D&D 5E Who wrote these CRs?

[Dausuul]

This is why I quit 3rd/Pathfinder, CRs were meaningless, you had to do way too much work to run a game and anything high-level was just completely unbalanced. I'm considering dropping 5th after this and going back to running 4E.

4E had similar problems in the first couple of years. High-level monsters were pathetic for their level, and much too defensively oriented. It wasn't till MM3, two years after release, that they got things ironed out. I'm hoping they'll get a better handle on high-level monsters soon. (It'd be nice if they could go back and errata the CRs of existing monsters, too.)

That said, you can't expect the system to know how skilled your players are. If you have a bunch of optimizer/tacticians, and you're throwing standard-difficulty encounters at them, they will stomp all over them, because the standard difficulty is geared to the standard player. In 4E, the standard encounter is supposed to be at the party level (plus or minus 1), but I quickly learned not to bother with anything less than level+1; with my players, that was the minimum for an even mildly interesting fight. Level+2 was my go-to encounter difficulty, with level+3 for tough fights and level+4 for when I wanted to make them really sweat. And my group was only moderately optimized.

 

[Prism]

Solars have +17 to Cha saves, it'd literally have to roll a one on a d20 twice in a row to be Banished. Int and Wis saves aren't much lower, Feeblemind or Hold Monster would be difficult. Flesh to Stone might work (Con save is "only" +8) but it still has to fail three saves, and the spell's range is 60 feet - why did the Solar let anybody get that close in the first place? Plane Shift is touch range and has a Cha save, it should be completely useless against a Solar.

If the Warlock did just get phenomenally lucky with a save or die against a solo monster, then... that's what happens with high-level PCs. It's not really about CR, that's an issue with high-level spells in general.

Hmm, fair enough. I hadn't noticed the high saves. Maybe the solar doesn't need legendary resistance. Guess we'll have to wait and see which spell it was

 

[DaveDash]

I ran a campaign to level 19. Single creatures from the MM don't last long at high levels, and many are on the soft side.

Using the DMG rules to calculate CR, or create custom monsters works a lot better.

I'll also echo what others have said; a hard fight is only hard after a 4+ combats, and you really need to use numbers of weaker CRs, its all about the action economy.

 

[redrick]

I've never played at double digit levels, but even playing in the high singles, my general experience was that "solo" encounters were usually not that exciting. If PCs have managed to hold onto high level spell slots and action surge, they can chew through an amazing amount of hitpoints in one round. So, for a climactic boss fight, probably better to have some allies in there to distract the PCs a little.

 

[Savage Wombat]

4E had similar problems in the first couple of years. High-level monsters were pathetic for their level, and much too defensively oriented. It wasn't till MM3, two years after release, that they got things ironed out. I'm hoping they'll get a better handle on high-level monsters soon. (It'd be nice if they could go back and errata the CRs of existing monsters, too.)

I don't think we can wait for WotC to get on that. We're going to need one of ENWorld's spreadsheet masters to rules-fu this problem into unconsciousness.

 

[KingsRule77]

Crs are fine

 

[redrick]

The good thing is that, since the CR's are meant to be fairly broad brush, even when working as intended, there's not a whole lot lost if they are a bit off.

I also think the designers are on the record as saying that, when there was a doubt, they rounded up on the CR. So, if your players are pretty smart tactically, there's nothing wrong with adjusting your targets a little bit when planning or sketching encounters. Especially if characters have magic items or rolled (and therefor higher) ability scores.

 

[Uchawi]

The standard game is easy mode, the devs said so themselves. Easy healing, easy hitting, and if you use feats or multiclassing, or any +1 etc magic items, it gets even easier...

Next campaign, I suggest moving on the harder mode: No multiclassing, limit the more OP feats (the -5/+10, the CE removing disad shooting in melee), use slow healing, with injuries or at the very least tracking -ve HP to prevent/discourage whack-a-mole. If you give a flanking bonus, make it +1, definitely NOT adv. Magic items wise, dont feel obliged to give out +1 etc weapons/armour to everyone - use the random tables and moderate/help balance your party via items. I also recommend making smite a bonus action or alternatively not permitting paladins.

On the other hand, as long as you have intra-party balance, you can always just double the monsters. If that's still too easy, triple them. And so on.

Best of luck.

I believe easy mode is the easy answer from the developers to let the DM figure it out. You just hope the DM, especially a new one, has the fortitude to survive the onslaught.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Feature, not a bug.

Sometimes, a good roll or a bad roll will swing the encounter. This is dynamism and variation.

This is part of why you have multiple encounters in a day - to mitigate the effects of individual rolls.

You could have fewer, longer encounters in a day, but then you risk a bit of grind.

What's needed more than new CR's is better information on what to expect out of the existing pacing rules, and better guidance no how to tweak them for particular effects.

 

[DaveDash]

I don't buy the whole feature not a bug argument.

Low levels can be pretty fricken deadly. Running POTA I've had to hold back a couple of times or I'd be looking at a TPK. My higher level game I had to throw everything I could at them to challenge them.
If D&D was designed with easy mode in mind, then low levels (and even mid levels to a certain extent) would not be anywhere near as deadly as they are now. As an example, take a look at the Minotaur Skeleton for a CR2 creature.
Also the DMG creates much more challenging monsters for the same CR than the monsters manual does.

So, definitely a bug in my mind, not a feature. They goofed up the CR ratings in the MM and then came up with something better in the DMG later.

I've ran/fought: Ancient and Adult Dragons (Weak without big advantages or spellcasting variant), Shadow Dragon (Hard fight but only because of terrain), Beholders (more annoying than anything), Death Tyrant (Caused some problems), Iron Golems (Weak), Balor (hit hard but dead in two rounds), Purple Worm (A joke for its CR), Vampires (Jokes for their CR, too easy to bypass their regen), Kraken (Hard fight but only because of water), Mummy Lord (Dies to fire).

Meanwhile some of the hardest fights I've ran have been large groups of lower CR stuff. The "Effective" HP the party has to burn through is much greater, and the action economy is less in their favour.