Menu
Sign In Search Podcasts Charts People & Topics Add Podcast API Pricing

Mike Shea

👤 Person
17697 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

Scott Gray, my friend and colleague that I've worked with on many books, including Forge of Foes, had a variant that he put into Forge of Foes, which I thought was really good too, which is essentially you can add all the character levels together... you divide it by four and then you multiply it by the tier of the characters.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

Scott Gray, my friend and colleague that I've worked with on many books, including Forge of Foes, had a variant that he put into Forge of Foes, which I thought was really good too, which is essentially you can add all the character levels together... you divide it by four and then you multiply it by the tier of the characters.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

Scott Gray, my friend and colleague that I've worked with on many books, including Forge of Foes, had a variant that he put into Forge of Foes, which I thought was really good too, which is essentially you can add all the character levels together... you divide it by four and then you multiply it by the tier of the characters.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

If they're tier one, you multiply it by one, which means it's still divided by four. If they're tier two, you multiply it by two, which now made it one half instead of fourth, multiply it by tier three and you get the tier three one or four, right?

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

If they're tier one, you multiply it by one, which means it's still divided by four. If they're tier two, you multiply it by two, which now made it one half instead of fourth, multiply it by tier three and you get the tier three one or four, right?

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

If they're tier one, you multiply it by one, which means it's still divided by four. If they're tier two, you multiply it by two, which now made it one half instead of fourth, multiply it by tier three and you get the tier three one or four, right?

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

So if you know the tiers of character levels, which is first to fourth is tier one, fifth to 10th is tier two, 11th to 16th is tier three and 17th to 20th is tier four. You can just keep that in mind and that's your way to keep your benchmark. But one thing that I really like doing and I recommend doing is writing the benchmark down during your preps just to have that number in front of you.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

So if you know the tiers of character levels, which is first to fourth is tier one, fifth to 10th is tier two, 11th to 16th is tier three and 17th to 20th is tier four. You can just keep that in mind and that's your way to keep your benchmark. But one thing that I really like doing and I recommend doing is writing the benchmark down during your preps just to have that number in front of you.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

So if you know the tiers of character levels, which is first to fourth is tier one, fifth to 10th is tier two, 11th to 16th is tier three and 17th to 20th is tier four. You can just keep that in mind and that's your way to keep your benchmark. But one thing that I really like doing and I recommend doing is writing the benchmark down during your preps just to have that number in front of you.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

It's not there to help you build encounters. It's there to help you understand what kind of threat an encounter may have when you're looking at it. So what are some advantages of the lazy encounter benchmark? These are, these are reasons I've done, but encounter billing stuff for a long time. And what are some of the reasons why this is a good approach?

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

It's not there to help you build encounters. It's there to help you understand what kind of threat an encounter may have when you're looking at it. So what are some advantages of the lazy encounter benchmark? These are, these are reasons I've done, but encounter billing stuff for a long time. And what are some of the reasons why this is a good approach?

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

It's not there to help you build encounters. It's there to help you understand what kind of threat an encounter may have when you're looking at it. So what are some advantages of the lazy encounter benchmark? These are, these are reasons I've done, but encounter billing stuff for a long time. And what are some of the reasons why this is a good approach?

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

One, it scales with the number of characters. It doesn't matter if you have three characters or five characters or six characters, however many characters you have, you can still do the math the exact same way. You just add all the characters, add all the characters together.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

One, it scales with the number of characters. It doesn't matter if you have three characters or five characters or six characters, however many characters you have, you can still do the math the exact same way. You just add all the characters, add all the characters together.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

One, it scales with the number of characters. It doesn't matter if you have three characters or five characters or six characters, however many characters you have, you can still do the math the exact same way. You just add all the characters, add all the characters together.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

It also allows you, if you're one of the weird groups where you have a mixed level of characters, like some characters are level six and some are level four, you can, it still works because you're adding all the characters levels together. It means a lower it for the group that has where you have four. So it actually works well, even if you're using a mixed set of levels of characters.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

It also allows you, if you're one of the weird groups where you have a mixed level of characters, like some characters are level six and some are level four, you can, it still works because you're adding all the characters levels together. It means a lower it for the group that has where you have four. So it actually works well, even if you're using a mixed set of levels of characters.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

It also allows you, if you're one of the weird groups where you have a mixed level of characters, like some characters are level six and some are level four, you can, it still works because you're adding all the characters levels together. It means a lower it for the group that has where you have four. So it actually works well, even if you're using a mixed set of levels of characters.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

I don't know many groups that are, but if you happened to be, if you happens to have some characters that are fourth level and some that are sixth level, this is a really easy benchmark to use because you just add them all together. It also scales with monsters of different challenge ratings, like we were talking about bandits and veterans together.

The Lazy RPG Podcast - D&D and RPG News and GM Prep from Sly Flourish
Challenge Rating Deep Dive – Lazy RPG Talk Show

I don't know many groups that are, but if you happened to be, if you happens to have some characters that are fourth level and some that are sixth level, this is a really easy benchmark to use because you just add them all together. It also scales with monsters of different challenge ratings, like we were talking about bandits and veterans together.