tankschmidt
Explorer
“…it’s considered bad form to slaughter a party using a random encounter, since most players consider this ending to be an unsatisfying one.” -- 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide
Then what’s the point?
Of course, I am kidding. But it is true that 5e shipped with very few wandering monster tables, and the DMG includes something like a dozen qualifying statements on their use. But what to do if you want random encounters in your game?
We converted our campaign from BECMI D&D to 5e and found ourselves in this situation. Our game is heavily focused on megadungeon exploration and hexcrawling, which are both styles that make substantial use of random encounter tables. The most complete, if not the best, such tables are found at the end of the AD&D Monster Manual II.
Here is my attempt at converting those tables to 5e: https://pdf.yt/d/X2wKb_3z1z6sropM
The tables include 10 dungeon levels. The wilderness tables cover six terrain-types across three climate zones for both civilized and wilderness areas. There are also surface and deep tables for freshwater and saltwater across the three climate zones. There are even ethereal and astral tables. The document wraps up with AD&D-style advice on how to build lairs and encounters with these creatures.
For convenience, each table includes the page number corresponding the the relevant monster entry in 5e. Wilderness tables include the AD&D number appearing, but the number of monsters for each encounter on the dungeon tables is scaled to the party level. To do this, I assumed a party of four adventurers with their levels equal to the dungeon level. The listed monster ranges then correspond to Difficulty Thresholds from easy to just above deadly, as described in the DMG. This construction goes along with the central sandbox assumption that players are able to have some control over their level of risk in the dungeon but not so much so in the wilderness.
When I came to a monster that wasn’t in the 5e Monster Manual, I tried to keep the flavor for each entry as similar to the original as possible. Giant Bumblebee became Giant Wasp, and Lamassu became Androsphinx. In some cases, AD&D monsters have been unofficially converted, like Sacrosanct’s Cave Fisher http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?364341-Give-me-your-monster-conversion-request! . In these cases, I included the creator’s moniker in place of the page number to help folks google these statistics themselves. In some cases, I felt a conversion was not necessary and left the reference to the AD&D Fiend Folio (FF) or Monster Manual II (MM2). This is more typical in the case of “trap” monsters like throat leeches.
If you disagree with any of my choices for these tables, I also uploaded the .tex file here: http://tny.cz/ace74355 Feel free to download it, and make any modifications you like.
Then what’s the point?
Of course, I am kidding. But it is true that 5e shipped with very few wandering monster tables, and the DMG includes something like a dozen qualifying statements on their use. But what to do if you want random encounters in your game?
We converted our campaign from BECMI D&D to 5e and found ourselves in this situation. Our game is heavily focused on megadungeon exploration and hexcrawling, which are both styles that make substantial use of random encounter tables. The most complete, if not the best, such tables are found at the end of the AD&D Monster Manual II.
Here is my attempt at converting those tables to 5e: https://pdf.yt/d/X2wKb_3z1z6sropM
The tables include 10 dungeon levels. The wilderness tables cover six terrain-types across three climate zones for both civilized and wilderness areas. There are also surface and deep tables for freshwater and saltwater across the three climate zones. There are even ethereal and astral tables. The document wraps up with AD&D-style advice on how to build lairs and encounters with these creatures.
For convenience, each table includes the page number corresponding the the relevant monster entry in 5e. Wilderness tables include the AD&D number appearing, but the number of monsters for each encounter on the dungeon tables is scaled to the party level. To do this, I assumed a party of four adventurers with their levels equal to the dungeon level. The listed monster ranges then correspond to Difficulty Thresholds from easy to just above deadly, as described in the DMG. This construction goes along with the central sandbox assumption that players are able to have some control over their level of risk in the dungeon but not so much so in the wilderness.
When I came to a monster that wasn’t in the 5e Monster Manual, I tried to keep the flavor for each entry as similar to the original as possible. Giant Bumblebee became Giant Wasp, and Lamassu became Androsphinx. In some cases, AD&D monsters have been unofficially converted, like Sacrosanct’s Cave Fisher http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?364341-Give-me-your-monster-conversion-request! . In these cases, I included the creator’s moniker in place of the page number to help folks google these statistics themselves. In some cases, I felt a conversion was not necessary and left the reference to the AD&D Fiend Folio (FF) or Monster Manual II (MM2). This is more typical in the case of “trap” monsters like throat leeches.
If you disagree with any of my choices for these tables, I also uploaded the .tex file here: http://tny.cz/ace74355 Feel free to download it, and make any modifications you like.
