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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4188122" data-attributes="member: 5143">In 4e, it is supposed to have four companions.  The standard is 5 PCs against 5 monsters.I think you're missing something.  Most level 8 monsters against a level 1 party in 4e should kill them, big time.  Their AC should be high enough so as to be able to be hit on a 17or higher by PCs at first level.  They should have enough hitpoints to take a good 8 or 9 hits to kill.  Which likely won't happen before the monster kills the PCs.  They might get lucky and beat it.A level 3 party against a CR 6 will win most of the time.  Generally, to seriously threaten a party with death in 3e, you need to use a monster with a CR at least 4 greater than the level of the party.What you'll find is because of the formula for 4e monsters, if you use just one monster that is really high level it will be extremely swingy.  It only gets 1 attack per round while the PCs get 5.  Although it has really high bonuses to hit and really high AC, luck favors the PCs.  They get more rolls and therefore more chances to roll high.  The monster doesn't do huge damage and only gets one attack per round.  However, it is likely to hit every time.  On average, it should win every time, but you'll see many more results where it loses due to luck.I'm not sure what you mean.  Why would I expect a CR 12 creature to behave as a CR 12+2-4 creature?  That's a CR 10.  Unless you mean EL?However, I understand the EL and CR system well.  I help to edit adventures for Living Greyhawk in my position as Triad member of Ket.  We have to use the guidelines on ELs handed down to us by WOTC all the time to create encounters.Trust me, they ARE rules for encounter creation.  In Living Greyhawk, we CAN'T create a 1st level adventure that has 6 1st level human fighters attack the group.  According to the rules, that is EL 6 and will certainly kill a 1st level group without chance of them surviving.The rules of 3e say that 4 level 1 monsters should be just as hard for a level 1 party as 1 CR 5 monster.  Both encounters should use up just as many resources.  Here's a hint.  They are nowhere NEAR the same difficulty.  Which is what you need to learn through experience.  That the CR and EL rules don't work.Add to this the fact that there is no way to actually predict how difficult a particular creature will be against your party(you can guess, but monsters surprise you).  One CR 15 monster might have an AC of 34 while another has an AC of 12.  One might have a Reflex Save of 6 while another one has 25.In 4e, you can rest assured that nearly every 5th level monster is very close to the same power and you can be reasonably certain how much of a challenge it will be.I guess my point is that 4e level system does exactly what it says.  It says that a party of 1st level characters will have a fairly decent challenge against a group of 5 1st level monsters.  And it works.  It says that the same group of players can fight against a group of 5th level monsters and it'll be REALLY hard.  And it's right.  It says that same group can fight against 1 solo 1st level monster and it'll be about the same as 5 1st level monsters.  And it's right.It also says, if you want, you can use one 8th level normal monster as an encounter for 1st level characters, it'll probably be alright as a 1st level encounter, though it'll be swingy, boring and likely frustrating.  This is because the monster will be almost impossible to hit, will hit nearly every time and since there is only one monster it'll use the same attack every round.  It won't try to flank or assist its allies as it has none.  So, strategy becomes: "I attack, all of you attack."Meanwhile, 3e says that 1 CR 4 creature should be possible as a boss encounter against level 1 characters.  It normally kills them.  It says that 8 level 1 enemies should be just as hard for a level 3 group as one CR 7.  The CR 7 will kill the party in all likelihood.  The 1st level monsters will likely die quickly.  It is just bad at predicting the difficulty of an encounter.</blockquote>

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