Is this game supposed to be insanely hard?

Right I meant appropriate.
Your last example is one that the DMG describes so: "Encounters with more than a dozen creatures are difficult to judge. If you need thirteen or more creatures to provide enough XP for a standard encounter, then those individual monsters are probably so weak that they don´t make for a good encounter. That´s why Table 3-1 doesn´t have an entry larger than twelve for "Number of Creatures"."

To make it a better encounter for a CR 10 I would not use 16 2HD Orcs but 12 CR 3 enemies.

 

sleep still ends this battle, and if it's 4 cr 4 creatures you end the battle with web, for instance.

 

If you mean that there are spells that are often useful - sure.
But why should Sleep "end this battle"? Sleep only works on 4 HD of monsters so one casting would only sleep perhaps 1 of the enemies of such an encounter and as the Lareth battle demonstrates sleeping enemies can be woken up by their comrades.

 

you are right, i forgot that sleep affects only 4hd of creatures not every creature below 4hd. but the point still stands that challenge rating is a broken mechanic; summon monster or nature's ally should be proof enough.

 

Maybe your are taking on these battles at a higher level than they are designed for.

Balancing an encounter is one of the most difficult things faced by a game designer, because for every person that says it too easy there are two that say it's too hard.

A never ending debate if ever there was one.

 

summon monster: the caster summons monsters which do not get accounted for when calculating the cr of the encounter, because it is supposed to be part of his abilities. now pray tell me how a cleric who summons celestial bisons is not totally ripping apart a fighter of the same cr. it's even worse with planar binding and gate.

 

I don't think of it as one character against another character, but more of a team of characters facing an encounter.

If my fighter was having problems with a summoned bison, then maybe MY cleric should buff him a little to give him a better shot.

I believe the cr of a player character does take into account his abilities, that's one of the reasons a higher level character has a higher cr.

 

What I know about programming you can fit in a thimble. But my one complaint about the game is the attack, damage and saves rolls in combat. If I pull up the roll history screen and keep track, it is seriously biased against the player. I have a suspicion that the rolls are intentionally biased against the player, at least early on in the encounter.

This seems particularly true in what seem to be boss fights. The moathouse boss battle in particular stands out in my memory. The bad guys seem to roll 15+'s on about 50-60% of their attack rolls while the PC's roll 5 or less about 50-60% of the time. It's crazy. I'm firmly convinced that both 1's and 20's get rolled more often than 10% of the time.

 

The RNG used by the game engine has been discussed in depth and a search for this topic could give you a great deal of input from many other players.

Myself, I have a knack for rolling bad .... Real bad. Last week in one of our PnP sessions I rolled a 1 three times back to back, that is almost impossible, but yet - I pulled it off.

 

Oh, I could regale stories of [un]fortuitous and inexplicable die rolls until my voice went hoarse, but that wouldn't do much good here. That is one thing I like about D&D, is that the dice rolling is always unpredictable, whether you hope for the best or the worst.

 

Funny, gonna use that one next game, which is tonight!

 

that's exactly what i've written before.