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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 7701547" data-attributes="member: 6701872">I don't think there is some magical thing that happens where a person that can look at, for example, the Shadowrun antagonists (which range from street gangers to immensely powerful dragons), and pick out which ones aren't too much for their characters to handle can't look at the Monster Manual for D&D and pick out which monsters aren't too much for their characters to handle.Those "narrow bands" in other games aren't, in my experience, anywhere near so narrow as to not have plenty of things that starting or even middle-powered characters aren't able to take on (without macguffin support or truly clever play).There are actually 10 HD red dragons (and 11 HD gold that are less likely to be used as enemies) in the Red Box I have.I don't see modern D&D as being any less obvious when a monster is too much for the party - even if ignoring the inclusion of CR. I admit, however, that my perception of the matter is that of a person experienced with figuring out fun encounters in a variety of games before 3rd edition came along and introduced the idea of building encounters to a specific challenge-level goal - so I wouldn't be surprised if someone of different experience saw games without encounter building guidelines as missing something, rather than seeing games with such guidelines as having an unnecessary bonus.</blockquote>