I just watched the most recent (literally two minutes old when I watched it) video on The Guild Master’s Guides YouTube channel. It’s titled, “Understanding CR: It’s Not Broken, It’s Misunderstood.” The guy there (sorry, I don’t know his name) puts forth the bold claim that you read in the vid’s title. Give it a watch because it covers a lot of good stuff to keep in mind about CRs when you’re building encounters in Dungeons and Dragons.
But here’s my take. I’m just posting here what I put in the comments for that video:
I agree and disagree. I have a love/hate relationship with CR. I DO use it as a guideline, but even then, I’m often steered wrong. I’ve used CR to guide encounters that accidently nearly caused a TPK using CR-level assets that matched CR-level assets that the party walked all over, even with depleted resources. But, on the other hand, how difficult would it have been to build both of those encounters in the first place without having CR to refer to?
So I would argue that CR is, indeed, broken…but that it is STILL immeasurably helpful.
And, we can’t forget, CR is mostly built out of HP, AC, number of attacks, and damage per attack. This doesn’t take into account strategies that monsters born with certain characteristics that impact how they would fight. (A great read is Keith Ammann’s “The Monsters Know What They’re Doing.” Pick it up.) And, of course, what about intelligent monsters. What tactics would they use? You can generally play them tactically to maximize their skill sets (unless the encounter is going poorly for the party and you have to nerf them) because, since they developed that skill set, that’s probably how they would actually fight.
It’s a broken guideline but use it anyway. Just do your due diligence on how your party plays vs. the strengths and weaknesses of the monsters you want to use. Also, be willing to look at monsters with both a higher and lower CR. I’m not just talking about hordes of kobolds and goblins vs. a 8th-level party. I mean, assuming resource depletion is not an issue, sometimes three CR4 monsters can be extremely challenging while three CR6 monsters may be a walk in the park for any given party. So cast your net wider by maybe a CR level or two in each direction. If this feels overwhelming, just remember that story and theme will help limit the choices to a reasonable number while giving you flexibility with a range of appropriate CRs.
What’s your experience using CRs to build encounters? What rules-of-thumb do you employ to make it more useful? Let me know below.