Encounter Tables

[Desdichado]

I don't use them, but that doesn't mean I think they are useless. Even if I'm not rolling on a random wandering monster type of action in my campaigns, it's nice to see what the developers think would be pretty much "standard" or common types of encounters in a given area. That's actually useful setting fluff.

 

[EricNoah]

I think Frostburn had encounter tables of mixed ELs, and had them arranged from low to high so it could double as an encounter menu.

In the era of 2nd Ed, I liked d12+d8 encounter charts: it gives you a nice bell curve from 2-20 with a big flat area in the middle for common/uncommon encounters, and then at the low and high ends you can put rare/extremely rare encounters. You could do something similar with CRs or ELs -- put low CR stuff in the middle and higher CR stuff at the ends.

 

[aco175]

Thanks, everyone.
I think I will put them in, at least for referencing what would be common in certain areas, and to provide some useful encounters with local people and things. I like the idea of using a couple dice to get a nice bell curve of low CR's that would be encountered more often.

As a side note, would having more encounters of lower level monsters become boring? It does add realism with the fact that there would be more of them to go around and only a few of the big monsters in the area, but would that slow down play and/or make the players bored. Say the party is higher level and is still running into goblins every time they enter the forest. The players know that they are there, but they might want to speng gaming time on something more challenging.

 

[Mark]

...wouldn't I be more likely to run into wagons or pilgrims before a giant.

[Schwarzenegger] Driven before a Giant? With the clubbing and the screaming and crushing and the things of that nature? [/Schwarzenegger]