Im not sure about capping the forges even though i may approve of capping the number of fleshforged if the number is reasonably high and if the CR cap is increased like to CR18-20 etc
The cap would still be high enough that we can churn out strategically relevant numbers of creatures, abstracted as large units, but low enough that we can't just drown the world in them as long as our bank accounts are in the positive. Right now, nothing would stop us from dumping 50 million IM into the forges and getting out an entire Legion made out of nothing but fullcasters and CR 15 murder-blenders.
I mean,
@Artemis1992 was completely right about our higher undead being able to tapdance on the default Gold Golems. The upgraded version of the golems (de facto always hasted, getting 5 attacks a round with a enchanted glaive as opposed to two slams) would be more even, but I'd still bet on a Black Brute in 1 on 1 combat. This is partially the result of this being a poor match for the golems (undead are immune to the nastier save-or-suck effects of their prismatic rays and our undead are specifically built to be HP mountains with extremely strong melee, which makes them very well suited to destroy golems, while the golems biggest strength, the magic immunity, is irrelevant in this match), but overall, a CR 14 creature is one hell of a force.
This is just another example of the narrative not really delivering on all the forge creations. Their battles tend to be out of focus most of the time and more often than not, they mostly show up as casualty statistics without us seeing just what amount of insane firepower was needed to bring them down. I remember the Golden Company battle having some people complain that the undead were useless due to their heavy losses until I made a statistic that clearly showed how we lost basically just easily replaced chaff, while the enemy was hemorrhaging high-CR dragons and casters. Same with the Black Brutes suffering one loss and one near-loss against the elephants, which sounded unimpressive, but taking down even one brute takes nearly 300 HP of damage. These things can survive
direct canon fire. The other category of creatures who are this resilient are high-level Outsiders and Adult+ Dragons.
So, no. I don't think the CR cap needs raising. What we need more is a bit of PC / High-CR Gribbly vs. Forged Creature combat that is given proper stage time instead of using them mainly as props in the background of PC fights. This is especially egregious when we send out someone mid-level like Valeana to lead a force containing multiple CR 15 creatures that utterly eclipse her in power, but the narrative focus is solely on her, not just as the leader, but also as the most prominent fighter. (I don't remember this happening explicitely with Valeana, but it did happen repeatedly with different characters. One of the most egregious example is Slavery Bay, where the narrative nearly exclusively revolves around PCs while we constantly have extremely murderous creatures assigned there.)
The one exception there is, in my perception, the Myrkdreki, since I wrote some omakes where they prominently fought side-by-side with high-level PCs. In the recent Iron Isles fight, they even did give direct and meaningful backup to main-party grade fights.
