D&D 5E Automatic random encounters

[wedgeski]

Yes, you're right, but I don't see a problem combining both approaches, do you? So using Reynard's travel damage and have some extra encounters that can (should) be solved non-combat. That way I have both: automatically resolved combat encounters and a few additional story- or theme-driven encounters.
Again, I'll try something like that tonight and report here tomorrow.

Nope, no problem at all! GLHF!

 

[ymd.fallen]

Okay, yesterday we tried it out. And what can I say? The players liked it. We were able to handle a single travel in about 30 seconds and they still had the feeling that something bad could happen (rolling dice always works).
I just think that I have to finetune it a little more. In general the travels were too easy for my taste and didn't really affect the party. I automatically set the travel difficulty to 0.25 * number of hexes traveled (on the Dessarin Valley map, rounded down). So usually we had a difficulty of 1-2. With a DC15 on a check of the players' choice (with modifiers mostly of +5/+6/+7), this mostly ended up with no travel damage at all. So maybe next time I just add +2 to the difficulty or something like that.
Furthermore, one player suggested to have a fixed set of skills that are needed, e.g. a few Stealth for sneaky approaches, a few Strengths for combats, a few Persuasion for talking out of battle, etc. This would make it a little more difficult. Let's see what we come up with.

 

[Reynard]

Okay, yesterday we tried it out. And what can I say? The players liked it. We were able to handle a single travel in about 30 seconds and they still had the feeling that something bad could happen (rolling dice always works).
I just think that I have to finetune it a little more. In general the travels were too easy for my taste and didn't really affect the party. I automatically set the travel difficulty to 0.25 * number of hexes traveled (on the Dessarin Valley map, rounded down). So usually we had a difficulty of 1-2. With a DC15 on a check of the players' choice (with modifiers mostly of +5/+6/+7), this mostly ended up with no travel damage at all. So maybe next time I just add +2 to the difficulty or something like that.
Furthermore, one player suggested to have a fixed set of skills that are needed, e.g. a few Stealth for sneaky approaches, a few Strengths for combats, a few Persuasion for talking out of battle, etc. This would make it a little more difficult. Let's see what we come up with.

Sounds like you had a good time. I wonder if you could use fairly typical encounter charts to guide the process. This might mean that the players can't always pick the skill they are absolute best at. If every PC has to deal with one obstacle per unit of distance or time (however you want to build it) it is possible that when the city born sorcerer's turn comes up it is giant ants. You can't talk your way out of that (and remember the "travel damage" represents stuff like getting hurt or having to burn spell slots).

 

[Psikerlord#]

Okay, yesterday we tried it out. And what can I say? The players liked it. We were able to handle a single travel in about 30 seconds and they still had the feeling that something bad could happen (rolling dice always works).
I just think that I have to finetune it a little more. In general the travels were too easy for my taste and didn't really affect the party. I automatically set the travel difficulty to 0.25 * number of hexes traveled (on the Dessarin Valley map, rounded down). So usually we had a difficulty of 1-2. With a DC15 on a check of the players' choice (with modifiers mostly of +5/+6/+7), this mostly ended up with no travel damage at all. So maybe next time I just add +2 to the difficulty or something like that.
Furthermore, one player suggested to have a fixed set of skills that are needed, e.g. a few Stealth for sneaky approaches, a few Strengths for combats, a few Persuasion for talking out of battle, etc. This would make it a little more difficult. Let's see what we come up with.

That suggested skills approach reminds me of skill challenges from 4e, which does seem to suit abstracted dangerous travel I think. You might also toy with Constitution checks and levels of exhaustion, we did that for an Athas game and it worked well, exhaustion levels are quite unforgiving if you get a few, and are not HP related (if you want to avoid that).

This is an area ripe for some solid houseruling I think!

 

[ymd.fallen]

Sounds like you had a good time. I wonder if you could use fairly typical encounter charts to guide the process. This might mean that the players can't always pick the skill they are absolute best at. If every PC has to deal with one obstacle per unit of distance or time (however you want to build it) it is possible that when the city born sorcerer's turn comes up it is giant ants. You can't talk your way out of that (and remember the "travel damage" represents stuff like getting hurt or having to burn spell slots).

What would you do if the number of "obstacles" or higher or lower than the number of players? Who comes first? What order, i.e. roll intiative or something like that? The way I understand your approach, every player would probably roll more than one die per travel?

 

[ymd.fallen]

That suggested skills approach reminds me of skill challenges from 4e, which does seem to suit abstracted dangerous travel I think. You might also toy with Constitution checks and levels of exhaustion, we did that for an Athas game and it worked well, exhaustion levels are quite unforgiving if you get a few, and are not HP related (if you want to avoid that).

Yes, also also definitely like the idea of using exhaustion for this, I really didn't think of it before. How did the skill challenges work in 4e? I skipped that edition...

 

[Reynard]

What would you do if the number of "obstacles" or higher or lower than the number of players? Who comes first? What order, i.e. roll intiative or something like that? The way I understand your approach, every player would probably roll more than one die per travel?

I am just spitballing obviously, but the way i envision the system is something like this:

The PCs are setting out on a journey. The journey will have a number of "legs" -- a "leg" is defined by a discrete environment. For example, the part needs to go from town to the dungeon in the mountains and this journey has three legs: a couple days on the road, a day through a haunted forest, and then three days in the mountains.

Each leg has a Difficulty rating and a Threat rating based on how dangerous the environment is, which is a combination of both the probability of random encounters and terrain effects. Difficulties range from 10 to 25. This is the skill check target number. threats range from 1 to 4. This is the potential travel damage for the leg. For the above example, assume the following: Leg 1 10/1, Leg 2 15/4 and leg 3 20/2.

Every day of travel, the party must make a check against the difficulty of that leg. Here you might use the environments random encounter chart for inspiration as to what kind of check to make based on what kind of obstacle is present. Every PC makes a check for the day. Success reduces the Threat by 1. Once the Threat is at 0 no more checks need be made. It gets a little metagamey here, but since we are trying to dispense with time consuming encounters we are already deeply in metagame territory: a PC can't make another check, even on the next day or next leg, until all the other PCs have made one (this is to keep the ranger from jumping in every time).

So, the example journey includes two DC 10 checks, a DC 15 check and 3 DC 20 checks. Each time, the party works together to reduce the Threat to 0.

At the end of the journey, all remaining Threat is added up to determine the Travel Damage taken, which must be "bought off" by each PC with Exhaustion levels, spent Hit Dice, used up daily abilities and spell slots, and so on. One would have to work out a good conversion for each resource.

Again, that's all very bar napkin sketching but I think it is the seed of a good system.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I am just spitballing obviously, but the way i envision the system is something like this:

The PCs are setting out on a journey. The journey will have a number of "legs" -- a "leg" is defined by a discrete environment. For example, the part needs to go from town to the dungeon in the mountains and this journey has three legs: a couple days on the road, a day through a haunted forest, and then three days in the mountains.

Each leg has a Difficulty rating and a Threat rating based on how dangerous the environment is, which is a combination of both the probability of random encounters and terrain effects. Difficulties range from 10 to 25. This is the skill check target number. threats range from 1 to 4. This is the potential travel damage for the leg. For the above example, assume the following: Leg 1 10/1, Leg 2 15/4 and leg 3 20/2.

Every day of travel, the party must make a check against the difficulty of that leg. Here you might use the environments random encounter chart for inspiration as to what kind of check to make based on what kind of obstacle is present. Every PC makes a check for the day. Success reduces the Threat by 1. Once the Threat is at 0 no more checks need be made. It gets a little metagamey here, but since we are trying to dispense with time consuming encounters we are already deeply in metagame territory: a PC can't make another check, even on the next day or next leg, until all the other PCs have made one (this is to keep the ranger from jumping in every time).

So, the example journey includes two DC 10 checks, a DC 15 check and 3 DC 20 checks. Each time, the party works together to reduce the Threat to 0.

At the end of the journey, all remaining Threat is added up to determine the Travel Damage taken, which must be "bought off" by each PC with Exhaustion levels, spent Hit Dice, used up daily abilities and spell slots, and so on. One would have to work out a good conversion for each resource.

Again, that's all very bar napkin sketching but I think it is the seed of a good system.

Yeah I really like the idea of breaking up the journey into legs according to terrain. Teh PCs could choose alternate routes too, giving more decision points. Very interesting indeed!

 

[ymd.fallen]

I like the idea of specific threats for different types of landscape, i.e. Reynard's "legs". However, I still see a problem with the skill checks: I think neither allowing the players to pick a skill/ability for the check (too easy) nor fixing it to a specific one would work (too restrictive).

For the last couple of days I was thinking of an alternative: I could prepare a small deck of cards with obstacles for a travel. Each one presents different ways for resolving them. Some examples:

Bandits:
- sneak around them (DC15 Stealth)
- combat (DC15 of the PCs' main attribute, i.e. Strength for fighters, Dexterity for Rangers, Intelligence for Sorcerers, ...)
- pay 1000gp

Falling rocks:
- deflect rocks (DC20 Strength)
- jump away (DC15 Dexterity)

Wild boars:
- sneak around (see above)
- combat (see above)
- calm animals down (DC15 Animal handling)

Now in the game, I have the different legs of the travel and put together the deck of cards accordingly (i.e. there'll be no falling rocks in a swamp) and draw some of them according to the difficulty (i.e. difficulty 1 means draw 1 card, and so on). For each card I let the party decide how to resolve the obstacle and let all of them do the check (or pay the money or whatever). Then we calculate as before: number of failed checks - number of succeeded checks + some modifier (which is also printed on the card). If the result is 0 or below, nothing happens, otherwise they get travel damage, which adds up over all legs of the travel.

I think this way the players have more influence on how to get past an obstacle, which should make it more interesting for them. And it's a little less meta-gamey, as we resolve with checks correlating with the threats.