Players, DMs and Save or Die

[Geron Raveneye]

You want to know why you confuse me with your line of arguing?

The CR system does work as advertised. If you use a standard party, you will get the results predicted by the CR/EL system. The further you deviate from that standard party (4 PC's, 25 point buy value) the less able it is to predict results. Seems pretty straight forward to me.

CR works as advertised...as long as you keep to the (pretty narrowly) defined baseline. Otherwise, it works less and less the more you deviate from standard. But as long as the baseline is in effect, CR works. Except that they classified monsters with Death effects, high-level casters, etc, with the CR system as well. So, CR should work with those as well, after all they were THERE when the CR system was designed.
Which leaves two possible conclusions. Either, the designers suddenly forgot to take a pretty well-known effect (for D&D) into account when designing the CR system...or the CR system isn't the "catch all" classification system, and hence limited and faulty. If I have a square peg, and should design a hole for it, I don't design a round hole and cut off all corners on the peg.
A rule that makes me tap-dance to get it to work is a bad rule? Try adjudicating CRs for a non-standard group and see if that's not tap-dancing.

But, there's nothing baseline about SoD effects. Ok, never mind CR for the moment. Is an encounter where the PC's have a 66% chance of PC death a good encounter?

Take a 4th level standard group. Take a fire giant with a greataxe. Have fun watching at least one PC die with 66% chance or more, if not two. And you know, that's just rated as "Very Difficult" in the Encounter Difficulty table, not yet overpowering. So apparently, if the CR system works as advertised, that is a good encounter.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The CR system does work as advertised. If you use a standard party, you will get the results predicted by the CR/EL system.

I don't currently have the Search feature, but last time we had this discussion, I pointed out to you that you yourself posted a problem with EL, specifically that the EL guidelines would have us believe that enough low-powered enemies are equal to our mid-to-high level PCs. That is certainly not a case where the CR system works as advertised, or where if you use a standard party you will get the results predicted by the CR/EL system.

The ogre is a case in example where WotC changed the CR because they discovered that the CR system did not work as advertised. Their guess was wrong. Any system that works on the basis of designer guesswork is bound to not work as advertised, a fair percentage of times.

I have posted in the past about the superiority of the ML system from 1e; glad to know that WotC apparently agrees -- 4e is much closer (based on WotC statements) to 1e than 3e in this case. Apparently, they realized that CR/EL worked better in theory than in practice.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

For shame yerself. Now, in this context, since you are all about reading things in the proper context, refers to this thread, not this point in time.

BTW, how does "Now" differ from "this thread" or "this point in time"? Either one suggests that this is a new line of reasoning, rather than something that has been repeatedly brought up over several years. When "CR doesn't work with SoD" comes up, I think that's a pretty appropriate time to bring up that "CR is flawed".

Wow, RC, you've spent so much time decrying other people's abilities not to be able to read plain English.

I am still, apparently, having a hard time with plain English.

For example, I can't see how "____________ is the greatest god(dess) of gaming and has proven me to be the biggest schmuck of the internet. They have defeated my anime challenge and I hereby declare that 3e art is fully inspired by anime." and "Find The Anime Challenge has been answered. Anime has been found!" are the same thing.

(And I know that this bothers me inordinately, so I think I'll just wait a year until that's no longer in your .sig to converse with you, if you don't mind.)

RC

 

[Anthtriel]

If a rule requires special tap dancing by the DM to work, is it a good rule? Is a system that requires all sorts of fiddling in order to bring it back in line with its expected results well designed?

IMO, no.

Wow ... doesn't that mean SoD needs to fly right out of the window?

 

[Cadfan]

The problem isn't "the CR system." Its "trying to assign an appropriate encounter level to an enemy that has a flat X% chance of killing a character per attack."

Blaming the CR system for not being compatible with Save Or Die is like blaming babies for not being compatible with grenades.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Wow ... doesn't that mean SoD needs to fly right out of the window?

Um...You do know that I was quoting Hussar re: SoD, and just modifying it a bit to reflect CR/EL, right?

I don't know about you, but I've noticed that the more a role-playing game can effectively model, the more it includes material that shouldn't be used "right out of the box". IMHO, 3e is the best edition thus far in terms of the scope it can mechanically model. IMHO, the call to make everything work "right out of the box" is effectively a call to limit the scope of what can be modelled.

I would much rather see better guidelines for implementing various forms of modelling/desired effects than limit what effects can be modelled.

YMMV.

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

The problem isn't "the CR system." Its "trying to assign an appropriate encounter level to an enemy that has a flat X% chance of killing a character per attack."

Blaming the CR system for not being compatible with Save Or Die is like blaming babies for not being compatible with grenades.

If SoD was the only place that the CR System was woefully inadequate, then I would be forced to agree with you. However, IME, it "sucks donkey" (as was politely put earlier), and is at best a poor man's version of Monster Level.

RC

EDIT: If you want to discuss the CR System more, I'll follow you into a new thread....or better yet, you can resurrect one of the dozens about the same that have appeared on EN World over the years. Suffice it to say that "X doesn't work with the CR System" doesn't remotely convince me that the problem is with X, and you are unlikely to change my mind on that matter (unless you have some line of reasoning that hasn't already appeared here on the aforementioned threads).

RC

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

If SoD was the only place that the CR System was woefully inadequate, then I would be forced to agree with you. However, IME, it "sucks donkey" (as was politely put earlier), and is at best a poor man's version of Monster Level.

RC

Here's a question: What makes Monster Level superior to CR? Both are systems for determining what level PCs a monster should appropriately challenge. Both are theoretically prone to the same pitfalls (i.e. they do not estimate this correctly). The main difference seems to be that ML is automatically connected to the monster's abilities, and CR is more ad-hoc, based on estimate and testing. But that means that CR is more of an empirical system, while ML relies on the precalculated monster powers working properly over the whole system.

Not arguing for either, but I don't suppose that we have any reason to think that ML is a priori a much better system than CR. It will depend on implementation.

 

[Piratecat]

For example, I can't see how "____________ is the greatest god(dess) of gaming and has proven me to be the biggest schmuck of the internet. They have defeated my anime challenge and I hereby declare that 3e art is fully inspired by anime." and "Find The Anime Challenge has been answered. Anime has been found!" are the same thing.

(And I know that this bothers me inordinately, so I think I'll just wait a year until that's no longer in your .sig to converse with you, if you don't mind.)

RC

Please look for an email from me -- and please, folks, don't sidetrack the thread. Thank you.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Here's a question: What makes Monster Level superior to CR? Both are systems for determining what level PCs a monster should appropriately challenge. Both are theoretically prone to the same pitfalls (i.e. they do not estimate this correctly). The main difference seems to be that ML is automatically connected to the monster's abilities, and CR is more ad-hoc, based on estimate and testing. But that means that CR is more of an empirical system, while ML relies on the precalculated monster powers working properly over the whole system.

Not arguing for either, but I don't suppose that we have any reason to think that ML is a priori a much better system than CR. It will depend on implementation.

If you want to discuss the CR System more, I'll follow you into a new thread....or better yet, you can resurrect one of the dozens about the same that have appeared on EN World over the years.