Tl;dr: How would you handle the idea of stumbling upon a
sanctuary – a particularly safe, dry, beneficial, and thematic resting place – while exploring the jungles of Chult?
I'm contemplating a
sanctuary allowing all PCs to rest without one keeping watch, restoring all levels of exhaustion (not just one), and allowing PCs to safely travel between known sanctuaries without random encounters. Does that seem reasonable?
I've been pre-rolling random encounters for ToA, hoping to do a bit of prep making them more interesting than "boo! another snake springs out!" So I'm treating the random encounter tables as raw ingredients with which to make interesting meals. To that end I've been using this slightly modified encounter roll & interpolating results creatively (and I also picked up the
Tomb of Annihilation Companion)... I also massaged the results to minimize single-encounter days...
1 = sanctuary
2-15 = no encounter
16-19 = encounter
20 = two encounters mixed together
I pre-roll for AM/PM/Night jungle encounters (and random weather, but not including that here for simplicity), and usually note the different options for "no undead"/"undead"/"greater undead" territories which I'm interpreting creatively:
Day 1: - / 25 (stegasaurus) / -
ask players about camping procedures
Day 2: - / - / -
this would be a narrated day of travel, not actually played through
Day 3*: - / 12 (cannibals/ankylosaurus/tyrannosauraus) + 96 (winterscape/yellow musk creeper/“) / -
described below
Day 4: - / - / -
this would be a narrated day of travel, not actually played through
Day 5*: SANCTUARY / - / 22 (hadrosaurus/dead explorer/flaming fist)
described below
Day 3: Cannibal Village
Decaying tree houses with grisly cannibalistic fetishes amid yellow flower garlands. 12
yellow musk zombies wander below. Up in treehouses are 14
tribal warriors quietly feasting on zombie corpses – the yellow musk serves to intoxicate them – and they are careful not to disturb a
yellow musk creeper overgrowing obvious wooden stairs at central tree of the “village.”
Day 5: Signs of Batiri Goblins & “Jungle Princess”
In the morning, PCs find a ring of large stacked wood piles easily ignited as signal fires that serves as a SANCTUARY; lighting this beacon causes tribes or settlements who can see smoke to believe goblin attack is imminent. A carved totem stick has pictograms of fearsome spirits chasing masked goblins, and unconcealed 10-foot pits are dug around area.
Later, in dead of night, a herd of 12
hadrosaurus (of which 2 are noncombatant young) pass by, grazing on fronds, their movements revealing a dead explorer – bones of a human lashed to a tree by vines (a victim of goblins who was doused in honey & left out for insects). Victim has a note in pocket containing information about “Jungle Princess” – a successful racing dinosaur belonging to merchant prince
Ifan Talro’a but recently stolen by bandits. Talro’a believes the
deinonychus is being transported to Jahaka Anchorage to be sold to pirates, and offers a 150 gp reward for its return to Port Nyanzaru. The deinonychus can be recognized by orange and green “racing” stripes along its sides.
DM NOTE: "Jungle Princess" is borrowed from a /r/dnd thread! What Talro’a really fears is that his cheating in the races is exposed; among the ornamental jewelry placed on “Jungle Princess”, there’s an amulet of the cheetah – a magic item that functions like horseshoes of speed.