Why do people pretend CR makes sense?

[Ridley's Cohort]

3) The XP for combat was not nearly as important as it is in 3E. In 1E the majority of XP came from treasure.

I think the last point is probably the most important. In 1 E we sometimes planned elaborate schemes to steal treasure from monsters without having to fight all the time. The combat XP was so trivial compared to treasure. Does anyone else remember the days of sneaking a peek at the critter's lair to see if it had treasure before deciding to fight?

IME the majority of 3e XP comes from overcoming obstacles and achieving goals. Sometimes that involves killing things and sometimes it does not.

I do not see locking the reward of XP to the reward of gaining treasure to be a plus.

 

[MerricB]

Lets not forget three very important differences.
1) In 1E the xp calculated for a given creature was stable- it didn't matter what level of character defeated it ( I like that)

2) The level of XP (Challenge) was not dependent on how many PCs were in the party. You got a flat xp for the creature and just increased the numbers of monsters if there was a large party.

3) The XP for combat was not nearly as important as it is in 3E. In 1E the majority of XP came from treasure.

It is worth noting that in the full AD&D 1E rules (which hardly anyone used):

* PC XP for killing monsters was adjusted downwards in the case of a too-powerful party taking on a weak monster group.

* PC XP for gold was adjusted downwards likewise, although I believe the calculation was different.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

(1) You are DMing 4 7th level PCs. You want too give them 2 separate combats today -- something not too taxing but not a complete walkover either. How much XP worth of monster do you throw at them?

It's not even "how many XP". Although the XP calculation is based on Hit Dice + special abilities, the determiner of challenge uses a different calculation. So, you need to do the calculation once for XP, and then another time to work out the Hit Die Equivalent of the monsters.

The "Encounter Level" of AD&D is a simple method of discovering what level of the dungeon the monster will most likely appear on. A encounter level X monster doesn't mean a party of 10th level PCs can take it on. The relationship doesn't work that way.

To get full XP from an encounter in AD&D, the combined levels of the party had to balance (or be exceeded by) the effective Hit Dice of the opponents, with special abilities adding extra hit dice.

Cheers!

 

[Jdvn1]

It just makes no sense to me...

Who said CRs make sense? Sure, I agree, they don't make sense a lot of the times. But, they're useful. It's like compressed air, or bottled water. Or spam. That's right, the CR system is like spam. You don't understand it--heck, you may not even want to understand it--but it fills you up.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I do not see locking the reward of XP to the reward of gaining treasure to be a plus.

And it certainly encouraged my players (and me, when I was a player) to steal everything that wasn't nailed down in Hommlet, Restenford, Saltmarsh and the Keep on the Borderlands, like we were playing Kleptomaniacs & Kobolds.

 

[3catcircus]

Grim Tales...

I use the Grim Tales Chi/Rho system to determine xp based on CR/EL. I then further do the 1st edition thing by multiplying this xp by the (Monsters total HD/Party total HD) ratio.

 

[eyebeams]

Given that most of the 1e system basically boiled down to "make a guess", I'm hard-pressed to see where you are coming from on this. You had a chart in the DMG. It gave experience by HD, and then extra per hit point. And then told the DM to make a guess based on the "significant" extraordinary abilities the monster had and add some more.

That's pretty easy to figure out. You just add XP for the abilities the monster effectively used in play.

Come to think of it, if CR worked that way it would work better. The zillion magical abilities a demon *could* use don't affect play. The ones they *do* use are what makes them dangerous.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Bizarre.

Pop quiz:

The main question in your "pop quiz" is askable in either system:

(1) You are DMing 4 7th level PCs. You want too give them 2 separate combats today -- something not too taxing but not a complete walkover either. How much XP worth of monster do you throw at them?

Your second question could be asked using either CR or Monster Levels with exactly the same result:

(2) You are DMing 4 7th level PCs. You want too give them 2 separate combats today -- something not too taxing but not a complete walkover either. How much CR worth of monster do you throw at them?

(2) You are DMing 4 7th level PCs. You want too give them 2 separate combats today -- something not too taxing but not a complete walkover either. How many Monster Levels worth of monster do you throw at them?

You are mistaking presentation for content.

RC

 

[Tetsubo]

CR/EL makes about as much sense as any other system I've seen for balancing encounters. D&D is as much of an art as a science in this area.

Sadly true. It justed shouldn't be an art. It should be simple and easily understood by any gamer regardless of their experience. So should the LA/ECL rules. I've always felt that this is where the game fails its audience the worse...

I don't mind a bit of "resource management" when designing an NPC encounter or a PC. But the CR/EL/LA/ECL rules just suck... far, far too complicated and subject to so many variables...

 

[Tetsubo]

And it certainly encouraged my players (and me, when I was a player) to steal everything that wasn't nailed down in Hommlet, Restenford, Saltmarsh and the Keep on the Borderlands, like we were playing Kleptomaniacs & Kobolds.

I think that may have been my very first 1E House Rule: No XP for treasure. The treasure itself was reward enough.

I can remember some high level 1E games where we had to figure out how many MILLION copper pieces the PC's had... just silly...

Of course I still have my custom character illustration of my 1E 26th level Ranger Lord up on my office wall...