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<blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 3699334" data-attributes="member: 1003">1. Creatures that survive have fitness.2. The fittest creatures survive.1. High-CR monsters are Dangerous. 2. Dangerous monsters are assigned a high CR.The above paired statements appear to be axiomatic; &quot;A = A&quot;. But they're not.The truth is that both of first statements are false.Fitness is a quality that all creatures have, indepdent of the observer.&nbsp; They merely demonstrate this quality by surviving.&nbsp; Is it no more axiomatic than saying that &quot;birds with certain pigments appear blue to human eyes.&quot;&nbsp; Some people are confused by the fact that there's no way to demonstrate fitness except by surviving; but this no more troublesome than the fact that the only way to demonstrate blueness is to bounce sunlight off your feathers and on to the retina of a human.CR is just the opposite.&nbsp; CR was an attempt by D&amp;D 3e's designers to boil down all variables to a single number, sort of the way that the stock market boils down all financial variables to the (single) market price.&nbsp; Monsters have HD, and attacks, etc. These are intrinsic qualities. Put them all together (including synergies between them and likely circumstances), and you get CR.&nbsp; It's an output formula.&nbsp; It's simply shorthand; an attempt to save the &quot;newb&quot; GM from having to look at the full stat block and synthesize all that information himself.&nbsp; There's no one other number which equals CR; there's no &quot;A = A&quot; here.&nbsp; A = HD * BAB * Movement type * (proprietary formula)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Irda Ranger, post: 3699334, member: 1003"] 1. Creatures that survive have fitness. 2. The fittest creatures survive. 1. High-CR monsters are Dangerous. 2. Dangerous monsters are assigned a high CR. The above paired statements appear to be axiomatic; "A = A". But they're not. The truth is that both of first statements are false. Fitness is a quality that all creatures have, indepdent of the observer. They merely demonstrate this quality by surviving. Is it no more axiomatic than saying that "birds with certain pigments appear blue to human eyes." Some people are confused by the fact that there's no way to demonstrate fitness except by surviving; but this no more troublesome than the fact that the only way to demonstrate blueness is to bounce sunlight off your feathers and on to the retina of a human. CR is just the opposite. CR was an attempt by D&D 3e's designers to boil down all variables to a single number, sort of the way that the stock market boils down all financial variables to the (single) market price. Monsters have HD, and attacks, etc. These are intrinsic qualities. Put them all together (including synergies between them and likely circumstances), and you get CR. It's an output formula. It's simply shorthand; an attempt to save the "newb" GM from having to look at the full stat block and synthesize all that information himself. There's no one other number which equals CR; there's no "A = A" here. A = HD * BAB * Movement type * (proprietary formula) [/QUOTE]

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