CR & ELs - how do you adapt?

[J-H]

We all know the CR & EL system is, at best, very imprecise.

#1) Do you still use it to determine XP, or do you do XP by objective completion?

#2) I have been using the EL calculator on the SRD, and my 4 6th-level players buzzsawed through what was allegedly an EL 11 encounter in about 7 rounds. One 5th-level enemy entered late (round 4) and only got a single hit in.

My players are not what I would call highly optimized (ToB multiclass headed to Mo9, Dragon Shaman->Crusader, Warlock, and a Psion whose Astral Construct is a beast of a 5th party member). I'm considering treating them as 1 level higher and counting the Construct as an additional party member when using the EL calculator to determine whether or not something will be a fun challenge. Has anyone else done this?

[Troacctid]

I use milestone leveling. I think it's vastly superior to the xp system.

Usually I don't bother calculating EL. I eyeball it instead.

[MisterKaws]

Yeah, you pretty much have no choice other than setting their levels yourself every time. Hell, if I actually followed the CR rules, and got angry at my ECL 20 party for whatever reason, it would be a good idea - according to RAW - to send a Were-Devastation Beetle(originally a CR50 vermin) Incarnate Flesh Colossus. Do you know just how ridiculous that is? Just the fact that it has 228HD worth of feats(Entomanothrope adds feats to Incarnate Construct retroactively, since it will always "give the entomanothrope fewer feats than a character of its total Hit Dice would
normally be entitled to") makes it virtually impossible to compete with it without using similar cheese. All these feats could just be invested in getting every single form of pseudo-magic(Incarnum, Maneuvers, Binding, Psionics, whatever) and basically becoming a giant magic beetle of DOOM.