CR Value

I'm sorry, but were the designers of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 high when they came up with CR? How is one 5th level character a challenge at all for 5 5th level characters to fight? Pretty much, they lay waste to these encounters one after another.

I think I'm used to first edition where you had to wade through hundreds of encounters to level up. Now, you can fight fleas and after 12 or so such battles, you're up to the next level. That's ridiculous. I assumed that when looking at these new rules, the whole thing would boil down to a kind of Champions or Vampire situation--lots of low level grunts who you could demolish easilly with a real battle at the end of the adventure with someone who's a real challenge--but no. The modules designed for Dungeons and Dragons are the same format as the old. But of course, CR doesn't seem to have anything to do with those encounters. They'll list an EL rating for an encounter that's actually lower than the CR for the monsters in it. What the hell? This is the experience system they're screwing with here. It's sort of the backbone for the game.

As a DM, I'm findidng that the only way to make the combat interesting is to aim for a CR a point or two above the characters. This is working, but only because they're fighting one encounter a night. What are people doing who play through four or five battles a night. What? Is everyone supposed to be level 20 by the end of the month?

I don't know what they're doing for version 4.0, but my suggestion is that on the top of the list should be a fix for this.