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Who wrote these CRs?
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<blockquote data-quote="Imaculata" data-source="post: 6723368" data-attributes="member: 6801286"><p><strong>CR means: </strong></p><p></p><p><u>"Your party can handle these monsters at that level and probably won't get obliterated"</u></p><p><u></u></p><p></p><p>That's all it means if you ask me. It says nothing about offering a hefty challenge, or a good fight (depending on how you interpret the meaning of "worthy challenge" or "fair challenge" ). In my view, all it says is "The party will probably not die when faced with this foe". And that's extremely useful information. It means that if the party is level 12, the DM can pretty much ignore all of the monsters that are lower than CR 12 in the Monster Manual, when building his/her encounters. So as the players increase in level, the selection of monsters to choose from decreases. In other words, CR's become <strong>MORE </strong>useful the higher the level of your players. Because there are less monsters to choose from.</p><p></p><p>Also, another <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum" target="_blank">argumentum ad populum</a>. Arguments of popularity are bad, because they don't add any meaningful arguments to the discussion. It's the equivalent of saying <em>"Lots of people agree with me, and that's my argument"</em>.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And this is where it gets tricky, and where I wish the 5th edition wording was a little less vague. The DMG also uses the term "fair challenge", which can be be interpreted in various ways. And we certainly split a lot of hairs about that phrasing in a <a href="http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4233726?page=26" target="_blank">very long discussion</a> over on the WotC forums. Does it mean fair, as in "reasonable", or fair as in "not unfair"?</p><p></p><p>A CR 3 creature may be a reasonable challenge to a group of three level 3 players, or it might be a cake walk when its a group of four or five players. Obviously the number of players, their equipment, and their class, has a dramatic effect on how hard an encounter is. And a CR can't possibly reflect that completely. What it can however indicate, is if under any of those combinations, the battle is likely to result in deaths. What if the group is made of only two players? What if they roll really badly on their saves? What if they accidentally get split up? According to the CR, that monster should still be reasonable under those conditions. I don't think that's useless information, and I don't think that's broken.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Imaculata, post: 6723368, member: 6801286"] [B]CR means: [/B] [U]"Your party can handle these monsters at that level and probably won't get obliterated" [/U] That's all it means if you ask me. It says nothing about offering a hefty challenge, or a good fight (depending on how you interpret the meaning of "worthy challenge" or "fair challenge" ). In my view, all it says is "The party will probably not die when faced with this foe". And that's extremely useful information. It means that if the party is level 12, the DM can pretty much ignore all of the monsters that are lower than CR 12 in the Monster Manual, when building his/her encounters. So as the players increase in level, the selection of monsters to choose from decreases. In other words, CR's become [B]MORE [/B]useful the higher the level of your players. Because there are less monsters to choose from. Also, another [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum"]argumentum ad populum[/URL]. Arguments of popularity are bad, because they don't add any meaningful arguments to the discussion. It's the equivalent of saying [I]"Lots of people agree with me, and that's my argument"[/I]. And this is where it gets tricky, and where I wish the 5th edition wording was a little less vague. The DMG also uses the term "fair challenge", which can be be interpreted in various ways. And we certainly split a lot of hairs about that phrasing in a [URL="http://community.wizards.com/forum/product-and-general-dd-discussions/threads/4233726?page=26"]very long discussion[/URL] over on the WotC forums. Does it mean fair, as in "reasonable", or fair as in "not unfair"? A CR 3 creature may be a reasonable challenge to a group of three level 3 players, or it might be a cake walk when its a group of four or five players. Obviously the number of players, their equipment, and their class, has a dramatic effect on how hard an encounter is. And a CR can't possibly reflect that completely. What it can however indicate, is if under any of those combinations, the battle is likely to result in deaths. What if the group is made of only two players? What if they roll really badly on their saves? What if they accidentally get split up? According to the CR, that monster should still be reasonable under those conditions. I don't think that's useless information, and I don't think that's broken. [/QUOTE]
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Who wrote these CRs?
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