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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1327696" data-attributes="member: 151">As long as it's fun for your group, then by all means, play it that way.  But I assure you, CRs and ELs (as opposed to ECLs) are extremely useful guidelines to have.  Knowing how relatively dangerous a Beholder is, in relation to a Destrachan or 8th level NPC fighter, is a useful tool for DMs to have...and for less experienced DMs, an even greater tool. Whether the players remember your giant encounter as a 'and then the DM decided to kill us all' or 'and then we began one of the coolest encounters ever' has nothing to do with balance or the system, and everything to do with you and your group.  My players have worked their way up from 1st level to 23rd, currently, and I can assure you that being overshadowed during combats is not fun for anyone.  Watching someone else dominate the combat becomes an exercise in boredom, and removes the fun from the endeavour. I can also assure you that after a certain point, mowing down legions of low-level creatures looses it's thrill, too.  There's a difference between being able to flex your muscles and wasting an hour on an encounter that is a fait accompli from the get-go.  Epic characters can mow down entire armies...but that doesn't mean that it makes for compelling game play.  Conversely, engaging in a battle against a vastly superior foe isn't terribly fun, either, nor is being faced with challenge after challenge where you're forced to run from a battle, because you're outmatched.  Once in a while can be fun and appropriate...but if verisimilitude overwhelms gameplay, fun gets left by the wayside. It also sounds like you've confused what CR is, and who it's for.  It's a DM tool, not a player tool, and should be used as such.  If your players have come to depend on CRs as a tool, then they deserve what they get.  With the addition of templates, advancement and applying class levels to monsters, the PCs can never be sure as to the abilities of a particular foe.  Ask my players about their encounter with a half-elemental Paragon Beholder, and they'll make it clear to you...they never take an opponent at face value.  CR is a relative guideline, and nothing more.  Party has no cleric?  All undead are likely to be tougher...not just for the initial encounter, but for the lingering effects of things like ability and level drains.  Party has no melee characters?  Golems are going to be...unpleasant.  No spellcasters and facing some high-level outsiders?  You get the idea.  Unwinnable?  Not by a long shot.  But the CR system was designed to give a rough approximation of how an average party would fair against an opponent, and a relative scale of deadliness.  Against a group with terrible Will saves, a Bodak could be a terrible thing.  Versus a party of pure clerics, it's almost embarassing to watch.   Change the frequency of combats, and the relative difficulty of individual combats changes.  Note how the CRs of encounters in "Speaker in Dreams" and the reasoning given in the module. It doesn't sound like we're discussing balance at all here, but how DMs like to set up their encounters.  Which has nothing to do with the CR system, at all.</blockquote>

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