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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jrowland" data-source="post: 6723186" data-attributes="member: 94389">There is some confusion here. 5-7 CR14s? What do you mean? 5-7 creatures with CR14 or 5-7 encounters of CR14? The former would would be very difficult to deadly for 4 level 10s and the latter makes no sense as there is no such thing as an encounter with CR14.CR is measure of a creatures "appearance on stage" or "level at which PCs can be reasonably assured to be able to defeat the creature". It is a measure of assumptions of PCs abilities. A theoretical creature that can do 20 points of damage on an average hit with AC10, -5 to hit, and 1 hp might be CR 2 because it can auto-kill a PC (no saves, your dead-dead at negative max hp) so the CR is bumped to reflect that. Yes, such a creature is a pushover and easy to kill, even a handful of them, but there is a good chance to auto-kill a PC, so its CR reflects that. Its not about how "powerful" it is in an objective sense, but relative effectiveness. It doesn't mean "Thou Shalt Not Ever Face a Creature Whose CR Is Greater Than Your Level", only that you, as encounter designer, need to pay attention to its abilities relative to your PCs. In fact, a CR 15 with vulnerabilities against a party of 4 level 10s that deal damage targeting that vulnerability might warrant adjusting its XP budget down! Which leads me to:Your XP budget is a separate thing and this "determines" difficulty. Note however, that 1000 orcs facing 4 level 10s may be un-challenging in the direct combat sense despite the exceeding your budget into deadly. The XP from a given creature can be adjusted if you, as encounter builder, think PCs have advantage (lots of radiant dmg vs undead, for example) or even a disadvantage (need magic weapons to hit/damage but PCs do not possess any). Last note: Assuming you mean 5-7 encounters whose XP budget is medium/hard for level 14 PCs, perhaps you are choosing LOTS of low CR creatures (whose XP shouldn't be counted) or perhaps high CR creatures who you know the PCs can handle (undead vs a radiant heavy group) or even one CR14 creature that the PCs outnumber 4 to 1! All of that can change the effective deadliness of the encounter, not to mention, creature tactics, terrain, etc.TL;DR:1. CR says if PC Level<<Creature CR, warning before use (it is not de-facto "hard" but can be)1a. PC Level >> Creature CR might not even count XP towards difficulty2. XP budget and relative number of combatants determines difficulty (plus terrain, tactics, etc)</blockquote>

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