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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7007557" data-attributes="member: 19857">There is a strong argument to be made that the "default" difficulty of the creature should not depend on an individual DM figuring out clever ways to make use of the creature. And that that's what CR should measure.  Or that if you are going to wrap up the DM coming up with clever strategy or clever tactics into the CR (i.e. the monster using its Intelligence) then you should provide advice to the DM on how to go about doing that.  (One thing I really liked about 4e was that almost every creature included a block of sample encounters suggesting other creatures you would find with it.  That's one way that advice on how the creature thinks strategically could be communicated).Of course this then becomes a question of whether or not a single number like CR can really provide enough information to be useful to a DM crafting encounters outside of being a very rough guideline.  I personally think that it can not - or at least not across all levels of play.  That was my experience in 3e as well - the higher the level, the less useful CR was for figuring out a "balanced" encounter and the more I had to wing it.  Less so with 4e's creature levels, but I suspect that was more because of per-encounter balancing of resources making it easier to judge how much of a threat each individual creature was going to be able to be than anything else.</blockquote>