D&D 5E Level = Challenge Rating

[mamba]

I strongly recommend 5e 2024 switches to saying "a slot 3 spell" instead of "a 3rd-level spell".

I am strongly against it, we already have spell slots, and they are not this

 

[mamba]

i have no idea how you reached this conclusion.

because the curve is much steeper in 4e and PF2…

well i mean yeah, obviously you'd need to change how the monster math works. 4e and pf2e did that.

it is not just about monster math, it is also about class progression / bounded accuracy

 

[W'rkncacnter]

because the curve is much steeper in 4e and PF2…

what curve? what are you talking about?

 

[mamba]

what curve? what are you talking about?

the power curve of the character, how fast monsters become too weak / too strong to be usable. 2 ratings below and they are cannon fodder, two rating above the players and they wipe the floor with them.

That (or rather avoiding it) is the whole point of bounded accuracy. Your proficiency bonus does not increase as fast, you are not gaining all these incremental bonuses as you level, etc.

There is much more to PF2 encounter math vs 5e encounter math than just using CR vs Level as the unit

 

[W'rkncacnter]

the power curve of the character, how fast monsters become too weak / too strong to be usable. 2 ratings below and they are cannon fodder, two rating above the players and they wipe the floor with them.

That (or rather avoiding it) is the whole point of bounded accuracy. Your proficiency bonus does not increase as fast, you are not gaining all these incremental bonuses as you level, etc.

There is much more to PF2 encounter math vs 5e encounter math than just using CR vs Level as the unit

oh, you're referring to how numbers scale? i mean, okay, except 3(.5)e exists. the numbers in 3(.5)e scale at least as fast as they do in 4e/pf2e, yet the CR system there is about as good as 5e's (which is to say, it's not).

also, pf2e has a proficiency without level option which brings the number scaling pretty close to 5e, and while it does change how encounter building works pretty drastically, from what i've seen it doesn't exactly break the entire thing open (unless you go into the extremes, which the rule warns about). and yeah, of course stuff there is wonky, because the game was designed to add your level to your proficiency bonus. that doesn't automatically mean you can't make a functional level based encounter system without that kind of scaling.

but, i mean, yeah, those games are designed around using level as the unit of measurement for how strong a monster is...and they're better for it. that's the point. maybe you can't really do it in 5e, but it'd still be interesting to try.

i'll be fair here, though - a5e still uses CR (because it wants to keep compatibility with 5e), and from what i've heard the changes they make to CR and the encounter building system make it actually pretty decent. so i guess it's not like you can't make a functional CR system, but rather that it's probably more difficult (given that only 1 game i know of has done it, as opposed to at least 3 for level).

 

[Upper_Krust]

Character Levels always seemed to be worth 2/3rds of a Challenge Rating to me. That seems borne out by the Monster Manual NPCs. However, I have been playing a lot of high-level 5E this past year and I think the two main problems are:

1. The Monsters don't hit hard enough for their Challenge Rating (because their CR is inflated by a bunch of resistances and other gobbledigook that doesn't make them more of a challenge).
2. When PC's go "All-Out" they are much more powerful (more like 1 Level = 1 CR at this point). PCs can do this for maybe 2, possibly 3 rounds and that will usually be enough to win an encounter. If they get to rest after that, then going "All-Out" might become the norm.

So if we sideline crazy CharOps Builds for the purposes of this discussion, the two above issues seem to be what mess up what is an otherwise reasonably functional (yes I said it) Challenge Rating system in 5E...albeit I think individual Challenge Ratings beyond a certain point (lets say CR 12, roughly equal to a Level 20 character) are less and less relevant and you can get away with just using CR 16, 20, 24 and 28 and that would help with faster encounter building.

 

[Yaarel]

Character Levels always seemed to be worth 2/3rds of a Challenge Rating to me. That seems borne out by the Monster Manual NPCs. However, I have been playing a lot of high-level 5E this past year and I think the two main problems are:

5e "Challenge" ratings are a hot mess, highly inconsistent, and there are no official rules to determine them. The 2014 DMs Guide has rules, but none of the official books with monsters utilize these rules.

In the 2014 Monster Manual, the "2/3" sometimes happens, but again is inconsistent. For example, the Archmage is Challenge 12 for a level 18 spell caster, and the Mage is Challenge 6 for a level 9 spell caster.

However, the spell casters in the recent book Mordenkainen Presents have a CR that is close to the level, and sometimes the same.

 

[Yaarel]

There is no need for 2024 to continue to use the terminology "Challenge" rating. There is no system to transmit forward. It is an almost random inconsistency.

To instead refer to "levels" is easier and clearer.

Most monsters will receive updates in 2024. So say what level these are.

For legacy monsters, refer to a chart that says what level a Challenge is equivalent to. It doenst matter how accurate this chart is, because the Challenge rating itself is so highly inconsistent.

 

[mamba]

There is no need for 2024 to continue to use the terminology "Challenge" rating. There is no system to transmit forward. It is an almost random inconsistency.

To instead refer to "levels" is easier and clearer.

why would you expect levels to be less of a supposed crapshoot than CR?

Either they are good at figuring out how powerful something is or they aren’t, the unit they express that in makes no difference to that

 

[Yaarel]

why would you expect levels to be less of a supposed crapshoot than CR?

Either they are good at figuring out how powerful something is or they aren’t, the unit they express that in makes no difference to that

Class balance is decent in 5e. Less tight than 4e, but perhaps a bit more robust.

Using the criteria of the levels for balancing classes makes sense for balancing monsters too.

With monster statblocks, levels are more strictly about combat balance, but that is a central requirement of class balance anyway.