Quote Originally Posted by Witty Username View Post
In Short,
-Saves are busted because DCs are expected to increase over time but saves are not, removing one of the goals of increased player agency without being inhibited by needing to significantly plan out a character
- The math of the game is fundamentally off because attack bonuses and damage values of monsters increase by CR, but not PC AC values, leading to a feeling of characters getting weaker as they level rather than stronger
- the lack of need for mechanical bonuses from other sources leading to looser game design with multiple areas that are easy to exploit
I disagree with these, but this isn't the point of the thread and yet has been discussed to death so...

But the thing I am more interested in, Is this nugget. Its a blog from 2018 (so definitely not new information), but the idea it posits is interesting. It is essentially a list of observations comparing the DMG monster guidelines and Monster Manuel statblocks and noting some weird stuff, in short:
- Monsters tend to have lower HP and expected damage across the board than the DMG would have us believe
- Monsters tend to have higher attack values then what the DMG would have us believe
- Monster HP, AC, Damage and Attack bonuses have mild correlation. The DMG would have us believe high attack bonuses would be balanced by lower damage and vice versa. but in practice there is little to suggest that in the MM. High AC monsters have comparable HP to low AC monsters and High Attack bonus monsters have comparable damage to Low Attack Bonus monsters.
- Of particular personal validation, Resistances and Immunity have no correlation to a monsters HP to a given CR, which makes sense as vulnerability does not according to the DMG, despite being the same thing from a game perspective presented differently

Does this match up with what people have observed using these systems? What are your opinions on any of this?
I think there are a lot of factors that go into calculating CR, but a TON of them aren't easy to quantify. Take for example the Rakshasa: Having immunity to any spell under 6th level is a huge CR weight, particularly for calculating what level of party should be facing one. But take away that ability and they're easily 5 or 6 CR lower, but putting a whole block of text about how to balance something like that for homebrew purposes is far more work than it's worth.