Post/Author/DateTime	Post
mage_guy 04-04-06, 11:59 AM	Well as the title suggests, I need help figuring out how to do exactly that. I already figure there are going to be some people out there who read this who will be thinking "If you don't even know how to do this, why are you even a DM" But hey, some people are really good with the storyline stuff, and others are really good with the hardcore math stuff. I'm not so good with the latter... I do know that one CR 5 creature is a EL 5 encounter... So, what happens if you have for instance six CR 1 creatures and six CR 2 creatures? How do you caclulate the EL for something like that? Or another example is one CR 5 creature and three CR 3 creatures? If anyone can give me any (and I do mean ANY) help figuring out the calculations for figuring out EL, please enlighten me. Thanks. RM
Chobemaster 04-04-06, 01:11 PM	google "encounter calculator D&D" and you'll find several good utilities. the general mechanic is build from the bottom...if you have a CR3 and 4 CR1's, break it down like this... 4 CR 1's = EL 3. EL 3 + CR3= 2 CR3's= EL 5.
DrMorganes 04-04-06, 01:50 PM	Better yet, just follow the link (http://nazaire.home.insightbb.com/calculator.htm)! ;) Go to File, select your Save Page As option, and save that puppy to your desktop for handy offline use.
Chobemaster 04-04-06, 01:52 PM	Better yet, just follow the link (http://nazaire.home.insightbb.com/calculator.htm)! ;) Go to File, select your Save Page As option, and save that puppy to your desktop for handy offline use. ;) give a man a fish...
runestar 04-04-06, 11:04 PM	Or you could total the individual xp individually, add them together, and choose the EL that closest matches this xp value.
ashcat_lt 04-05-06, 12:53 AM	runestar, I was initially excited by the prospects of your proposal, thinking it sure would make things easier, but on further examination I find that either I'm not completely grasping what you are saying, or it is completly wrong. Can you please try to elaborate.
mage_guy 04-05-06, 07:21 PM	hey guys, thanks so much for all your help, I'll definitly make use of things. That EL calculator will come in very handy. RM
BW0222 04-05-06, 08:54 PM	mage_guy, One final step... Ignore the numbers and just look at the encounter for a few minutes. Think about your PCs and imagine how the combat will go. CRs/ECLs, and APLs are all nice, but they are at best a rule of thumb. Once can easy have a party which slaughters and appropriate ECL or who gets slaughtered by it. For example, the calculator can tell you time and again that a wraith encounter is fair, but if folks honestly don't have +1 weapons, spells, or holy water... they care kind of dead. Give a troll a ring of fire resistance, and the ECL goes into the cieling. Most PCs are pretty much toast - baring a barrel of acid. A bunch of grigs could slaughter mid-level PCs without a lot of missile weapons, just dropping rocks on them. CRs/ECLs are a good rule of thumb. If they say something is pretty difficult, double check that it is still possible, give the PCs some extra warning, etc.
runestar 04-06-06, 08:20 AM	runestar, I was initially excited by the prospects of your proposal, thinking it sure would make things easier, but on further examination I find that either I'm not completely grasping what you are saying, or it is completly wrong. Well, I never did get the grasp of using the EL tables to extrapolate ELs outside of what was provided in the DMG, and I was never aware of any EL calculators, so we devised our own method, which is somewhat inaccurate, but more or less gets the job done. Basically, find the total xp the encounter will net you, then find the nearest value that corresponds with this. Say a lv3 party meets with 8 lizardfolk barbarian1s. Each lizardfolk barbarian gives 600 xp, 8 of them gives a total of 4800 xp. Reading across the table, it is equivalent to a challenge between cr 7 and 8(about 7.67). More or less there, the main use is to gauge how tough any expected battle will be. Of course, depending on how it is actually run, it may or may not deviate from this, but the gist is there. Have I been reading it wrong?
Frugal 04-06-06, 09:35 AM	Basically, find the total xp the encounter will net you, then find the nearest value that corresponds with this. Say a lv3 party meets with 8 lizardfolk barbarian1s. Each lizardfolk barbarian gives 600 xp, 8 of them gives a total of 4800 xp. Reading across the table, it is equivalent to a challenge between cr 7 and 8(about 7.67). More or less there, the main use is to gauge how tough any expected battle will be. Of course, depending on how it is actually run, it may or may not deviate from this, but the gist is there. Have I been reading it wrong? I don't have the DMG with me right now so I can't double check this. But, I think you're off because XP is dished out by experience level whereas EL is calculated regardless of experience level. I'm trying to work out the encounter using an encounter calculator, I'm guessing you have the lizardfolk at CR 2? That gives me 1200 XP per party member (for a 4 member party) so that's the 4800 XP so I think that's how you've figured it out too. Now, that does happen to work out to be an EL 8 encounter. But where your system breaks down is that it's an EL 8 encounter regardless of the party's level. If the party is 4 level 8 PCs it's still an EL 8 encounter. But it sounds like you'd calculate the XP for the party at level 8, which will be lower (2400 total XP) and look up the level of the encounter which will look much lower than it actually is. This could cause problems since EL 8 is supposed to be a challenging encounter for an 8th level party so you might end up taking this challenging encounter and scaling it higher or throw more encounters at this level than you should since you'd think it's a much lower challenge. That said, the EL system breaks down in a lot of ways so your system might help adjust for some of that when you're dealing with large encounters. Since I don't have the DMG with me I can't really check this though so it's just pure speculation on my behalf.