September 2023 Sly Flourish Patreon Q&A

Hey Mike you've been talking a lot about the next iteration of DnD coming in 2024. Given this last playtest packet, do you find yourself disinterested in WotC's direction? I want to see the next evolution and the game and for them to provide guidance for roleplaying and theatre of the mind combat. If they take the great parts of 5e and build upon it I feel it would be much better. Great it for new players, fix the broken pieces, and tailor a DMG that all DMs can learn from.

Its probably best not managed in math. I was just writing about this in a freelance assignment I've been working on. The difficulty of waves changes depending on how fast those waves come in. If there's room between waves and they're not overlapping heavily, it'll be easier. The more the waves overlap, the harder it goes. So there's no clean way to adjust the encounter benchmark to account for waves. You're best off keeping it in mind for each wave and then deciding how much overlap there is between waves. Those overlaps are also a dial you can turn. If things look too hard, stretch out the waves or have the next wave include fewer creatures. If they're having an easier time, add more monsters coming sooner. Hope that helps!

Michael Shea

Hey, Mike, thanks so much for all the fantastic resources you’re putting out there for lazy/anxiety-prone DMs like me! My question: how would you adjust the Deadly Encounter Benchmark to account for the enemies coming in waves, instead of all being present from the beginning? I feel like there should be some sort of upward adjustment to account for the enemy’s reduced damage output, and the ability to focus fire. Obviously doing too much math is antithetical to the Lazy DM approach, but if you/anyone has found a quick rule of thumb like “the deadly benchmark for each wave is 1/2 the normal deadly benchmark” that would be great! (I’m confident my hypothetical example would not work, just using it as an illustration)

Sam