The scenery type stuff should mostly be in addition to the interesting encounters and not be the encounter itself. And often times you don't want that stuff to be random. If you are using say the weather to help set a specific tone then you can't use/rely on a random table to do that.
One problem with this type of "random" approach is that without the adventuring context a lot of this stuff is just not particularly interesting in itself.
If the players are trying to sneak into an orc camp to rescue some prisoners, then something like a posturing bear becomes more interesting...
My belief is that to make anything interesting there needs to be an interesting choice being made by the players. So the answer to how to make travel interesting is simple, provide interesting choices for the players.
Random combat encounters don't tend to provide interesting choices, but that...
Keep in mind the ratio of actions stays the same regardless of how many players there are because it's based on the hope/fear dice and not the number of players all getting a turn. The increased difficulty from a larger group comes from the larger total HP/Stress/Hope pools that the adversaries...
There's the fluidity element that should help either speed up the combat, or at least remove the sort of dead space of a player spending a couple minutes trying to decide what to do which is pretty common for CR. But additionally the spotlight swinging back to the DM often through either failed...
I think they had already said he was.
I haven't played Daggerheart myself yet, but my impression is that it handles bigger parties better then 5e does. And with Matt as a player plus Robbie with the whole crew + guest stars that they no doubt want to continue having, that's a pretty unwieldly...
I would imagine they want to announce it closer to the actual start date of C4 so that it's still in the news and being talked about when the game actually starts.
It was mentioned by I think Sam that when doing the TV show that they had to re-order a lot from the actual play because they were just wandering around aimlessly for so much of it. So there's been an attempt to make the storyline a little more coherent, but we'll have to wait and see.
It's impossible to provide an adequate simulation of everything that is theoretically possible because that's infinite. If there's specific things a player wants then it can be homebrewed and would need to be fun and balanced against other features. Creating a trap options for PCs just because...
I would consider plagiarizing some stuff from the FR the Order of the Dark Moon. These were Monk/Sorcerers hybrids using the shadow weave that were the spies/assassins for Shar. Thematically they make for a solid mage hunters.
In terms of stat blocks start with Martial Arts Adept from MPMotM...
Yes if you want your PC to retire from adventuring and spend the next 5 years training sure go ahead, in the meantime roll up a new character and let's continue the current campaign we are in. Or find or create a homebrew class/subclass/feat for whatever it is and if it's balanced it will be...