whats the CR?

[tannish2]

ok i need the CR of a villian who im going to eventually use in my campaign, and the CR of him in a special circumstance, that being said i know at least one person who plays in my campaign occasionally posts on this sites forum, and to them i must say, that reading the thing in spoiler tags will be punished by at least 3 deaths, probably more, without being undead, and a much less entertaining campaign ok 2 18's 2 16's 2 14's human swashbuckler3/pious templar 1/fighter 4/dervish5/ranger 2/shadow dancer2 would that be a CR any higher than its character levels? now what would the modification be on a system of pillars with @least 10 feet between them (movement mastery would let him make something like DC 20 checks free of failure chance, as his equipment would not be terribly heavy) and maybe a dispelling weapon, and having the pillars in a spiral staircase pattern, so that altitude wouldnt be a huge problem, what do you think the CR would be on that, o and it would be in total darkness, and with shadowdancer darkvision and goggles of night darkvision he would have 120 ft of it. i know that has to be a modifier of some sort but i just cant figure out

[Starsinger]

His CR should be his class levels, although tally up the value of his magic items, if he's higher than wealth by level, consider bumping up the CR a bit.

[CASTLEMIKE]

CR17 normally maybe CR 18 depending on the group.

[Nnanji]

You could treat the environment like a trap and figue out what CR it should be worth. Then calculate the encounter CR as his class levels plus the CR of the trap together. As long as the gear is within his wealth level no extra modifiers are needed. Although if you have tailored his gear and the environment ti give the players a harder than normal encounter than either bump the CR up one or two, or just give them a +10% EXP boost for victory.

Sorry about the lack of spoiler tags but I do not know how to do that.

[brian c]

As Starsinger said, CR = class levels in this sort of example, assuming there are no other templates you have applied to this. However, the Encounter Level may be somewhat higher than the CR (which in this case is 17) in a few cases:

1) Magic items available to this guy are significantly more than the lvl 17 WBL (which you'll have to look in your DMG to find)

2) He has fairly strong allies with him

3) The environment in some way gives him an advantage over the PCs (in this case, if the PCs don't have any way to see in the dark that's a big advantage for him, maybe +1 or +2 to the EL)

On the other hand, if the opposite of any of these things are true then the EL could be lower than his CR 17; if he has little or no equipment or if the environment favors the PCs (though reading your description I'm fairly sure it should favor him).

Overall, it's a CR 17, but the Encounter Level is probably more like a EL 18, depending on the PCs abilities to see in the dark and what kind of equipment this guy has.

[Dausuul]

Don't forget to adjust for his stats. CR is built on the assumption that NPCs use the elite array (25 point buy); this guy is 64 point buy, which is worth +1 or even +2 CR by itself.

[Arbitrarity]

I'm betting not more than +1, myself.

[tannish2]

ok so adding 1 or 2 for encounters out of lair, adding 3 or 4 for encoutners in lair, shiny

[Dausuul]

I'm betting not more than +1, myself.

Well, elite array is: 15 14 13 12 10 8
This guy is: 18 18 16 16 14 14

So all of his stat modifiers (not just stats but the actual modifiers) are at least +2 over what they would be with the elite array. That's +2 to hit, +2 AC, +3 damage (since he's presumably a dual wielder), +34 hit points, +2 to all saves and skills, +2 initiative... it is certainly at least LA +1.