Quote from: Larsdangly;761603Exactly! I stopped over there for a rare fly-by and thought I'ld wandered into a mad house two days after they ran out of meds. I'm not a massive fan boy of any game written after 1990, but what is the problem here supposed to be?

I always get a chuckle out of the nutjob theorycrafters dissecting every mechanic and value in D&D, desperately trying to turn it into a sublime paragon of elegant mathematical design. I can't imagine how shitty your life must be if your hobby is analyzing the mechanics of a roleplaying game for years and years (in many cases without actually playing), while denouncing its flaws relentlessly to anyone who will listen.

But 5E has inspired the theory-wanks to an unprecedented frenzy of outrage. I don't know if it's because 5E is supplanting the only edition of D&D that did follow the design models promoted by the theorycrafters. Or if it's the  modular, loose, flexible quality of 5E that makes steam blow out of their ears. But it's damn fun to watch.

Quote from: Haffrung;761748I always get a chuckle out of the nutjob theorycrafters dissecting every mechanic and value in D&D, desperately trying to turn it into a sublime paragon of elegant mathematical design. I can't imagine how shitty your life must be if your hobby is analyzing the mechanics of a roleplaying game for years and years (in many cases without actually playing), while denouncing its flaws relentlessly to anyone who will listen.

But 5E has inspired the theory-wanks to an unprecedented frenzy of outrage. I don't know if it's because 5E is supplanting the only edition of D&D that did follow the design models promoted by the theorycrafters. Or if it's the  modular, loose, flexible quality of 5E that makes steam blow out of their ears. But it's damn fun to watch.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;761719Those monsters really make me think they're applying the bounded accuracy theme to CRs as well.  I.e., the entire design seems to be around a lot less numbers escalation than previous editions.  So a CR 10 creature in Next would be the equivalent of a CR 20 creature in 3e.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/dndqa/20140425

Why use the term Challenge Rating instead of just level for monster difficulty?

We have a number of reasons, including that we want to use fractions at the low end (as Mike alluded to in Legends & Lore). Additionally, we're already using level in two different ways in the game (character level and spell level, for example) and adding yet another metric of level didn't seem like a good idea. Moreover, we didn't want to use level because we expect monsters to remain relevant for much longer in the game than in previous editions (being used in larger numbers), and the term "level" could dissuade DMs from using things that are too far below the level of the party. By going with CR, we can indicate to the DM at what point the monster should enter his or her stable of monsters for use when designing adventures and avoid making it seem like they are too quickly removed from that same stable.

It's also worth noting that, because you use the monsters' XP value, not their CR, when gauging the difficulty of encounters and adventures, the actual CR value is of little significance beyond being a relative gauge of power among all monsters. Since the concept of level is of high significance in gauging the power of player characters, it didn't seem like a good idea to use the same term for two concepts, one of which was extremely important, and the other far less so.

How does CR work for what should be big 'solo' monsters? How would a DM calculate CR for a big villain that he or she has created?

The CR of a monster is based on the level at which a party of four player characters could fight that monster and have a moderate-to-challenging fight. So, for the big, solo monsters that you fight, four-on-one serves as the baseline for the CR system, and CR represents about the level at which the monster starts to pop up in adventures (there's some leeway in this, of course; you could fight something of a higher CR, but it becomes significantly more challenging). If you're fighting monsters in larger numbers, they're almost certainly of a CR that is lower than player character level.

As for calculating the CR of a villain, you'll do that just like you would with any other monster: by comparing the villain/monster that you've designed to a set of baseline values to determine its CR, similar to how monster design worked in 4th Edition. We're going to present a set of guidelines that you can use to gauge the CR of a monster, whether built like a player character or built just as a normal monster. (More on this in the next answer.)

Will characters of a certain level have a CR equal to their level?

No, for a number of reasons. First, because CR is based on the idea that the player characters are fighting the monster four-on-one, and four player characters will not find a single player character of the same level to be a significant challenge in many cases. Additionally, although player characters are designed to have resources that are expended over the course of an adventuring day, NPC villains in adventures don't have this same need: they are on-screen for a limited amount of time, and they can dump large amounts of resources into attacks quickly and without the need to husband their resources for the rest of the adventure. While the party wizard might dole out his or her highest-level spells one at a time out of necessity, the NPC wizard can cast those higher-level spells one after another since doing so is a matter of life-and-death. The same goes for any class, including fighters with Action Surge, paladins with Lay on Hands, and so on. As a result, this skews how difficult a fight with that NPC is. To figure out the CR of an NPC, you'll need to do the same kind of comparisons to monster baselines, just as you would when designing a monster not built on NPC classes, and get a more accurate CR out of it.

This method should also produce more accurate gauges of the challenge player characters face when encountering a monster that the DM decides to give class levels to; adding a few levels of cleric to a high-level monster may have no real impact on that monster's challenge, while adding those levels to a lower-level monster might have a huge impact. All that matters is the end result: whatever the monster/NPC can do during an actual fight, not how it got to those results, determines its CR.

Quote from: Haffrung;761748I always get a chuckle out of the nutjob theorycrafters dissecting every mechanic and value in D&D, desperately trying to turn it into a sublime paragon of elegant mathematical design. I can't imagine how shitty your life must be if your hobby is analyzing the mechanics of a roleplaying game for years and years (in many cases without actually playing), while denouncing its flaws relentlessly to anyone who will listen.

But 5E has inspired the theory-wanks to an unprecedented frenzy of outrage. I don't know if it's because 5E is supplanting the only edition of D&D that did follow the design models promoted by the theorycrafters. Or if it's the  modular, loose, flexible quality of 5E that makes steam blow out of their ears. But it's damn fun to watch.

Is awful purple frothing and sputtering?  I haven't checked.

The Good News: Ochre Jellies can no longer be knocked Prone.

Quote from: CRKrueger;761789Is awful purple frothing and sputtering?  I haven't checked.

Big-time. It's shaping up to be the forum of choice of 5E haters.

Quote from: Haffrung;761799Big-time. It's shaping up to be the forum of choice of 5E haters.

but let me guess.  It's still not an official edition, and "things could still change", so their edition war rules don't apply to 5e...

Quote from: Haffrung;761748But 5E has inspired the theory-wanks to an unprecedented frenzy of outrage. I don't know if it's because 5E is supplanting the only edition of D&D that did follow the design models promoted by the theorycrafters. Or if it's the  modular, loose, flexible quality of 5E that makes steam blow out of their ears. But it's damn fun to watch.

Any particularly interesting mushroom clouds you can point us towards?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;761803but let me guess.  It's still not an official edition, and "things could still change", so their edition war rules don't apply to 5e...

Doesn't really make any difference to me at this point. They lost. D&D won.

Now, I'm just busy getting work cleared so I'll have time to enjoy it when it arrives.

Let them froth away.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;761803but let me guess.  It's still not an official edition, and "things could still change", so their edition war rules don't apply to 5e...

They were moderating it a bit better for a while, but not so much the past week or so.

Quote from: Warthur;761805Any particularly interesting mushroom clouds you can point us towards?

"Wasn't there not supposed to be a dependence on magic items..."

Gauntlets of Ogre Power have apparently broken 5E.

Quote from: Warthur;761805Any particularly interesting mushroom clouds you can point us towards?

Any thread I posted in. Just  do a search for marleycat. It should lead you right to the hotspots. Though my friends there have convinced me to just stop.... given a wall has no ears.

CR is more fun then Topher anyway.

Quote from: Haffrung;761799Big-time. It's shaping up to be the forum of choice of 5E haters.

It is quite hilarious seeing the lengths some people are going to to justify their dislike. I saw some joker moaning about the equipment list in the starter set because by 3rd level you won't need to buy a lantern, so why is it listed in the equipment section?

Not to mention the fact that 2 or 3 of the most vocally anti-5e have basically admitted they don't really play d&d in any meaningful way anyway.

I kinda ignored all the anti-4e rhetoric floating about here about it being the edition for people that didn't like d&d, but as the design process for Next has progressed, i think it's come to light that it is pretty much true.

I've also just seen Torchbearer held up as an OSR game. That gives a general idea of the clueless nature of large portions of that board.

Quote from: Marleycat;761912Any thread I posted in. Just  do a search for marleycat. It should lead you right to the hotspots. Though my friends there have convinced me to just stop.... given a wall has no ears.

CR is more fun then Topher anyway.

Oh hey, TBP finally fixed their search function. That took, what, five years at least?

Quote from: CRKrueger;761789Is awful purple frothing and sputtering?  I haven't checked.

The Good News: Ochre Jellies can no longer be knocked Prone.

But we can still trip them right?

Quote from: One Horse Town;761941I've also just seen Torchbearer held up as an OSR game. That gives a general idea of the clueless nature of large portions of that board.

In a year, 5 max. OSR will have lost any meaning. Just like RPG, Role-Playing, Railroad, etc.

2nd Ed? That was one of the best OSRs to come out. But Shadowrun was a better OSR... :confused: