Challenge rating is it easy to comprehend

[Whit]

Is there an easy way to do challenge rating.
Should there be a change on how it’s done

[Xalyz]

I managed to find a few encounter builders online, this is the one I used. Although i don't have much experience(I only ran a one shot for my brother over discord) and the players managed to avoid combat. It seemed to be fairly straight-forward.

http://tools.goblinist.com/5enc

Good Luck

[Eldariel]

Challenge rating is easy enough but sadly also mostly a "broad side of the barn"-level approximation. It's somewhat useful but often misleading and sometimes downright bull****. Kobold Fight Club (https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder) is of course the best way to do it automatically - though again, what it actually gives you is a bit off.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Challenge rating is easy enough but sadly also mostly a "broad side of the barn"-level approximation. It's somewhat useful but often misleading and sometimes downright bull****. Kobold Fight Club (https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder) is of course the best way to do it automatically - though again, what it actually gives you is a bit off.

I actually wing it when it comes to encounters and use kobold fight club for the xp the party earns.

[nickl_2000]

Is it easy to understand?
No

Should it be changed to be something better
Yes


As a note, I don't DM consistently so I haven't analyzed it as carefully as others. However, I find the DMG CR system incredibly confusion for how it is generated. The problem is how do you do that. You have a lot of variables in abilities, casting, HP, AC, attack bonus, and damage (and likely others that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head). Combining those together in a simple system to make a challenge rating is not easy.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Improving the CR system as presented in the DMG seems like an impossible task to me. The main problem with the existing system, I think, is that it provides only a very rough indication of challenge that doesn't take into account lots of important variables. But for high level monsters, it already takes a good 10 or 15 minutes to churn through all the maths, and I've heard plenty of people saying they feel so intimidated by the system that they don't even want to try it. Any attempt to add more complexity will surely make the system unusable without a computer to process it. Especially if you start drilling into the real devilish details like the relative value of different status conditions or damage resistances, or the synergy between different abilities.

I honestly can't see a practical way of improving the system without making it too complicated to actually use.

[Lunali]

I would like to see them spell out that CR is a measure of a creature's damage/endurance rather than it's danger level. As for changes to the system, I'd like to have them actually use the rules they give us for determining CR to determine the CR of the creatures they created. Additionally, it would be nice if there were some kind of indicator that a monster has abilities that could drastically change its danger level.