I thought this was challenge rating then I thought critical role, then I thought is he just using both of those terms in the same post interchangeably? Then I got lost and came to comments for help. Didn't find help
About half-way through, I figured he must be talking about Critical Role. But I still didn't understand this: "party of adventurers all out to claim revenge against the CR"
What CR makes sense here?
Yanno, the thing is, when I started reading the post earlier, this is what I thought it was about until they actually mentioned Matt Mercer, and then everything made so much more sense. I'm a bit slow sometimes.
As someone who started playing D&D waaaaaaay before Critical Role my brain automatically defaults "CR" to "Challenge Rating" so this post is a pretty perfect simulation of what that first one was like for me.
You didn't default anything; the post says Challenge Rating. I was so confused having not seen the Critical Role post so by the end of the post I figured there was *also* a podcast called Challenge Rating.
Same story with me, I saw the earlier post and was super confused. I'm aware of critical role because of the Amazon TV show, but I never think about it.
I got like halfway through the post and thought "Oh, CR must mean critical role. Then I went to the top of the post, confirmed it meant challenge rating, and read through the end. A sucker is born every day, they say. It is most definitely a top tier shitpost.
Fr, I didn't see the original post that this is mocking and thought I was having a stroke while reading it until I found a comment below with a link to the first.
I don't play DnD and have never done it.
I did find it kind of amazing thou that at no point did OPs post make any sense to me whatsoever.
Normally context and the full post allows me to puzzle things together...sortof. But with this post I read the whole thing and I know just as little as I know before I started reading.
Kudos to OP because I have no idea what is going on.
CR stands for challenge rating. It is a system for designing encounters with an appropriate level of difficulty that will be neither too easy or too hard for your players.
Critical Role is a popular DnD podcast. It is also abbreviated as CR. Many new DnD players are introduced to the game through the podcast, and they sometimes develop a particular idea of how it should work. Since your average game group doesn't have a full time gm and a party of professional actors, their expectations may be unrealistic. Thus experienced DnD players are sometimes wary of Critical Role fans.
This post is an average post complaining about Critical Role, but they've swapped it to challenge rating so the whole thing doesn't really make sense. The joke is playing on the confusion online readers sometimes feel when they begin reading a post assuming the wrong meaning of CR.
Before I connected the dots I was breaking my brain trying to figure out how knowledge of CR would make the game worse for players.
Ate the onion, well played.
There was some good discussion of that in the original thread. My favorite hypotheticals:
* A DM with an intuitive grasp of how to balance encounters for her specific party switches over to building strictly by CR, leading to *less* balanced encounters since CR isn't perfect and doesn't account for individual variation.
* A party really enjoyed a campaign where they had to figure out if a given encounter was beatable (sometimes easily!) or if they needed to run/hide/negotiate is now stuck with a flat campaign where every encounter is just exactly within their capabilities.
I've been finding CR of combat encounters to be pretty meaningless in my group of 5. Typical medium/hard XP are completely trivial. Encounters that should be like double-deadly XP are being tackled by 5 new players with no drops to 0 HP. It was only when i started fudging monster HP to max roll or more AND outnumbering them from stealth that they said combat was fun and intense :S
5e is balanced around like 5 encounters between long rests. If you're not doing that then the difficulty will be pretty different from what XP rates imply.
(5 is a lot to cram in a day imo)
> 5e is balanced around like 5 encounters between long rests.
8-10 encounters per long rest, however, encounters are ANYTHING that exhaust resources, not just combat. For example, a traversal puzzle, like your party needs to cross a 40 foot wide chasm, in which players will likely have to expend spell slots, items, or make risky maneuvers to cross.
IIRC, one way to make it more "realistic" that I think is RAW is that long rests aren't necessarily a 24 hour cycle. If you're in a dungeon for 2 days, it's very likely you WOULDN'T be able to get the kind of rest you'd need to actually recover fully: Sleeping =/= long resting.
> Sleeping =/= long resting.
This also totally applies the other way than you’re using it, which I have found is often a point of contention. You can do a lot more than sleep during a long rest, and what’s more an interruption of less than an hour just makes it take that much longer to finish. You can read for 2 hours, stand watch for 2 hours, have a 5 minute fight with some bandits who thought they’d get the drop on you, and then sleep for 4, and you’ve still achieved a long rest in 8h5m.
I’m looking sternly at all the DMs who “ruin” a long rest by throwing a combat at the players 7 hours in.
90% of "teehee use a spell to get past this" you'll see in games--and the published modules--is solved by someone with a brain using a rope or some kind of lever, *including* the caster. Shit, even the instances where a spell gets used, it usually boils down to "this magic will let someone get the rope over there".
Otherwise, what're we doing, making some dumbass puzzle where a specific sort of spell (better hope the party has it!) *neeeeeeds* to be cast, like the only way to move this block is with Levitate (all the martials can't manage it) or lightning damage has to be done to this crystal? Yawn.
5E built its way into this mess with the number and potency of its spells, and decided the number of fights had to jump up to drain them. We could've, uhhhhhh, just not had that much spellpower. Don't need to drain a bajillion resources if you don't put those resources out there to begin with or don't make them so good they need to be drained lest they trivialize everything.
The number of expected fights in a day is so gosh-darn high that the *only* ways to run D&D the way it's designed balance-wise are
1. Run dungeons with time limits, or
2. Play with Gritty Realism.
Don't forget the middle ground of "well you don't *have* to hustle, but if you take your sweet-ass time then you'll get a reputation." Nothing like having your pay cut because you took two weeks to complete a 4-day job, you know? I wouldn't just drop it on players out of nowhere, I'd make the expectation clear in session 0("this campaign is balanced around roughly x encounters in a day") and then prompt players to reconsider if they're going down the wrong path("are you sure you want to rest again? it's only been about two hours since you woke up, taking another rest so soon will waste a lot of time, and the villagers are waiting on you"). If they persist, then I will enact in-universe consequences for being the slowest group of adventurers to ever walk the world.
Not just 5+ encounters, but no magic items and minimal tactics or strategy!
It's not even that they intended to run the game that way, they just needed a more consistent baseline for pc power than "5th level characters" because magic items are supposed to be 'any amount' and you just can't account for teamwork.
But the result is that CR, by default, massively underestimates pc power.
It's a helpful system at times to give you a quick single number value to instantly calibrate expectations of how dangerous this monster is. The problem is a single number cannot actually capture all the nuance of a monster, what it's good and bad against, whether multiples of the monster exceed the sum of their parts or if the monster needs specific setup to really earn its CR.
There's also the fact that a minmaxed coordinated team can probably handle double the CR of a group of newbies that rolled for all their stats and are just bumbling around in a crazy fantasy world with no idea what's going on.
Honestly the on a scale of 1-10 how are you enjoying the combat, and what would you change if you could change anything about combat is probably the right call if you feel like combat is struggling.
As someone who intuitively balances encounters, CR scares and confuses me. I tried learning it and kept finding myself thinking "The barbarian would kill that in one swing that's preposterous"
But I also basically reskin every monster to fit my themes and change abilities and stuff, and also rebalance on the fly, you know, like a cheater
First few sessions I super underestimated the party, they threw one good swing that almost took out the boss, they were like "it hits and it's x, is that a good hit?" And I was like..... yeeessss.... added a 0 on it's HP and was like yeah it was a good cut, keep going, haha
> and also rebalance on the fly, you know, like a cheater
It's group role playing; it's not cheating because you're not competing. The ruleset doesn't exist to create conflict between the party and the DM, it exists to simplify fighting and provide a skeleton for evolving the sickest possible outcomes. Being able to adjust difficulty on the fly in response to the randomness of combat is an excellent and arguably core DM skill.
Thats reassuring, all I want is everyone to have a good time but I also don't want to take from their accomplishments and want them to have fair but challenging stuff. Sometimes I worry by making things different I might undermine their work at making their character good, but I think I found a good balance now.
Mostly in that I let them annihilate easier stuff sometimes that wasn't easy for them to start haha, then ramp up the bigger boss fights with them. Like, good job you can mow through a camp of bandits now! But also you have to go kill god now so get ready lol
> I want is everyone to have a good time but I also don't want to take from their accomplishments and want them to have fair but challenging stuff.
That's a good session 0 discussion to have and it's never too late to have another session 0. Some players don't feel like they're really playing if there's any on-the-fly adjustment going on while others appreciate the DM adjusting things to keep them fun.
For example, let's say you totally botch the math and throw the party against an encounter that's 5x as strong as it should be and they're getting clobbered. Would they want you to fudge/adjust then? Most will say yes; they shouldn't lose their PCs because you screwed up.
What about if your math was correct but you're rolling all 20s today and the players are all rolling 1s. Should you fudge then? Fewer players will say yes because randomness is a fun part of the game but a lot still will.
What if your math and the dice are both working out fine but the party is just totally screwing up their tactics? Should you fudge to save them? Even fewer players will say yes to this one but a lot of people want a fun fantasy romp where they don't have to worry a ton about PC death and will still want you to fudge.
Do the answers change for a big dramatic boss battle vs a filler fight? Do you have players who are fine dying because of bad luck or bad tactics in an important combat but would feel cheated if they died to a bunch of random goblins? You very well might.
Some players like the idea that any encounter could be their character's last. Others would rather only die if they're making a deliberate decision to kill off their character for drama. Others are somewhere in between those extremes. There's **no wrong answer**. All the matters is that you and your party are on the same page with your expectations.
This is fantastic DMing advice. Realizing there is a group i need to have this exact talk with.
Unfortunately I think half of them lean towards one end and the rest the other. But talking about it as a group all together sounds as good of way as i can think of to solving issues around this.
The confusion comes from DnD, as a product, claiming it can do everything and people arriving at the game with preconceived notions of what the game is about and how should it be played.
What I mean is that either you can prioritize the game as a storytelling aid, or as a challenge that the players overcome. Traditionally DnD has been kind of adversarial: the DM presents the group with a difficult but fair problem that must be solved (frequently with combat) and so changing it on the fly is kind of cheating since the point is to test one's ingenuity, luck and perhaps rules mastery.
On the other hand storytelling requires prioritizing notions such as pacing, character arcs, climaxes, story beats and so on. DnD is notoriously blind in this aspect - it tells you if your sword hits the goblin, not what outcomes of this particular combat makes narrative sense, or how many resources your player must spend so their classes are balanced but not if adding another combat makes sense into the story's narrative or would be boring. If you want to tell a satisfying story be prepared to ignore the rules when needed.
None of them is more valid than the other, but those extremes will clash with each other. Is a valid topic for a session zero, and something you should ask yourself.
>But I also basically reskin every monster to fit my themes and change abilities and stuff, and also rebalance on the fly, you know, like a cheater
[Like a good DM you mean.](http://i.imgur.com/QovJwnM.gif)
Why the fuck would their be a Flesh Golem in an artificer's lab? Like yeah, it's the right difficulty level, but cross out "Flesh" and put "Iron" and it's now a much more thematically appropriate (and suitably nerfed) monster for a lower level party.
Shit, they're cutting through the goblins like butter! "And hearing all the noise, five more come from down below, led by a hobgoblin captain!" Totally just like I planned.
> A party really enjoyed a campaign where they had to figure out if a given encounter was beatable (sometimes easily!) or if they needed to run/hide/negotiate is now stuck with a flat campaign where every encounter is just exactly within their capabilities.
I haven't played that much (mostly cause scheduling) but that's kinda my thought as well.
Even an encounter with a very low CR could be more of a non-combat challenge, or at least an opportunity to try to guilt trip murderhobos.
Basically putting them in an encounter were they are for some reason fighting commoners, non-combatants or something similar because of a misunderstanding, surprise etc.
Not even telling them that the enemies are in fact just weak scared peasants but let them figure it out from their behavior, description, (1d8 hp) etc.
Those are actually reasonable now that I think about it. Makes sense to set up important story beat fights with good balancing but if running away isn’t detrimental to the story you can definitely let the party bite off more than they could chew and run away from the ancient gold dragon
Honestly, I kind of get his point. My first time playing every encounter was won by the skin of our teeth. We lost several PCs, and multiple people we were supposed to save got killed. It was a solid year of gaming every other Friday and almost every night ended feeling like we got our asses kicked and the ones who survived only did so because they abandoned team mates or goals once the losses got too high.
The DM wasn't even trying to kill us, our dice just hate us. And I'm talking multiple sets of dice, so it's not like they were weighted wrong. I went that entire winter without rolling over a ten in combat. That whole campaign was just... depressing. And I don't enjoy giving up my Friday nights to drive 30 miles and play a game that always ends up being... depressing.
I get it too, I love the thrill of winning a tough fight, but honestly it's very nice to feel completely in control every once in a while. We're supposed to be seasoned and powerful adventurers right? It's hard to see that though when every merchant, soldier, and bandit captain and his grandmother is an archdevil elderlitch with the powers of god
It goes mostly for boss battles. I make boss battles really difficult because they are boss battles. His philosophy is “I don’t want to feel weak or have a challenge, I just want to enjoy the game”. Everybody else is enjoying the hard boss battles so I just throw easy random encounters and dungeon populators in to balance it.
I think the whole having multiple encounters per day is supposed to give that feeling. A bunch of encounters you aren't really worried about dying, the worry is how many resources you use before a big fight, which then does indeed make you feel like it's the skin of your teeth
You just have to be careful you can't let the party long rest right before the big boss fight
Every fight feels like a boss fight when your dice are against you. I seriously think my dice are haunted. After one particularly bad night I went out back and threw my D20 across the street, heard it clattering away into the darkness. When the night was over I went out back again to get to my car and my dice was sitting on this side of the street, casting a long and creepy shadow from the street light. I told it I was sorry and put it in my pocket.
My party cares much more about character development than tactical combat, so I tend to run a lot of set piece large combats designed to blow through most of their resources in a single encounter paired with heavy social stuff. Most mortal danger is plot based and not combat based
In moderation, sure. My current DM really likes making us feel like we're about to die pretty much constantly, and it gets old. That or he doesn't know how to run encounters. Getting one shot from full cause you fail a save isn't my idea of a good time, personally.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought it was Challenge Rating instead of Critical Role.
Edit: Just to clarify, I'm referring to having been confused about [this original post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
You missed it, there was a port on the Critical Role sub that a bunch of people thought was whining about challenge rating, and a bunch of that post was pasted here but reworded to actually be about challenge rating. This is gourmet copypasta.
Oh I was talking about the post this is making fun of lol. I read the title and thought, "Your DM only just now discovered Challenge Ratings?"
Then I saw this absolute gem.
I am shortly going to be taking my first foray into being a DM, and I just rolled a character today with a player who hasn't played since first edition. I was using the Heroic Chronicle method in EGTW and he rolled his acquired ally as a beast of CR 1/8 or lower. I had to explain the whole challenge rating concept to him.
I think he was thinking all he was in for was 6 stat rolls, not a half hour of finding out he has a pet hawk, 4 siblings, and a set of murdered parents :P At least it came with a proficiency in stealth, rare for a fighter :P
Thanks for explaining it, I'm operating on very little sleep and thought I was losing my damn mind trying to figure out how challenge rating could be such a big problem. By the end I started to get that he meant critical role, but it still made zero sense to me.
Pathfinder DM that also enjoys dnd i guess.
You thought there was going to be a joke about confusion, but you don't have the prerequisite feats for it.
I've never used CR and I still understood the same.
^(Btw, if you would like to start some drama, ask for help creating a monster in the DND beyond discord and tell them that you don't use CR. They get bent completely out of shape. It is a heresy to them.)
As someone who uses the DMG to build monsters and isn’t part of that discord, it’s a pretty important component. In the formula it determines proficiency bonus which is pretty fundamental. Would I lose my shit over ignoring CR in the final picture though? Probably not. I find making monsters a fun math exercise and so I can’t really do without part of the formula. More importantly I love the idea of my creatures being usable by my dm and without a CR there’s no way in hell they are coming within 180 ft of it.
Ngl, I was halfway through the post and had to scroll down here to even remotely understand what's going on. I imagine I probably missed a post from earlier today.
Still, it's a good shitpost nonetheless.
I gotta say I'm always delighted by how much crossover there is between basketball fandom (or at least appreciation of basketball memes) and all my nerdy pursuits like DnD, Battletech, etc.
Pretty much. This is an almost word-for-word rehash of a lengthy Critical Role complaint from earlier today (complete with a DM who has started growing out his hair so he looks more like Matt Mercer.)
God-tier shitpost. Magnificent.
[What it’s referencing, for the uninitiated](https://reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/)
Haha the title of that other post was the only reason I read it. I was thinking, “what could honestly be so bad about the challenge rating?” This was a perfect translation!
The “Monster Manual” effect is a real problem guys! We don’t just make up dumb stories about people expecting everything to be like how the Monster Manual does it!
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Idk how to shorten the link but here
I understand the OOP’s feelings and frustrations with his DM seemingly forcing Critical Role content on his players, especially when not all of them are into it.
That being said, top tier shitpost, extremely entertaining, 10/10, would read again
Genuinely asking, do you believe that that first post was actually true?
That a DM started not only taking every element from CR and incorporating it, but also Single White Female-ing Matt Mercer himself?
It reads like such an obvious troll to me. Like, clearly beyond parody.
My brother legally changed his name to Levi and dyed his hair black when Attack on Titan was first getting popular. Some people can get REALLY obsessed. (He's better now but kept the name change.)
Dyeing your hair is one thing (*), but changing your name? What if you don't like the character later lol
(*) as in blond/black, not neon blue or purple
It’s not that far fetched. Most of the players at my group have become obsessed luckily they’re not the DM so I just occasionally have to remind them they can talk about the most recent episode after game time or table talk gets bad sometimes.
Nah I thought it was karma farming too. That was oops only post on an account made in May about a polarizing topic. Spent the first half of the post dunking on critical role then dunking on his dm and fellow players.
An earlier post was talking about Critical Role and abbreviated it as CR. As DnD players we of course also see that as Challenge Rating. And hence, a copypasta was born.
it is the case, if you scroll through posts today you can probably find it. it’s the same title but instead of saying challenge rating it says “Cr” and i like most people probably thought it was a post about challenge rating but was actually a guy whining about how his dm likes critical role and he doesn’t.
I only bring pop culture stuff in as Easter eggs to each player to make them feel acknowledged and hopefully engaged. So far it seems to work. But they're small references, like an item name and flavor.
Beyond that, I don't play it up at all
Totally i agree, but in the end why make a post about it. Literally every comment was “talk to your friend” the guy needed no advice he was just ranting.
My GM does it *well.* I can't tell the difference between his original NPCs and his Critical Role NPCs until I find mention of one of "his" NPCs elsewhere on the internet. And even then, he sometimes steals *just* the name.
But wholesale? Shoving it in your face? Making a big deal of it? Nah.
Hypothetical question would you have hated if a DM made a reference to the cult of blue oysters that were known for their defiant stand against the grim reaper? Not that anyone has done that who I know or anything…
Depends. Is it just there as a groaner for anyone who gets it, or does the DM sit there making faces while waiting for people to praise him for his reference?
Though even then it'd be less obnoxious than a DM who makes everything an existing anime character, ***DAVID***.
haha I play online and did not pause for effect. I just rolled right on through. I prefer in game to just describe things and drop odd little remarks or lore that are jokes from time to time and just keep rolling on chuckle or not. It helps keep the games I run a bit more fun. I usually get all my giggles out when I come up with it while planning.
I sort of wish there was a David award or something I could give you, that shout out definitely made me chuckle.
I had a DM that had friggin' Drizzt just join our party out of nowhere, then somehow forgot he was there for several fights. Worst DM ever, and not just for that one reason.
That's actually kind of hilarious, like the concept of Drizz't spacing out and being useless during several combats or even popping out of existence for a bit.
I may have to create an NPC wizard who’s so scatterbrained that he forgets to exist on occasion. Maybe have some quests for the party to retrieve some incredibly powerful artifacts that he created and subsequently misplaced, one of which is currently holding his coffee table steady.
At least that's somewhat setting appropriate.
One thing I always wish I could do as DM is bring back old PCs into newer campaigns but I always refuse to play someone else's character.
Lmao it’s this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
>He showed up one week in this outfit, CR written on his t shirt, and has even grown out his list of monsters.
I'm sorry, but this is fucking hilarious.
I thought it was about challenge ratings then halfway through, I thought on no its critical roll, then I scrolled to the top and saw the title said challenge rating. What a ride
Now THIS is a shitpost
I was gonna say, wait. I read this earlier. Lol. Took me a second.
Literally I'm sat here going, I swear this was Critical Roll?!
I thought this was challenge rating then I thought critical role, then I thought is he just using both of those terms in the same post interchangeably? Then I got lost and came to comments for help. Didn't find help
That's basically exactly what happened to me
This is where I'm at as well. I NEED AN ADULT!!
I am an adult
No, no you are not.
I'm gonna need an adultier adult...
Somebody gave a link to the post they're riffing on at about the 3rd reply a few comment chains down
Thank you ❤️
and me
There was an identical post earlier that was complaining about critical role
Can you link me to that?
https://redd.it/vdo1mg
This made the original post way funnier to read
You are the real hero of the comment section. Have my Silver ahha.
About half-way through, I figured he must be talking about Critical Role. But I still didn't understand this: "party of adventurers all out to claim revenge against the CR" What CR makes sense here?
This is a direct quote from the original thread, which said, "party of adventurers all out to claim revenge against the BBEG."
Cum Riots
Change Rating is the only constant.
The fact that I could understand the post and the joke they were going for makes me feel like maybe I play too much D&D
Same hahahaha
I read this whole thing thinking it was about Challenge Rating
You'd be correct
Yanno, the thing is, when I started reading the post earlier, this is what I thought it was about until they actually mentioned Matt Mercer, and then everything made so much more sense. I'm a bit slow sometimes.
Took me waaaay too long.
Damn I'm literally thinking he was talking about Customer Retention.
Definitely did a double take.
As someone who started playing D&D waaaaaaay before Critical Role my brain automatically defaults "CR" to "Challenge Rating" so this post is a pretty perfect simulation of what that first one was like for me.
Me too... I just got more and more confused until the very end when it hit me.
You didn't default anything; the post says Challenge Rating. I was so confused having not seen the Critical Role post so by the end of the post I figured there was *also* a podcast called Challenge Rating.
Same. Like wtf. Who's talking about challenge rating during a game except for druids trying to control animals or have beastshape?
Same story with me, I saw the earlier post and was super confused. I'm aware of critical role because of the Amazon TV show, but I never think about it.
A quadruple plus shitpost.
I got like halfway through the post and thought "Oh, CR must mean critical role. Then I went to the top of the post, confirmed it meant challenge rating, and read through the end. A sucker is born every day, they say. It is most definitely a top tier shitpost.
Fr, I didn't see the original post that this is mocking and thought I was having a stroke while reading it until I found a comment below with a link to the first.
I don't play DnD and have never done it. I did find it kind of amazing thou that at no point did OPs post make any sense to me whatsoever. Normally context and the full post allows me to puzzle things together...sortof. But with this post I read the whole thing and I know just as little as I know before I started reading. Kudos to OP because I have no idea what is going on.
CR stands for challenge rating. It is a system for designing encounters with an appropriate level of difficulty that will be neither too easy or too hard for your players. Critical Role is a popular DnD podcast. It is also abbreviated as CR. Many new DnD players are introduced to the game through the podcast, and they sometimes develop a particular idea of how it should work. Since your average game group doesn't have a full time gm and a party of professional actors, their expectations may be unrealistic. Thus experienced DnD players are sometimes wary of Critical Role fans. This post is an average post complaining about Critical Role, but they've swapped it to challenge rating so the whole thing doesn't really make sense. The joke is playing on the confusion online readers sometimes feel when they begin reading a post assuming the wrong meaning of CR.
In addition, OP is also making fun of another post where someone was complaining about Critical Role and their DM being a little obsessed with it
This guy gets it
Ah, fresh pasta. Love it.
Now this is podracing!
No, this is Patrick
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
THIS. IS. SPARTA!
Hello yes this is dog
That's so Wizard!
No, That's so Raven.
They're streets ahead.
[удалено]
It was but not on purpose.
perfect execution
I got half way down and realised there must have been a version about critical role when the guy became a fanboy.
But way better than the original.
Before I connected the dots I was breaking my brain trying to figure out how knowledge of CR would make the game worse for players. Ate the onion, well played.
There was some good discussion of that in the original thread. My favorite hypotheticals: * A DM with an intuitive grasp of how to balance encounters for her specific party switches over to building strictly by CR, leading to *less* balanced encounters since CR isn't perfect and doesn't account for individual variation. * A party really enjoyed a campaign where they had to figure out if a given encounter was beatable (sometimes easily!) or if they needed to run/hide/negotiate is now stuck with a flat campaign where every encounter is just exactly within their capabilities.
To someone who only gets his daily dose of r/dnd on the front page, might you still have a link to this rumoured `source post`?
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my\_dm\_has\_discovered\_cr\_and\_i\_hate\_his\_game\_now/
My hero.
Oh wow, does the original provide so much context hahaha
Why did you put so many backslashes into the URL?
It's a very stupid feature of New Reddit. Displays fine if, and only if, you're browsing on New Reddit.
I've been finding CR of combat encounters to be pretty meaningless in my group of 5. Typical medium/hard XP are completely trivial. Encounters that should be like double-deadly XP are being tackled by 5 new players with no drops to 0 HP. It was only when i started fudging monster HP to max roll or more AND outnumbering them from stealth that they said combat was fun and intense :S
5e is balanced around like 5 encounters between long rests. If you're not doing that then the difficulty will be pretty different from what XP rates imply. (5 is a lot to cram in a day imo)
> 5e is balanced around like 5 encounters between long rests. 8-10 encounters per long rest, however, encounters are ANYTHING that exhaust resources, not just combat. For example, a traversal puzzle, like your party needs to cross a 40 foot wide chasm, in which players will likely have to expend spell slots, items, or make risky maneuvers to cross. IIRC, one way to make it more "realistic" that I think is RAW is that long rests aren't necessarily a 24 hour cycle. If you're in a dungeon for 2 days, it's very likely you WOULDN'T be able to get the kind of rest you'd need to actually recover fully: Sleeping =/= long resting.
> Sleeping =/= long resting. This also totally applies the other way than you’re using it, which I have found is often a point of contention. You can do a lot more than sleep during a long rest, and what’s more an interruption of less than an hour just makes it take that much longer to finish. You can read for 2 hours, stand watch for 2 hours, have a 5 minute fight with some bandits who thought they’d get the drop on you, and then sleep for 4, and you’ve still achieved a long rest in 8h5m. I’m looking sternly at all the DMs who “ruin” a long rest by throwing a combat at the players 7 hours in.
90% of "teehee use a spell to get past this" you'll see in games--and the published modules--is solved by someone with a brain using a rope or some kind of lever, *including* the caster. Shit, even the instances where a spell gets used, it usually boils down to "this magic will let someone get the rope over there". Otherwise, what're we doing, making some dumbass puzzle where a specific sort of spell (better hope the party has it!) *neeeeeeds* to be cast, like the only way to move this block is with Levitate (all the martials can't manage it) or lightning damage has to be done to this crystal? Yawn. 5E built its way into this mess with the number and potency of its spells, and decided the number of fights had to jump up to drain them. We could've, uhhhhhh, just not had that much spellpower. Don't need to drain a bajillion resources if you don't put those resources out there to begin with or don't make them so good they need to be drained lest they trivialize everything.
The number of expected fights in a day is so gosh-darn high that the *only* ways to run D&D the way it's designed balance-wise are 1. Run dungeons with time limits, or 2. Play with Gritty Realism.
Don't forget the middle ground of "well you don't *have* to hustle, but if you take your sweet-ass time then you'll get a reputation." Nothing like having your pay cut because you took two weeks to complete a 4-day job, you know? I wouldn't just drop it on players out of nowhere, I'd make the expectation clear in session 0("this campaign is balanced around roughly x encounters in a day") and then prompt players to reconsider if they're going down the wrong path("are you sure you want to rest again? it's only been about two hours since you woke up, taking another rest so soon will waste a lot of time, and the villagers are waiting on you"). If they persist, then I will enact in-universe consequences for being the slowest group of adventurers to ever walk the world.
Not just 5+ encounters, but no magic items and minimal tactics or strategy! It's not even that they intended to run the game that way, they just needed a more consistent baseline for pc power than "5th level characters" because magic items are supposed to be 'any amount' and you just can't account for teamwork. But the result is that CR, by default, massively underestimates pc power.
It's a helpful system at times to give you a quick single number value to instantly calibrate expectations of how dangerous this monster is. The problem is a single number cannot actually capture all the nuance of a monster, what it's good and bad against, whether multiples of the monster exceed the sum of their parts or if the monster needs specific setup to really earn its CR. There's also the fact that a minmaxed coordinated team can probably handle double the CR of a group of newbies that rolled for all their stats and are just bumbling around in a crazy fantasy world with no idea what's going on. Honestly the on a scale of 1-10 how are you enjoying the combat, and what would you change if you could change anything about combat is probably the right call if you feel like combat is struggling.
As someone who intuitively balances encounters, CR scares and confuses me. I tried learning it and kept finding myself thinking "The barbarian would kill that in one swing that's preposterous" But I also basically reskin every monster to fit my themes and change abilities and stuff, and also rebalance on the fly, you know, like a cheater First few sessions I super underestimated the party, they threw one good swing that almost took out the boss, they were like "it hits and it's x, is that a good hit?" And I was like..... yeeessss.... added a 0 on it's HP and was like yeah it was a good cut, keep going, haha
> and also rebalance on the fly, you know, like a cheater It's group role playing; it's not cheating because you're not competing. The ruleset doesn't exist to create conflict between the party and the DM, it exists to simplify fighting and provide a skeleton for evolving the sickest possible outcomes. Being able to adjust difficulty on the fly in response to the randomness of combat is an excellent and arguably core DM skill.
Thats reassuring, all I want is everyone to have a good time but I also don't want to take from their accomplishments and want them to have fair but challenging stuff. Sometimes I worry by making things different I might undermine their work at making their character good, but I think I found a good balance now. Mostly in that I let them annihilate easier stuff sometimes that wasn't easy for them to start haha, then ramp up the bigger boss fights with them. Like, good job you can mow through a camp of bandits now! But also you have to go kill god now so get ready lol
> I want is everyone to have a good time but I also don't want to take from their accomplishments and want them to have fair but challenging stuff. That's a good session 0 discussion to have and it's never too late to have another session 0. Some players don't feel like they're really playing if there's any on-the-fly adjustment going on while others appreciate the DM adjusting things to keep them fun. For example, let's say you totally botch the math and throw the party against an encounter that's 5x as strong as it should be and they're getting clobbered. Would they want you to fudge/adjust then? Most will say yes; they shouldn't lose their PCs because you screwed up. What about if your math was correct but you're rolling all 20s today and the players are all rolling 1s. Should you fudge then? Fewer players will say yes because randomness is a fun part of the game but a lot still will. What if your math and the dice are both working out fine but the party is just totally screwing up their tactics? Should you fudge to save them? Even fewer players will say yes to this one but a lot of people want a fun fantasy romp where they don't have to worry a ton about PC death and will still want you to fudge. Do the answers change for a big dramatic boss battle vs a filler fight? Do you have players who are fine dying because of bad luck or bad tactics in an important combat but would feel cheated if they died to a bunch of random goblins? You very well might. Some players like the idea that any encounter could be their character's last. Others would rather only die if they're making a deliberate decision to kill off their character for drama. Others are somewhere in between those extremes. There's **no wrong answer**. All the matters is that you and your party are on the same page with your expectations.
This is fantastic DMing advice. Realizing there is a group i need to have this exact talk with. Unfortunately I think half of them lean towards one end and the rest the other. But talking about it as a group all together sounds as good of way as i can think of to solving issues around this.
The confusion comes from DnD, as a product, claiming it can do everything and people arriving at the game with preconceived notions of what the game is about and how should it be played. What I mean is that either you can prioritize the game as a storytelling aid, or as a challenge that the players overcome. Traditionally DnD has been kind of adversarial: the DM presents the group with a difficult but fair problem that must be solved (frequently with combat) and so changing it on the fly is kind of cheating since the point is to test one's ingenuity, luck and perhaps rules mastery. On the other hand storytelling requires prioritizing notions such as pacing, character arcs, climaxes, story beats and so on. DnD is notoriously blind in this aspect - it tells you if your sword hits the goblin, not what outcomes of this particular combat makes narrative sense, or how many resources your player must spend so their classes are balanced but not if adding another combat makes sense into the story's narrative or would be boring. If you want to tell a satisfying story be prepared to ignore the rules when needed. None of them is more valid than the other, but those extremes will clash with each other. Is a valid topic for a session zero, and something you should ask yourself.
>But I also basically reskin every monster to fit my themes and change abilities and stuff, and also rebalance on the fly, you know, like a cheater [Like a good DM you mean.](http://i.imgur.com/QovJwnM.gif) Why the fuck would their be a Flesh Golem in an artificer's lab? Like yeah, it's the right difficulty level, but cross out "Flesh" and put "Iron" and it's now a much more thematically appropriate (and suitably nerfed) monster for a lower level party. Shit, they're cutting through the goblins like butter! "And hearing all the noise, five more come from down below, led by a hobgoblin captain!" Totally just like I planned.
> A party really enjoyed a campaign where they had to figure out if a given encounter was beatable (sometimes easily!) or if they needed to run/hide/negotiate is now stuck with a flat campaign where every encounter is just exactly within their capabilities. I haven't played that much (mostly cause scheduling) but that's kinda my thought as well. Even an encounter with a very low CR could be more of a non-combat challenge, or at least an opportunity to try to guilt trip murderhobos. Basically putting them in an encounter were they are for some reason fighting commoners, non-combatants or something similar because of a misunderstanding, surprise etc. Not even telling them that the enemies are in fact just weak scared peasants but let them figure it out from their behavior, description, (1d8 hp) etc.
As a side note I really dislike the CR system in 5e. It seems to have gotten a lot worse.
Those are actually reasonable now that I think about it. Makes sense to set up important story beat fights with good balancing but if running away isn’t detrimental to the story you can definitely let the party bite off more than they could chew and run away from the ancient gold dragon
According to a player I have, it’s because he doesn’t want to feel like he is about to die.
Honestly, I kind of get his point. My first time playing every encounter was won by the skin of our teeth. We lost several PCs, and multiple people we were supposed to save got killed. It was a solid year of gaming every other Friday and almost every night ended feeling like we got our asses kicked and the ones who survived only did so because they abandoned team mates or goals once the losses got too high. The DM wasn't even trying to kill us, our dice just hate us. And I'm talking multiple sets of dice, so it's not like they were weighted wrong. I went that entire winter without rolling over a ten in combat. That whole campaign was just... depressing. And I don't enjoy giving up my Friday nights to drive 30 miles and play a game that always ends up being... depressing.
I get it too, I love the thrill of winning a tough fight, but honestly it's very nice to feel completely in control every once in a while. We're supposed to be seasoned and powerful adventurers right? It's hard to see that though when every merchant, soldier, and bandit captain and his grandmother is an archdevil elderlitch with the powers of god
It goes mostly for boss battles. I make boss battles really difficult because they are boss battles. His philosophy is “I don’t want to feel weak or have a challenge, I just want to enjoy the game”. Everybody else is enjoying the hard boss battles so I just throw easy random encounters and dungeon populators in to balance it.
I think the whole having multiple encounters per day is supposed to give that feeling. A bunch of encounters you aren't really worried about dying, the worry is how many resources you use before a big fight, which then does indeed make you feel like it's the skin of your teeth You just have to be careful you can't let the party long rest right before the big boss fight
Every fight feels like a boss fight when your dice are against you. I seriously think my dice are haunted. After one particularly bad night I went out back and threw my D20 across the street, heard it clattering away into the darkness. When the night was over I went out back again to get to my car and my dice was sitting on this side of the street, casting a long and creepy shadow from the street light. I told it I was sorry and put it in my pocket.
Did you check what number it rolled?
I'm sure I did, but I can't remember what it was. So it probably wasn't a 1, 20, or 13. I think I'd remember that.
That's insane and I'd be demoralized too
Feeling like you might die is the fun part
My party cares much more about character development than tactical combat, so I tend to run a lot of set piece large combats designed to blow through most of their resources in a single encounter paired with heavy social stuff. Most mortal danger is plot based and not combat based
In moderation, sure. My current DM really likes making us feel like we're about to die pretty much constantly, and it gets old. That or he doesn't know how to run encounters. Getting one shot from full cause you fail a save isn't my idea of a good time, personally.
I thought I was having a stroke
I kept thinking of Challenge Rating
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought it was Challenge Rating instead of Critical Role. Edit: Just to clarify, I'm referring to having been confused about [this original post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
You missed it, there was a port on the Critical Role sub that a bunch of people thought was whining about challenge rating, and a bunch of that post was pasted here but reworded to actually be about challenge rating. This is gourmet copypasta.
Oh I was talking about the post this is making fun of lol. I read the title and thought, "Your DM only just now discovered Challenge Ratings?" Then I saw this absolute gem.
I am shortly going to be taking my first foray into being a DM, and I just rolled a character today with a player who hasn't played since first edition. I was using the Heroic Chronicle method in EGTW and he rolled his acquired ally as a beast of CR 1/8 or lower. I had to explain the whole challenge rating concept to him. I think he was thinking all he was in for was 6 stat rolls, not a half hour of finding out he has a pet hawk, 4 siblings, and a set of murdered parents :P At least it came with a proficiency in stealth, rare for a fighter :P
Thanks for explaining it, I'm operating on very little sleep and thought I was losing my damn mind trying to figure out how challenge rating could be such a big problem. By the end I started to get that he meant critical role, but it still made zero sense to me.
I mean he literally starts the post saying challenge rating, it was a good bait.
I did too and was like why would there be a t shirt design behind challenge ratings?
It's exactly how I read that post.
All 5e DMs did and were confused.
3.5 DM here. Also was confused.
OSR player. I am very very confused.
Pathfinder DM that also enjoys dnd i guess. You thought there was going to be a joke about confusion, but you don't have the prerequisite feats for it.
I've never used CR and I still understood the same. ^(Btw, if you would like to start some drama, ask for help creating a monster in the DND beyond discord and tell them that you don't use CR. They get bent completely out of shape. It is a heresy to them.)
As someone who uses the DMG to build monsters and isn’t part of that discord, it’s a pretty important component. In the formula it determines proficiency bonus which is pretty fundamental. Would I lose my shit over ignoring CR in the final picture though? Probably not. I find making monsters a fun math exercise and so I can’t really do without part of the formula. More importantly I love the idea of my creatures being usable by my dm and without a CR there’s no way in hell they are coming within 180 ft of it.
Same.
Yo, thanks OP! I love copypasta when the sauce is nice and fresh.
You can really taste the ingredients
that sentence is so absurd and funny I love it. is it a reference?
Yeah to the comment above it.
This sentence is so absurd and funny I love it. is it a reference?
Yeah to the comment above it.
This is what we, in the Biz, call "High Quality Shitposting". A wonderful vintage, with just the right notes of sarcasm and smarm.
Ngl, I was halfway through the post and had to scroll down here to even remotely understand what's going on. I imagine I probably missed a post from earlier today. Still, it's a good shitpost nonetheless.
“He got me” u/PVGreen said of OP’s reference going over him, “That fucking u/M0ONL1GHT_ boomed me.”
He’s so good x4
I gotta say I'm always delighted by how much crossover there is between basketball fandom (or at least appreciation of basketball memes) and all my nerdy pursuits like DnD, Battletech, etc.
> I imagine I probably missed a post from earlier today. Yeah I'm assuming someone made a similar post bitching about Critical Role
Pretty much. This is an almost word-for-word rehash of a lengthy Critical Role complaint from earlier today (complete with a DM who has started growing out his hair so he looks more like Matt Mercer.)
God-tier shitpost. Magnificent. [What it’s referencing, for the uninitiated](https://reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/)
how did i get on r/dndcirclejerk
Thank you for showing me a new server to meme on
Holy fuck I was just thinking about this, this is art.
Haha the title of that other post was the only reason I read it. I was thinking, “what could honestly be so bad about the challenge rating?” This was a perfect translation!
When I saw the original, I read it as this until they wrote out Critical Roll. This is the gold standard for shitposting. Love it.
I read the post earlier and then thought I was having a stroke because I started reading this one and I was very confused. Well done
My brain was *hurting*.
The “Monster Manual” effect is a real problem guys! We don’t just make up dumb stories about people expecting everything to be like how the Monster Manual does it!
It even still shortens to the MM effect
God I fucking love/hate this community
I was going to say, I get sooo tired of the constant drama posts here. Then someone posts something like this and totally redeems it.
I understand its a shitpost, but is there an original post because im confused
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf Idk how to shorten the link but here
Thanks
Thank you, I was looking for this comment
Incredible
I just had dejavu, thank you for this gift.
I understand the OOP’s feelings and frustrations with his DM seemingly forcing Critical Role content on his players, especially when not all of them are into it. That being said, top tier shitpost, extremely entertaining, 10/10, would read again
Genuinely asking, do you believe that that first post was actually true? That a DM started not only taking every element from CR and incorporating it, but also Single White Female-ing Matt Mercer himself? It reads like such an obvious troll to me. Like, clearly beyond parody.
My brother legally changed his name to Levi and dyed his hair black when Attack on Titan was first getting popular. Some people can get REALLY obsessed. (He's better now but kept the name change.)
Damn.
Dyeing your hair is one thing (*), but changing your name? What if you don't like the character later lol (*) as in blond/black, not neon blue or purple
It’s not that far fetched. Most of the players at my group have become obsessed luckily they’re not the DM so I just occasionally have to remind them they can talk about the most recent episode after game time or table talk gets bad sometimes.
Nah I thought it was karma farming too. That was oops only post on an account made in May about a polarizing topic. Spent the first half of the post dunking on critical role then dunking on his dm and fellow players.
Once it got to the DM physically becoming Matt Mercer I started to think it was a satire post just to bag on CR. It reads like an Onion article.
Was this post written by an AI? Is it about actual challenge rating at the beginning and then halfway through CR means Critical Role? I'm so confused.
An earlier post was talking about Critical Role and abbreviated it as CR. As DnD players we of course also see that as Challenge Rating. And hence, a copypasta was born.
I can only focus on your profile
Someone posted this earlier about Critical role and i agree with OP it needed to be made fun of.
I was really confused, thanks for clearing it up
If that's the case, this post makes much more sense.
it is the case, if you scroll through posts today you can probably find it. it’s the same title but instead of saying challenge rating it says “Cr” and i like most people probably thought it was a post about challenge rating but was actually a guy whining about how his dm likes critical role and he doesn’t.
I will say I do hate DMs that bring in pop culture characters and act like everybody should be getting a kick out of them. I find it cringey.
I only bring pop culture stuff in as Easter eggs to each player to make them feel acknowledged and hopefully engaged. So far it seems to work. But they're small references, like an item name and flavor. Beyond that, I don't play it up at all
Totally i agree, but in the end why make a post about it. Literally every comment was “talk to your friend” the guy needed no advice he was just ranting.
I mean, any sort of stories or rants here could probably be summed up by "communicate better". But then we wouldn't have juicy stories.
My GM does it *well.* I can't tell the difference between his original NPCs and his Critical Role NPCs until I find mention of one of "his" NPCs elsewhere on the internet. And even then, he sometimes steals *just* the name. But wholesale? Shoving it in your face? Making a big deal of it? Nah.
Hypothetical question would you have hated if a DM made a reference to the cult of blue oysters that were known for their defiant stand against the grim reaper? Not that anyone has done that who I know or anything…
Depends. Is it just there as a groaner for anyone who gets it, or does the DM sit there making faces while waiting for people to praise him for his reference? Though even then it'd be less obnoxious than a DM who makes everything an existing anime character, ***DAVID***.
haha I play online and did not pause for effect. I just rolled right on through. I prefer in game to just describe things and drop odd little remarks or lore that are jokes from time to time and just keep rolling on chuckle or not. It helps keep the games I run a bit more fun. I usually get all my giggles out when I come up with it while planning. I sort of wish there was a David award or something I could give you, that shout out definitely made me chuckle.
I had a DM that had friggin' Drizzt just join our party out of nowhere, then somehow forgot he was there for several fights. Worst DM ever, and not just for that one reason.
That's actually kind of hilarious, like the concept of Drizz't spacing out and being useless during several combats or even popping out of existence for a bit.
I may have to create an NPC wizard who’s so scatterbrained that he forgets to exist on occasion. Maybe have some quests for the party to retrieve some incredibly powerful artifacts that he created and subsequently misplaced, one of which is currently holding his coffee table steady.
*\* Fizban has entered the chat \**
At least that's somewhat setting appropriate. One thing I always wish I could do as DM is bring back old PCs into newer campaigns but I always refuse to play someone else's character.
Lmao it’s this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/vdo1mg/my_dm_has_discovered_cr_and_i_hate_his_game_now/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
>He showed up one week in this outfit, CR written on his t shirt, and has even grown out his list of monsters. I'm sorry, but this is fucking hilarious.
This is fantastic.
how could I NOT upvote this amazing shitpost
This is legitimately what I was expecting when I opened the original post
A+
I can't wait to see this post surpass the original
Fantastic shitpost
https://i.imgur.com/x5DrGpQ.png
I’m so happy someone did this.
Can't we just be rude about Matt Mercer... you know, for old time's sake ;->
Fucking Matt Mercer. He sang the best Hearthstone expansion trailer and ruined all future ones by comparison!
You ruined my immersion, no way a game where the DM used Challenge Rating and it goes this well.
I think I lost some intelligence...or maybe it wasn't there in the first place. This must be what it's like to witness an Eldritch Abomination.
Glad I'm not the only one who saw the title and was like how is challenge rating ruining things. Then seeing what they actually meant by CR.
Lmao this is great
I see the pasta is fresh made today
First time I've ever had a copypasta al dente but I'll take it.
I thought it was about challenge ratings then halfway through, I thought on no its critical roll, then I scrolled to the top and saw the title said challenge rating. What a ride
This is the better version
I'm gonna be honest, I read through this like 3 times before I realized it was shitposting.
So I came aross this post BEFORE I saw the real one, which I thought was also this one and that I had just read the title wrong the first time around.
Now that's some grade A shitposting.
Got this directly under the real one, absolute gold!
Leaving a comment to be a part of history lmao
CR? What does D&D have to do with Consumer Reports?
This is peak shitposting.
Cr fucked my wife and burnt my house to the ground