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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2936083" data-attributes="member: 22779">Would that be games like Gurps, Rolemaster, or Hackmaster by any chance?  Perhaps Rifts or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?  Maybe MegaTraveller where it takes about three hours to create a character and you can possibly die during creation?I admit, I'm not even all that system curious and I can think of half a dozen major games FAR more complex than 3.5 DnD.  Granted, there's a ton of simpler ones as well, but, let's compare apples to apples shall we?  I'm not talking about the one booklet games that have proliferated over the years.<img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/paranoid.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":uhoh:" title="Paranoid    :uhoh:" data-shortname=":uhoh:" />But, the three different things are measuring three completely different elements in the game.  One doesn't measure weight with a yardstick.  Effective Character Level has zero to do with either hit dice or it's abilities in one combat.  There was a Sage column in Dragon talking about this that I remember.Take a hound archon.  It's got an LA of 5 and an ECL of 11.  Yet a CR of 4  Seems like a mistake right?  Wrong.  One of the biggest abilities for a player hound archon is his ability to constantly use the Aid spell.  No limit.  Thus, the entire party is going to have +1/hit and damage and an extra hit die pretty much constantly.  That's a pretty big effect.  Yet, it's still only got 6 hit dice.  It dies pretty quick against 4 sixth level characters.  Hit dice do not measure anything really.  Sure, caster level is determined by hit dice, but, well, that's in keeping with determining CR.  Hit dice X gives you a rough guestimate of CR before refining it with extra abilities.The thing is, CR is by far not an exact science.  It was never meant to be.  It's a good estimate, but, that's about all.  Like all "good guesses" it's sometimes right and sometimes way off.  That doesn't make it elegant or inelligant, just a very rough yardstick.  There's no way you could make HD=CR=LA.  It just won't work.While elegant does mean simple, it doesn't mean wrong.</blockquote>

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