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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Delta" data-source="post: 3746738" data-attributes="member: 40269">Well, I use the program anytime I'm evaluating a new brute-type monster (so the results are scattered all over the place, wherever I have monster writeups, and usually they're new monsters no one is familiar with). That said, attached is one analysis I did the other night of melee vs. ranged differences, for example -- melee fights seem to go up by about x2 --> +2 EL (because of limited combatants), while ranged fights almost go up by x2 --> x2 (because presumably all the enemies are firing all the time).I find that 3 1st-level human warriors are evenly matched against a 1st-level NPC fighter (so CR 1/3?), so are 3 goblins (so CR 1/3, same as book), while a standard hill giant is evenly matched against a fighter of level 8 or 11 (ranged vs. melee; book says CR 7). The latter shows that you do have to degrade the output numbers at higher levels, because the simple combat brutes don't work so well against high-powered magic or flying characters, etc. (I've got a table written in my MM giants entry that says you can take the melee result and subtract 5, or the ranged result and subtract 2, and basically get the book CR for those giants.)If I had more time I'd playtest some of FrankTheDM's really powerful creatures, incorporate an unreachable flying wizard & cleric, and see at what point those creatures kill 25% of the party (indicating, I guess, the proper CR). Again, I use the program as a starting guess, and then ideally run a couple of playtests with a stock NPC party of that level and see if it needs nudging up or down.</blockquote>

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