The Deadly Encounter Benchmark – The Lazy D&D Way to "Balance" Combat Encounters

39K views • 5 years ago • 20:07 Mike offers a simple tool you can keep in your head for determining whether a given combat encounter may be deadly in Dungeons & Dragons. Here it is in two steps: 1. Build encounters from the story and the situation. Choose monsters and determine combatants by what happens in that story. 2. Determine whether an encounter may be deadly. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings are greater than half the sum total of character levels or one quarter if the characters are below 5th level. Video Contents 00:00 Beginning 00:35 The Deadly Encounter Benchmark 02:03 Comparing monster CRs to character levels 05:30 Qualifiers for encounter balance. Why it's so hard. 09:24 Only you know the true capabilities of the characters in your game 10:31 How the Dungeon Master's Guide does it 12:24 How Xanathar's Guide does it 13:08 How I do it in the Lazy DM's Workbook 14:37 Running easy battles is awesome 17:30 Advantages of this system 18:42 Summary of the benchmark Artwork by Jack Kaiser and Victor Leza Moreno. Buy Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master http://slyflourish.com/returnofthelazydm/ Buy Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot https://slyflourish.com/grendleroot/ Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/slyflourish Subscribe to the Sly Flourish Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/aea22a827290/slyflourishnewsletter Buy the Lazy DM's Workbook http://slyflourish.com/lazydmsworkbook/ Sly Flourish Discord Channel https://discord.gg/C7bSuqZ