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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6832352" data-attributes="member: 6701872">Yes, encounters fall into two categories - those which are static (this ruin in this hex is inhabited by this many Yuan-ti, these related creatures, and contains these specific treasures), and those which are determined at random from a chart.I check for unplanned encounters fairly regularly with a relatively low chance for each check. My notes say I was checking every hour, with the chance of encounter ranging from 10% to 20% but typically being 15% with the variation being based on what terrain the party was actually in (for example, in jungle hexes the chance was 15% whether day or night because the creatures living in those areas didn't primarily favor day or night, but the chance in hill or mountain hexes was 20% during the day and 10% at night because most creatures there favor daylight, and coastal hexes had the reverse so that the most likely encounter would be sahuagin coming ashore at night).And since the players know that the number of encounters isn't completely predictable (since it could be anywhere from 0 to 20 or more depending on dice and exactly how large any "dungeons" they might come across are) , they have no difficulty in playing their characters as cautiously "conserving ammo."Another thing I do to play up the uncertainty is to actually describe the weather (with this wonderful little webtool: <a href="http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/weather/" target="_blank">http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/weather/</a>) which might result in something like unexpected heavy rain which complicates travel - it'd reduce encounter chances, of course, but it also might mean that their plan for a 10 day trip just stretched to 12 days whether their supplies like it or not. As such, my players also dedicate a bit of their limited resources like spells to being sure that they can mitigate the harsh effects of whatever environment they are in (Even though it doesn't commonly come into play due to being so high level, Mordenkainen's magnificent mansion is my group's collective favorite spell.)</blockquote>

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