Now That's a Can of Worms!

[Z. H. Darkstar]

One advantage of the Hardcovers however is the Random Encounter tables
Since you can always combine encounters into a super-encounter when it makes sense, there is nothing stopping an AL DM from adding a random encounter, and then combining it with a published encounter. This would give DMs more flexibility to "adding creatures" to an encounter. I wouldn't recommend this tactic except with experienced DMs however - and I would inform players that the encounter was combined with a random encounter (if asked). Last thing I want, is for DMs to be accused of adding creatures to an encounter that wasn't included in the adventure.

I actually did this recently at my OotA table. Since most of the Ch. 2 encounters are weak for a party doing the travel tasks for the Battle of Blingdenstone, I set up a "Day from Hell" for their last day of travel.

The penultimate day ended with them finding the warning sign outside of Neverlight Grove. The ultimate day then kicked off with a battle against Shadow Demons. A few hours after that was the Main Event, an encounter in the Boneyard with 3 Minotaur Skeletons and an interrupting Umber Hulk, as it was also the Umber Hulk's lair.

The trip back was no picnic either. I opted for another 2 encounters in 1 day scenario. The first was a pack of 8 Quaggoth Spore Servants, followed by 4 Carrion Crawlers a few hours later.

 

[Tyranthraxus]

Ive become a bit of an old pro at varied levels in encounters tables. My first few chapters of Princes were a mess , I had new players at level 1 and players who had just got their chracters to 3-4 from Lost Mine.

 

[Cascade]

In any case, the DM should not be adding monsters that are not present in an encounter.

I think as it has been said before...

"expect table variation"....I've personally experienced it both good and bad. It all comes down to the quality of the judge.

 

[Pauper]

Why not just ask Mearls to clarify what he was talking about?

Partly because the tweet is now over a month old, so it's not clear he'd even remember the context in which it was made.

Mainly, though, it's more to prep the AL staff for questions from people who encounter that tweet on the Sage Advice EU site and interpret it the way I did -- it mainly gives the staff a chance to prep a response before they actually need one. After all, most folks won't likely respond to Mearls's tweet, either, if they found it the same way I did.

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Pauper

 

[Pauper]

I actually did this recently at my OotA table. Since most of the Ch. 2 encounters are weak for a party doing the travel tasks for the Battle of Blingdenstone, I set up a "Day from Hell" for their last day of travel.

Nice! And a good way to upset the traditional all parties in the wilderness have exactly one encounter before reaching their destination trope.

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Pauper

 

[Anthraxus]

While I can see they probably don't want people dropping a Large Red Dragon randomly into a mod to make it tougher, for tough parties... "What do you mean you guys were TPK'ed by a Red Dragon? There weren't any in that mod!"

I can see scaling the encounter up to the next suggested level(in Expeditions/AL mods), or adding more creatures that were already appearing in the encounter(or a higher level/tougher one) as suggested by a few above. Add 10 or 20 hit points, up to its maximum, as suggested by Kalani, above?

I mean, if you *know* the Party can take it -and they want more of a challenge- anyway.

 

[Z. H. Darkstar]

Nice! And a good way to upset the traditional all parties in the wilderness have exactly one encounter before reaching their destination trope.

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Pauper

What was happening at my table prior to this is that I was using the Summarizing Travel option, rolling 1d6+1 for days passed and then rolling on the encounter table. RNGesus must have been taking pity on the players, because there would be long stretches of no encounters after almost a tenday went by. One of the trips had 15 straight days of nothing happened. That's when I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Sure, I now give them only one day of encounters on each leg of the trip. However, I make it my mission to make that one day of encounters a living hell. Although, I do try to at least be a fair DM and have the day of encounters be no more than a day's travel from civilization, so that any dead members of the party can get Raise Dead cast on them if they can afford it.

I'm going to start doing some research to come up with the party's final day from hell when they get to the exit of the Underdark. They're not going up against the Drow with full resources...

 

[RCanine]

I was trying to find the actual rules on modifying encounters and I was unable to.

 

[kalani]

Google "DMing and DM Empowerment" by Arthur Severance. That is the closest you will find to a clear-cut set of rules for modifying an encounter. With that being said, some people have argued Arthur meant "type" as in creature type (opening the door to widely different encounters), when in fact he meant "identical creature". This is especially true in the context of other statements he made such as "creatures of a different type have different abilities......"

 

[skerritthegreen]

Except there's one complication -- when Chris Tulach left the AL team to work on the Magic side of the WotC business, Mike Mearls was named as his replacement to the Wizard's AL team. In other words, Mearls is an admin, and one who represents the mothership in this discussion.

Not responding to the thread, but please note the above is incorrect. Chris Lindsay has replaced Chris Tulach as the Op Manager. Mike is everyone's boss. That said, he's right that one person shouldn't dictate the fun. And you can add extra of the same kind of monster to a combat. Just don't add random things.