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ZeroGear
2021-06-19, 10:20 AM
Recently, given the rise and increased frequency of fantasy series in manga, anime, and light novels (especially given the current boom of 'isekai' series), one trope that seems to keep popping up is quest ranks.
It's been very common to rank quests from E-S (and in some cases "SS" ) to represent relative difficulty, and while CR has been the staple system that works very well from a mechanical standpoint, I was wondering if anyone ever tried equating the two systems to make it easier for younger generations to get involved in their game.

I've taken a stab at it recently, as a means to flesh out the Guild system and give a more solid description of how dangerous any given quest is. As such, I've organized ranks as follows:

E-Rank: Safe quests that even non-guild members can complete. Often referred to as "Entry Rank", these are usually gathering quests, or hunts for small monster groups that have no more than a CR of 1/2 total.

D-Rank: Beginner level quests. These are more dangerous than E-rank, but generally fall around a CR of 1-2.

C-Rank: Quests more dangerous than D-rank, requiring some training to complete. Typically CR 3-4.

B-Rank: These quests can be dangerous, and require groups to be well trained. These range from CR 5 to CR 8.

A-Rank: Hazardous quests. These quests are dangerous enough to threaten entire villages or small towns. They range from CR 9 to CR 12 at the highest.

S-Rank: Disaster level quests. These are dangerous enough to level large towns or kingdoms, and only the strongest warriors and sages can even hope to complete them. They can range in CR from 13-16.

SS-Rank: Calamity level quests. This designation is only given to threats that are powerful enough, and dangerous enough, to threaten kingdoms at the least, and the entire nations at the worst, possibly the world as a whole. Any threat CR 17 or higher is considered SS.

Is this a viable description that would be believable to characters in game? And has anyone every made a ranking system for their own world similar to this?

Ettina
2021-06-20, 03:07 PM
Seems like a good way to translate CR into in-game terms.

Zombimode
2021-06-21, 01:44 AM
I really don't think that I'm the target audience for this, but how would they know?

The GM knows of course because they are designing the challanges, but from an in-universe perspective?

But again, this idea so far removed from my gaming preferences so this question might not matter to you at all.

Quertus
2021-06-21, 08:53 AM
I really don't think that I'm the target audience for this, but how would they know?

The GM knows of course because they are designing the challanges, but from an in-universe perspective?

A good question. The answer depends on the system and the guild, I suppose.

Some might use Divinations. Others might use scouts. Yet others might rely on the description given by the person willing to pay for the quest.

That is, how do the ninjas in the hidden leaf village know how to rank something a "B" mission? How do the guilds in [insert isekai anime here] know what the PCs may face on a mission? Answer such questions, and you have your answer.

Well, that, and knowing how dangerous the monsters / a pair of Jonin(sp?) / a housecat / Etc have been to past groups.

Ettina
2021-06-21, 08:53 AM
I really don't think that I'm the target audience for this, but how would they know?

I'm guessing a mix of scouts, scrying, and various divination spells.

Seems like it'd be a good idea to have them be wrong sometimes. Maybe they thought it was just a goblin tribe causing a ruckus, and then the underleveled PCs stumble upon an illithid hive with goblin thralls and need to beat a hasty retreat and call in reinforcements. You could signal this is a possibility ahead of time by mentioning previous quests that turned out way more dangerous than they were meant to be, and by having NPCs encourage the PCs to be willing to retreat and call in help if they're in over their heads. And if they do get captured in their first "mission that's more dangerous than it should have been", have it that the adventuring guild realized on their own that this mission was more dangerous than they thought, and the PCs get rescued by a higher-level adventuring party. (Having the overlevelled enemies be inclined to capture PCs instead of just killing them would be a good idea if you want this option open. For example illithids might want to break them and make them thralls - dominate monster doesn't last that long and breaking in a thrall on a more permanent basis takes weeks.)

ZeroGear
2021-06-27, 05:20 PM
I really don't think that I'm the target audience for this, but how would they know?

The short answer is bureaucracy.
The CR system is basically just a DM tool meant to craft encounters and challenges that exist within the range of what PCs can do.
Given that real life doesn't have any had numbers, one can assume that organizations like Adventurers Guilds have their own form of staff that specializes in evaluating and categorizing information into more manageable chunks that can be assigned to individuals with appropriate skill.
In addition to anyone that specializes in gathering information about the requests, there is also a staff of chroniclers, librarians, mineral experts, zoologists, mythologysts, arcanists, treasurers, and a whole host of other staff members working under the Guild Master and supporting the front desk to help minimize the risk of death any given group faces as much as they can (after all, nothing causes loss of faith in the guild more than getting your adventurers killed on a regular basis).

Anonymouswizard
2021-06-27, 07:14 PM
Put me down in the 'it would damage my personal immersion' camp. Although I'm also not the target audience.

Honestly though, if we're assuming that the Guild or Space Force or Century Club is just extrapolating from information they already have it makes sense as an in universe system, although pretty much everybody will be aware that it's highly inaccurate sheet their first couple of jobs. Plus you'll have the Goblin Slayet issue where even Apparently 'every level' quests could be a lot more dangerous than their rank suggests.

But assuming that the Guild doesn't somehow know the end boss's CR but are making an educated guess, than the biggest problem I have are with the tank names. I mean yes, it's to help people understand a basic idea (all one that I'd argue is pretty easy to grasp anyway), but I can't think of any fictional organisation I've used that might use such tiers. Maybe a metallic ranking, maybe some more descriptive words, many that would just descriptively write how simple it challenging they think the quest is (if they weren't just profit trekking you 'do this one'), but not a E/D/C/B/A ranking.

ZeroGear
2021-06-27, 07:33 PM
But assuming that the Guild doesn't somehow know the end boss's CR but are making an educated guess, than the biggest problem I have are with the tank names. I mean yes, it's to help people understand a basic idea (all one that I'd argue is pretty easy to grasp anyway), but I can't think of any fictional organisation I've used that might use such tiers. Maybe a metallic ranking, maybe some more descriptive words, many that would just descriptively write how simple it challenging they think the quest is (if they weren't just profit trekking you 'do this one'), but not a E/D/C/B/A ranking.

That's a fair and valid complaint. Though, the E-SS system was presented as it's the most commonly used interpretation in modern media (mostly because it's a common japanism found in a massive chunk of anime, manga, and games) the ranks could very easily be Bronze, Iron, Steel, Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum or some other setting appropriate theme.
Heck, as long as everyone everyone in the setting understand the meaning of the ranks, it doesn't matter what's used.
(I mean, it's not that different when compared to something like the DEFCON levels, is it?)

Anonymouswizard
2021-06-28, 04:25 AM
(I mean, it's not that different when compared to something like the DEFCON levels, is it?)

Exactly, there's many instances where hearing DEFCON-3 would pull me out if the games.

As to it being a common Japanism, you're forgetting that many people, even youngsters don't consume media from Japan (or even media directly inspired by such media). Which then causes confusion when people think that their country's grading system applies.

But again, I'm not the target audience. But I really don't see how using the Japanese grading system actually helps compared to anything else. Heck the last Japanese fantasy story I seriously tried to read had adventurers ranked from Porcelain through Silver tiers (with Gold being adventurers of such per and stature they no longer quest). As something in addition to in-world terms it might work, but I question it's value compared to descriptive terms.

At the end of the day, because there's a decent number of people who don't know the system you're using you're adding more words for the same information. And possibly have to include even more information to explain why S is above A (in the system I'm used to such a grade would be A*, and anything below a C is practically a fail even if not technically one).

Silly Name
2021-06-28, 06:44 AM
Other possible ways to rank are colours (Green, Yellow, Red are a classic and very intuitive for most people), generic descriptors (Easy, Medium, Hard), or even more simply the reward offered.

Difficult, complex missions are likely to have higher rewards, simply because otherwise people wouldn't take it. Of course, you can then have the classic trope of a poor village besieged by a dangerous monster, unable to scrounge up a "worthy" reward...

Vahnavoi
2021-06-28, 06:46 AM
Been there done that. IIRC this classification (F, D, C, B, A, S) comes from Japanese school system. It is fairly ubiquitous in Japanese media, including videogames, so if your playgroup has played such games it's a decent heuristic. But not any better than, say, ranking quests from 10th Kyu to 10th Dan amongst martial artists or Go players, or ranking them "apprentice, journeyman, master, grandmaster" amidst people who know how guild titles work, or using military jargon amongst soldiers...

Pauly
2021-06-28, 07:52 AM
Assuming you have an adventurer’s guild or equivalent, which has the personnel and organizational structure to formalize the difficulty level of quests. Your options are

1) Give the quest a name (F to S, color, metal, whatever) according to it’s difficulty.
2) Give standardized rewards based on the difficulty. Most fictional bounty hunter guilds work on this principal. The higher the payout the higher the difficulty level. This does lead to money being the standard quest reward, not items. It allows the guild to shave funds from over compensated quests to beef up the rewards for more deserving quests from underfunded benefactors.
3) The guild master (DM) assigning quests based on the party’s abilities. This is the default setting for D&D.

ZeroGear
2021-06-28, 08:51 AM
-.-, … somehow, I feel like this topic is starting to drift away from the original question.
I get that everyone has different experiences, and that depending on the group, the ranks could be labeled differently, but that’s really not what’s being asked here.

I honestly wanted feedback on how I divided the ranks, if the description (not the rating) was of an appropriate level, or if I needed to shuffle the CR numbers around a bit more to make it feel more balanced.

Pauly
2021-06-28, 08:43 PM
-.-, … somehow, I feel like this topic is starting to drift away from the original question.
I get that everyone has different experiences, and that depending on the group, the ranks could be labeled differently, but that’s really not what’s being asked here.

I honestly wanted feedback on how I divided the ranks, if the description (not the rating) was of an appropriate level, or if I needed to shuffle the CR numbers around a bit more to make it feel more balanced.

The fact that there’s been zero discussion on the point tells you the answer. No one has disagreement with it.

Since this is the general RP forum I didn’t want to get into the weeds with how different systems create challenge ratings for encounters. There’s still a lot of DM fiat involved with adjusting the strength of individual encounters, or to provide imperfect information to the players, but that’s a separate issue to the general concept of how the CRs get classified by the guild.

Devils_Advocate
2021-07-01, 10:09 PM
So, these ranks presumably aren't less precise than challenge ratings because those giving them are being deliberately vague about the level of danger a quest involves, but due to uncertainty and imperfect knowledge. As such, I think that it makes more sense for the ranks to be described as covering broader, overlapping ranges of likely CRs. Something like

1 and below
4 and below
2-7
5-10
8-13
11-16
14-19
17-22
20 and over

... although the most obvious thing for 9 quest ranks to correspond to in D&D is the 9 levels of spells. Thinking about it, maybe "the level of spell that will be needed to get the job done barring something else of equivalent power" is the most practical consideration.

Mastikator
2021-07-02, 07:07 AM
I think you can get more mileage by replacing "quest" with "mission". Quest is something *more personal, mission is something given to you by an organization based on rank/merit/station. The kind of organization that would create a whole system for classifying missions wouldn't call them "quests".


*quest isn't always personal, but it feels more personal than is warranted by this kind of organization.

Anonymouswizard
2021-07-02, 02:10 PM
I honestly wanted feedback on how I divided the ranks, if the description (not the rating) was of an appropriate level, or if I needed to shuffle the CR numbers around a bit more to make it feel more balanced.

It works. Is it ideal? Who knows. Clearly it's not something people thought was worth commenting on. At the end of they it's still reliant on GMs and/or module makers to be able to balance to level X, so it doesn't actually matter what the ranges are.

However, to satisfy your desire I have come up with two criticisms.

1) not every levelled system treats the power boost from levels identically (assuming you're sticking to unrefluffed official monsters). As you step out of whatever system you originally built this around you'll find that the ideal fluff changes.

Your C-rank fluff is probably what fits for a 1st level 13th Age party (as a side note, who'd send somebody without training on a dangerous mission?). In a game like Modern Age a group might not gain any combat skill as they gain levels. Legends of the Wulin only assumes that PCs can raise their level three times. Many games just don't have levels.

2) There's no overlap. Realistically ranges wouldn't be quite so clear.

AceOfFools
2021-07-06, 02:44 PM
-.-, … somehow, I feel like this topic is starting to drift away from the original question.
I get that everyone has different experiences, and that depending on the group, the ranks could be labeled differently, but that’s really not what’s being asked here.

I honestly wanted feedback on how I divided the ranks, if the description (not the rating) was of an appropriate level, or if I needed to shuffle the CR numbers around a bit more to make it feel more balanced.

It’s pretty much impossible to do this in a system agnostic way—this is the general forum after, not the DnD one. White Wolf games have a 5-point scale of threats, albeit one not called CR, and not one I’ve ever seen anyone actually USE.

Even within DnD, CR is going vary wildly between editions—its a 30 point scale in 4e, but a 20 point scale in 3rd & 5th. 2nd edition characters are on a different power curve.

That said, I do like the description of E-rank as “entry level” and “doable by non-professional”. I’d focus on that sort of in-universe description of numerical CR.

I mean, CR was—as far as I know—a function of the individual monsters. A level 1 goblin fighter is CR 1, but a quest to fight 1 is completely different than a quest to fight 100. And 100 goblins in a fortified, well trapped tunnel is a completely different beast than defending a fortified position from an equal number of goblins. I’d want a quest rank to reflect projected challenge with known circumstances accounted for, rather than the baseline, context-blind abstraction.