kardar233
2011-05-11, 05:50 PM
The 3.5 group I'm in just played a session where we went up against a lot of NPCs, and the EL of the encounter seemed unnecessarily high and gave an incongruously large amount of XP.
So here's the situation: the party is level 9, all single-classed. We've got a Warblade (me, using a Keen Elven Courtblade), an Evoker/Transmuter Wizard, a Druid, a modified Ranger (loses Animal companion for a DR-giving item free and benefits of both combat styles), my NPC Cleric cohort and a 16th level Fighter tagging along (he didn't do much at all).
In two groups we made a teleport assault on two separate 7x8 towers, with difficult terrain in the centre. Each tower had 6 level 8 Fighters with a template added (detailed later). They had magic weapons and probably magic armour (~24 AC w/o shield says magic to me).
Terrain advantage was arguable: on our side, we could chuck the enemies off the tower, but our wizard couldn't use his blasty AoEs because we needed to keep the trebuchets on the tower intact and our druid (in bear form) got caught in the trebuchet net, slammed against the wall of the tower for some damage and he then had to wildshape to Giant Eagle and was not in the rest of the fight.
The template that the enemies had gave them (as far as we know) DR10/bludgeoning, DR5 vs bludgeoning and they take double damage from fire attacks, calculated after DR. We called them CR9.
This encounter, when we worked it out on the table, was apparently a EL15-odd encounter, which goes under "Overpowering" against a level 9 party. The only significant damage we took was from the druid getting slammed against the wall and my warblade Power Attacking himself in the face (on a critical failure, one of three) for 33 points of damage.
According to the tables, we should have leveled up twice from that. [Jubal Early voice]Does that seem right to you?[/Jubal Early Voice]
How do you calculate NPC CR if this is incorrect?
So here's the situation: the party is level 9, all single-classed. We've got a Warblade (me, using a Keen Elven Courtblade), an Evoker/Transmuter Wizard, a Druid, a modified Ranger (loses Animal companion for a DR-giving item free and benefits of both combat styles), my NPC Cleric cohort and a 16th level Fighter tagging along (he didn't do much at all).
In two groups we made a teleport assault on two separate 7x8 towers, with difficult terrain in the centre. Each tower had 6 level 8 Fighters with a template added (detailed later). They had magic weapons and probably magic armour (~24 AC w/o shield says magic to me).
Terrain advantage was arguable: on our side, we could chuck the enemies off the tower, but our wizard couldn't use his blasty AoEs because we needed to keep the trebuchets on the tower intact and our druid (in bear form) got caught in the trebuchet net, slammed against the wall of the tower for some damage and he then had to wildshape to Giant Eagle and was not in the rest of the fight.
The template that the enemies had gave them (as far as we know) DR10/bludgeoning, DR5 vs bludgeoning and they take double damage from fire attacks, calculated after DR. We called them CR9.
This encounter, when we worked it out on the table, was apparently a EL15-odd encounter, which goes under "Overpowering" against a level 9 party. The only significant damage we took was from the druid getting slammed against the wall and my warblade Power Attacking himself in the face (on a critical failure, one of three) for 33 points of damage.
According to the tables, we should have leveled up twice from that. [Jubal Early voice]Does that seem right to you?[/Jubal Early Voice]
How do you calculate NPC CR if this is incorrect?