Archived from groups: rec.games.frp.dnd (
More info?)
Spinner wrote:
> >> Okay, forgetting that, can anyone see WHY the DMG breaks with the
> > general
> >> principle that doubling creatures adds 2 for CR 1 only? Is there
> > something
> >> strange about the CR 1 creature type that makes this come out this
> > way and
> >> makes it logical?
> >
> > There is a reason, but it doesn't neccessarily have anything to
> > do with how dangerous the encounters actually are.
> >
> Basically you say below that it's because of experience point values,
not
> because of power. So does that mean that you think the book supports
the
> concept that two CR 1 monsters have about the power of an EL 2
encounter or
> an EL 3? That is, is it just a kludge for making the xp work out
right or
> is CR 1 really half as powerful as CR 2?
I think it is a cludge to make EP work out right. It may also be
half as powerful (I doubt it), but the reason is that EP and EL
should match.
> > EL typically gives (approximately) total EP if you treat an
> > encounter as a single monster of CR=EL. In fact for cases where
> > all foes give EP this is as accurate as possible given the table
> > precission and round-off rules they are using.
> >
> > This makes sense, two EL 6 encounters are about the same difficulty
> > so they should give about the same EL baring ad-hoc adjustments
> > to EL or EP.
> >
> > The "normal" EP formula would give EP awards for CR 1, 2, and 3
> > as follows for levels 1-3:
> > Level 1: 300, 400, 600
> > Level 2: 400, 600, 800
> > Level 3: 450, 600, 900
> >
> > Which is wonky with higher levels getting more EP, so they use
> > the level 3 line for everybody from level one to three.
> >
> This is where you lost me -- can you explain this table? IDHMDMGIFOM
and of
> course I can't get this out of the SRD! It seems like this is
crucial to
> your explanation below.
The EP table in the DMG is based on four simple rules:
1) An equal CR foe is worth 300xCR EP at every level.
2) +2 CR is worth x2 EP; -2 CR is worth x1/2 EP
3) When CR differs from level by an odd number round off as if +1
CR were worth character level x 400 EP (which is quite close to
times square root two).
4) Truncate the table at absolute value (CR-ECL)>8.
These rules can be combined into a single formula:
EP = 300 * ECL * 2^(CR-ECL/2)
With round off for odd CR-ECL very slightly modifying the result, and
large differences in CR and ECL being thrown out. This reproduces every
EP value they give except for the ECL 1-3 row, and the CR 1 column.
For ECL 1-3 they combined and used the results for ECL 3, which are
almost identical to those for ECL 2 in any case, and for the CR 1
column they applied a maximum award of 300 EP.
> For example, what is the "normal" EP formula you refer to here? Why
does
> the xp get higher with level here?
EP gets higher with level because ECL 3 vs. CR 3 has to give 900
EP. (their basic rule for advancement at 13.3333 "patrol" encounters
demands this), but the standard rule for ECL 1 is 300 EP for CR 1,
and double for +2 CR, which of course gives only 600 EP.
So combining the two basic rules for EP awards for a given CR
we get higher awards at level 2 & 3 than at level 1.
The basic design decisions, constant advancement rate, power
roughly doubles every 2 levels, and EP needed to advance goes
up linearly dictate this result.
Basically if you look at the formula above, the EP award for a
constant CR has one term that goes UP liniarly with level, and
a second that comes DOWN exponentially with level.
We think of exponential growth as faster than liniar, but that
is only true as the independent variable gets "large", in this
case large happens to be at about level 3, prior to that the
liniar term is actually more significant. So they throw out
the results for levels 1 and 2 which give the wonky result.
> > Which is wonky since then a level 1 party would advance after
> > only 8.88888 encounters with appropriate encounters rather
> > than 13.33333. So they reduced to only 300 EP the CR one award
> > on the level 1-3 line of the table. (And for levels 4-6 they
> > retained a value of 300 rather than using the slightly higher
> > values a formula would give.)
> >
> > Reduced EP for CR 1 means they also use reduced EL for encounters
> > with multiple level 1 foes, since if they did not the CR 1 foes
> > would give too little EP per encounter at equal EL.
> >
> > Basically level 1 characters get too much EP for everyone above
> > CR 1, and everyone else up to about level 6 gets too little for
> > CR 1 foes. This is done to make the EP table work, but the
> > result is that CR 1 gives less EP than you would expect compared
> > to higher CR foes up until level 6. So they alse reduced the
> > significance of multiple CR 1 foes relative to CR 2 and 3 in
> > calculating EL.
> >
> > For more on the EP table see my post
> > with ID:
> > 1106866804.151803.198200@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com
> >
> Thanks for all this reply -- I couldn't follow this link BTW.
Go to advanced search in Google groups and paste that into
the Message ID search, it works fine for me.
But I basically just repeated it with different emphasis.
Alternately whatever browser you use should have some way to
search on message ID, it may want the ID enclosed in < >;
although the message may have expired off your server so I
recomend Google in this case.
DougL
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