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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sonofapreacherman" data-source="post: 335069" data-attributes="member: 2315">The problem isn't the monster, it's the CR systemHowdy folks.Putting the effigy aside, I think this thread generated far more interest when it began to reevaluate how "Challenge Ratings" work.Monte Cook and Sean K. Reynolds both speak of the "iconic" characters (the statistics of the exampled characters from the Player's Handbook). They tell us that the Challenge Ratings of monsters are based on the "non-tweaked" (read: non-optimized) statistics of these iconic characters. Monte Cook even goes on to admit that when "optimized" characters *are* played by people, which clearly outshine the iconic characters, then Challenge Ratings become less effective, scaling down proportionately.First of all, you don't need the "splatbooks", as Monte puts it, to make characters that are more optimized than the iconic characters.Second of all... I have to ask Monte a serious question.Did you (and all the other designers) really think that player's "wouldn't" optimize their characters? I mean come on, I love role-playing and make a point of not *tweaking out* my characters, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to being guilty of it now and then. And if I'm only "a little" guilty of optimizing my characters, then obviously some people are going to be much more guilty of it than me (the majority of people, I suspect, who play Dungeons and Dragons to become truly heroic characters worthy of the fantasy genre, rather than a realistic character in a fantasy book, as I tend to play).If you're going to design a game system with maximum appeal and functionality, you have to design it with *everybody* in mind.That said, rather than defending a system based on arbitrarily designed "iconic" characters, which makes the game designer's job infinitely easier, ignoring the potential complexity of different role-playing styles (tweaked-out versus non-tweaked characters), why not suck up their game designing pride and admit that the current Challenge Rating system lacks the same diversity that defines the rest of Dungeons and Dragons?To explain, I strongly suspect that Monte Cook (and all the other designers) based the Challenge Rating system on a group of "iconic" characters to create a "point of reference" for themselves. That's great. I can even understand why they did it. By creating a point of reference for themselves they eliminated the random element of individual role-playing styles (tweaked-out versus non-tweaked characters), and made their job far more manageable.The problem is, while they were busy creating a simple Challenge Rating system, based on "singular archetypes" (the iconic characters) they were diversifying the rest of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons to account for diverse role-playing styles. These two approaches to game design are clearly incongruous with each other.I think RyanD has the right idea.By creating "Challenge Rating Factors" (a significant list of abilities with their appropriate Challenge Rating modifiers) you can create a Challenge Rating system that scales with "individual" parties (rather than just the "iconics"). This will involve more design work, but once that work is done, such a system will be a snap to implement.Alternatively I even think Upper_Krust had some really good suggestions too.To see Upper Krust's idea for yourself, use the link he provided (below) and download issue #6 of Asgard. The article is called "Challenging Challenge Ratings" on page 29.<a href="http://www.d20reviews.com/Natural20/asgard.html" target="_blank">http://www.d20reviews.com/Natural20/asgard.html</a>Here is Ryan S. Dancey's original post as well. It bears reading again if you overlooked it the first time.</blockquote>

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