CR for a Tiefling bard

[calls_lightning]

Making a recurring henchman/villain (a tiefling bard) for my 5th level party of 5. What would be a good level to put said tiefling at?

Is there a table in the DM's guide I missed that would have that information?

edit: this is for a 3.5 campaign

[JNAProductions]

Making a recurring henchman/villain (a tiefling bard) for my 5th level party of 5. What would be a good level to put said tiefling at?

Is there a table in the DM's guide I missed that would have that information?

3E? We'd need WAY more info on your party-some parties will struggle with equal CR encounters, others will faceroll CR+10. And how well built do you want the bard? Technically, CR=ECL, but that doesn't work.

4E? No idea.

5E? I'd advise building the enemy as a monster, and just taking inspiration from the Bard class. No need to bind yourself to the class chassis.

[Lalliman]

Edit: I assumed that this is about 5e. Ignore if you meant a different edition.

There is no consistent way of converting level to CR, the game isn't made for that. This is because player characters are designed to function on resource expenditure across several battles, and NPCs are balanced around doing only a single battle (i.e. the one where they face the player characters).

The most reliable advice, especially if you're new to DMing this system, is to build this character with the monster creation rules and give them a number of bard-like abilities that (like most monster abilities) are either at-will or have a cooldown. That way you can be sure the CR system is working as intended.

Alternatively, if you actually want to use a bard, I suggest you just use whatever level seems right, and calculate an estimate of his CR using the guidelines given in monster creation. Then provide him with a suitable number of allies to adjust encounter difficulty.

[calls_lightning]

This is for a 3.5 campaign, three (sort of thee and a half) of my players are new. An equal level encounter was a decent fight when only four players were present.

[Malimar]

The actual rules answer: In 3.5e, each level of a PC class adds +1 to CR. (There's some stuff about associated vs non-associated classes, but this doesn't apply to a no-RHD tiefling.) So an appropriate level encounter for a level 5 party would be a level 5 tiefling bard. Throw on a couple more if you want him to be a boss.

The practical advice answer: bards are of course weak on their own, so you'll want to throw in some minions for the bard to buff. The bard is not a powerful thing on its own, but even that piddling +1/+1 of low-level Inspire Courage is a surprisingly effective force multiplier with enough minions. So if you want him to be a boss fight, I would recommend a level 5 bard, and then add enough lower-level minions to make a boss fight (using the CR-addition rules, which yes, the DMG has a table, but the general rule is twice the creatures is +2 to the total encounter rating). So if you want a good boss fight for your level 5 party, I'd use the level 5 bard and four CR1 minions (or eight CR½ minions), for a level 7 encounter, a good boss battle for a level 5 party.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: Moved.

[Thurbane]

The actual rules answer: In 3.5e, each level of a PC class adds +1 to CR.

While that's true for most races without HD, some (like Drow, or Karsites), call out an exception: both of these races are PC class levels +1 CR (or equal to NPC class levels).

Tiefling has no such special rule, so Malimar is correct regarding CR for a Tiefling.