Need some wilderness encounter building help/ideas

[NewJeffCT]

My party of six PCs is currently at level 8 in game and is going to be journeying to a sparsely populated area in hopes of exploring it, taming it and making it their own. (think Kingmaker, but higher level)

I'm looking for several wilderness encounter ideas that will hopefully give them some good challenges (a group of encounters each in the level 7-10 range, maybe an 11/12 in there). This could be forest, swamp/marsh, river or hills.

They've already had their fill of goblins and ghouls. They also have an upcoming encounter with human raiders and trolls.

I have several series' of encounters already set with (mostly) human bandits, kobolds in a heavily trapped lair, and spriggans. So, hopefully nothing with any of those three types of opponents.

Maybe an adult green dragon (level 10 solo) as a climax to one set of encounters? What sort of minions/support would lead up to a green dragon?

A series of encounters with ogres maybe?

Any other ideas?

The party makeup is:
Elf Ranger (archer build)
Eladrin Rogue (brutal)
Human artificer/swordmage
Human wizard
Human Fighter
Human shaman

Thanks!

 

[Saagael]

If they're trying to tame the land to make it livable, and its mostly wilderness, I think a run in with some nasty dryads, treants, and nymphs might be in order (or any fey creature for that matter).

You might also try a hag or oni that's been lording over the local troglodyte and lizardfolk population. And of course there're always the bulliwugs; they never get enough love.

 

[NewJeffCT]

If they're trying to tame the land to make it livable, and its mostly wilderness, I think a run in with some nasty dryads, treants, and nymphs might be in order (or any fey creature for that matter).

You might also try a hag or oni that's been lording over the local troglodyte and lizardfolk population. And of course there're always the bulliwugs; they never get enough love.

trogs sounds like a good idea, as would some sort of hag. Thanks

I'd award you XP, but I need to spread it around more first

 

[NewJeffCT]

looking for a few more ideas - thanks

 

[Kinneus]

One of the biggest problems I have running wilderness encounters is the five-minute adventuring day. If you plot things out realistically, PCs are probably only going to have a single encounter a day, if even that. It's hard to challenge PCs when they have all of their resources every single encounter, and they know they're going to get them back after at the end of the encounter.

Of course, you could put some sort of arbitrary time constraint on them to discourage extended rests, but since this sounds like an exploration adventure stemming from the PCs own perogative, that might be difficult to shoehorn in. Your other option to make things challenging is to have one encounter after another, but this can be difficult to justify. If the adventure is taking place in a massive wilderness, then how come every bandit, predator and wandering monster just happened to stumble across the PCs in the same eight-hour timeframe?

The best solution to creating a challenging, realistic environment in the middle of nowhere is scavengers.

Say the PCs just bested a group of human and troll bandits. Hurrah! Time to move on, right? Unfortunately, that's when your PC with the highest passive Perception notices a dark shape moving the nearby underbrush. Some big, scary predator (Owlbears, I'm thinking, for your particular level) have spotted all the fresh carrion your PCs just created. And they're moving in, and they're likely going to try and take the PCs down, too, or at least scare them off so they can eat unmolested. It doesn't take much to explain; the monsters heard combat, smelled blood, were very hungry, and so came a-runnin'. And bingo, back-to-back combat sufficient to challenge your party with.

P.S. - While the party watches the owlbears circle, working up the nerve to attack, I'd give them a short rest. I'm simply of the opinion that depriving a party of a short rest should be done very rarely, if ever. If you do decide to have the scavengers charge right away, be sure to scale the encounter down a bit to account for the party having fewer Encounter powers, including the all-important Healing Words and Healing Word-look-alikes.

 

[NewJeffCT]

scavengers is a good idea.

however, I can also look at lairs of different monsters - like the aforementioned hag. Hags in prior editions sometimes would work with ogres (merrow) /trolls (scrags) as consorts. The PCs could first encounter a patrol of ogres, then maybe the hag sends out a second wave of ogres/trolls and then the final encounter in the heart of her lair.

Then, with the spriggans, the main encounter will be in their underground lair - so, they'll have several rooms of spriggans to deal with there.

Similar with other monsters - if the PCs were lower level and were facing orcs or hogboblins, you could run it similar to the hags - a few waves of orcs/hobgoblins, then the main encounters at the orc camp or hoggoblin lair.

 

[Raikun]

One of the biggest problems I have running wilderness encounters is the five-minute adventuring day. If you plot things out realistically, PCs are probably only going to have a single encounter a day, if even that. It's hard to challenge PCs when they have all of their resources every single encounter, and they know they're going to get them back after at the end of the encounter.

I kinda house-ruled that. I'm tweaking pieces of it so that the math continues to work, but the basic idea is, an extended rest doesn't give back all healing surges/powers unless it's in an Inn/home/real bed/etc.

Instead, if they make camp in the wilderness, they need nature checks etc to build a camp, and the total of their roll tells how many surges they get back, as well as chance to get daily powers etc. Also, camping in the wilderness doesn't reset Milestones/Action points.

Then I also allow other skills to help with the roll...the wizard can do an Arcana check (setting magical wards etc), which will let him add part of his roll, Perception checks might help find a spot free of monster traffic, etc.

So, that way I can throw harder than average encounters at them, since they will likely get some surges back, but challenging enough that staying in the wilderness for an extended time is likely to chip away at their resources until they return to civilization.

 

[ThunhusDM]

One of the biggest problems I have running wilderness encounters is the five-minute adventuring day. If you plot things out realistically, PCs are probably only going to have a single encounter a day, if even that. It's hard to challenge PCs when they have all of their resources every single encounter, and they know they're going to get them back after at the end of the encounter.

Of course, you could put some sort of arbitrary time constraint on them to discourage extended rests, but since this sounds like an exploration adventure stemming from the PCs own perogative, that might be difficult to shoehorn in. Your other option to make things challenging is to have one encounter after another, but this can be difficult to justify. If the adventure is taking place in a massive wilderness, then how come every bandit, predator and wandering monster just happened to stumble across the PCs in the same eight-hour timeframe?

The best solution to creating a challenging, realistic environment in the middle of nowhere is scavengers.

Say the PCs just bested a group of human and troll bandits. Hurrah! Time to move on, right? Unfortunately, that's when your PC with the highest passive Perception notices a dark shape moving the nearby underbrush. Some big, scary predator (Owlbears, I'm thinking, for your particular level) have spotted all the fresh carrion your PCs just created. And they're moving in, and they're likely going to try and take the PCs down, too, or at least scare them off so they can eat unmolested. It doesn't take much to explain; the monsters heard combat, smelled blood, were very hungry, and so came a-runnin'. And bingo, back-to-back combat sufficient to challenge your party with.

P.S. - While the party watches the owlbears circle, working up the nerve to attack, I'd give them a short rest. I'm simply of the opinion that depriving a party of a short rest should be done very rarely, if ever. If you do decide to have the scavengers charge right away, be sure to scale the encounter down a bit to account for the party having fewer Encounter powers, including the all-important Healing Words and Healing Word-look-alikes.

I have similar adventure for 11-14 level characters. I just made encounters harder so players used almost all dailies and surges in just one encounter. Worked okey.

I used white dragon as scavenger once. It let me use same battlemap twice.

Thunhus

 

[ThunhusDM]

Maybe an adult green dragon (level 10 solo) as a climax to one set of encounters? What sort of minions/support would lead up to a green dragon?

A series of encounters with ogres maybe?

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

Use green dragon as scavenger. It could fly anywhere and attack. Make it retreat to it's lair when bloodied.
Dragon could have kobold worshippers. A rout to dragon lair could include a canyon/dungeon full of traps and kobold minions.

Ogres
Hillbilly ogres living in a farmhouse (Paizo's Hook Mountain massacre)

Knight with entourage
-seeking minotaur brothers (murderers and thieves)
-could be allies

Minotaur brothers with mage
-Mage has hired brothers as bodyguards
-Looking for lost artifact. Has a map.

Elves
-neutral elves who don't like tresspassers
-Do not like to be tamed
-have problems with dragon and ogres

Thunhus

 

[NewJeffCT]

Use green dragon as scavenger. It could fly anywhere and attack. Make it retreat to it's lair when bloodied.
Dragon could have kobold worshippers. A rout to dragon lair could include a canyon/dungeon full of traps and kobold minions.

Ogres
Hillbilly ogres living in a farmhouse (Paizo's Hook Mountain massacre)

Knight with entourage
-seeking minotaur brothers (murderers and thieves)
-could be allies

Minotaur brothers with mage
-Mage has hired brothers as bodyguards
-Looking for lost artifact. Has a map.

Elves
-neutral elves who don't like tresspassers
-Do not like to be tamed
-have problems with dragon and ogres

Thunhus

good ideas - thanks. The hillbilly ogres might work well, as I had run some of the Rise of the Runelords stuff earlier in the campaign before I soured on it...