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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy" data-source="post: 266696" data-attributes="member: 4036">Nice.  But you're forgetting something.  CR 16-17 monsters are ranked that high from fighting iconic Tordek.  To a party of 4 character's who's highest stat after belts/gloves/cloaks/etc. is 21.That seems awefully low doesn't it?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  He's got 21 Str, a +3 weapon, and +17 base attack, so he's got +25/+20/+15/+10 instead of the probably +40 or +35 that the berserker or weaponmaster can get to.And he does (get this) 1d10+10 per hit.  That's it.  11-20 points of damage.  If he hits twice against--you said 30 is a low AC?--he'll be lucky to do 35 points of damage that round.That's why an 85 hp marilith that your berserker can kill in one round is CR 17.  Because to Tordek and company, she's one mean bitch.  To your group, as written, she's still a bitch, it's just she's your bitch.Your group--while they may be "only" level 16-17--are equal to the iconic group at level 19-20 (that might actually be a little conservative).  That means the XP awards and CR scale are both off by a few levels which is what gets you into the vicious cycle.If the DM throws 3 critters at you that are each 18 CR, you mop the floor with them expending less than 20% of your resources, because in reality while he thought he was sending something your party level +2, he in fact misjudged your party level and sent something party level -1.  Worse, the XP chart says you get 30,000 xp for it because you just defeated 3 creatures all higher CR than your party level instead of the 9,000 XP (or less) that your afternoon stroll was worth.Hence the viscious cycle.The easiest (read: least work for the DM----and that's a good thing, because it gives him more time to work on personalities, hooks, and plot) way for the DM to deal with this is not to handicap players (no fun) or to take away their abilities (kinda like dm cheating), but to just figure out what level they'd have to be to do the things they do with nothing but improved crit, power attack, weapon focus, and cleave (look at their terrible choices in feats that the CR system is based off of), 15/14/13 stats (upped to 21 max), and no prestige classes or good magical items.Because while your XP and the number on your Level line says one thing, that doesn't match up with your capabilties in the conservative system WotC invented to appease the "We-Hate-Power-Gamers" purists.  And that makes for all kinds of headaches for the poor DM.</blockquote>

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