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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 3036262" data-attributes="member: 151">So your question actually is something more akin to: "why do some people try and minmax monsters within the existing CR system when they're the DMs and don't have to make the numbers add up correctly?"Several reasons that I can think of.  Firstly, some groups prefer that play-style.  Creating the best possible challenge for their players may be tactically motivated or it may simply be a desire to create the best possible challenge for their players.  Some groups enjoy playing D&D as more of a purely tactical excercise of challenging battles with a story merely there to move them along to the next encounter.Second, some groups like to stick to the letter of the rules.  Even when the rules are something more of a 'I know it's balanced when I see it' art doesn't invalidate a benchmark that helps in assessing the baseline...especially when it was created by people who have more time to determine balance and good rules design than they might have time for.  Third, CR isn't the only way to measure an encounter, obviously.  For those who use CRs to help compute XP, using the CR as a starting point in the equation is a help.  A DM can always break the rules, but it's much easier if there ARE rules to break in the first place.</blockquote>