First, can we just acknowledge the absurdity of claiming that:
(a) The Pathfinder core rulebooks contain wandering monster tables.
(b) Paizo's modules include wandering monster tables "for GMs to use" (your words).
(c) But you aren't actually supposed to use them.
'Cause that's pretty flippin' absurd.
Or in the alternative, accurate.
Paizo creates products for a variety of different customers to purchase and read. Some purchase them for the adventures and others purchase them to use as part of their Golarian setting and will never actually run the adventure itself. It's just there to be read and inspire the GM.
Are wandering monsters the default design of 3.xx or Pathfinder? No and HELL no. If you think otherwise because that's the game you want to run? Take as much of that style of play as you like. Fill your pockets. FILL YOUR BOOTS.
Your preferences are your preferences. What I may prefer and what you may prefer are necessarily different. It doesn't make one of them right and one of them wrong.
However, if you are saying that a game like 3.xx and
Pathfinder, based on, in 3.xx case, explicit CR and EL design, and in the case of
Pathfinder, a new CR basis with a new slower experience progression chart -- are both premised upon designing those foes and CR charts -- only to them throw them out the frikkin window with arbitrary encounter charts as the intended mode of play?
I think that opinion is DEAD wrong.
But let's examine this latest claim in detail. Is it true?
Of course it's not.
Legacy of Fire, Volume 1, pg. 18: "After the PCs have set up shop in the monastery, the ruin is the most likely spot from which the building will be attacked by wandering monsters."
Un-huh. And of course, it breaks right in to noting how often the GM should check for wandering monsters, clearly stating the frequency of encounters, thereby making the likelihood and frequency of those encounters an inferentially known and assumed part of the adventure text that the designer adjusts for.
Just as the text invariably did back-in-the-day in every 1st ed module and 2nd edition module where that same text occurs.
Oh wait.
It doesn't say that. Gee, that's odd isn't it?
Upshot: When the players are journeying towards the dungeon area, the GM can choose to give them an encounter if things are boring and the party's health and resources can handle it - otherwise, the GM should not. You certainly should not do this just because the dice say to do so. Use your discretion and do it only when it seems appropriate -- never because the dice just say so. That's 3E.
This, otoh, is 1E and 2E:
"Wandering monsters may be encountered in the labyrinth of Foozle, once per turn, on a roll of 1 on 1d6. Consult the table below to determine the encounter."
Old Skool: Roll the dice; read em and weep.
The Paizo AP adventures allows a GM to include them if he or she wants, but it is there is no explicit reference as to how often one should check for such wandering critters or the frequency of those checks and it is assumed they won't be RANDOM wandering monsters. It's left completely open to GM interpretation because the designers at Paizo KNOW that some GMs are Old Skool and like to add them - but they don't specify those encounters within the adventure text itself --
and almost never within the actual adventuring area of the dungeon itself. Because that's not 3E nor the intention behind the CR levels in the game. No, not even if you
really, really want to pretend otherwise.
Note: the adventure is the adventure. The Bestiary and Region Guides are provided in the Adventure Path products to describe and flesh out the lands and regions in which the adventure takes place -- but that isn't the adventure text itself. That's a distinction with a difference -- and one that you gloss over pretty quickly in a rush to make a point which over-reaches considerably.
When you are looking for wandering monsters within the text of the adventures within the dungeon area, you'll see the list of monsters that are referenced within the design of the adventure itself are VASTLY shorter -- reflecting transitory encounters within the facility -- and are drawn from a brief list of monsters where the CR is tightly limited. They are there to disrupt flow and timing and potentially consume resources, but not to challenge the party itself in terms of lethality.
Look, if you want to game in a dungeon with a list of random monsters on a chart and let the dice determine what, when and how many monsters your party will face? Go ahead. There's nothing stopping you. The game is not designed for that style of play though -- and no amount of jumping up and down and posting in a snide, offensive and rude manner changes any of that.
If you are suggesting that the default mode of play encouraged by
Pathfinder and specified in the adventure text of adventures put out by Paizo is to include wandering monsters in the dungeon as an explicit and assumed style of play? We're clearly reading different products.
In the OPs original post, the product in question was
World's Largest Dungeon. I think that says it all in terms of the nature, sophistication and balance of the source dventure material. World's Largest?
Maybe. World's
Best? Nobody ever said that about WLD...
