Just a thought on my side as a GM.
I'm thinking maybe there needs to be an automatic CR adjustment for any monster that has class levels. My reasoning being that if I take a CR 6 monster (Minotaur for example) and then add 10 levels of Barbarian to it, theoretically it should be an 15 CR (9 for class and 6 for base). However, I don't think anyone would actually argue that a 10th level barbarian minotaur is actually a valid 15 CR (four 15th level characters would turn a 10th level barbarian minotaur into swiss cheese in the first round, second at the least).
So, going from the rules in the beastiary, I was thinking an automatic reduction of base CR every 3 class levels? That would result in a 10th level barbarian minotaur being a CR 12 (9 from class + 3 from base), which I think is probably about right.
Thoughts?
I gotta go with kevin here. For a good read on monster class level viability, have that minotaur/bbn 10 go toe-to-toe with a human bbn 15. Putting the minotaur against a whole group is an obvious recipe for an unimpressive showing. Really, any single opponent of matched CR is going to go down quickly to a full party; think of how that lone minotaur would have fared sans class levels against the party when they were level 6.
Personally, I think the associated-level CR calculations are actually underpowered in some scenarios. Take a fire giant and give it 11 levels of monk or cleric and you will wreak havoc well beyond their CR 15 pricetag would suggest.
Personal favorite: Troll cleric 6 with the fire and earth domains. CR 9 and years of disgusted player reminisces.
I think some clarification is needed. A CR 15 should be an average challenge for a 15th level party of four. Per the rules, it should consume about 25% of the party's resources (based on four encounters per game day).
Sorry, but a 10th level Barbarian Minotaur would NOT require 25% of the groups resources. It would instead require one or two rounds of melee attacks by the fighter, a sneak attack by the rogue, a single spell from the sorcerer and maybe a cure from the cleric afterwards. That's not 25% of the daily resources, it's barely a bump in the road.
I never claimed it should be a 'challenge' for the party. I said it was no challenge at all, which means it uses no resources at all to kill it. I would much more expect a group of 12th level characters to use about 20% of their resources fighting off a 10th barbarian minotaur.
@Frerezar & Kevin Morris, yes, exactly. It's not part of the rules for advancing monsters via Class Levels, just for monster PCs. However, I think it works well for monsters advanced via class levels as well.
I gotta go with kevin here. For a good read on monster class level viability, have that minotaur/bbn 10 go toe-to-toe with a human bbn 15. Putting the minotaur against a whole group is an obvious recipe for an unimpressive showing. Really, any single opponent of matched CR is going to go down quickly to a full party; think of how that lone minotaur would have fared sans class levels against the party when they were level 6.
Personally, I think the associated-level CR calculations are actually underpowered in some scenarios. Take a fire giant and give it 11 levels of monk or cleric and you will wreak havoc well beyond their CR 15 pricetag would suggest.
Personal favorite: Troll cleric 6 with the fire and earth domains. CR 9 and years of disgusted player reminisces.
LOL,
Yeah, there are some class/creature combinations that get a huge synergy bonus, but it's usually with caster classes, not melee classes.
Pathfinder doesn't explicitly use the 25% resources bit that I can find. There's no exact metric for how much an appropriately CR'd encounter should drain from party resources.
It's not in the book, but Jason and James have confirmed in several posts on the forums that they pegged the CRs of the bestiary based on the 25% resource idea.
However, even in 3.5, the 25% rule never really worked past early levels. "Resources" pretty much means spell slots, and casters have a lot of slots of varying levels. At 11th level, should an equal-level CR encounter drain 1 6th level spell, 1 5th level spell, 1 4th level spell, and so on? An 11th-level Wizard has 18 spell slots, but spell slots aren't worth the same, across levels, either.
I agree it didn't work all that well in 3.5. The PF rewrite however has attempted to fix that as much as possible. Check the CR's between Bestiary and MM I, you will see a lot of adjustments. Resources also refer to healing supplies, wands, arrows, etc. Not just magic, although I'll grant you that most of it is magic.
I always generally took the route when DMing for 3.x that a caster's highest level slots were his main resource. So, if it's a 4 person party, and the Wizard uses one or two of his highest level spells, and the Cleric uses one or two of his highest level spells, they've used about 25% of their main resource in most cases.
And that's a fair enough use. Personally, in my games I use spell points, which makes it much easier to adjudge 25% when it occurs (although granted usually in my games it's not 25% per encounter, it usually 30-80% per encounter, but one to three encounters per day because I generally don't do dungeon delves as the main story). Which was how I noticed that adding classes on seemed to screw up the CR/resource curve.
The CRs in the Bestiary do seem to be pretty well tagged though.
It does require recalibrating one's expectations of what an equal-level CR represents, though. In the end, I do agree that NPCs with class levels are sometimes weaker than you might expect, though they can also end up quite more powerful than you would expect, too. I like Pathfinder's class level - 1 rule for NPC CR much better than the old CR = level bit from 3.5, though.
True. My preferred, honestly, type of encounter is equalish level/number sentient fights. I'll usually have them encounter an equal number of enemies (bugbears, hobgoblins, etc) with equal level of class levels. That seems to be a good setup that balances challenge vs exp gained.
The last major combat I did was 12 level 10 fighter lizardfolk (although only 8 were attacking, the other 4 were poling the boats in the swamps) who volleyfired arrows at the party (7 PCs, 2 cohorts and 2 NPCs). It was a decent fight, and the party got tore up pretty well (about half their resources used, plus I managed to strip one cohort of all equipment when her boat sank with all her equipment on it and they couldn't recover all of it thanks to the thick mud and stirred up water).
Spell pools aside, "party resources" is such a nebulous and circumstantial thing to measure, I've never bothered even trying to keep track. A single optimized rogue getting the drop on the party mows through "25% resources" in a heartbeat, while the ogre they see charging might not get a single swing in. Running four medium-easy fights in succession to grind out a full day's resources would bore my group to tears; I favor one or two fights at APL + 2-4. It taxes the party to their limits, puts the fear of god in 'em, and justifies more interesting foe options, fight cinema, and treasure. Of course, my group will occasionally try to lynch me for abuse of the CR system, but that's what keeps things fun for me.
I've got to say, though, it's nice to hear other people prefer to run fewer than the standard 4 encounters per day. Honestly, outside of dungeons, how do you really justify a group coming up against that many individual fight-or-die situations in a single friggin' day?
The only time I've had it come up logically was actually 2 weeks ago.
The players are a Warforged fighter, a human wizard/ranger, a human rogue/warmage, and a human healer.
They bought a sand-sled (traveling through the desert) and harnessed up the warforged. Since he doesn't get tired, he just plodded along 24 hours straight while they slept in shifts. In that one day, they got attacked 3 times by sand-lizards (6, 8, and 7 groupsize).
Still, that's the only time, and only because they were traveling 24/7 and attracting them.
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A 10th level barbarian minotaur should be a equivalent to a CR 12 in pathfinder rules.
According the the base rules an NPC with PC class levels has a CR of level - 1, but that's partly because of reduced wealth. A regular PC has a CR of equal to their level, hence why a minotaur (CR4) is considered equal to a 4th level player (CR4).
However, the value of the benefits of races diminishes with time (ie class levels) and as such the bestiary has rules for reducing the base CR (detailed on p313-314).
These adjustments occur every three levels by allowing the player to get an "extra" level. The maximum number of times this occurs is equal to half the base monster's CR (rounded down) and starts half-way between levels 2 and 3.
In this case, the minotaur would have gained an "extra" level between 6 and 7 (or between 2 and 3 class levels) and then again between 8 and 9 (or between the 5th and 6th class levels). This leaves the minotaur as having "bought off" two of its CR points and becoming CR 12.
A CR 12 would certainly be turned into swiss cheese by a level 15 party.
A 10th level barbarian minotaur should be a equivalent to a CR 12 in pathfinder rules.
According the the base rules an NPC with PC class levels has a CR of level - 1, but that's partly because of reduced wealth. A regular PC has a CR of equal to their level, hence why a minotaur (CR4) is considered equal to a 4th level player (CR4).
However, the value of the benefits of races diminishes with time (ie class levels) and as such the bestiary has rules for reducing the base CR (detailed on p313-314).
These adjustments occur every three levels by allowing the player to get an "extra" level. The maximum number of times this occurs is equal to half the base monster's CR (rounded down) and starts half-way between levels 2 and 3.
In this case, the minotaur would have gained an "extra" level between 6 and 7 (or between 2 and 3 class levels) and then again between 8 and 9 (or between the 5th and 6th class levels). This leaves the minotaur as having "bought off" two of its CR points and becoming CR 12.A CR 12 would certainly be turned into swiss cheese by a level 15 party.
That was sort of the point of my post, although I got the minotaur's base CR wrong orriginally. However, please note the rules you are quoting above are for PC Monsters, not for advancing monsters by adding class levels. Those rules are in a different section and I missed the CR adjustment text in that section (facepalm).
Step 3: Determine CRDetermining the final CR for a creature with class levels requires careful consideration. While adding a class level to a monster that stacks with its existing abilities and role generally adds 1 to its CR for each level taken, adding classes that do not stack is more complicated.
Table: Monsters with Class Levels gives general guidelines regarding which core classes add directly to a monster's abilities based on its role. Classes that are marked “key” generally add 1 to a creature's CR for each level added. Classes marked with a “—” increase a creature's CR by 1 for every 2 class levels added until the number of levels added are equal to (or exceed) the creature's original CR, at which point they are treated as “key” levels (adding 1 to the creature's CR for each level added). Creatures that fall into multiple roles treat a class as key if either of its roles treat the class as key. Note that levels in NPC classes are never considered key.
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Personally, I do not like to distinguish between monsters and players. What is fair for a player is fair for a monster, so I use the same rules for both.
So yes, by "advancing monsters" your example should be CR14. That CR should also be stomped by a party of level 15 characters.
I recommend house ruling that monsters either always follow the same rules as players, or that they also get to buy off the extra CR every so often (for key classes, anyway). The first allows the system to remain consistent, the second allows the DM to adjust for adding a sub-optimal class and both fix the problem you've outlined. Unfortunately these goals do not intersect in any of the base rules.
Personally, I do not like to distinguish between monsters and players. What is fair for a player is fair for a monster, so I use the same rules for both.
So yes, by "advancing monsters" your example should be CR14. That CR should also be stomped by a party of level 15 characters.
I recommend house ruling that monsters either always follow the same rules as players, or that they also get to buy off the extra CR every so often (for key classes, anyway). The first allows the system to remain consistent, the second allows the DM to adjust for adding a sub-optimal class and both fix the problem you've outlined. Unfortunately these goals do not intersect in any of the base rules.
Yep. That was why I originally posted, I had missed the CR adjust under the class level addition, but it's still out of whack with the player character mods.
I think I'll just use the character mods, as I posted above. It seems to work out better.