what is the CR of the robot dragon in the beginner's box? *spoilers?*

[ghostunderasheet]

I got the box and am about to run the module for acouple people but i am wondering what the cr for the later more powerful encounter robot dragon after the module.or if it should be much later.

[ghostunderasheet]

Nevermind found it. Its cr 7. A hard 3rd lvl fight and a decent battle for a forth lvl party of two,right? If i am understanding cr right.

[Cellion]

The harder Robot Dragon in the appendix on page 82 is indeed CR7. This makes it a very challenging fight for a 4th level party of 4 characters.

To work out what CR is appropriate for your group, you should check page 28 of the beginner's box GM guide. This walks you through the steps of determining your party's Average Party Level, or "APL". You add up all the levels of people in your party, then divide by the number of party members. Since you have fewer than 4 people in the party, you should subtract 1 from the result (My rule of thumb is that going down from 3 to 2 players is such a big drop in party strength that you should actually subtract 2 from the APL instead). For a 3rd level party of 2 players, that would be an APL of 2 (or 1 if following my rule of thumb).

Then look at the Encounter difficulty table in Step 2. This tells you how high of a CR in total the encounter should have. While the table uses words like "average" "hard" and "epic", my rule of thumb is:

A fight with APL = Encounter CR is a run of the mill encounter that is minimally dangerous, and you can throw as many of these sequentially at a party as you like.

A fight with APL+1 = Encounter CR is somewhat dangerous and can be used as punctuation between the easier fights. Such encounters are unlikely to KO or defeat player characters unless the foes have incredible luck.

A fight with APL+2 = Encounter CR is a boss encounter, which has a chance of KOing or defeating individual player characters. These should be used sparingly.

A fight with APL+3 = Encounter CR, or higher, is a very challenging fight, and should be used carefully because of its chance for wiping out a party.

In your example, your party has an APL of 2, so a CR7 encounter would be an APL+5 encounter! Nigh impossible. An appropriate "hard" encounter for two level 3 characters would be a single CR3 or 4 creature, or two CR2 creatures. A boss encounter might be a single CR4 or 5 creature.

[Metaphysician]

Yeah, a CR 7 opponent is *not* appropriate for a 3rd level party, not unless it is either an unusually large party or they have significant circumstantial advantages. APL +4 = its a coin flip whether the whole party dies.

[ghostunderasheet]

Problem is that in the module they do not tell you the monster's CR and they also tell you that some monsters are much weaker then they would actualy be. But took some time to look at and compair the two gobbo sheets and hps are the same.