Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Evenglare" data-source="post: 6722968" data-attributes="member: 63245">Yeah.. the thing is your quote of ... " if your party isn't at least this level, this creature could be difficult to defeat without suffering casualties." is found no where in the explanation of monster CR. Specifically your "at least this level". That line is found no where. The description states a monster of X CR should be able to be killed by a well rested party and well equipped party. That party should have no deaths. The thing about that is that's exactly why this topic exists I think. The CRs just mean nothing because of the massive amounts of moving parts of the system (ability scores, DM style, magic weapons, obscure items, class powers, racial powers, different magic systems, various environmental hazards, OTHER npcs, buffs/debuffs, monster abilities etc etc). I mean.. just... NO it can't be done. If you want to argue that the CR works fine for lower levels, then I'll play devils advocate and say you are right. So if you admit that they don't work at high levels, then you essentially agree with me that the CRs are meaningless at that level range. If you agree they are meaningless, then you have a few options. First make up another type of CR system for the stuff at high levels. This is idiotic because it would add another layer of complexity which 5e has tried not to approach.  If you don't want to make up another CR system for higher levels, then you are going to have to explain how to balance appropriate fights....at those levels. That means that you are going to have to explain to the DM why/what/how to create those good encounters. Now, okay, you are EVENTUALLY going to have to do EXACTLY what I said. You need to teach the GM how to make good encounters. This is also incredibly poor approach. Clearly we all know that at higher levels characters and monsters become exponentially complex in what they can do, which again, leads us to the fact that CR is an awful way of calculating the power of something.  So why the hell would you want to use the CR system for lower levels, then explain to the GM how to make higher level encounters good?? Why not do THAT from level 1 and onward instead of relying on the CR crutch that will eventually stop working??? It's just.. it makes absolutely no sense! Get rid of CR and explain how to run encounters by assessing the party's ability against the monsters abilities. At low levels you will begin to learn what monster's can and can not do without an overload of options. Then gradually as the game gets harder as the monsters get more complex you will have that foundation to build off what you learned in the earlier levels. ... I don't see how anyone could argue this except for "muh nostalgia". The CR system itself is just a cluster**** of god awful rules to calculate a number that tells you how hard something is. Hell, in 5e it's debatably the worst system to figure out CRs of a monster. Have you LOOKED at that table that shows you how to calculate CR? It's a nightmare! It's like... they tried to mathematically explain "winging it".Teach a GOOD GM how to run a game, not how to regurgitate meaningless numbers in a certain situation.</blockquote>

Verification