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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9086100" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>Well, I'm not competent to make the comparison not being a D&D5e guy, but I haven't exactly heard a lot of compliments to 5e CR.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not going to deny it. I just think that your issue (and to make it clear, you absolutely aren't alone here) is the price of having a CR system that actually works.</p><p></p><p>(I'll admit to being a little cynical that the problem in some cases is people kind of want an encounter to <em>look</em> dangerous without actually <em>being</em> dangerous. In other words, they kind of want the CR system to lie to them. Again, I don't want to say that's what's going on with you, but it seems the case with some people here, who don't want to take the action of deliberately going to down-level encounters (where characters who are played at all carefully can absolutely kick butt) because its too obvious they're down CR. Yours seems to be that there's a limit as to what strategic planning can do (which is absolutely true, but in my 3e days at least, after a while it seemed to turn the process into an SOP that made it all kind pointless to do anything but turn up the difficulty on encounters).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm just going to have to disagree with you here, because I've seen the difference with "We go in with this particular material or element ready" and not (because I'm now playing a gunslinger who can do some book cooking there) and it can be pretty stark. Even if you are missing a fair bit, if the hits are very punchy (because ever one is doing an extra 20 damage) or you're ignoring the resistances (because you don't use the thing they're resistant to). Yeah, spells that are save based used uphill can be pretty pointless, but that's the advantage of strategic planning--you go in ready to do other things.</p><p></p><p>Now, as you said, there's some things that can feel rough individually in uphill solo battles--but at some point I think if that bothers you the best thing to do is avoid solo battles. Honestly, if a purely solo endboss type is not going to be a paper tiger, there's a limit to what any one individual can do, or what are the rest of them there for?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yeah, that was the thing, we'd just either retreat (if absolutely necessary) or forge on figuring that being down ten hit points when you had a hundred and twenty wasn't that big a deal in cases where we obviously couldn't take the rest. I was very conscious of it in that campaign because I had a character that got good use of of his Focus spells, so I was always wanting to scavenge back a Focus point if I could.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sometimes, but there are people who have a lot of emotional attachment to the red dragon being the big draconic terror, and having that term not be in use even if there's another big draconic terror, or not some other specific recognizable opponent or spell will bother them in a way few mechanical changes would.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 9086100, member: 7026617"] Well, I'm not competent to make the comparison not being a D&D5e guy, but I haven't exactly heard a lot of compliments to 5e CR. I'm not going to deny it. I just think that your issue (and to make it clear, you absolutely aren't alone here) is the price of having a CR system that actually works. (I'll admit to being a little cynical that the problem in some cases is people kind of want an encounter to [I]look[/I] dangerous without actually [I]being[/I] dangerous. In other words, they kind of want the CR system to lie to them. Again, I don't want to say that's what's going on with you, but it seems the case with some people here, who don't want to take the action of deliberately going to down-level encounters (where characters who are played at all carefully can absolutely kick butt) because its too obvious they're down CR. Yours seems to be that there's a limit as to what strategic planning can do (which is absolutely true, but in my 3e days at least, after a while it seemed to turn the process into an SOP that made it all kind pointless to do anything but turn up the difficulty on encounters). I'm just going to have to disagree with you here, because I've seen the difference with "We go in with this particular material or element ready" and not (because I'm now playing a gunslinger who can do some book cooking there) and it can be pretty stark. Even if you are missing a fair bit, if the hits are very punchy (because ever one is doing an extra 20 damage) or you're ignoring the resistances (because you don't use the thing they're resistant to). Yeah, spells that are save based used uphill can be pretty pointless, but that's the advantage of strategic planning--you go in ready to do other things. Now, as you said, there's some things that can feel rough individually in uphill solo battles--but at some point I think if that bothers you the best thing to do is avoid solo battles. Honestly, if a purely solo endboss type is not going to be a paper tiger, there's a limit to what any one individual can do, or what are the rest of them there for? Yeah, that was the thing, we'd just either retreat (if absolutely necessary) or forge on figuring that being down ten hit points when you had a hundred and twenty wasn't that big a deal in cases where we obviously couldn't take the rest. I was very conscious of it in that campaign because I had a character that got good use of of his Focus spells, so I was always wanting to scavenge back a Focus point if I could. Sometimes, but there are people who have a lot of emotional attachment to the red dragon being the big draconic terror, and having that term not be in use even if there's another big draconic terror, or not some other specific recognizable opponent or spell will bother them in a way few mechanical changes would. [/QUOTE]
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