D&D 5E How dangerous are your wildnernesses?

[EdL]

Voted "moderately dangerous" but would have preferred to vote "highly variable" had the option been there.

Some wilderness is reasonably safe. Some wilderness is worse than the average dungeon (or in fact *is* the dungeon!). Some is in between. Some areas change greatly over time depending what's recently moved in and-or out e.g. migratory dragons or nomadic bands of giants.

Lan-"and sometimes it's at the whim of my dice"-efan

Absolutely this. I'll only add that the wilderness doesn't start at the edge of town. 'Monsters' have learned that hanging around settlements for any length of time is a Bad Idea. So occasional raids, yes. A tribe of Gnolls camped a few miles away from town, no. Oh, and roads are usually safe, just to move things along.

 

[Hand of Evil]

depends on location, you have your areas outside of cities and along roads that have some patrols, so they are a bit safer but then you have your areas where there are no patrols and monsters are more common but still keep away from the races unless they out number them. Then you have your zones where it is hostile for the races, monsters have no fear of them.

Nights only increase the danger of an area.

 

[michaeljpatrick]

If I feel like running an adventure that takes place in the wilderness then it's just as deadly as anyplace adventure happens. If it's just along the way to the fun part then I fast forward.

 

[Warbringer]

I went with "Moderate" - just recently the Monk was alone near a waterfall and got carried off by a Peryton for a mating ritual. Fortunately the party had set a rendezvous and went looking for him.

i hope the monk had Vaseline ...

 

[Azurewraith]

Deadly but then that's the kind of games we like the fear of constant pc looming really brings out the best in peoples thought process when they come up with creative ways to avoid combat such as in my first session of a game i ran when our regular GM couldn't make it the lvl 1pcs woke up in cages near a cave and where told they had to collect items from inside it by an unknown person and they would be set free so they went in quickly jumped down a hole to an underwater lake in the underdark they progressed well until a settlement of derro stopped them dead there where 30-40 derro plus there slaves they had no chance so they went through a strange side tunnel which just happened to of been recently made by a purple worm(they flubbed the check to notice the activity) needless to say the worm sensed them turned the hell around and within 5mins they where running from the worm when they got to the exit the rest of the pcs headed back towards the lake praying it couldn't swim except for one guy who headed for the derro settlement im sure you can picture how this ended.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I use random encounters, from nothing to non-combat to way over level bad asses that can kill the party. So it's random and i use the whole scale, depending on how deep in the wilderness you are.

The poll needs a "easy - deadly" option.

 

[Bawylie]

Depends what I'm using the wilderness for.

If it's the walls of my sandbox, it's perilously deadly.

If it's an adventure site, it's tailored to the party.

If it's a setting, it varies by zone per adventuring tier.

And if it's "color" to my setting or scene, it fits whatever is needed to convey the proper mood/flavor/color/whatever.

 

[wedgeski]

I went for Moderate, but my players know me well enough by now that they will expect to run into things they really should just hide from. I have no interest in catching them out, though, so such things are usually well-telegraphed.

Also, the difficulty of any wilderness is proportional to the role it plays in the adventure. In some adventures, the wilderness *is* the adventure, whereas in others, it can easily get in the way of the action. I won't be rolling for random encounters if a month's worth of meticulous pacing is going to pay off a day's travel away.

That sound you can hear is the sharp intake of breath from a thousand sandbox DM's.

 

[sleypy]

My wilderness areas are primarily resource-sinks unless it's a major feature of the campaign. There are wilderness locations that are environmentally dangers or home to deadly creatures (possibly both). Everywhere else it is a paywall to deplete resources or impede progress.

 

[delericho]

Pretty deadly. I like the whole "points of light" conceit.

But, more than that, I posit that the wilderness areas in my settings are actually part of The World Malevolent - they're not just neutral animals and plants (and hills, mountains, and seas) that are just there; they're part of an ecosystem that has somehow gone wrong. They are old, and angry, and they'll harm you if they can.