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Possible D&D Monster scaling by CR?

GreyFang82

GreyFang82

He/Him
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Now... I don't know too much about D&D but since the game itself has some form of a rating system for how tough a monster is to defeat couldn't we take the power of a creature we know like The Krake and use scaling to say monsters with equal or greater CR should be just as strong?

But, since this is coming from someone who doesn't know much about the game or lore, what do you guys think?
 
CR... yeah, while some of it affects the "plot", CR is mostly game mechanics. A bunch of low level characters can still defeat high CR monsters with enough luck and a good strategy (a D&D non-written rule: if it has stats, it can be defeated).

And, a monster with CR 20 can be quite weak compared with a legendary monster (in 5e parlance) of the same CR-- and the difference is notable.

Besides that, how to determine the level of monsters changes between editions, so, while you can compare 3.5 and 5e CR, other editions (such as 1e, 2e or 4e) determine the difficulty level using different systems.
 
Different Editions of D&D were basically universal Rewrites, so Monsters should have Keys for each edition if you wanted to be really technical.
 
Yeah I've heard that phrase from a friend before, but that doesn't really mean much, and CR is usually kept in mind with the assumption of 4 players i believe.

And for which edition to use, it would be the one that states the power we can scale to. EX: Which version of the Kraken is used for it's profile? we use that one's CR.
 
D&D as a whole is a very inconsistent verse. Normal humans who die from falling a few stories, can dodge lightning bolts and attack with nearly as much damage as lightning does.
 
It is an inconsistency. It may be an inconsistency that a lot of games have because they are not physics simulators, but it is an inconsistency nonetheless.

But even aside that, normal humans in D&D can land hits on characters who have Deflect Arrows, which allows them to deflect projectiles with their barehands, which for Arrows is subsonic. Normal Humans can make saves against Lightning Strikes from the Sky and Fireball Explosions which give them very high speeds and the like.
 
Saying it's an inconsistency is like saying video game characters getting shot is an inconsistency.

It's just an absurdly common occurrence of ignorance that we have no reason to regard.
 
shouldn't we talk about the monsters rather than the characters? Because a characters have a bunch of BS, I survived something i shouldn't have because of a saving throw! While a monster's strength is kinda independent of that.
 
The way D&D is formatted goes almost directly against the nature of this wiki. That is the problem. The Tarrasque and Kraken are rated for Destroying towns and cities, and can do such through lore, but their game statistics don't even allow for this, because the game system is designed to make things "balanced" rather than realistic or consistent with lore.

This means using things like CR or any in-game stats, is inconsistent at best and absurd at worst.

Sure you can find things like lifting strength based on the Carrying Capacity game mechanic, but finding the attack potency becomes incredibly difficult, when "Town Level" dragons can still be damaged by far weaker level character's attacks.
 
But anything that strong being hurt or taking chip damage by something that it should be stronger then for the sake of fairness, is literally the definition of Game Mechanics isn't it? I feel like CR should be different because it's not saying anything other than this is how hard it would be to defeat this being so being around Level X would be a good idea. It wouldn't be game mechanics if the book itself said (hey! since your character falls under the recommended level to fight, say the Kraken, and it be a fair fight) Anything under that said level that defeats it would be a complete outlier. Also I believe the CR rating assumes a group of 4 adventurers. Not a bunch of weaker adventurers that add up to it.
 
I'm not so... fond with this idea, but if you insist...

To give a solid value to CRs, we need first to give solid value to character levels. As you said, CR is a rating that assumes a bunch of player of certain level are equivalent/stronger/weaker to a monster of certain CR.

And, we know that rules wise most of the levels are just "you gain this new feature that has no actual use in combat"—the main priority here. Like, gaining more skill points for spot or search, or such useless features (in battle, I mean).

So, how do you want to address PC levels? Giving certain levels a minimum cap of what that PC can do is a good start. For instance, in 4e, specific tiers of levels had a minimum level of power for PCs, regardless of their actual level or their class. Ie. All characters in Paragon tier were super human, able to do stuff regular mortals cannot, regardless of skill and such. All epic tier were akin to demigods (and there is an actual Epic Destiny that let you get a divine spark and become a demigod, but the other Epic Destinies were pretty much as stronger like the demigod was, at least lore-wise).

IIRC, 5e has this level tiering as well. When I'm home, I'm going to check the 5e DMG to help you out with this.

With character levels categorized in this way, if a monster can give problems to a bunch of super humans, then its CR has a meaning beyond game mechanics.
 
I have never seen anyone in D&D ever do anything beyond Small Building Level. Just for a point of reference. Even Balors cannot smash through entire castles. None of the player characters can do it either so there is no way to scale them higher in my opinion.

Even the Tarrasque razes villages over time. You can just check out the stats for animals. an Elephant, which is obviously 9-B, has something like 80 to 100 hp. The Tarrasque cannot even one-shot it with a single hit, it would take a full attack.
 
By lore the Tarasque can pick up horses and eat them, but it doesn't go around nuking anything with its attacks. Similarly most dragons are the same, except maybe some of the uber epic ones. But even they don't do castle size damage.
 
Well, 4e lore has the Tarrasque eating whole countries because reasons (as per an article in Dragon 418). But 4e is more epic in scope than most D&D editions...
 
That is over time though, right? It would be a rather big jump to make the Tarrasque country sized where it can one-shot nations.
 
The article has the story of the Tarrasque over time, yes. According to that particular origin story, the Tarrasque was created by the primordials as a weapon to defeat the gods in the Dawn War (I have made a recap of the Dawn War here), but they never finish it. The gods won before they could.

Over time, the Tarrasque grew in size, and began to eat parts of the world. Starting with villages, and later, cities. 300 years before the campaign starts, it can eat whole countries. Its assumed, by the narrator of the story (a Vistani), that the next time it awakes, it can destroy the world.

By 4e standards, the Tarrasque is a solo monster for epic tier characters (solo assumes that the monster is a threat for a 4-party of characters the same level as the monster).
 
I am not knowledgeable about 4e or 5e, it is possible that people got tired of how weak 3.5 was, and amped the stakes. Because in 3.5 the Tarasque would take multiple rounds to even destroy a castle wall.

It was pretty much just a big dumb dino with Regenerationn.
 
4e modified much of the established D&D lore, rewriting a lot of assumed facts of 3.x and earlier editions, like the nature of some creatures and the cosmology. Some changes were good, but others extreme and not well received.

5e returned to the established lore of pre-4e, but incorporated the good 4e stuffs that didn't contradicted the traditional D&D lore, or the ones that enhanced the lore in ways pre-4e stuff didn't (like, for instance, the Dawn War, that expanded in the non-detailed creation myths of the Fiend Folio).

So, much of what you know of D&D still apply, but some stuff got upgraded. The Tarrasque one of them.
 
As promised. 5e DMG talks of the "Tiers of Play" in pag 36. Player's characters began to be a significant exemplar of their class at level 11, "set well apart from the masses". I guess this means they have reached peak human (or dwarf, or elf, etc.) level at this point.

At level 17, they "have superheroic capabilities", so... I guess at this point the have become super human/dwarf/elf/etc. At level 20, they are equivalent to epic tiers characters from 4e. Monsters can reach level 30. Monsters of such CR are threats to the world and the planes.

This means that CR only becomes relevant if is CR 11 or higher.
 
so... is it saying

11 to 16 = Street Level to Wall Level at most

17 to 19 = Higher End Wall Level to Who knows

20 = Planet level?

Is that what the CR is saying? (At least in terms of this wiki)
 
This seems very unreasonable.

A better way would be to look at an animal that occurs in both the game and real life. Like an Elephant or a Lion. Both of those are 9-B. If the monster can dominate them they might be 9-A if the monster cannot, they are 9-C or 9-B. Side from plot device monsters, I doubt any of the game monsters can casually one-shot big game animals.

Likewise a level 20 character does not one-shot a level 16 character.
 
Also threatening the planet doesn't usually mean actually destroying the planet. You can be a nuke level being and threaten all life on the planet, since you would be able to topple governments and wage endless war shifting civilization forever.

Or demons that can summon legions of nightmare armies, or magicians that can control the minds of world leaders... they don't require huge APs to be world tier threats.
 
20 = Demigod-ish, that its not the same as planet level.

Planet level should be around 30th level, that, at least in 5e, is a level that only NPCs can reach (player characters are caped at 20th level). And it is the max level any creature in D&D that is not a god can reach.

For instance, the Tarrasque is CR 30.
 
Also, notice that this apply mostly to non-spellcaster characters, as wizards and the like have a higher output of offensive power compared with a fighter. While a 20th level fighter in 5e can be at most city level on his own, a 20th level wizard can be country, or even continent with the right selection of spells. Magical items can also change the whole equation as well.

That is why CR imply that a monster is equivalent to a minimum of 4 PCs of the same level. Because player characters have not the same level of power.
 
The PHB mostly... so, nope.

You can read the character progression of classes and the description of spells. Again, as I said, this imply the optimal choice of class features, spells and magic items--(magic items are in the DMG), so you should approach this with a "min-maxer" point of view.
 
Min-maxing is what I am very familiar with, at least in 3.5. But given that in 3.5 single blocks of stone alone have more hp than the Tarrasque 900 to a Tarrasque's 858, D&D 3.5 is basically Wall level until you get to Epic Levels with some absurd spells combinations.

I am currently looking up how powerful the 5e Tarrasque is, to see how it threatens planets.
 
Hp is generally considered a game mechanic, so this wiki avoids it. It is just difficult to pin down the power ratings though without comparing. In the game, the Tarrasque can't 1-shot an elephant (though it gets multiple attacks), so it feels very odd placing it at Planet Level when a stampede of Elephants could give it an annoyance.
 
It can flip over boats and stuff... I am not sure it Nukes them though... City Level is pretty strong. Even if it is just AP, that sort of attack would cut through a ship instantly.
 
The Kraken is city level based off of what is stated in the 5e Monster Manual, specifically this paragraph of text.

Not even landlocked surface dwellers are safe from a kraken's wrath. Krakens can breathe air as easily as water, and some crawl up rivers to nest in freshwater lakes, destroying cities and towns along the way. Adventurers tell of these monsters lairing in the ruins of lakeside citadels, their tentacles twined around leaning towers of disintegrating stone.

Here's the source
 
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