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Gan The Grey
2009-10-18, 03:58 PM
I might be using these terms wrong, but my basic question is this:

A level 4 human fighter without templates or further levels in another class is considered an ECL 4 and a CR 4, right?

If this is right, does this mean that a level 4 fighter and a CR 4 monster are considered even matched?

And finally, let's say for one fight I was to take a level 5 PC and replace them with a CR 5 monster. For this one fight, on average, would this increase/decrease/or allow the power level of the party to remain the same? On average.

infinitypanda
2009-10-18, 04:00 PM
Only very roughly. And it gets even more confusing when you add in additional hit dice or class levels. For instance, a gnoll is CR 1. A gnoll with one level in fighter is CR 2. If that gnoll with one level of fighter was a PC and not an NPC, then it is ECL 4. This gets even more confusing when you use monsters/monstrous races with higher RHD and LA.

Yuki Akuma
2009-10-18, 04:02 PM
One PC class level generally equals 1 CR. NPC classes are generally less. Racial HD tend to suck, unless they come with lots of awesome abilities.

ECL and CR aren't always the same. An illithid is CR 8 and ECL 16.

Grynning
2009-10-18, 04:04 PM
ECL is for player characters, and represent the level of a party to which you would be contributing on an even footing (in theory, not so much in practice).

CR is for monsters, and represents that a party of 4 of the level of the CR should be able to take one out if they expend ~20-25% of their daily resources (again, it's not always an accurate measurement - many monsters are over or under-CR'ed).

oxybe
2009-10-18, 04:05 PM
to quote myself from a previous thread


CR is a challenge rating. it's how difficult the creature is supposed to be as opposed to party of 4 PCs

LA is level adjustment. it adds to the character's effective character level to make up for gaining various abilities (this is in addition to racial Hit dice and class hit dice).
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let's use the case study of Billy the Bugbear Beguiler 1

as a Bugbear, Billy has 3 Racial HD (humanoid) and a Level adjustment of 1. added to this, is his 1 Beguiler level. Billy is effectively a Level 5 character (ECL 5). but has 4 Hit dice (3 humanoid, 1 Beguiler).

Bugbears, however, are a Challenge Rating 2 and adding the level of beguiler makes him a CR 3 enemy (as per DMG, adding a PC level to a monster adds about 1 to the CR for each PC level).

this means that even though he's a level 5 character, he should pose a decent threat to 4 level 3 PCs.
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everyone understood? no? too bad. get off my lawn!

note that CR is borked for various reasons and while the bugbear should be decent threat, he probably won't be.

Gan The Grey
2009-10-18, 04:08 PM
Okay, so does that mean that, in 90% of situations, a CR 5 monster would be the equivalent of a PC with five class levels?

Milskidasith
2009-10-18, 04:09 PM
No. In almost all instances a monsters going to have a bunch of RHD and LA if played by a PC, so it will be an ECL >>> 5 monster and a CR 5 creature.

bosssmiley
2009-10-18, 04:09 PM
Okay, so does that mean that, in 90% of situations, a CR 5 monster would be the equivalent of a PC with five class levels?

In theory; yes. A CR5 monster should be a 50/50 W/L fight against a single level 5 PC, or a significant threat to a party of 4 level 5 PCs.
In practise; only very rarely. Some classes/monsters are more equal than others. :smallwink:

LA/ECL is just a way of gimping player character monsters. It was created because WOTC didn't bother to wholly decouple HD as hit point and Save bonus mechanic from CR/level when they were first writing 3E. In old D&D HD used to be roughly equivalent to threat level; in 3E, forget about it! :smallannoyed:

Net result: horrific borkage if you want to play anything other than the standard fractional CR, LA+0 races. Play a Vampire with Monk class levels at the RAW-specified character level (CR5 = ECL13), and then tell me with a straight face that LA isn't a gimping mechanism.

lsfreak
2009-10-18, 04:12 PM
Okay, so does that mean that, in 90% of situations, a CR 5 monster would be the equivalent of a PC with five class levels?

According to the CR rules, yes. According to common sense, no. Compare how threatening a buffer-bard without anyone to buff is to a party compared to an ubercharger and then compare that to a paranoid god wizard.

Gan The Grey
2009-10-18, 04:13 PM
Alright, alright. Final question:

Let's say for one fight I was to take a level 5 PC and replace them with a CR 5 monster. For this one fight, on average, would this increase/decrease/or allow the power level of the party to remain the same? On average.

oxybe
2009-10-18, 04:14 PM
not really... CR is usually guesstimated (i can't believe that word is real, according to firefox :smallbiggrin:) at best based on monster stats & abilities. CR and ECL aren't really associated at all in but the vaguest of senses. technically, the game assumes a CR 5 creature to be a challenge for 4 Player Characters of ECL 5.

the problem is that the things that challenge a group of 4 monks probably aren't the same things that challenge 4 wizards.

CR is just weird.

tyckspoon
2009-10-18, 04:41 PM
Alright, alright. Final question:

Let's say for one fight I was to take a level 5 PC and replace them with a CR 5 monster. For this one fight, on average, would this increase/decrease/or allow the power level of the party to remain the same? On average.

There is no identifiable average; it depends on what you are replacing with what. At CR 5 replacing ECL 5.. generally, you will get an increase if you switch a melee character with a CR 5 melee monster, because monsters get more attacks, HD, and bigger stats than PCs. You will usually lose power if you replace a skill character or a caster, because caster-type monsters tend to have relatively lame casting for their CR and there just aren't a lot of skill-based monsters at all. You will probably gain power if you are replacing something with an Outsider or Dragon, because they are Better Than You.

As you go up in levels, the potential gain from swapping in a (stock) monster is vastly reduced. Around level 10 or so the items, feats, and class features a normal PC has acquired should be far more useful than almost any CR 10 monster- Polymorph effects aren't broken because they let you be a monster, they're broken because they let you be a monster with your own feats, skills, class features, intelligence, and sometimes items.

Godskook
2009-10-18, 04:41 PM
Actually, there's an additional issue involved, and that's WBL. A CR 5 has a different WBL than a ECL 5 does, due to the 'PC' status that ECL 5 entails.

Doug Lampert
2009-10-18, 04:48 PM
No. In almost all instances a monsters going to have a bunch of RHD and LA if played by a PC, so it will be an ECL >>> 5 monster and a CR 5 creature.

Yep. There are reasons for this.

There are several problems with CR for monsters advanced with class levels. Take a CR 4 monster and give it elite abilities and rechose it's feats. It will in fact be about CR 5 (best attack goes up by +2 or more, AC goes up by about +1, saves and HP improve; then there's the feat benefits, most default monster's feat choices suck, ability focus alone is worth +2 more to the best attack for many monsters).

Now take that same CR 4 monster and add two levels of a non-associated PC class. It gets EVERYTHING the monster above got, plus two more HD, skills and feats for those HD, two levels of PC class abilities, and most important of all gear appropriate to a level 5 NPC which often adds more than everything else I've given it put togather. (A common method is to give gear based on it's class levels only, which helps some, but the DMG rules for creating random NPC adventurers make it clear that gear is appropriate to the CR for creatures with any PC class levels). With all that it's still CR 5.

This is insane. It GROSSLY understates the monster's combat power.

But this doesn't matter because only the GM gets to create monsters, and he's effectively omnipotent anyway, there's no point in worrying too much over the GM having access to an overpowered build.

But for a PC build this doesn't work. Grossly overpowered is bad. And PCs get even more gear than the monster builds and get more care in chosing feats and ability arrays.

Also you want the basic player races to always be a good choice and not be totally overshadowed, so when in doubt they went high on LA.

A hobgoblin isn't worth LA +1, a bugbear probably isn't worth it's LA either, but in both cases if you drop the LA by one it starts looking better than PHB races for many builds.

The end result is that ECL tends to be a bit higher than actual effectiveness even for a reasonably optimized build, and that CR for a classed monster is MUCH MUCH lower than actual effectiveness. ECL>>CR for the same basic build.

Gan The Grey
2009-10-18, 04:50 PM
Assuming WBL optimization and feat/skill optimization for said monster as well, does this mean that a CR 5 monster will generally be more powerful than a similar level 5 character? And, if CR slowly becomes less powerful as Character level increases, about what point would this happen?

Godskook
2009-10-18, 05:12 PM
Assuming WBL optimization and feat/skill optimization for said monster as well, does this mean that a CR 5 monster will generally be more powerful than a similar level 5 character? And, if CR slowly becomes less powerful as Character level increases, about what point would this happen?

You're wanting something that just doesn't exist. There's no sooner an exchange rate between CR and ECL than there is between purple and 5. Hell, ECL 5 != ECL 5, as a general rule.

Gan The Grey
2009-10-18, 05:15 PM
Then I guess I don't really have to worry that much about balance, as balance isn't really obtainable. K thanx

Toliudar
2009-10-18, 05:21 PM
Again, it's very difficult to generalize, for reasons articulated well above. I'd take a CR 5 dragon over, say a gibbering mouther or celestial owlbear any day, even if the latter came with gear. Is there a specific CR 5 creature you had in mind?

Rixx
2009-10-18, 05:21 PM
Pathfinder actually goes into detail about this - Monster PCs are treated with their CR as their "class level" to start with. Therefore, a CR 4 monster would act as a Level 4 character.

As they level up, though, they'll eventually start to gain extra class levels to make up for the diminished value of their monster levels. They can't lose more than half their monster levels this way, though.

CR is actually determined with charts and stuff in Pathfinder, too. All that info is in the back of the book.

lsfreak
2009-10-18, 05:36 PM
Then I guess I don't really have to worry that much about balance, as balance isn't really obtainable. K thanx

I certainly wouldn't go that far. You can balance it out, but it requires a deep knowledge of how things work and a lot of on-the-fly adjustments. CR is utterly and completely broken; you would have to go in and manually adjust essentially every monster in order to get a working system. But once you understand things enough, you can make judgments about how things add up. For example, dragons on the whole are under-CR'd, and ones like Shadow Dragons can be absolutely brutal, but if you know the system you can take this into consideration.

Even once you get all that figured out, you still have to manually adjust. A dragon stuck on the ground won't be much a threat, and a huge horde of low-level goblins charging the tripper won't be much threat. Put that dragon in the sky and give him metabreath feats, or take those goblins and give them a mix of classes and terrain advantage, and you've got an entirely different situation that warrants an entirely different CR.

lesser_minion
2009-10-18, 05:42 PM
It's a pretty difficult question to answer really.

In theory, a class level in a PC class adds a point of CR. However, a monster could have an ECL higher than its CR even without class levels.

The problem is that there are quite a few abilities in the game which the designers felt weren't really that important when wielded by monsters (or merely made the fight a lot more interesting by forcing players to think), but which would break the game so hard that theoretical physicists would be forced to reconsider the concept of fundamental particles if they got into the hands of players.

All of these were 'balanced' by giving them a massive level adjustment, even where they didn't necessarily add much to the monster's combat prowess (as evidenced by the CR).

The big powers in this category were things like at-will teleportation, incorporeality, regeneration, or the ability to grant wishes.

There was also the problem that the limits on a monster's powers weren't necessarily made explicit in the crunch, mainly for lack of space for detailing them (if such limits didn't exist, then why didn't Pazuzu just make himself into Pun-Pun?)

In the end, however, a big failing of the whole system was that the designers apparently forgot that it wasn't too difficult for players to get the game-shattering abilities.