I've seen a lot of people claim that CR isn't actually very useful when determining the challenge of an encounter, especially at higher levels. But I'm not sure how true these claims are; at high levels, yes, CR does get thrown out of the window pretty quickly, but what about lower levels? And at what level does CR become obsolete?
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No, it's pretty wacky at every level.
But remember, the people who decide the CR don't play massively-optimized Tier-1 characters. At least, not for the purpose of testing monsters and assigning CRs. If you want to know what they play, get the NPC Codex and look at those characters; I'm sure that's basically what the game developers use as a baseline for their development.
So, if your gaming table is playing some pretty vanilla classes and not thinking about "optimized builds", then you will find the CR system works fairly well most of the time. On the other hand, if you're optimizing a group of super tier-1 characters, you might as well forget the CR even exists.
Even for the vanilla group, some monsters are ridiculously hard for their CR and some monsters are ridiculously easy. But even so, most of the monsters are pretty much spot on.
What gets weirder is when you make groups of monsters and try to combine CRs to find the CR of the whole group - the CR system breaks down quite a bit there.
When is it obsolete? As I mentioned above, that really depends on the group. It's obsolete at level 1 if you're group is maximally optimized and it's probably never fully obsolete at level 20 if your group is generally plain-vanilla.
Never obsolete.
It gets a bit more fuzzy as the levels raise, but its always a useful rough measure of combat danger.
I have had nothing but trouble woth it. Sure it gives youba sort of ball park idea, but it completely undervalues spell casting. An Aboleth is a CR 7, but i Had 4 completely wipe a party of 7 level 9s with 3 full casters and all were slightly over geared... it made me sad...
Oh and there shouls 0 full martial types at higher CRs..
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I haven't had any issues with it. Granted all my games are homebrewed and I haven't gotten a campaign above 6th level so YRMV but it's a good baseline.
That's all I've used it for though: a baseline.
In this thread the astute Alexander Augunas links to a document about creating interesting encounters. In that he throws out an interesting idea: create an experience budget of what your PCs can handle individually and then "buy" monsters based on the exp budget.
For example if you have a group of 5 PCs, all level 2, first start with APL 2. Generally the APL and CR mechanics assume a party of 4 PCs, so if you've got APL 2, that means four level 2 PCs can handle a CR 2 monster between them as an Average threat. A CR 2 is worth 600 xp, so 1 level 2 PC can handle about 150 xp worth of monster individually.
So with a party of 5 PCs, all level 2, this means you've got an xp budget of 150 xp x 5 PCs, for a total of 750 experience. So you could drop, say, 4 kobold warrior 2 (540 xp) accompanied by a kobold adept 3 (200 xp) and the fight should waste about 20% of the party's resources.
This allows you to use CR as a guideline to help you calculate your budgets, but at the same time you're not bound to it religiously. With CR helping to set the budget in the background you get a more accurate read on what your players can handle and you can build specific to the party.
CR is useful as long as everyone understands that's it's more of a very loose guideline than an ironclad rule. Ultimately, you always have to consider your party when designing encounters. That CR 3 Shadow or CR 5 Wraith goes from an on-target encounter for a low-level party to a potential TPK if the group doesn't have a good way to handle incorporeal enemies, for example.
CR is a rough estimate, and GMs should always consider the players in the equation.
Have a PC party of melee specialists? Swarms might be tougher or impossible for such a group.
Have a PC party of low level casters? Constructs may be much more dangerous to that group than the CR would lead you to believe.
Have a party of divine casters? If they are prepared and resourceful, such a PC party could handle undead threats of higher than usual CRs.
CR is like using a more descriptive cookbook (a pinch of salt, for example), rather than exact measurements.
It is not a perfect system, yet it beats no system at all. It also gives starting GMs a clue that an ancient dragon is way out of the league for a first level party to handle.
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I've never understood why people rip on CR so much. It's not perfect, but that's impossible as how difficult certain monsters are varies greatly with the party composition.
For example - the Will O' Wisp is a classic example of a creature generally thought to be hard for their CR. What if you have someone in the party with Greater Feint? Suddenly they're super easy.
It's inherently not perfect, but I certainly wouldn't want to do without and just have to guess as to relative creature power level. Plus it makes figuring out exp for class/monster combos far easier.
Incredibly useful as long as you appreciate it's limitations. I am not sure what I would do if it wasn't there, and I can't think of a better way to categorise relative strength of monsters.
What it can't do is take into account anything outside of the monster stats. That includes environment, party composition, player experience, player optimisation, GM experience and optimisation (if a monster plays into a GMs strengths it becomes much nastier, if the GM isn't as familiar it can be much easier - especially true with caster monsters) It also doesn't handle large numbers well, whether that's scaling to deal with a large party or a large number of monsters.
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Pretty handy to be honest, there's outliers here and there, but overall I know roughly what my party can handle, their strengths and weaknesses with the CR system. Assuming I keep in mind, the point buy and experience level of my players.
It can get a bit wonky at higher CRs (13+), but that's inherited from 3.5, and is something that can be adjusted for (thank you mythic).
My issue is how a level 10 fighter is the same CR as a level 10 wizard... any creature without spell casting beyond like CR 6-7 and is not something special like super templated or a swarm or something with a host of Su powers (like oozes, undead, ect.) Should not be the CR are they are. For instance... giants.
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Can you clarify the type of game you're discussing? I am an optimizer and play with many of them and there are many different kind of games enjoyed by many different types, whether or not they optimize.
I find that optimization pushes Pathfinder into a game of Rocket Launcher Tag. In essence, the goal is to win initiative, and throw out the most effective save-or-suck/die you can (bonus if it doesn't allow SR, 2X bonus if it doesn't allow a save). If you are a martial character, you need to take out the foe before he can attack you, which generally limits you to full ranged attack, pounce, possibly some form of grapple/trip.
Generally, these groups can easily walk through APL -1 or APL 0 encounters, and make an effort to bypass encounters, and get to the main boss as quickly as possible. Fairly quickly the game starts to become a string of APL +2 or APL +4 encounters that are highly lethal.
This style of play generally involves single round combats, or at least the combat being decided in the surprise round or the first round. Since most classes and even most builds can't hang in this style of game, you generally only see a half dozen different types of characters, repetitive use of spells, and spamming of slumber hex, heavens oracles with color spray, etc. Also, everyone's characters kind of look the same... Maxed casting stat, decent Con, dumped Cha, dumped Int, 2 handed weapons for the martial characters, etc.
Since this style of play is so lethal, The Rules become very important. If you misinterpret a rule or situation, your PC is going to die, so detail can't be handwaved and story/personality take a backseat to survival. The Rule of Cool, spending an action to display your characters personality, or trying something for flavor are luxuries you can't afford if you want to survive.
I thought that an APL +0 encounter was supposed to use 20-25% of the parties resources, but I can't find that text, and I wonder if it was in 3.5 when CR worked a little differently?
It's that 20-25% of resources that are the most concrete example of how difficult an encounter should be, and why different classes, and builds fit into the CR system in ways above or below what the numbers indicate.
For example, if we take a tenth level party composed of a rogue, a monk, an alchemist and 2wf ranger (or Harsk), they are theoretically the same APL as a conjuration wizard, druid, bard and summoner. However when presented with most CR appropriate challenges, the second party will use far less resources or simply have a higher success rate. You can see similar differences if you take either party and throw them against a 14th level wizard and a 14th level monk. Both are CR 13 encounters (assuming CRB race and NPC wealth) however, the wizard will have more gear, and might have a dominated minion or planar bound outsider supporting them (not to mention summoned creatures, contingencies, etc.) Therefore it is not accurate to say that every class is equally part of the CR system.
This applies to monsters as well. At first level, probably the most deadly monster is the Orc. At 1/3 CR the orc is quite capable of downing a PC with a power attack falchion attack, and difficult to kill due to his Ferocity special quality. 3 Orcs is an APL+1 or challenging encounter, yet it could easily be a TPK.
By the mid levels many martial powerhouses become easy to avoid, and a lone flying PC could take out almost any animal or creature without a ranged attack with absolutely no risk.
When you reach the later stages of the game, it is difficult to find creature types that present a challenge. Humanoids can be held/dominated, even more creatures can be slumbered or otherwise enchanted. Undead are vulnerable to specific spells, and effects as are plants, animals, etc. many creatures are trip/grapple fodder. Pretty much anything with a bad fortitude or will save is toast.
This is correct. Martial classes tend to fall horribly behind the CR system during the transition into mid-levels and it only gets worse as the levels go higher.
Heck just compare a straight Fighter to a Melee Beatstick of the same CR over level 7-8 or so and it's never good for the Fighter, who should be able to beat such a foe 50/50.
I think it is more a case of the casters being too powerful for their APL, rather then the martials being too weak. If I compare a 10th level fighter to a CR 10 Fire Giant, I think it would be a decent fight. Some of the other comparisons could go either way however. Part of the problem in judging is that the fighter could often make or break the encounter by drinking the right potion - for example, an oil of bless weapon or potion of displacement is going to alter the success rate by a tremendous amount in many cases.
To bring the conversation back around, a huge part of it is degree of optimization. An optimized fighter looks fairly similar to any other fighter. A few points here and there, but in the same ballpark, because you generally have to make sacrifices to get benefits. However, a well optimized wizard really didn't sacrifice anything. He jacks up his casting stat, picks the right spells, and can take out APL+2 or +3 Foes with a single casting of Blindness or Flesh to Stone. In the ways that matter, he is MUCH more powerful then the CR system intended.
I ran some math and Fighter vs Fire Giant comes out fairly close actually. Assuming a fairly generous stat array [whether acquired by dumping, given as an array by the GM or from a large point buy) and gloves of Dueling along with the rest of the expected gear for the level.
The Fighter looked fairly likely to lose a slugfest due to having roughly 2/3rds the HP and 1d6/hit less damage, but if he had Archery at his disposal [and the environment to actually use it at a distance] he'd have no problem butchering the Fire Giant.
In theory, an archery fighter can decimate balor in a few full attacks.
The problem comes with trying to actualy land those attacks. With the ability to summon like crazy, teleport, DD, greater dispel, abd dominate, the poor fighter would in reality have no chance.
I ran some math and Fighter vs Fire Giant comes out fairly close actually. Assuming a fairly generous stat array [whether acquired by dumping, given as an array by the GM or from a large point buy) and gloves of Dueling along with the rest of the expected gear for the level.
The Fighter looked fairly likely to lose a slugfest due to having roughly 2/3rds the HP and 1d6/hit less damage, but if he had Archery at his disposal [and the environment to actually use it at a distance] he'd have no problem butchering the Fire Giant.
In theory, an archery fighter can decimate balor in a few full attacks.
The problem comes with trying to actualy land those attacks. With the ability to summon like crazy, teleport, DD, greater dispel, abd dominate, the poor fighter would in reality have no chance.
Which is why party members and tactics mean something. It isn't a solo game and not all choices are equal (or supposed to be).
It is supposed to be a cooperative game. If your spell caster is ending encounters by them self all the time, they aren't really cooperating, they are hogging the spotlight. They are also probably optimized, which means taking the highest tier classes to the highest efficiency which skews the CR.
As GM you need to "set the bar" and be able to challenge all involved by understanding just what each character can handle and brings to the group. If you just go the "rocket tag" route, you will be challenging the highest optimized party members and making the rest of the party feel inefficient and useless. That pretty much comes out to "bad GMing" as the highest powered characters are running the game now. It's like the 15 min adventuring day. It never happened unless the GM let it happen. Which means it was a problem with the GM, not the game or rules mechanics.
The CR system is based on 4 PCs, not one. One fighter versus one giant might be a fair fight, it might not; I haven't done the math. But I DO know that based on the averages four PCs are expected to be able to work together to bring that giant down with a minimum of resources expended if their Average Party Level is equal to the giant's.
Put another way, let's look at the Beastiary for average monster stats. Looking at the chart a CR 4 creature has 40 HP, around a 17 AC, a high attack of +8 and deals on average about 16 pts with said high attack. This means if I want to build an effective damage dealer for level 4 I need to be able to hit AC 17 more than half the time and inflict about 10 damage in a round in order to successfully contribute to ending this monster.
Of course there are other ways to contribute. Save or suck, buffing your friends, Aid Another etc. However The above are the basic, numeric assumptions of CR 4.
Now this CR stuff was all written as a cut-and-paste from 3x and updated to the Pathfinder Core Rules. That being said, if I made a level 4 fighter with only Core feats, no traits, a 15 point buy (which I think is assumed in most APs and is kind of the default for "average" heroes) and only core spells, I'd end up with a fighter using 5, maybe 6 feats at this level. Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Dodge, Mobility and Spring Attack for example. This means my core fighter attacking a core monster with only core gear, feats and abilities can deal roughly a +1 greatsword +8 (2d6 +15) damage, or a DPR of about 13 or 14 pts of damage in a round.
The core fighter is keeping pace with the monsters based on averages in CR.
Now I haven't calculated every level but I think this stays pretty consistent at least through 6th level which is where I stopped analyzing. When you start factoring non-core classes, feats, gear, traits, spells, etc. the CR mechanic can get really bizarre. Probably after 6th level too it gets kooky.
This is why most of the posters in this thread say CR is useful, but on in so much as it gives a baseline.
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Can you clarify the type of game you're discussing? I am an optimizer and play with many of them and there are many different kind of games enjoyed by many different types, whether or not they optimize.I find that optimization pushes Pathfinder into a game of Rocket Launcher Tag. In essence, the goal is to win initiative, and throw out the most effective save-or-suck/die you can (bonus if it doesn't allow SR, 2X bonus if it doesn't allow a save). If you are a martial character, you need to take out the foe before he can attack you, which generally limits you to full ranged attack, pounce, possibly some form of grapple/trip.
That's only if you optimize for offense only - which admittedly, many do.
Actually - the game is far LESS rocket tag if you sacrifice a little offense for a lot of defense (and frankly - it's really the more powerful build method). The problem is that the whole party has to do so. If one player decides to build a glass cannon, everyone else is forced to do so to some degree in order to kill foes before said glass cannon is murdered horribly.
I ran some math and Fighter vs Fire Giant comes out fairly close actually. Assuming a fairly generous stat array [whether acquired by dumping, given as an array by the GM or from a large point buy) and gloves of Dueling along with the rest of the expected gear for the level.
The Fighter looked fairly likely to lose a slugfest due to having roughly 2/3rds the HP and 1d6/hit less damage, but if he had Archery at his disposal [and the environment to actually use it at a distance] he'd have no problem butchering the Fire Giant.
In theory, an archery fighter can decimate balor in a few full attacks.
The problem comes with trying to actualy land those attacks. With the ability to summon like crazy, teleport, DD, greater dispel, abd dominate, the poor fighter would in reality have no chance.
Which is why party members and tactics mean something. It isn't a solo game and not all choices are equal (or supposed to be).
It is supposed to be a cooperative game. If your spell caster is ending encounters by them self all the time, they aren't really cooperating, they are hogging the spotlight. They are also probably optimized, which means taking the highest tier classes to the highest efficiency which skews the CR.
As GM you need to "set the bar" and be able to challenge all involved by understanding just what each character can handle and brings to the group. If you just go the "rocket tag" route, you will be challenging the highest optimized party members and making the rest of the party feel inefficient and useless. That pretty much comes out to "bad GMing" as the highest powered characters are running the game now. It's like the 15 min adventuring day. It never happened unless the GM let it happen. Which means it was a problem with the GM, not the game or rules mechanics.
The problem is that, for a lot of creatures, to set a challane for powerful casters would make the encounter straight deadly for martials. One of the most common tactics for strong enemies vs casters is Greater Dispel (like the Balor) combined with flight. The thing is, if you are a melee character that murders You Since you have a hard time trying to hit anything anymore. Also, using AMF on a familiar is a strong tactic, but again that muders the fighter (who is very gear dependent). It is hard to set a chchallange that will push the high level mage without cruahing the martial
I think it is more a case of the casters being too powerful for their APL, rather then the martials being too weak.This is correct. Martial classes tend to fall horribly behind the CR system during the transition into mid-levels and it only gets worse as the levels go higher.
Heck just compare a straight Fighter to a Melee Beatstick of the same CR over level 7-8 or so and it's never good for the Fighter, who should be able to beat such a foe 50/50.
You two are Patients 0 and 0.5. Just so you know.
EDIT: PIXIE DUST is Patient -0.5 or something. Point is lots of patients here. We may have to quarantine this case.
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On my experience useful as a baseline but not more than that IMO. It's not even a matter of optimization. My group has only one real optimizer. The rest take the bread and butter feats for classes. They end up defeating creatures of cr 1and 2 higher. Sometimes easily. It's not helped with npcs in the zaps who have either poor feat and/or spell selections. Or start off in poor strategic positions. In arise of the Runelords a tribe of ogres takes over a human fort with no modifications. So large creatures in a medium space. Another example which was my fault was allowing a optimized gunslinger with a musket. Who was one shotting Giants. I had to triple the hp to make them last.
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I think it is more a case of the casters being too powerful for their APL, rather then the martials being too weak.This is correct. Martial classes tend to fall horribly behind the CR system during the transition into mid-levels and it only gets worse as the levels go higher.
Heck just compare a straight Fighter to a Melee Beatstick of the same CR over level 7-8 or so and it's never good for the Fighter, who should be able to beat such a foe 50/50.
You two are Patients 0 and 0.5. Just so you know.
EDIT: PIXIE DUST is Patient -0.5 or something. Point is lots of patients here. We may have to quarantine this case.
Do we need to make a new law of the internet now?
"As the number of posts in a thread devoted to Pathfinder tends towards infinity, the probability that said thread will devolve into bickering about caster martial disparity approaches 1"
Its just what i found with CR. Caster ttypes seem undervalued. Assuming played properly, they crush parties that should supposedly crush them lol. I learned this long ago with Aboleths and mindflayers of 3.5
Its just what i found with CR. Caster ttypes seem undervalued. Assuming played properly, they crush parties that should supposedly crush them lol. I learned this long ago with Aboleths and mindflayers of 3.5
I see aboleths get mentioned a lot as doing this. I can see why - It is entirely possible for the aboleth to get off 3 DC22 dominates if they abuse things like programmed image. Half the party is liable to get dominated in a CR=APL encounter, and that's TPK material right there.
Mindflayers were very much the same way. Dominate crushed people
Oh and i forgot about vampires too. Only +2CR for that thing... i doubt a level 2 party is killing elf vampire sorcerer
Vampire spawn do still get a dominate power, though. :P
You two are Patients 0 and 0.5. Just so you know.
EDIT: PIXIE DUST is Patient -0.5 or something. Point is lots of patients here. We may have to quarantine this case.
Hmmm, I've always thought of myself more as a patient 0.6 maybe 0.7.
I'm not quarantined in here with you, YOU'RE QUARANTINED IN HERE WITH ME!Actually, I like discussing this stuff because I was on the opposite side of the debate originally. After playing a conjure wizard for like 15 levels in the alpha/beta playtest, then spending a lot of time listening to the wizards-are-invincible crowd before the most offensive got banned, I figured out where things stand. More importantly, I figured out how and why it damaged the fun of the game, and I'm still working out how to fix it as simply as possible.
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Challenge Rating was designed on the assumption of a party of four people, comprised of 1 wizard, 1 fighter, 1 rogue and 1 cleric. Since party compositions tend to differ, CR needs to be approached somewhat differently.
Personally, I find that in general the CR system overranks certain attributes. I've seen monsters pegged as CR 14 who struggle to hit 14th level PCs and seem to gain their high CR just for their defenses (such as such grandiose nonsense as a DR 20/magic or something).
On the issue of the aboleth or other mind controllers, keep in mind certain spells can render the aboleth's principle attack methods basically useless (pro evil), similarly I've seen aberrations and magical beasts whose attack routines fall apart when they end up fighting a PC's undead servants.
Other monsters (like dark folk) can be rendered nigh useless rapidly just by having a lot of darkvision.
The CR chart none the less ranks abilities on the basis of spell level and their perceived effectiveness against the golden four.
I always find it more useful to use the CR as a ballpark, and then just look at the stat line to see how useful they'd actually be.
Paizo's encounter design (NPC Codex, Monster Codex) seems to actually believe that having a large group of enemies who are literally incapable of touching the PCs should raise the encounter. I kind of disagree with that.