When designing a tussle, do you use CR guidelines? Do you make sure it will be at least somewhat fair fight?

When designing a tussle, do you use CR guidelines? Do you make sure it will be at least somewhat fair fight?

>tussle
How delightfully devilish

>do you use CR guidelines?
while not always accurate, they do give an indication of whether they will live or die in the fight

>Do you make sure it will be at least somewhat fair fight?
the game will get stale if they either crush the enemy or ar forced to flee/TPK every fight, so a fair fight, where the players will win if they apply their head and dont just yell attack every turn, is usually in order

sometimes i do throw them something with a CR way above theirs as a puzzle boss, cannot be beaten in combat, but must be killed via environment or talking
so it depends on what i am feeling on throwing them for the day
a fair fight if i feel like my players want a hard hour long brawl session against an anti-party or a hydra, or have them face off against something way too big like a dragon, which they cannot beat face to face but must collapse the cave around it or find his rival metallic dragon to soften him up

No and No. There are two types of encounters: those designed for attrition, and those designed for the kill. Neither uses CR, and neither needs to be perfectly fair.

>tussle

If you are talking about D&D/Pathfinder the best system I found is to math out the average dmg output of the party vs the health of the thing they are fighting. From there I factor in any random tricks or what have you the monster can do.

>tussle

I make sure that i makes sense in the context of the story and that it isn't a white-room encounter.

>tussle
I thought we were gonna discuss puzzles.

Fuck, you people are insane.

Nigga, you a bot or something?

I know exactly what you're referencing and it's not a referencable thing.

>tussle

CR only matters if you design your dungeon as a series of linear combat arenas, with combat being the only guaranteed XP source.

Okay, i either use random encounters and flesh em up a bit on the fly, or when i design something, i make the monsters smarter.

I really like kobolds

Not him but it's a very referenceable thing.

...

It's a /qst/ expression.

>Tussle

Yes, and?

So it's a Veeky Forums expression?

Quests are not and never have been Veeky Forums.

t. /qa/

Your fucking point being...?

Hello, newfriend.

I hope you prepared yourself for an unforgettable luncheon.

Came here to do this. Good work user

>tussle

With a party of 6 to contest with, if I want a tough fight I'll give them three flavours of combat.
>One enemy with a much higher CR, plus minions around their level or lower.
>A number of foes equal to their number, with slightly lower CR.
>About 3 enemies, all with CR around their level.

I suppose I could have swarms of low-level minions too, but that honestly seems like a headache to keep track of.

I take design cues from Fire Emblem, so no.

No. The creator of D&D, Mike Mearls, has admitted that he ignores them. If he has no faith in them, why should I?

For my tussles I tend to use CR as very rough guidelines, but look at the monster's actual stats to get a better idea if it's fair. How easy is it to hit? How easily will it hit back and how many hits before a player will be downed?

I think it's much better to decide what would make sense for them to encounter first, then tweak things to make sure it won't be unreasonably hard or boringly easy.

>The creator of D&D, Mike Mearls
I know this is bait, but it still made my blood pressure go up.

Gary Gygax may have invented the thing that came before D&D, but Mike Mearls turned it into something worth talking about.

People want to make it an epic thing in Veeky Forums's history just because they were ther for it. But it really isn't, it's just a copy pasta with Veeky Forums things in it that was posted once, was mildly funny and prompted a series of reaction images.