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.
Using the new system from XGtE, a single monster that has a CR two to four higher than the average party level would be a balenced encounter.
I assume you're referring to the following chart. That's for legendary creatures, not just any old creature. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, a CR 15 vampire spellcaster with an altered spell list and extra necrotic damage, is deemed "a more perilous battle" for six 9th-level characters. And while the accuracy of that official assessment is arguable, I can't say the same for an Ice Devil or Purple Worm.
lol I love how any time someone asks this question, everyone throws up their hands and jumps on the "there's no way the CR system can know everything and work for everyone !!!!"
OK - but shouldn't it at least be consistent between monsters, using the defined 8pp or so of CR parameters ? Its well-known they crapped out on calculating the CRs, so please don't argue the point.
And news flash to the question askers - D + D 5e is super easy ! Yup. I know. You can kill a Balrog at L1 lol. 5e is made for role players who don't care about combat / numbers and noobs. Veteran min maxer combat oriented players aren't going to be challenged. Ratchet up the monster levels by 3-4 and you should hit a sweet spot. Except of course for the creatures that were assigned incorrect CRs based on the written parameters supposedly used for assessing them. But its not exactly a news flash that the designers utterly failed at making a blanaced consistent game. But hey, good news is there is 25 pages detailing that stupid town and what the motivations of each inhabitant is......sigh........
Pendulums swing - its what they do. Suck it up till it swings back to D and D's miniature fantasy combat origins. Then we can scoff at all the role players complaining about how hard 7e is ROFLOL
Sorry, what? I legitimately have to ask if you've played Dungeons and Dragons before. You appear to have no interest in playing 5e and your statements about it are obviously incorrect(Only three races in the game have a chance of surviving a balor's death burst if they're members of one of 4 classes, assuming average damage). Then, when it comes to older editions, it doesn't sound like you've played that, either. THAC0 was balanced and made sense? Chainmail was a good system? Gold being worth XP was a great idea?
I have been playing D and D for 45 years (since I was 9), through every edition since Chainmail. That's about 10,000 hours of play/prep time, probably more than anyone here I suspect. My group is meeting this sunday, as we do every 2nd week, and I spend 15 hours a week of prep time before each meeting.
No, you really aren’t. Many of us have been playing for a similar timespan, we just don’t spout on about it or use it to imply that this fact makes us right and anyone else is ‘playing d&d wrong’. Pretty much everyone from back in the day thinks that calculating Thaco was a pain in the arse when you added in the values for different weapons being used against different armour types. Nobody still believes that getting 1exp per gp found was ever a good idea, or only the person who struck the killing blow on a monster actually got the exp for it. Those ideas and more caused no end of disagreements and resulted in the unique style of play that became known as ‘budo snatching’. I’m also really struggling to understand how you spend 30 hours preparing for a single game session. That’s completely unrealistic even if you are manually redrawing every single map by hand, every single session. Pretty much the only thing I even remotely agree with you on is that the 5e rules are much more simplistic and the game is much easier to play now.
The simple fact is that the CR rating is meant to be a simple guide for a group of 4 unoptimised characters. I have seen as a DM such groups almost tpk against enemies that other groups of more experienced players with optimised characters go through like a hot knife through butter. CR only works as a tool when the DM understands the players and what they are capable of.
people who say a balanced cr system doesn't exist I point you to pathfinder 2e as someone who played 5e from its release until 2020 then switched yeah its actually balanced if the rules say something is severe it actually is I highly suggest looking into it. & no it is not a 1st edition so no insane modifier stacking. it also has way more classes dm material rules for dms to use better pc customization & better supplement books and adventure modules next month paizo is releasing book of the dead with anti undead options for players playable undead for pcs full vampirism rules for playing a lich goul or ghost a skeleton race & tons of new undead creatures & necromancy spells
cr is one of the constant complaints I see about 5e pathfinder2e providers cr that actually works!!!
I don't think Pathfinder 2e is as balanced as you suggest, though I agree it does a better job with the math. The sacrifice however here is that role-playing in Pathfinder 2nd has been completely mechanized. Any conceivable action you could take during a role-playing game has a mechanic associated with it and how difficult any action you take depends on what level your character is.
So a 1st level character trying to investigate something has a DC of 20, a 20th level character investigating the exact same thing has a DC of 50.
Its a rather bland way of balancing the game and one of the major drawbacks of Pathfinder 2nd edition is that after about 5th-6th level you have so many different powers, abilities and effects you can produce its almost impossible to keep track of, yet in the end none of that really matters since the DC's of anything you do have continually risen as you leveled up to keep pace.
Plus there is entirely too much fussing about with the rules (math) given the outcome. Like there really is very little payoff for all the rules management in the narrative sense in Pathfinder. You do a whole bunch of extra math, calculations and parameter management and in the end you don't know anything more about the outcome of a situation than if you would if you just kept it simple. This is kind of my main beef with Pathfinder balance, its just a much more complicated roundabout way to figure out the same result you get out of the far more elegant bound accuracy system and while I will grant you all the math makes this a little bit more balanced, I don't think the 650-page rulebook is worth the effort.
Sounds like I dodged the bullet - I saw Pathfinder for cheap recently and considered it, but decided against it. 5e and STA is enough for us for now. But that would have frustrated me - I'm not a big fan of the treadmill effect.
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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.
It's an inherent part of game design that, any time you have a choice between two or more options, one of the following must be true
One choice is strictly superior to another.
The choice is meaningless because all options are the same, other than possibly cosmetic effects.
The best choice depends on the situation.
In general game design tries to have choices be of the third type, though the process of balancing often winds up moving towards the second type. However, this means that, in a particular situation, a party that made choices that fit the situation is better than a party that made choices that fit a different situation. This is unavoidable and means CR math will always be iffy.
Sounds like I dodged the bullet - I saw Pathfinder for cheap recently and considered it, but decided against it. 5e and STA is enough for us for now. But that would have frustrated me - I'm not a big fan of the treadmill effect.
It wasn't my intention to discourage anyone from trying Pathfinder 2nd edition, but yeah it is a very different style of design and in a lot of ways it's a philosophical opposite to 5e D&D in terms of how you actually execute the game. It's weighted towards stricter mechanical forces, so its a bit closer to something akin to a miniatures battle game. It of course has the same basic principles in terms of role-playing, so how you run is as important as how its designed to be run, but like any RPG it does steer you towards a "style" of running the game and Pathfinder's style is certainly more towards the mechanical execution approach.
It's a fine game and for a time I advocated it a great deal, but the weight of the mechanics does create a sort of fatigue at the table. It's really quite impossible to keep the rules straight in particular once characters reach like 5th+ level, the sheer amount of "stuff" is just too much to juggle for this old brain of mine.
Don't worry, I'd already decided against buying it, I was just glad that I made the right decision. I'm sure it's a good game, but it's just not for me.
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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.
lol I love how any time someone asks this question, everyone throws up their hands and jumps on the "there's no way the CR system can know everything and work for everyone !!!!"
OK - but shouldn't it at least be consistent between monsters, using the defined 8pp or so of CR parameters ? Its well-known they crapped out on calculating the CRs, so please don't argue the point.
And news flash to the question askers - D + D 5e is super easy ! Yup. I know. You can kill a Balrog at L1 lol. 5e is made for role players who don't care about combat / numbers and noobs. Veteran min maxer combat oriented players aren't going to be challenged. Ratchet up the monster levels by 3-4 and you should hit a sweet spot. Except of course for the creatures that were assigned incorrect CRs based on the written parameters supposedly used for assessing them. But its not exactly a news flash that the designers utterly failed at making a blanaced consistent game. But hey, good news is there is 25 pages detailing that stupid town and what the motivations of each inhabitant is......sigh........
Pendulums swing - its what they do. Suck it up till it swings back to D and D's miniature fantasy combat origins. Then we can scoff at all the role players complaining about how hard 7e is ROFLOL
Sorry, what? I legitimately have to ask if you've played Dungeons and Dragons before. You appear to have no interest in playing 5e and your statements about it are obviously incorrect(Only three races in the game have a chance of surviving a balor's death burst if they're members of one of 4 classes, assuming average damage). Then, when it comes to older editions, it doesn't sound like you've played that, either. THAC0 was balanced and made sense? Chainmail was a good system? Gold being worth XP was a great idea?
I have been playing D and D for 45 years (since I was 9), through every edition since Chainmail. That's about 10,000 hours of play/prep time, probably more than anyone here I suspect. My group is meeting this sunday, as we do every 2nd week, and I spend 15 hours a week of prep time before each meeting.
No, you really aren’t. Many of us have been playing for a similar timespan, we just don’t spout on about it or use it to imply that this fact makes us right and anyone else is ‘playing d&d wrong’. Pretty much everyone from back in the day thinks that calculating Thaco was a pain in the arse when you added in the values for different weapons being used against different armour types. Nobody still believes that getting 1exp per gp found was ever a good idea, or only the person who struck the killing blow on a monster actually got the exp for it. Those ideas and more caused no end of disagreements and resulted in the unique style of play that became known as ‘budo snatching’. I’m also really struggling to understand how you spend 30 hours preparing for a single game session. That’s completely unrealistic even if you are manually redrawing every single map by hand, every single session. Pretty much the only thing I even remotely agree with you on is that the 5e rules are much more simplistic and the game is much easier to play now.
The simple fact is that the CR rating is meant to be a simple guide for a group of 4 unoptimised characters. I have seen as a DM such groups almost tpk against enemies that other groups of more experienced players with optimised characters go through like a hot knife through butter. CR only works as a tool when the DM understands the players and what they are capable of.
30 hrs per session is fairly easy to do. Especially when one recalls the mantra of old school DMing of (1 to 5 hrs of prep time per 1 hr of play time at the table). Given that his group meets every 2 weeks; I think we can assume they meet for more than the "modern" average of 4 hrs (probably closer to 8hr sessions). So that gives us an average of 20hrs with a minimum of 8 (for those using short cut techniques) and a maximum of 40hrs... And there is more to prep than just picking monsters and drawing/designing maps. There is NPC generation (this is attitude, motivation, background, personality, etc...), contingencies, subplots, side plots, and so on.
Being a "Professional DM" I do find 30 hrs (for a single session) to be a tad excessive, but I do run 4 campaigns a week and can only devote a smaller amount of time for prep per game. Still I estimate all totaled in prep time alone I devote around 20hrs a week for those 4 games. (But that is with using every short cut I have developed over the last 40 plus years as a "Forever DM".)
I agree with your assessment that CR only works as a guide in conjunction with an understanding of what the players are capable of.
But yeah, CR is one of the easiest things in the game to get right. Its just frickin math. But something tells me that Math was not the strongpoint of the design team at WoC....
[REDACTED]
CR is not just math, and we'll get to that in a second, but even the math they give is imperfect. A breath weapon, such as a dragon's, is assumed to only affect two targets; regardless of the size of the AoE. And I say that because the DMG also gives rules for adjudicating areas of effect. A 30-foot cone, like that of Venomfang from Lost Mine of Phandelver, should hit three targets. That increases its effective difficulty to CR 10. But dragons behave differently. That said, it cuts both ways. A dragonborn NPC with a 15-foot cone (2 targets) or 30-foot line (1 target) are assumed to both be able to hit two targets with their respective breath weapons. Speaking of NPC stat blocks, I've yet to see a single non-human NPC in any book that includes the ability modifiers prescribed in the DMG. Many of those have the potential to adjust a creature's challenge rating.
And that's before getting into how different creatures have an "optimal path" to reach their assigned CR. Deviating from that path, such as with the orc lets them punch above their weight as CR 1 creatures. Ditto for any goblin that can take shelter behind total cover; which adds a +5 bonus both to its AC against ranged attacks and to its Dexterity saving throws.
You are attempting to throw shade at literally everyone conceivable. According to you, no DM can get it right because they're allegedly uneducated. And even if they were educated, it doesn't matter to you because WotC is, allegedly, equally incompetent. In your assessment, the blind are leading the blind. This renders your first point moot─the capabilities of the disparate Dungeon Masters are inconsequential. You're shooting yourself in the foot.
If CR isn't usable to estimate how dangerous a given encounter is, what exactly is it for?
Arguably a failed attempt to make encounter balance more approachable for new players in my opinion. In the world of IT we have a saying, no data is better than bad data. If you have no idea what something is because there is no data, you will ask, research, try to find the information. If you are given the wrong information, you will assume its correct and use it as is without asking questions.
I think CR falls into this category that it is more misleading than helpful. I personally have found that I have never been able to use the CR to create a balanced encounter as effectively as my own gut instinct and experience. Little comfort to new players, but a reality nonetheless.
When I was a new DM and had players that were also all new, CR usually got me pretty close to what I needed for a balanced encounter. Now that I'm more experienced and I have players with more experience than I have, CR is more of a decent starting point for me. So in my opinion, CR does a pretty good job at what the rest of 5e was designed for: simplify things so new players aren't overwhelmed.
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I assume you're referring to the following chart. That's for legendary creatures, not just any old creature. For example, Strahd von Zarovich, a CR 15 vampire spellcaster with an altered spell list and extra necrotic damage, is deemed "a more perilous battle" for six 9th-level characters. And while the accuracy of that official assessment is arguable, I can't say the same for an Ice Devil or Purple Worm.
No, you really aren’t. Many of us have been playing for a similar timespan, we just don’t spout on about it or use it to imply that this fact makes us right and anyone else is ‘playing d&d wrong’. Pretty much everyone from back in the day thinks that calculating Thaco was a pain in the arse when you added in the values for different weapons being used against different armour types. Nobody still believes that getting 1exp per gp found was ever a good idea, or only the person who struck the killing blow on a monster actually got the exp for it. Those ideas and more caused no end of disagreements and resulted in the unique style of play that became known as ‘budo snatching’. I’m also really struggling to understand how you spend 30 hours preparing for a single game session. That’s completely unrealistic even if you are manually redrawing every single map by hand, every single session. Pretty much the only thing I even remotely agree with you on is that the 5e rules are much more simplistic and the game is much easier to play now.
The simple fact is that the CR rating is meant to be a simple guide for a group of 4 unoptimised characters. I have seen as a DM such groups almost tpk against enemies that other groups of more experienced players with optimised characters go through like a hot knife through butter. CR only works as a tool when the DM understands the players and what they are capable of.
I sense some people with experience with first edition Bushido, as that's the only RPG I recall that gave xp for kills and called xp budo.
Haha yeah, that was fun 😂
Sounds like I dodged the bullet - I saw Pathfinder for cheap recently and considered it, but decided against it. 5e and STA is enough for us for now. But that would have frustrated me - I'm not a big fan of the treadmill effect.
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.
It's an inherent part of game design that, any time you have a choice between two or more options, one of the following must be true
In general game design tries to have choices be of the third type, though the process of balancing often winds up moving towards the second type. However, this means that, in a particular situation, a party that made choices that fit the situation is better than a party that made choices that fit a different situation. This is unavoidable and means CR math will always be iffy.
Don't worry, I'd already decided against buying it, I was just glad that I made the right decision. I'm sure it's a good game, but it's just not for me.
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.
30 hrs per session is fairly easy to do. Especially when one recalls the mantra of old school DMing of (1 to 5 hrs of prep time per 1 hr of play time at the table). Given that his group meets every 2 weeks; I think we can assume they meet for more than the "modern" average of 4 hrs (probably closer to 8hr sessions). So that gives us an average of 20hrs with a minimum of 8 (for those using short cut techniques) and a maximum of 40hrs... And there is more to prep than just picking monsters and drawing/designing maps. There is NPC generation (this is attitude, motivation, background, personality, etc...), contingencies, subplots, side plots, and so on.
Being a "Professional DM" I do find 30 hrs (for a single session) to be a tad excessive, but I do run 4 campaigns a week and can only devote a smaller amount of time for prep per game. Still I estimate all totaled in prep time alone I devote around 20hrs a week for those 4 games. (But that is with using every short cut I have developed over the last 40 plus years as a "Forever DM".)
I agree with your assessment that CR only works as a guide in conjunction with an understanding of what the players are capable of.
If CR isn't usable to estimate how dangerous a given encounter is, what exactly is it for?
[REDACTED]
CR is not just math, and we'll get to that in a second, but even the math they give is imperfect. A breath weapon, such as a dragon's, is assumed to only affect two targets; regardless of the size of the AoE. And I say that because the DMG also gives rules for adjudicating areas of effect. A 30-foot cone, like that of Venomfang from Lost Mine of Phandelver, should hit three targets. That increases its effective difficulty to CR 10. But dragons behave differently. That said, it cuts both ways. A dragonborn NPC with a 15-foot cone (2 targets) or 30-foot line (1 target) are assumed to both be able to hit two targets with their respective breath weapons. Speaking of NPC stat blocks, I've yet to see a single non-human NPC in any book that includes the ability modifiers prescribed in the DMG. Many of those have the potential to adjust a creature's challenge rating.
And that's before getting into how different creatures have an "optimal path" to reach their assigned CR. Deviating from that path, such as with the orc lets them punch above their weight as CR 1 creatures. Ditto for any goblin that can take shelter behind total cover; which adds a +5 bonus both to its AC against ranged attacks and to its Dexterity saving throws.
You are attempting to throw shade at literally everyone conceivable. According to you, no DM can get it right because they're allegedly uneducated. And even if they were educated, it doesn't matter to you because WotC is, allegedly, equally incompetent. In your assessment, the blind are leading the blind. This renders your first point moot─the capabilities of the disparate Dungeon Masters are inconsequential. You're shooting yourself in the foot.
When I was a new DM and had players that were also all new, CR usually got me pretty close to what I needed for a balanced encounter. Now that I'm more experienced and I have players with more experience than I have, CR is more of a decent starting point for me. So in my opinion, CR does a pretty good job at what the rest of 5e was designed for: simplify things so new players aren't overwhelmed.