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Message: <blockquote data-quote="demiurgeastaroth" data-source="post: 390958" data-attributes="member: 7532">Personally, I prefer UK's approach, but to throw somthing else out to think about, I think both systems have a flaw in this section:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------    ECL --- CR        1-20 --- +1/Level --------------------------------------------------------------------------------I don't believe a single humanoid of any class is the same level of challenge as a monster whose CR is equal to that class level.For example, I don't think a 7th level fighter (or any class) is as challenging a combat as a Hill giant (CR7), whether that fighter is equipped as a PC or NPC. I'm not picking out Giants as especially dangerous, just that character levels don't match up to monster CR's when compared one on one.The monster's CR is balanced (theoretically) to present a challenge for a team of PCs of that level. A human PC of a given class level is not. It's just a character of a certain level. The DMG says NPCs should be given a CR equal to their level, but this is a fudge and not a satisfactory one for me.I've placed many NPCs (including teams) up against my players, and they usually have a far easier time of it than when they face monsters of a given CR.This shouldn't be surprising, since one character of (say) level 4 facing a team of characters of level 4 is obviously outmatched. You might think that since 1 character faces 4 of equal level, the encounter will use up 20-25% of resources. In practice, this is hardly ever the case (in my experience anyway). In simple terms, the defenders can take 4x as much damage but they also have 4x the attacks - you could say this is more like a 16x difference in power level. It's probably not quite that great an advantage, but it's more than the simple 4:1 that CR=ECL would have us accept.For the sake of comparison, I used a spreadsheet to compare the effectiveness of 1 NPC fighter facing 4 fighters of the same stats, to work out what level difference would produce a 20% use of resources by the team. A 20th level fighter came out as a suitable challenge for a 16th-17th level, and a 12th level fighter challenged a 9th level team.  Obviously, there are a couple of problems here - first, PC teams aren't all fighters - but the mix of characters is probably stronger than if they were all a single class.So if we assume that characters of equal level are roughly equal regardless of class (they present different challenges, but the whole idea of D&D assumes they are balanced), this doesn't present a problem.The comparison also assumed both sides were equipped equally - NPCs are much weaker than PCs due to their poorer equipment, skewing the numbers even more in the PCs favour.This point of this long diatribe - to argue for some other comparison of ECL to CR at the sub-20 level. If CR = ECL x2/3 or x.8 or something like that (up to ECL 20, the progression continuing as listed in the original table), this might even make the conversion of dragons and the like easier.A Great Wyrm White Dragon under earlier ECL proposals worked out as CR25+ if I remember correctly. i think the official figure of 20 may not be correct but is definitely closer the mark, and with a system like this it'll be easier to get that.You have a bit more leeway for modifiers at the lower levels.Something to think about, I hope.</blockquote>

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