Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Last City 04-21-06, 10:06 PM	Ok, i was looking up this monster called the quarephont in the monster manual III. Personally im a lil confused... i was trying to create a character out of this monster & did the necessary formula: you add the monster's 9 hit dice + LA (of +5) = ECL 14 Now if im not mistaken that would mean if i give this monster 1 level of barbarian. It would be a total of ECL 15 right? Thus CR 15? N thus can join my party members of level 15 characters right? Thing is, i looked it up and saw that they did an example of a level 5 barbarian version of the monster... the CR is 10. :confused: m i missing something? We have 2 other DMs here in town and they didnt know what to say either. I mean imagine: i create a character of this monster at level 1 but considered as a level 15 character... but if you pit me against my own race that was 5 levels barbarian higher then me, im suppose to imagine i can kick its a$$ :confused: M i missing something here about ECL, CR and character level? Kindly help our group to this situation...
runestar 04-22-06, 12:23 AM	ECL and cr are 2 entirely different things. ECL gauges the power of a monster PC relative to the party's lv, and so it will be used only when creating a PC to play along with the party. Cr gauges the power lv of a creature when pitted against the party - so it would be used only when creating an enemy to throw at the players. The disparity is so for a variety of reasons - some abilities which are balanced in the hands of an NPC are downright broken if accessed by a PC, such as any special ablilties useable at will, or superior stat mods. Also, PCs get much more treasure/gear than NPCs, and will have superior stats due to rolling/point buy, while npcs are usually relegated to elite npc stat array or base 10s/11s. Thus, the quarephont will have a base ECL of 14(without class lvs) if used as an active player in your party, and a base cr of 5 if used as an enemy against your party. Hope this helps. :)