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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 5333250" data-attributes="member: 20741">We have a very lengthy discussion concerning the wisdom of random encounters in the Kingmaker AP in Episode #008 of our podcast during the GM Only Chronicle section of the cast.It comes down to this: in wilderness adventure campaigns of our youth in 1st Edition days, random encounters were, essentially, the entire POINT of the campaign. You travelled from point A to point B and along the way -  the DM rolled encounters from a chart.You fought the monsters in the wild and then you tried to track them back to their lairs. Sometimes you could and sometimes you could not. If you tracked them back, the DM would roll up their treasure randomly and then we would all find out at the same time what their treasure was. Random items rolled out of the 1st ed DMG charts!! The true source of all Monty Haul campaigns! Sometimes, it was a crappy scroll or potion. Sometimes, it was the Deck of Many Things.  Like Gump's box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get.Fast forward thirty years and wandering monsters in a wilderness campaign as are presented in Kingmaker serve a different function. The wilderness hexes are already pre-populated, but the nature of the pre-population is that there is, generally speaking, only one "encounter" in that hex. Without the possibility of a wandering encounter, there is no incentive for the PCs to hold back any power reserve. It's the thirty-second-adventuring-day. Party enters into hex, explores it -- has encounter -- and fights it. They are done and need not worry about any other encounter for the day. They rest, heal up and regain their spells.Off to the next hex: wash, rinse, repeat.The role of the wandering encounter in the game design is, therefore, two-fold:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> to set an atmosphere of danger and "anything can happen" in the game; and</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> to act as a governor on the power retention of the party.</li> </ul>In my experience, the frequency of wandering monsters in Kingmaker is, in practice, too low to act as a real governor. Moreover, the scroll and potion creation rules of Pathfinder allow even a low lovel Wizard caster to prepare scrolls to act as the wandering encounter "holdout resources". This means, on a net effect basis, that the caster holds almost nothing back in practice from the "main fight", and trusts to luck that there will be no wandering encounter afterwards (at a 1 in 7 chance - a pretty good bet). If the wandering encounter DOES pop-up, then the caster relies upon his holdout resources and cantrips (buffed with spell components from the Adventurer's Armory) to see him through.It's a strategy that generally works.I'm not sure what the proper REAL role of a wandering monster really is in the wilderness if those are the actual mechanical effects in game. I guess the intention for them to act as a governor on the use of magical power and to tend to discourage the use of using ALL extraordinary resources in one fight is the only tangible effect -- to the extent it works at all. It barely serves that role.Beyond that, it's all about atmosphere and, perhaps, most of all, pure nostalgia.</blockquote>

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