Revised Challenge Ratings/Encounter Levels (pdf)

[seasong]

Situational modifiers: There is an incredibly beautiful ("My God, it's full of stars!") way to handle situational modifiers. It won't work for absolutely every situation, and it takes some work, but... here are the generic situational modifiers:

If the monster can not retaliate in any way: No XP. No exceptions. Doesn't matter how tough the monster is, if there is no chance of retaliation, there is no risk, and hence, no XP.

Note: a situation where the PCs can not retaliate in any form or fashion at all should not give XP (they couldn't do anything), but also should be used only sparingly, if at all, in a D&D campaign.

If the situation nullifies one of the monster's abilities: Drop that ability from the monster's CR. This is the lightning strike I just had. If the situation nullifies the party's abilities, same thing in reverse.

If the situation enhances on of the monster's abilities: Use the enhanced ability as the CR. Ditto the party.

These can be combined. If the monster can retaliate, but only in some piddly way, rebuild the monster as if it was a piddly attacker with its full defenses. That is, Upper Krust's system lets you figure out the CR of a 50 HD creature that only has a 1d4 ranged fire damage attack, so work it out!

PCs get a surprise round: CR minus 1/4th the party's level. This is designed to scale with how much damage the party can dish out by the round, and assumes that in an ideal situation, the party can kill another party in an average of 4 rounds.

Monsters get a surprise round: CR plus 1/4th the monster's CR. See above.

Most situational modifiers can be put in as fractions of the 1/4th level factor. For example, if a ranged party is attacking a foe who is far away and has no ranged attacks (no ability to fight back), subtract 1/4th the party's level per round it will take him to reach the party.

Note: Most of these can be handled somewhat on the fly. If the dragon is in a narrow space, look up his flight in Upper Krust's system, and subtract that from his CR. Simple, see?

Anyway, I'm sure there are holes. This is the lightning strike, not the refined product . But I think it might be a good start to some well defined situational modifiers.

 

[Anubis]

Funny. You didn't actually say anything here, except to regurgitate how the system currently works ... without seemingly understanding why (hence your inability to objectively question it). No matter. Let's see if I can clear it up.

Actually I answered your questions, you simply didn't comprehend the answers. The fact is that it ALREADY works as it stands. There is no problem. It's in your head, or rather your lack of understanding the implications of the EL/PEL relationship. A party of Level 1 PCs is NOT EL 1 but rather *PEL* 1, but are still EL 5.

To elaborate, *EL* is the estimation of power. *PEL* is the number representing the EL that would be a 20% encounter. If two encounters of the same EL match up, that's a 50/50 encounter. Therefore a new number is needed to determine the party's XP, which is based off challenges that are 20% encounters and not 50/50 encounters. Since EL +4 is a 50/50, that means *PEL* should be actual EL -4, as stated in the system rules.

This goes for multiple opponents as well all the way. PEL is always EL -4. That is so the DM can judge the 20% encounter and give proper XP. UK also explains this a bit further down.

Hiya mate!



You...blunt...never.



It could just be the way I am reading it but I think your idea is a bit too complicated to be at all practical.

...maybe thats just me though!?

What does anyone else think?

Perhaps my explanation was too complex. Simply put, it's simpler than any other solution so far given. Lemme say it again in simpler terms.

Step 1: Find the difference between the WotC SR and the WotC CR. (e.g. Lemure, SR 5, CR 1, Difference +4)

Step 2: Calculate UK CR and EL. (e.g. Lemure, UK CR 2.75; CR 2, EL 5)

Step 3: Add difference between WotC SR and WotC CR to UK EL to determine new UK SR. (e.g. Lemure, Difference +4, EL 5; NEW SR 9)

*Optional* Step 4: Determine value of new SR and repeat Steps 1-3 until final whole CR does not increase. (e.g. Lemure, UK CR +0.4, CR 3.15; CR 3, EL 7; EL +2, SR 11; UK CR +0.2, CR 3.35, Final Result) I repeat, this is optional and probably unnecessary. For simplicity's sake, only follow Steps 1-3. Step 4 is for experimental purposes only.

Then simply use EL as caster level when rolling for spell penetration. A Level 20 PC Wizard is EL 18, so spell penetration is 1d20+18.

Here you miss the point originally by also embracing the current system.

When you take four 1st-level player characters and four 1st level non-player characters, the player characters already have an advantage. This is reflected in their Challenge Ratings.

The party of four 1st-level player characters is CR 1.
The party of four 1st-level non-player characters is CR 0.

Now advance two levels.

The party of four 2nd-level player characters is CR 2.
The party of four 2nd-level non-player characters is CR 1.

The party of four 3rd-level player characters is CR 3
The party of four 3rd-level non-player characters is CR 2.

In every one of these examples, there should be a mathematical certainty that the player characters earn less (base) XP each time (before being multiplied by average level).

But that's not how it works.

Instead (using the current system) the XP breaks down like this...

Level 1 (225 XP) --> Level 2 (150 XP) --> Level 3 (450 XP.)

The base XP in each case (before being multiplied by average character level and divided by 4) is 900 XP --> 300 XP --> 600 XP.

This breaks what should be a mathematical constant of steadily decreasing XP rewards.

Um, no. You see, the ONLY certainty is that the value of the SAME CR/EL will go down as *PEL* goes up. You're increasing BOTH. Since the increases are not the same, of course you will get results that appear to be "off".

The reason this happens is is because the PCs get the "bigger" power increase from Levels 1-2, and the monsters get the "bigger" power increase from Levels 2-3.

Hiya mate!



I think I see a flaw in your reasoning...



Actually EL 5 (PEL 1)



Actually EL 4.



I would have said they represent a difficult challenge since they practically match the PCs, its almost a 50/50 encounter.



They don't. You don't substitute PEL for EL when creating an encounter.

Thanks for clearing that up, UK. That's what I was trying to say. You just said it better, heh.

To sonofapreacherman (mainly).

Okay I have a bit of a headache at the moment but I think the EXP solution has just clicked.

Instead of using the EL difference of the encounter to determine EXP, instead use the EL difference for each individual creature.

I'm guessing someone has likely mentioned this before, I must have missed the 'gist' of it initially.

*Raises Hand*

That would be me. Remember on MSN when I said that you went from giving XP per monster to XP per group and I said I didn't like the results? This is what I meant. I dropped it because in the end, I understood your reasoning and felt that you were right to judge by group.

As much as I would enjoy you reversing, I'm going to now defend your original position. Hehehe.

You see, giving XP per monster ignores the challenge posed by multiple creatures. Consider the following two examples. In example 1, the party faces a goblin in combat, then later faces another single goblin in combat, and then later faces a third lone goblin in combat. In example 2, the party faces 3 goblins at the same time. Think about it. If you give XP per creature, both situations will give the PCs (assuming a party of four) 150 XP each. If you give XP per encounter, however, the battle against the three goblins at once will instead give the PCs 225 XP each.

Now to say that XP should be given per creature invalidates the FACT that the single battle against three goblins at once IS IN FACT more difficult than three different encounters against lone goblins. See what I'm saying? This is why I reversed my position on the EL issue and also why you should not reverse yours, UK. I think you know this and are just letting some misinformation get to you at this point.

Situational modifiers: There is an incredibly beautiful ("My God, it's full of stars!") way to handle situational modifiers. It won't work for absolutely every situation, and it takes some work, but... here are the generic situational modifiers:

If the monster can not retaliate in any way: No XP. No exceptions. Doesn't matter how tough the monster is, if there is no chance of retaliation, there is no risk, and hence, no XP.

Note: a situation where the PCs can not retaliate in any form or fashion at all should not give XP (they couldn't do anything), but also should be used only sparingly, if at all, in a D&D campaign.

If the situation nullifies one of the monster's abilities: Drop that ability from the monster's CR. This is the lightning strike I just had. If the situation nullifies the party's abilities, same thing in reverse.

If the situation enhances on of the monster's abilities: Use the enhanced ability as the CR. Ditto the party.

These can be combined. If the monster can retaliate, but only in some piddly way, rebuild the monster as if it was a piddly attacker with its full defenses. That is, Upper Krust's system lets you figure out the CR of a 50 HD creature that only has a 1d4 ranged fire damage attack, so work it out!

PCs get a surprise round: CR minus 1/4th the party's level. This is designed to scale with how much damage the party can dish out by the round, and assumes that in an ideal situation, the party can kill another party in an average of 4 rounds.

Monsters get a surprise round: CR plus 1/4th the monster's CR. See above.

Most situational modifiers can be put in as fractions of the 1/4th level factor. For example, if a ranged party is attacking a foe who is far away and has no ranged attacks (no ability to fight back), subtract 1/4th the party's level per round it will take him to reach the party.

Note: Most of these can be handled somewhat on the fly. If the dragon is in a narrow space, look up his flight in Upper Krust's system, and subtract that from his CR. Simple, see?

Anyway, I'm sure there are holes. This is the lightning strike, not the refined product . But I think it might be a good start to some well defined situational modifiers.

This requires A LOT of math, but I like it anyway! I think this could be the best solution. In this case, though, UK should release the official numbers for all creatures (the actual CR numbers and not the final whole CR numbers).

 

[Eldorian]

Hey all.

Was just reading seasong's list of situational modifiers, and I have to disagree that a monster with no way of retaliating is worth no exp. It is an obstical that requires resources. Like a locked door, except it's a locked door that requires 20% of your resources. I give exp for puzzles and other obsticles even if they pose no physical threat to the PCs. Even tho the monster WOULD pose a threat if the PCs fought it on the ground, lets say. What you are doing is encouraging PCs to fight dumb, cause fighting dumb would earn them exp, whereas fighting smart would lose them exp. I say that any ability the PCs negate from the monster in question should still be worth EXP. Afterall, the PCs did gain experience from the fight, ie, learning how to negate ability X from monster Y.

Eldorian Antar

 

[Sonofapreacherman]

Anubis.

Your replies consist of quoting the rules verbatim. Rules that I think everybody are acquainted with at this point (including myself, who took the longest to understand them). You're not saying anything new, nor do your replies constitute any kind of argument.

-----

Upper_Krust.

More math for you. By calculating XP for individual monsters, rather than groups of monsters, sometimes you get less XP, sometimes you get more.

When you get these XP discrepancies, it is usually around a factor of 0.1 or 0.1R%. As in the differences between 200 and 225.

For example, in the more XP category, let's say instead of sending 4 hobgoblins at 0 CR against a party of 1st level PCs, you send 5 hobgoblins instead. The EL does not change at all, but now each characters nets 250 XP each.

Ultimately the difference is negligible, and certainly not enough to diminish the exaggerated XP totals your CR system churns out right now. In fact, it increases them in many cases. So whether you use "group" or "individual" XP for PC opponents, the problem of inflated XP does not go away.

I'm not sure how right now, but I'm certain your solution can be found through calculating EL bonuses for "numbers" the same way for both PCs *and* their opponents. To make this possible, however, I'm pretty sure the CR to EL values you consider sacrosanct will have to change.

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

Re: Re: Pseudo-deity Package

Hiya mate!



Not sure I fully understand the question? Do you mean the template for divinity or the individual deific abilities (salient divine abilities).

I don't technically use Divine Rank in the Immortals Handbook.

I have the Quasi-deity (in my book) rated as a +20 CR template.

The deific abilities each rate approx. +1 CR.

It was the template for divinity I was interested in, thanks. It is the same as the abilities gained by a Rank 0 deity in Deities & Demigods?

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

Situational modifiers: There is an incredibly beautiful ("My God, it's full of stars!") way to handle situational modifiers. It won't work for absolutely every situation, and it takes some work, but... here are the generic situational modifiers:

If the monster can not retaliate in any way: No XP. No exceptions. Doesn't matter how tough the monster is, if there is no chance of retaliation, there is no risk, and hence, no XP.

It depends. If it's an isolated incident, a random encounter that just happens to be one in which the pcs are immune to harm, then I'd agree.
But if it's an encounter where the PCs knew what they were getting into, and set up the situation so that the creature couldn't fight back, they should get some experience.
Also, if it's one encounter in a day of enconters, even if the players couldn't be harmed they may use resources and may be weaker for those later encounters: since those later encounters are now harder, giving XP for the first encounter does simulate the greater challenge.
And finally, the thing they face mght be an important objective: it might not be abel to harm them, but in defeating it they do accomplish something (maybe it's guarding a mountain pass and the king needs to send a messenger through it, for example). There are campaign effects, so XP is justified.

If the situation nullifies one of the monster's abilities: Drop that ability from the monster's CR. This is the lightning strike I just had. If the situation nullifies the party's abilities, same thing in reverse.

If the situation enhances on of the monster's abilities: Use the enhanced ability as the CR. Ditto the party.

This is a neat idea. However, I will stick to assigning ad-hoc modifiers ("extra 10% XP" or whatever) because I don't have to go back to the design system when it's done.
Also, the adding/dropping modifiers is in a sense arbitrary, since you can only make modifiers of +50%, +100%, +150%, +200%, -25%, -50%, etc - nothing smaller or in-between.
A creature with a CR of 30 that can't get use a CR2 ability would not be affected at all, but a creature if CR29 would lose 25% of its XP value. This isn't right.

Darren

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

Re: Re: Playtesting

Hello again mate!
Mmmm...interesting.

What did they encounter?

I'll give a few examples Tuesday - no time to look through notes today, and the session is tomorrow

How did they beat the Tarrasque ~ there may have been a situational modifier in there...remember the Tarrasque has no ranged attacks, so if the PCs took it down at range I would apply a -2 EL mod. Also I take it they didn't use the old Harm or Heal spells.

Remember also that they would have had to expend 5000 XP to finish him off as well.

Nope, no use of harm, and the spellcasters providely basically indirect aid. Turning the ground to mud in an attempt to collaopse the tunnel it was making to escape, that kind of thing.
The Monk and the Fighter, using spring attack did most of it. Then the fighter went in toe-to-toe, and his close quarters fighting feat acually stopped him getting grabbed once. When he did get swallowed, a bracelet of friends was used to bring him out, and he charged back in again - it would have only taken another round without that

The tarrasque has a really poor AC (compared to other creatures encountered by CR24 creatures), and it was very easy for the fighter to rack up damage - there was even one round where the monk managed to do about a 100 points (a couple of criticals countering the last couple of misses). There were rounds where they players were basically breaking even, just cancelling it's regeneration, and the fight did go on for soemwhere in the 10-20 round range, but the players where never in serious danger.

And my tarrasque was actually beefed up. Note the official tarrasque has no power attack. The damage dice of each of its attacks was doubled, and it got a substantial power attack bonus.
Spellcasters did have some effect - not all of their spells are cancelled by the tarrasque's defences, though it's hard to get it to fail a save.

Does the party have wealth within the current parameters?

The have roughly the wealth of a typical 24th level group (and sunk about 10-15% of it into inherent ability bonuses, because of which I'd been treating them as 25th level for XP and challenge purposes).

That's more wealth than your document suggests: about the same as 26th level character, which wouldn't change ther PEL.

Darren

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

To sonofapreacherman (mainly).

Okay I have a bit of a headache at the moment but I think the EXP solution has just clicked.

Instead of using the EL difference of the encounter to determine EXP, instead use the EL difference for each individual creature.

I'm guessing someone has likely mentioned this before, I must have missed the 'gist' of it initially.

I hadn't mentioned it, but this is in fact what I am doing.
In fact, this probably could lead to using three ratings.

1) Creature Level Equivalence (replace with some far better title with a useful acronym): what CR actually is in your system at the moment
2) CR: the UK_system EL of an individual creature.
3) EL: the encounter level of an actual encounter, determined exactly as in the DMG, using the above determined CR.


Darren

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

EL and PEL

Hi Sonofapreacherman

You are probably think that you're banging your head against a brick wall with your point about EL of monsters and EL of PCs. Let me see if I can explain where the misconception lies.

You stated:

A party of 4 1st level characters is EL 1.

This is not quite true...
If you face a single level 1 adventurer, his EL is 1. If you face 4 of them, you add +4 EL, so it's EL5.

If a player party of 1st level adventurers encountered that above group and fought them, it would be 1 50-50 encounter - the definition of a difficult (EL+4) encounter.
Note that UK and the DMG both regard a 50-50 encounter as an EL+4 encounter.

Since it is an EL+4 encounter, and the encounter is EL5, then the players must have an EL of 1. Because it's confusing to use EL in two different ways (once for opponents and one for PCs against which the opponens ar set), UK's system uses the term PEL.

So, any team or character has a PEL of 4 less than its EL.

If that PC team of 4 level 1 characters encountered a single level 1 character, the opponent has an EL of 1, and the PCs have an EL of 5, and a PEL of 1.

When using EL v EL in straight comparison, you are declaring that equal numbers equal 50% chance of defeat.
If you use PEL v EL in straight comparison, the result is most likely a win for the players, with a 20% loss of resources. The standard challenge rating system from the DMG.

Darren

 

[demiurgeastaroth]

Heal and Harm

I would replacing the Heal and Harm listed in the document with the new 3.5e versions, which appear to be: heal (or harm) 10 points per level to a maximum of 150.

They are about twice as effective, but otherwise clerics will find they need to memorise too many heal spells and are once more relegated to this role.
Also, as fixed effects, you can't use Empower, Maximise or Intensify on them, so it's not all good for the caster. But the important thing is maintaining as much compatibility with standard rules as possible.

Darren