the monster have. High damage output or high AC are also part of this, but <em>special effects</em> play a more important role. For example, if a monster is invisible, then it might be almost impossible if the party at the current level has no tricks around invisibility, and a lot simpler once the party gets access to them. However, <em>nothing</em> in the DMG's CR estimation guidelines relates to assessing these kind of special abilities.</p><p></p><p>Then purpose 2 is actually itself two-fold:</p><p></p><p>2a- XP as award, for levelling up</p><p>2b- XP to assess the <em>encounter</em> difficulty</p><p></p><p>As much as I don't particularly care for XP awards since I'm probably going to always just control level advancement directly, I still need to figure out how potentially deadly the encounters are. In theory, the older 3e system was a bit easier to use: from each monster's CR you could figure out the whole encounter CR, and compare it straight with party level. In 5e we are supposed from each monster's CR to figure out the encounter XP, and then use a table to compare it to party level (there's a sort of double conversion, from CR to XP then from XP back to level, while in 3e CR and level were somewhat similar units of measurement). Part 2a was however a lot more tedious in 3e.</p><p></p><p>But this is actually why I am speculating that for NPCs built with PC classes, the truth might be a lot more simple than it looks, and that it could really be just a matter of comparing the NPC level <em>directly</em> with the PC level, skipping all conversions to CR and XP.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 6754283, member: 1465"] It's possible, I've only run the game at low levels so it's hard to tell. Mostly I have heard people complain that the CRs are higher than they should be, however. Let's keep in mind that CR is said to serve two (related) purposes: 1- to decide if a single monster is too risky 2- to determine the XP IIRC somewhere already in Basic says not to use monsters with CR > party level, unless you are willing to risk some death. This is supposed to be independent on [I]how many[/I], so the focus here perhaps should be on specifically what kind of abilities does the monster have. High damage output or high AC are also part of this, but [I]special effects[/I] play a more important role. For example, if a monster is invisible, then it might be almost impossible if the party at the current level has no tricks around invisibility, and a lot simpler once the party gets access to them. However, [I]nothing[/I] in the DMG's CR estimation guidelines relates to assessing these kind of special abilities. Then purpose 2 is actually itself two-fold: 2a- XP as award, for levelling up 2b- XP to assess the [I]encounter[/I] difficulty As much as I don't particularly care for XP awards since I'm probably going to always just control level advancement directly, I still need to figure out how potentially deadly the encounters are. In theory, the older 3e system was a bit easier to use: from each monster's CR you could figure out the whole encounter CR, and compare it straight with party level. In 5e we are supposed from each monster's CR to figure out the encounter XP, and then use a table to compare it to party level (there's a sort of double conversion, from CR to XP then from XP back to level, while in 3e CR and level were somewhat similar units of measurement). Part 2a was however a lot more tedious in 3e. But this is actually why I am speculating that for NPCs built with PC classes, the truth might be a lot more simple than it looks, and that it could really be just a matter of comparing the NPC level [I]directly[/I] with the PC level, skipping all conversions to CR and XP. [/QUOTE]
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