I just had my level 15 characters make short work of a CR 19 creature. It has been clear to me for a long time now that CR ratings are useless. Is WOTC planning to fix this with 5.5e? It really is becoming a sore point seeing my players have no problem during combat.
You assume it's possible to fix CR. I'm sure it could be better, but there's a ton of things that can affect how difficult or easy a given encounter is that have nothing to do with the monsters. And the higher the character level, the more egregious that becomes.
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CR is a general guide, not an idiot proof guarantee. It is impossible to have a rating system that perfectly factors all possible abilities of all permutations of all classes, subclasses, feats, and tactics that will occur in any given D&D combat, especially at high levels when the amount of possible combinations of such abilities are myriad. A DM has to read more than just the CR number when preparing an encounter. They should actually read what the monster/NPC is capable of, and they should know how it's attacks, proficiencies, and defenses interact with those of their party and use tactics appropriate to the situation. For example, a swarm of fifty zombies adds up to a big scary number for CR but if they're just mindlessly (and slowly) charging the party that's huddled around the Cleric and their upcast spirit guardians it's going to be a very predictable fight. If the DM plays the monster(s) suboptimally the party is going to shred it. If the DM plays the monster smart, canny, and makes full use of it's strengths while attempting to avoid or otherwise compensate for it's weaknesses and then the players just charge in for a straight up, no brains hack 'n slash 'n blast then they're probably going to get eaten alive (possibly literally) by something of appropriate or lesser CR. Basically, I'm saying The DM has to know the rules of the game and how everything works in order to provide a satisfying challenge.
DMing is something that requires intelligence and preparation. Especially at high levels with all the awesome crazy crap that powerful PCs can do. The OP said CR 19 "creature" so I'm guessing it was a single creature and they probably weren't doing anything to compensate with the fact that the party gets more actions in a turn than a single enemy. Were you using terrain features or mobility affecting abilities of the creature to limit the number of PCs that could harm it in a turn or just move forward and roll attacks every turn? Because a CR 19 monster is going to be able to do a lot of things other than just move forward and attack, otherwise it wouldn't be a CR 19 monster.
The CR system isn't "broken." It was never capable of being a perfect guide to brainless dice rolling that folks who complain about it clearly think it should be. D*D is a complex game, especially at high levels, and requires you to put time, thought, and effort into actually learning how to be good at it if you want to make it work. These complaints are like people saying a Lamborghini is a crappy car because they don't know how to drive stick and couldn't get it out of first gear.
At higher levels, CR is practically of no value except to set XP awards. My group of 6 x level 10 players can easily handle a Lich but they are optimised, good strategists, and there are 6 of them. How would 4 x Level 16 non-optimised characters fare against a Lich? How many encounters have they already suffered through that day? How do you balance an encounter that can be approached by 3 characters who've done 0 encounters since their last rest, or 6 characters that have fought through 3 combats, 2 traps, had a short rest, then done one more combat? What if the Cleric didn't take Revivify? What if the Wizard's Wand of Lightning Bolts explodes on the first use? If one character is on fewer than 100 hit points and the Lich wins initiative, a single Power Word: Kill makes the fight into a 1v3 instead of a 1v4. What if the party have a cube of force and the lich can't cast spells at them?
There are just too many factors. It's impossible to create a system to predict these things unless you basically go with MMORPG style scaling.
Instead of using CR, just throw encounters at your players. If they're breezing through encounters, then throw something harder at them. If they're too hard, the players will need to retreat. Not every encounter can be predicted. Whole fights turn on whether a creature passes a save vs. Banishment.
However, all that said, for a level 15 party, a lone CR19 creature is considered Hard. The party should be able to handle 4-6 Hard encounters in one adventuring day (it won't be Hard for them though). A party with full abilities will obliterate enemies with vastly larger CRs since they can unload Action Surges, high level spells etc.
I hope as well that you're increasing hit points and legendary actions + resistances to accommodate for party size. Against a party of 4, use standard stat blocks. For parties of 6, the monster should have 5 legendary actions, 5 legendary resistances (one for each enemy) and multiply hit points by 1.5. I'd also then double the hit points as all monsters over CR5 have shockingly low hit points.
The CR system also isn't utilized the way it was designed.
It was designed to remain mostly accurate over 6 combats, not one... plust traps, hazards, and puzzles. Players can Nova in one combat and blow much tougher things out of the water if they aren't worried about the oncoming threats.
The CR system also isn't utilized the way it was designed.
It was designed to remain mostly accurate over 6 combats, not one... plust traps, hazards, and puzzles. Players can Nova in one combat and blow much tougher things out of the water if they aren't worried about the oncoming threats.
Exactly. Again, as I said, good DMing requires actual thought and competence on the part of the DM. Anybody complaining about how they think CR should be a one step, no brains required replacement to actually reading the manuals and learning how the game works is not qualified to complain because they clearly do not know what they are talking about.
The CR system also isn't utilized the way it was designed.
It was designed to remain mostly accurate over 6 combats, not one... plust traps, hazards, and puzzles. Players can Nova in one combat and blow much tougher things out of the water if they aren't worried about the oncoming threats.
The idea behind CR isn't XP based, it's action based. The thing is Wizards has an internal guideline on what action sequences make it so that a monster gets to that CR rating. So Monsters of the Multiverse is designed with that in mind to makes it easier for DMs to see what the "right" way to run a monster is. Keep in mind from an internal standpoint, this is assuming you are running RAW of RAW from an internal playtest standpoint, which NO ONE DOES.
It is essentially impossible to account for every single nuance of a monster. For example, a lich may seem like the perfect final boss, but look closely: it has only one spell that doesn't have a verbal component, which is counterspell. Counterspell only works when a creature within 60 feet of the lich casts a spell, but the range of the spell silence is 120 feet. Have your bard cast silence on the lich while they're 100 feet away or something, and then let the wizard snipe it with fire bolt at 120 feet, and have the fighter and rogue proceed to maul it. If these are level five characters with 16s in their prime requisites, the fighter could do an average of 8 or 9 damage to the lich with a longsword, attacking twice per turn and hitting around 40% of the time, for a damage per round of 6.8 damage. The rogue could use sneak attack to do 3d6 + 1d8 + 3 damage per round with a rapier, averaging 18 damage, or 33 with a critical hit. Even though that only averages 7.2 damage when the lich's armor class is accounted for, it would only take the in-game equivalent of about a minute to kill the lich, even without the 11 damage that the wizard does every single round (unless it misses). All together, this accounts for 18.4 damage per round, and it would take only eight rounds for the fifth-level party to kill the challenge rating 21 lich.
CR, as a pen and paper system, is never really going to work. At low levels, battles go by the dice. Higher levels and the dice don't matter so much but how the characters are built matter much more. Neither are going to be predictable via a single number preprinted on the monster statblock.
At low levels, whether an attack misses hits is a massive factor. My level 1 3 member party wiped out a team of 12 goblins with barely a scratch because the dice favoured them. If the Goblins had gotten reasonable rolls and initiative, the party would likely have been TPK'd with only one kill. You can't predict that. Later on at L3, the Pally went unconscious, the Druid had 2HP left and the Ranger died while fighting a Druid. The dice weren't favourable.
On the other hand, later levels have builds have a much bigger role. Dice don't matter as much - increased HP with curving off damage potential in relation to the HP means that it takes several rounds to take someone down - meaning results will be.overall closer to the average. Bulsa have qmuch larger role now though, and it can be quite variable. A balanced team dedicated to taking down the undead will fare much better against your Lich compared to a party full of Eloquence Bards who have all taken dialogue based spells.
There are other factors - are they expecting to have to conserve resources or can they blast their L9 slots with abandon? How badly did previous fights go? Do they have surprise? Do the players know how to play the characters? Are they better optimised than expected? Are there immunities and resistances? Magic items?
None of this is easy enough to be rated using pen and paper. A full on computer program that track all of this data maybe, but not back of of envelope stuff assumed by the CR system. The CR system should be taken comparatively. CR10s are being stomped by your party? Put CR12s in next time. Almost had a TPK? Knock it down a notch to CR9.
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I just had my level 15 characters make short work of a CR 19 creature. It has been clear to me for a long time now that CR ratings are useless. Is WOTC planning to fix this with 5.5e? It really is becoming a sore point seeing my players have no problem during combat.
I don't know how your anecdote indicates anything. How many level 15 characters making short work of a CR19? Yes it's "hard" for a 5 PC level 15 party, becomes deadly with 3 PCs, but 6 PCs at 15? Technically adding a sixth 1st level character makes the fight "easy." We're not even clear how much additional magic items are in play (maybe the equivalent of a 1st level character in the mix?). We don't know whether the monster is being tactically optimized in the way the DM plays it vis a vis the optimization and/or tactics of any of the PCs. Level 15 parties vs. a CR 19 monsters is in that area where the DM has to use the CR19 with a lot of care, using the full capacity of the monster for it to match the difficulty indicated in most encounter builders. Once you're playing in Tier 3, if the DM wants the encounters to be hard, the DM has to play hard. I don't see any indication of how the encounter played out other than "short work" (so like 3 rounds? 3 rounds being pretty involved at level 15). As presented it sounds like the DM thought a CR 19 monster is wind up toy where you turn the key, release it on the party and it kicks butt. The game just doesn't work that way.
Going back to someone's Maserati quip, In a lot of fields where there's a lot of users complaining of mechanical or design flaws, upon examination of the problem you see a lot of operator error. Could the DMG guide a DM better in how to wield "highish" CR monsters? Sure, and I think some of the stat block changes and monster streamlining in MMM are in fact a way for the stat blocks to help DMs "see what they're doing" than present renderings.
I'm not saying with any certainty that the DM didn't think this through in this situation; but with only "argh the CR system" being the only thing really said here, it's hard to see what really went on and whether there's a flaw in the game design's math or the DMs ability to take what the math indicates and actually enact the challenge.
CR is a measure of relative power ... but power has to be utilized effectively. The monster's available power is described; but it's performance of those powers is unscripted and left to the DM. It's unclear what "made short work of" means here.
It's common when DMs and GMs are disappointed to blame either their players or their system. Sometimes introspection works better than the aspersion. It definitely produces better play in the future than the other two reactions to disappointment.
Will WOTC ever fix CR? Well I don't know if it's possible to ever make CR work completely as intended, but we do know that they're still thinking about how it's used and playing around with design to make it work closer to intended because they're still talking about it and changing things in new books. This is also likely the thought process going into the 2024 overhaul.
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He says DM find high CR monsters that are supposed to be "scary" are actually "a cakewalk" but other DMs with different groups have the same monster "bulldoze" their group of the same level. The obvious variable here is the human element. Then he says a monster hits "below it's CR" when the DM chooses sub-optimal options to use the monster's action economy. Really? This is supposed to be news?
"Essentially what we're doing is we're making it so it is harder for a DM to make a series of choices that will cause a monster to drop out of it's challenge rating." So there you have it from one of the lead designers of the game. He's literally saying that they are trying to dumb monsters down because the DMs who are complaining don't know what they're doing.
I don't think calling people stupid because CR isn't a good system is a very productive thing... Seems pretty elitist, hostile, and definitely unhelpful. Don't act like 5e is a mechanically tight system and anyone who doesn't know the DMG back-to-front is an awful person.
5e isn't a balanced system, but CR should at least be a good at-a-glance guideline for what a party can handle. As with most DM facing material for 5e, it is not very helpful. I would hope MotM and D&D 2024 would help fix this, but we'll see...
Not read Monsters if the Multiverse yet but intrigued to see what they have done to make monsters closer to there CR, a lot has been said about how they have made certain monsters much tougher.
But the thing ti remember is that CR is generally based on a very one domensional attack tactic that, if it works, can take out a player. Many of us utilize monsters in different ways, of the party make up nullifies that major attack, instantly nerfing the monster.
What Crawford said explicitly in that video is that they took out the other options that aren't the most powerful things that monsters do so that DM's who lack the ability to figure out that they are not the most powerful abilities don't use them outside of situations that they are actually advantageous and then complain about the monster being weak.
And I am saying that if you look at a stat block and do things like using a breath weapon or other AoE against a single target that has a high Dex save or don't use it against the party that's all grouped up then you are either deliberately pulling punches or you are just what can be politely called "a little slow." You don't have to have the DMG memorized to know this. There are about twenty five pages of rules in the PHB that detail everything anybody really needs to know about how ability scores, proficiencies, general adventuring (including things like rests), combat, and magic work. Roughly half of those pages are taken up by illustrations just to make the book look pretty. If you haven't taken the time to actually learn those rules to the point that you actually understand how combat works then you have not put in any real effort to actually know what you're doing. And until you put in an effort to actually become at least semi-knowledgeable of something you have no justification to be whining about how the what you perceive as systemic flaws in a game that you haven't bothered to learn to play as it is designed to be played. On top of that you have to actually think. Nobody has a better basis for predicting how a party will act in any given scenario than the DM that has been literally guiding and narrating them through everything they do. If that person can't figure out that their party is built in a way and favors tactics that make them extremely well suited to steamroll a particular encounter (or the opposite) then nobody can.
Choosing and building encounters fitting to the party is a major part of a DM's entire purpose for being the DM and if that could be replaced by nothing but a stat block then there would be no need for a DM in the first place. Players would just open a pre-written module and take turns reading the railroad straight flow chart for what happens next and roll dice when appropriate, and I don't know about you but that sounds like a boring game to me. CR as is provides a guidepost for things that are roughly appropriate for most parties of a given level and beyond that it's up to the DM to use their brain and figure out if something will provide a challenge akin to children on a military obstacle course, actual Marines wading through the ball pit at Chuck E Cheese's or something in between.
I am surprised about the number of posts here talking about how the DM needs to know everything about the game in order to make combat challenging for the players. Basically defending the flaws of CR. Last I checked a creature with CR 19 was designed for four players at level 19. In this case however, my four players were at level 15. That's a four level difference so I would expect the challenge to be...you know a challenge. The example given about the car is frankly terrible. A better example would be a driver renting a van to drive as directed by his boss and instead being given a truck. The reality does not follow expectations of what you're gonna get.
I am surprised about the number of posts here talking about how the DM needs to know everything about the game in order to make combat challenging for the players. Basically defending the flaws of CR. Last I checked a creature with CR 19 was designed for four players at level 19. In this case however, my four players were at level 15. That's a four level difference so I would expect the challenge to be...you know a challenge. The example given about the car is frankly terrible. A better example would be a driver renting a van to drive as directed by his boss and instead being given a truck. The reality does not follow expectations of what you're gonna get.
You sorta blow a flat on your metaphorical vehicle there. Encounter design is a creative endeavor and thus requires more attention to the instructions presented in the stat block. If you want to drive a rental van with instructions from a boss, play a module.
CR is clearly indexical of capacity, not a guarantee of outcome. A CR of a given numbrer isn't a "boom that's it", seeing a CR in the range you're looking for is an invitation to look at the monster further and use your knowledge as DM to determine whether this would be an adequate challenge as is or requires a different monster or some adjustments to the stat block as is (as explained in the DMG). So much of a powerful being's, you know, power stems on the player or DM playing the power. You're still not forthcoming on the performance of the encounter and seem to avoid discussing that in favor of abstractly complaining about the rules. That's suspect. No one here but you knows what the creature was, what the party make up was, or any of the particulars regarding the tactical breakdown of why the encounter failed to be challenging. There's many ways a CR 19 can be nerfed through DM performance and lack of tactical consideration. D&D isn't automated, that is why DMs exist, and against a level 15 party, there's an emphasis on the mastery connotation of DM. Your complaints as opposed to providing a true accounting of what happened, opting instead to basically post "CR, am I right?!?!," don't seem to reflect any care in design.
I honestly don't know where you got CR 19 = challenging for 4 level 19 characters which I guess is the basis of your presumptions about a vaguely defined level 15 party. Maybe it's in the DMG, but I don't see it on a quick skim (and maybe I'm less studied, but frankly I rarely express the disappointment you're putting out here so I think I'll stick with whatever I'm doing differently). I see encounter design principles a lot more nuanced than that, that are also aware of CR applied to design's roughness and see the system is laden with caveats. If you want to vent, that's fine, you've vented. But the substance of your case sounds to me more like someone who would more constructively benefit from a discussion of encounter design and playing antagonists than a simple validation of your abstract criticism of CR.
I don't think calling people stupid because CR isn't a good system is a very productive thing... Seems pretty elitist, hostile, and definitely unhelpful. Don't act like 5e is a mechanically tight system and anyone who doesn't know the DMG back-to-front is an awful person.
5e isn't a balanced system, but CR should at least be a good at-a-glance guideline for what a party can handle. As with most DM facing material for 5e, it is not very helpful. I would hope MotM and D&D 2024 would help fix this, but we'll see...
Let's be clear before you fall off your mirage of moral high ground and hurt yourself, no one called anyone stupid, so put away your sanctimony and tell me how you would engender a constructive conversation to the OP's aired complaint. How is interrogating the lack of substance behind "My 15th level party beat a CR 19, stupid broken D&D" not constructive? Do I think the OP may be mistaken? Definitely, and most definitely after the expression "CR 19 = challenging to 4x 19th level PCs". But I nor anyone else called the OP stupid. No one's saying 5e is mechanically tight. Folks were saying the monster must be attended to (especially at tier 3 play) beyond a quick CR consult. CR is indexical, you don't have to have an advanced degree in game design to recognize that. You learn that from playing the game. Being mistaken does not make one an awful person, and certainly not a stupid person. Your claim that that was being said is a gross misrepresentation of everything written in response to the OP, however critical.
At the end of the day, the OP is a DM playing 5e right now. It sounds like you think this thread should be a simply facilie validation of their contention that maybe the game won't be broken in 2024. Maybe if the OP, as much of the feedback seems to prompt, substantiated this particular encounter, the general problem they seem to be implying they're having in the game could be addressed.
I feel sorry for you because I think you truly believe you were writing altruistically here. In fact, going on your litany of elitist, hostile, etc ... it's just a childish perspective that rejects contentions outright just because the language is contentious. That's not an altruistic vantage, it's inert. The OP's game will have to sit and wait and grief for 2 years under your logic, whereas those of us asking the OP questions, who don't seem to have the OP's problem (and I don't think any of us really think we're better human beings than the OP, your implications that that thinking is at play is childishly brittle) in the situation the OP has vaguely outlined ... that's constructive.
I am surprised about the number of posts here talking about how the DM needs to know everything about the game in order to make combat challenging for the players. Basically defending the flaws of CR. Last I checked a creature with CR 19 was designed for four players at level 19. In this case however, my four players were at level 15. That's a four level difference so I would expect the challenge to be...you know a challenge. The example given about the car is frankly terrible. A better example would be a driver renting a van to drive as directed by his boss and instead being given a truck. The reality does not follow expectations of what you're gonna get.
My five paragraph post clearly explained why even the concept of a rating system cannot possibly be predictably accurate. D&D has both PCs with wildly varying stats and strategies as well as having a degree of randomness baked into the combat. Both of those factors make it inherently impossible to reliably predict the outcome of a battle when all you know is the level of a party and the stats of the monster. As a result, CR is only going to be useful in telling you which monsters are, generally speaking, more powerful than others.
I'm not sure what to else to say. The concept isn't that challenging to grasp.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I am surprised about the number of posts here talking about how the DM needs to know everything about the game in order to make combat challenging for the players. Basically defending the flaws of CR. Last I checked a creature with CR 19 was designed for four players at level 19. In this case however, my four players were at level 15. That's a four level difference so I would expect the challenge to be...you know a challenge. The example given about the car is frankly terrible. A better example would be a driver renting a van to drive as directed by his boss and instead being given a truck. The reality does not follow expectations of what you're gonna get.
Here's a different analogy for you: You don't open a frozen burrito (stat block of any CR as is) for it suddenly become a perfectly cooked five course gourmet meal (an encounter perfectly tailored to your party) when you bite it. Your expectations of simplicity and universal applicability in a complex system are unrealistic and impossible to meet. This expectation is clearly the result of a lack of understanding of the subject material, much like your allegations that anyone in this thread has suggested that anyone "know everything" is evidence that you have not, in fact, actually read those posts (unless you are flat out lying about what you know other people have not actually said).
I am surprised about the number of posts here talking about how the DM needs to know everything about the game in order to make combat challenging for the players. Basically defending the flaws of CR. Last I checked a creature with CR 19 was designed for four players at level 19. In this case however, my four players were at level 15. That's a four level difference so I would expect the challenge to be...you know a challenge. The example given about the car is frankly terrible. A better example would be a driver renting a van to drive as directed by his boss and instead being given a truck. The reality does not follow expectations of what you're gonna get.
There is no possible way DnD designers can make a monsters CR match for every situation You as the DM put it into. You know the makeup of your party, you know the go to tactics of the group, if you do't take that into account in designing the encounter then the odds are your monster will die a horrendous death very quickly. If your party can lay down 150+ damage a round and the CR 19 creature is the only thing in the room, you are going to have to significantly bump its HP in order to have it last long enough to be an interesting fight.
Sometimes your players also do something very very unique and different, like the party that polymorph a dragon turtle into a sea snail, pick it up, fly it to 3000 feet and then drop it, or the party that banish your kraken back to the water plane.
Also remember the CR is based on the party having had other encounters in the lead up. So a CR19 challange may well be far easier if the party have not been forced to burn spell slots and use reactions/single use actions in the run up to the encounter.
I just had my level 15 characters make short work of a CR 19 creature. It has been clear to me for a long time now that CR ratings are useless. Is WOTC planning to fix this with 5.5e? It really is becoming a sore point seeing my players have no problem during combat.
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You assume it's possible to fix CR. I'm sure it could be better, but there's a ton of things that can affect how difficult or easy a given encounter is that have nothing to do with the monsters. And the higher the character level, the more egregious that becomes.
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CR is a general guide, not an idiot proof guarantee. It is impossible to have a rating system that perfectly factors all possible abilities of all permutations of all classes, subclasses, feats, and tactics that will occur in any given D&D combat, especially at high levels when the amount of possible combinations of such abilities are myriad. A DM has to read more than just the CR number when preparing an encounter. They should actually read what the monster/NPC is capable of, and they should know how it's attacks, proficiencies, and defenses interact with those of their party and use tactics appropriate to the situation. For example, a swarm of fifty zombies adds up to a big scary number for CR but if they're just mindlessly (and slowly) charging the party that's huddled around the Cleric and their upcast spirit guardians it's going to be a very predictable fight. If the DM plays the monster(s) suboptimally the party is going to shred it. If the DM plays the monster smart, canny, and makes full use of it's strengths while attempting to avoid or otherwise compensate for it's weaknesses and then the players just charge in for a straight up, no brains hack 'n slash 'n blast then they're probably going to get eaten alive (possibly literally) by something of appropriate or lesser CR. Basically, I'm saying The DM has to know the rules of the game and how everything works in order to provide a satisfying challenge.
DMing is something that requires intelligence and preparation. Especially at high levels with all the awesome crazy crap that powerful PCs can do. The OP said CR 19 "creature" so I'm guessing it was a single creature and they probably weren't doing anything to compensate with the fact that the party gets more actions in a turn than a single enemy. Were you using terrain features or mobility affecting abilities of the creature to limit the number of PCs that could harm it in a turn or just move forward and roll attacks every turn? Because a CR 19 monster is going to be able to do a lot of things other than just move forward and attack, otherwise it wouldn't be a CR 19 monster.
The CR system isn't "broken." It was never capable of being a perfect guide to brainless dice rolling that folks who complain about it clearly think it should be. D*D is a complex game, especially at high levels, and requires you to put time, thought, and effort into actually learning how to be good at it if you want to make it work. These complaints are like people saying a Lamborghini is a crappy car because they don't know how to drive stick and couldn't get it out of first gear.
At higher levels, CR is practically of no value except to set XP awards. My group of 6 x level 10 players can easily handle a Lich but they are optimised, good strategists, and there are 6 of them. How would 4 x Level 16 non-optimised characters fare against a Lich? How many encounters have they already suffered through that day? How do you balance an encounter that can be approached by 3 characters who've done 0 encounters since their last rest, or 6 characters that have fought through 3 combats, 2 traps, had a short rest, then done one more combat? What if the Cleric didn't take Revivify? What if the Wizard's Wand of Lightning Bolts explodes on the first use? If one character is on fewer than 100 hit points and the Lich wins initiative, a single Power Word: Kill makes the fight into a 1v3 instead of a 1v4. What if the party have a cube of force and the lich can't cast spells at them?
There are just too many factors. It's impossible to create a system to predict these things unless you basically go with MMORPG style scaling.
Instead of using CR, just throw encounters at your players. If they're breezing through encounters, then throw something harder at them. If they're too hard, the players will need to retreat. Not every encounter can be predicted. Whole fights turn on whether a creature passes a save vs. Banishment.
However, all that said, for a level 15 party, a lone CR19 creature is considered Hard. The party should be able to handle 4-6 Hard encounters in one adventuring day (it won't be Hard for them though). A party with full abilities will obliterate enemies with vastly larger CRs since they can unload Action Surges, high level spells etc.
I hope as well that you're increasing hit points and legendary actions + resistances to accommodate for party size. Against a party of 4, use standard stat blocks. For parties of 6, the monster should have 5 legendary actions, 5 legendary resistances (one for each enemy) and multiply hit points by 1.5. I'd also then double the hit points as all monsters over CR5 have shockingly low hit points.
The CR system also isn't utilized the way it was designed.
It was designed to remain mostly accurate over 6 combats, not one... plust traps, hazards, and puzzles. Players can Nova in one combat and blow much tougher things out of the water if they aren't worried about the oncoming threats.
Exactly. Again, as I said, good DMing requires actual thought and competence on the part of the DM. Anybody complaining about how they think CR should be a one step, no brains required replacement to actually reading the manuals and learning how the game works is not qualified to complain because they clearly do not know what they are talking about.
This is incorrect, from a game design standpoint.
https://youtu.be/mlgFdbRZjN4?t=189
The idea behind CR isn't XP based, it's action based. The thing is Wizards has an internal guideline on what action sequences make it so that a monster gets to that CR rating. So Monsters of the Multiverse is designed with that in mind to makes it easier for DMs to see what the "right" way to run a monster is. Keep in mind from an internal standpoint, this is assuming you are running RAW of RAW from an internal playtest standpoint, which NO ONE DOES.
It is essentially impossible to account for every single nuance of a monster. For example, a lich may seem like the perfect final boss, but look closely: it has only one spell that doesn't have a verbal component, which is counterspell. Counterspell only works when a creature within 60 feet of the lich casts a spell, but the range of the spell silence is 120 feet. Have your bard cast silence on the lich while they're 100 feet away or something, and then let the wizard snipe it with fire bolt at 120 feet, and have the fighter and rogue proceed to maul it. If these are level five characters with 16s in their prime requisites, the fighter could do an average of 8 or 9 damage to the lich with a longsword, attacking twice per turn and hitting around 40% of the time, for a damage per round of 6.8 damage. The rogue could use sneak attack to do 3d6 + 1d8 + 3 damage per round with a rapier, averaging 18 damage, or 33 with a critical hit. Even though that only averages 7.2 damage when the lich's armor class is accounted for, it would only take the in-game equivalent of about a minute to kill the lich, even without the 11 damage that the wizard does every single round (unless it misses). All together, this accounts for 18.4 damage per round, and it would take only eight rounds for the fifth-level party to kill the challenge rating 21 lich.
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CR, as a pen and paper system, is never really going to work. At low levels, battles go by the dice. Higher levels and the dice don't matter so much but how the characters are built matter much more. Neither are going to be predictable via a single number preprinted on the monster statblock.
At low levels, whether an attack misses hits is a massive factor. My level 1 3 member party wiped out a team of 12 goblins with barely a scratch because the dice favoured them. If the Goblins had gotten reasonable rolls and initiative, the party would likely have been TPK'd with only one kill. You can't predict that. Later on at L3, the Pally went unconscious, the Druid had 2HP left and the Ranger died while fighting a Druid. The dice weren't favourable.
On the other hand, later levels have builds have a much bigger role. Dice don't matter as much - increased HP with curving off damage potential in relation to the HP means that it takes several rounds to take someone down - meaning results will be.overall closer to the average. Bulsa have qmuch larger role now though, and it can be quite variable. A balanced team dedicated to taking down the undead will fare much better against your Lich compared to a party full of Eloquence Bards who have all taken dialogue based spells.
There are other factors - are they expecting to have to conserve resources or can they blast their L9 slots with abandon? How badly did previous fights go? Do they have surprise? Do the players know how to play the characters? Are they better optimised than expected? Are there immunities and resistances? Magic items?
None of this is easy enough to be rated using pen and paper. A full on computer program that track all of this data maybe, but not back of of envelope stuff assumed by the CR system. The CR system should be taken comparatively. CR10s are being stomped by your party? Put CR12s in next time. Almost had a TPK? Knock it down a notch to CR9.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I don't know how your anecdote indicates anything. How many level 15 characters making short work of a CR19? Yes it's "hard" for a 5 PC level 15 party, becomes deadly with 3 PCs, but 6 PCs at 15? Technically adding a sixth 1st level character makes the fight "easy." We're not even clear how much additional magic items are in play (maybe the equivalent of a 1st level character in the mix?). We don't know whether the monster is being tactically optimized in the way the DM plays it vis a vis the optimization and/or tactics of any of the PCs. Level 15 parties vs. a CR 19 monsters is in that area where the DM has to use the CR19 with a lot of care, using the full capacity of the monster for it to match the difficulty indicated in most encounter builders. Once you're playing in Tier 3, if the DM wants the encounters to be hard, the DM has to play hard. I don't see any indication of how the encounter played out other than "short work" (so like 3 rounds? 3 rounds being pretty involved at level 15). As presented it sounds like the DM thought a CR 19 monster is wind up toy where you turn the key, release it on the party and it kicks butt. The game just doesn't work that way.
Going back to someone's Maserati quip, In a lot of fields where there's a lot of users complaining of mechanical or design flaws, upon examination of the problem you see a lot of operator error. Could the DMG guide a DM better in how to wield "highish" CR monsters? Sure, and I think some of the stat block changes and monster streamlining in MMM are in fact a way for the stat blocks to help DMs "see what they're doing" than present renderings.
I'm not saying with any certainty that the DM didn't think this through in this situation; but with only "argh the CR system" being the only thing really said here, it's hard to see what really went on and whether there's a flaw in the game design's math or the DMs ability to take what the math indicates and actually enact the challenge.
CR is a measure of relative power ... but power has to be utilized effectively. The monster's available power is described; but it's performance of those powers is unscripted and left to the DM. It's unclear what "made short work of" means here.
It's common when DMs and GMs are disappointed to blame either their players or their system. Sometimes introspection works better than the aspersion. It definitely produces better play in the future than the other two reactions to disappointment.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Will WOTC ever fix CR? Well I don't know if it's possible to ever make CR work completely as intended, but we do know that they're still thinking about how it's used and playing around with design to make it work closer to intended because they're still talking about it and changing things in new books. This is also likely the thought process going into the 2024 overhaul.
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He says DM find high CR monsters that are supposed to be "scary" are actually "a cakewalk" but other DMs with different groups have the same monster "bulldoze" their group of the same level. The obvious variable here is the human element. Then he says a monster hits "below it's CR" when the DM chooses sub-optimal options to use the monster's action economy. Really? This is supposed to be news?
"Essentially what we're doing is we're making it so it is harder for a DM to make a series of choices that will cause a monster to drop out of it's challenge rating." So there you have it from one of the lead designers of the game. He's literally saying that they are trying to dumb monsters down because the DMs who are complaining don't know what they're doing.
I don't think calling people stupid because CR isn't a good system is a very productive thing... Seems pretty elitist, hostile, and definitely unhelpful. Don't act like 5e is a mechanically tight system and anyone who doesn't know the DMG back-to-front is an awful person.
5e isn't a balanced system, but CR should at least be a good at-a-glance guideline for what a party can handle. As with most DM facing material for 5e, it is not very helpful. I would hope MotM and D&D 2024 would help fix this, but we'll see...
Not read Monsters if the Multiverse yet but intrigued to see what they have done to make monsters closer to there CR, a lot has been said about how they have made certain monsters much tougher.
But the thing ti remember is that CR is generally based on a very one domensional attack tactic that, if it works, can take out a player. Many of us utilize monsters in different ways, of the party make up nullifies that major attack, instantly nerfing the monster.
What Crawford said explicitly in that video is that they took out the other options that aren't the most powerful things that monsters do so that DM's who lack the ability to figure out that they are not the most powerful abilities don't use them outside of situations that they are actually advantageous and then complain about the monster being weak.
And I am saying that if you look at a stat block and do things like using a breath weapon or other AoE against a single target that has a high Dex save or don't use it against the party that's all grouped up then you are either deliberately pulling punches or you are just what can be politely called "a little slow." You don't have to have the DMG memorized to know this. There are about twenty five pages of rules in the PHB that detail everything anybody really needs to know about how ability scores, proficiencies, general adventuring (including things like rests), combat, and magic work. Roughly half of those pages are taken up by illustrations just to make the book look pretty. If you haven't taken the time to actually learn those rules to the point that you actually understand how combat works then you have not put in any real effort to actually know what you're doing. And until you put in an effort to actually become at least semi-knowledgeable of something you have no justification to be whining about how the what you perceive as systemic flaws in a game that you haven't bothered to learn to play as it is designed to be played. On top of that you have to actually think. Nobody has a better basis for predicting how a party will act in any given scenario than the DM that has been literally guiding and narrating them through everything they do. If that person can't figure out that their party is built in a way and favors tactics that make them extremely well suited to steamroll a particular encounter (or the opposite) then nobody can.
Choosing and building encounters fitting to the party is a major part of a DM's entire purpose for being the DM and if that could be replaced by nothing but a stat block then there would be no need for a DM in the first place. Players would just open a pre-written module and take turns reading the railroad straight flow chart for what happens next and roll dice when appropriate, and I don't know about you but that sounds like a boring game to me. CR as is provides a guidepost for things that are roughly appropriate for most parties of a given level and beyond that it's up to the DM to use their brain and figure out if something will provide a challenge akin to children on a military obstacle course, actual Marines wading through the ball pit at Chuck E Cheese's or something in between.
I am surprised about the number of posts here talking about how the DM needs to know everything about the game in order to make combat challenging for the players. Basically defending the flaws of CR. Last I checked a creature with CR 19 was designed for four players at level 19. In this case however, my four players were at level 15. That's a four level difference so I would expect the challenge to be...you know a challenge. The example given about the car is frankly terrible. A better example would be a driver renting a van to drive as directed by his boss and instead being given a truck. The reality does not follow expectations of what you're gonna get.
1 shot dungeon master
You sorta blow a flat on your metaphorical vehicle there. Encounter design is a creative endeavor and thus requires more attention to the instructions presented in the stat block. If you want to drive a rental van with instructions from a boss, play a module.
CR is clearly indexical of capacity, not a guarantee of outcome. A CR of a given numbrer isn't a "boom that's it", seeing a CR in the range you're looking for is an invitation to look at the monster further and use your knowledge as DM to determine whether this would be an adequate challenge as is or requires a different monster or some adjustments to the stat block as is (as explained in the DMG). So much of a powerful being's, you know, power stems on the player or DM playing the power. You're still not forthcoming on the performance of the encounter and seem to avoid discussing that in favor of abstractly complaining about the rules. That's suspect. No one here but you knows what the creature was, what the party make up was, or any of the particulars regarding the tactical breakdown of why the encounter failed to be challenging. There's many ways a CR 19 can be nerfed through DM performance and lack of tactical consideration. D&D isn't automated, that is why DMs exist, and against a level 15 party, there's an emphasis on the mastery connotation of DM. Your complaints as opposed to providing a true accounting of what happened, opting instead to basically post "CR, am I right?!?!," don't seem to reflect any care in design.
I honestly don't know where you got CR 19 = challenging for 4 level 19 characters which I guess is the basis of your presumptions about a vaguely defined level 15 party. Maybe it's in the DMG, but I don't see it on a quick skim (and maybe I'm less studied, but frankly I rarely express the disappointment you're putting out here so I think I'll stick with whatever I'm doing differently). I see encounter design principles a lot more nuanced than that, that are also aware of CR applied to design's roughness and see the system is laden with caveats. If you want to vent, that's fine, you've vented. But the substance of your case sounds to me more like someone who would more constructively benefit from a discussion of encounter design and playing antagonists than a simple validation of your abstract criticism of CR.
Let's be clear before you fall off your mirage of moral high ground and hurt yourself, no one called anyone stupid, so put away your sanctimony and tell me how you would engender a constructive conversation to the OP's aired complaint. How is interrogating the lack of substance behind "My 15th level party beat a CR 19, stupid broken D&D" not constructive? Do I think the OP may be mistaken? Definitely, and most definitely after the expression "CR 19 = challenging to 4x 19th level PCs". But I nor anyone else called the OP stupid. No one's saying 5e is mechanically tight. Folks were saying the monster must be attended to (especially at tier 3 play) beyond a quick CR consult. CR is indexical, you don't have to have an advanced degree in game design to recognize that. You learn that from playing the game. Being mistaken does not make one an awful person, and certainly not a stupid person. Your claim that that was being said is a gross misrepresentation of everything written in response to the OP, however critical.
At the end of the day, the OP is a DM playing 5e right now. It sounds like you think this thread should be a simply facilie validation of their contention that maybe the game won't be broken in 2024. Maybe if the OP, as much of the feedback seems to prompt, substantiated this particular encounter, the general problem they seem to be implying they're having in the game could be addressed.
I feel sorry for you because I think you truly believe you were writing altruistically here. In fact, going on your litany of elitist, hostile, etc ... it's just a childish perspective that rejects contentions outright just because the language is contentious. That's not an altruistic vantage, it's inert. The OP's game will have to sit and wait and grief for 2 years under your logic, whereas those of us asking the OP questions, who don't seem to have the OP's problem (and I don't think any of us really think we're better human beings than the OP, your implications that that thinking is at play is childishly brittle) in the situation the OP has vaguely outlined ... that's constructive.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
My five paragraph post clearly explained why even the concept of a rating system cannot possibly be predictably accurate. D&D has both PCs with wildly varying stats and strategies as well as having a degree of randomness baked into the combat. Both of those factors make it inherently impossible to reliably predict the outcome of a battle when all you know is the level of a party and the stats of the monster. As a result, CR is only going to be useful in telling you which monsters are, generally speaking, more powerful than others.
I'm not sure what to else to say. The concept isn't that challenging to grasp.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Here's a different analogy for you: You don't open a frozen burrito (stat block of any CR as is) for it suddenly become a perfectly cooked five course gourmet meal (an encounter perfectly tailored to your party) when you bite it. Your expectations of simplicity and universal applicability in a complex system are unrealistic and impossible to meet. This expectation is clearly the result of a lack of understanding of the subject material, much like your allegations that anyone in this thread has suggested that anyone "know everything" is evidence that you have not, in fact, actually read those posts (unless you are flat out lying about what you know other people have not actually said).
There is no possible way DnD designers can make a monsters CR match for every situation You as the DM put it into. You know the makeup of your party, you know the go to tactics of the group, if you do't take that into account in designing the encounter then the odds are your monster will die a horrendous death very quickly. If your party can lay down 150+ damage a round and the CR 19 creature is the only thing in the room, you are going to have to significantly bump its HP in order to have it last long enough to be an interesting fight.
Sometimes your players also do something very very unique and different, like the party that polymorph a dragon turtle into a sea snail, pick it up, fly it to 3000 feet and then drop it, or the party that banish your kraken back to the water plane.
This is a great example of that very situation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c189ArVQ3k4
Also remember the CR is based on the party having had other encounters in the lead up. So a CR19 challange may well be far easier if the party have not been forced to burn spell slots and use reactions/single use actions in the run up to the encounter.