CR/EL System View

[Animus]

How do view the CR/EL system? Do you think it is something to strictly adhere to? Do you see it as more of an art then a science and use it as a guideline? Or do you throw it out entirely?

 

[Crysmalon]

Definitely an art - I find myself using it as a gauge and then assigning XP appropriately. I am the DM afterall

 

[Odhanan]

How do view the CR/EL system? Do you think it is something to strictly adhere to? Do you see it as more of an art then a science and use it as a guideline? Or do you throw it out entirely?

The DMG itself does not present the CR/EL system as something someone would "have to adhere to" in a strict rules sense. There are no hard rules with the CR/EL system, just suggestions.

 

[Psion]

I'd call it a guideline.

If done right, CR and EL say something fairly meaningful about the challenge of an opponent, but it is based upon certain assumptions about the capabilities of the party and can be very situation specific.

I do use it to eyeball encounters, and find it is fairly good in that context if I keep the party's capabilities in mind. Which I find fairly straightforward to do. For example, last high level game I had, there was a fighter who never used ranged weapons or, for that matter, and weapon other than his greatsword. If I wanted the other characters to shine, ranged or flying attackers or creatures with good DR vs. slashing were the order of the day.

I wouldn't use the term "I'd call it an art." Being situation specific does not make it an art, any more than the matter of fact about whether my 1 GHz PPC will run a program faster than my 1 GHz Pentium 4 is "an art". It's a matter of what program you are talking about, what it's trying to do, what OS you are using, etc.

I do not use CR to calculate XP. I call that "tedious" and "rewarding the wrong thing".

 

[shilsen]

It's a useful, if not very precise, guideline.

 

[JoeyD473]

Its a guideline, and one I happen to really like because it gives me a way to try and figure out good encountersappropriate to the characters.

 

[mmu1]

I went with option 2, but it doesn't really fit my take on it that well - every poll needs a "none of the above" option.

In a perfect world, it could be useful as a broad guideline.

In the real world, it does more harm than good.

Between the game designers who frequently pull the CRs out of their butts, the huge amount of power creep that only gets worse with every new monster manual, the DMs who play the strange game of exploiting the (crappy to begin with) CR design guildelines to make custom monsters overpowered for their CR, and the ones who use CR as an excuse for not having to think about what they throw at the PCs, it's now a massive impediment to good DMing.

 

[Random Axe]

It's poorly written and badly presented and damned confusing, and WAY TOO MUCH BLOODY MATH.

However, it's the only thing that I have to go on, so I don't exactly throw it out....

 

[Arnwyn]

As with everyone else: a guideline.

Interestingly enough, it's one that I adhere to more often than not, due to the fact (creepy coincidence?) that it has almost always worked out for my particular group for the past 6+ years of 3.x.

 

[GlassJaw]

I'm somewhere between guideline and throw it out but I voted for guideline.

For as much "math" as it has, there are just too many situations it can't model. I prefer the sum of the squares method much more.