Hogsy
2016-01-27, 08:58 AM
It's my first time DMing and I'm having a tough time understanding the CR of monsters and what a level appropriate CR would be for my players. We all love min/maxing but we'll have a newbie in your campaign this time around so we'll keep the power curve a bit lower till he can catch up. Anyhow, they like a challenge and especially one of them is like a D&D wiki on his own so I am planning to make the encounters somewhat harder than normally. Besides giving them some homebrew powers they'll also be able to choose a gestalt(-ed?) prestige classes at lvl10. Anyway, they'll be starting at lvl3 and there will be 5 characters. The first encounter will be 1 lvl2 rogue and 2 lvl1 rogues who have been somewhat optimised for a lot of sneak attack dmg from the bushes before they go all in(Knife Master). After that I'll put in some random monster encounters and the final battle will be between them and a lvl5 Musket Master who will also be somewhat optimised for a lot of dmg. I want them to struggle against him because he is important to the plot. My first questions are these: Is he a level appropriate encounter for them? What is the CR of a lvl5 character? And what is the appropriate CR for level 3 characters to fight? How can you calculate what the appropriate CR would be for your players no matter what their level is? I am generally planning to design my own custom encounters with NPCs that have player classes and use monsters as EXP grinding if it goes too slow or generally for something to pick up the pace of the session.