NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5003890" data-attributes="member: 4937">I love random tables.  The trick is to build enough randomness into the table that its actually useful instead of burdensome.Random finds are meant to provide structure and place to a setting when you haven't actually filled in all that structure and place.  Effectively you are creating something that looks like a prepared encounter on the fly.  They are meant to supplement and not replace wandering monsters.  You get a random find roll for moving from a place to new place regardless of the time you take getting there.  Conversely, you get a new wandering monster encounter per unit of time regardless of whether you move.1) Remains of Former Expedition: Camp site.  You find a camp site with ashes, empty potion bottles, discarded cotton bandages, painted runes indicating some sort of circle of protection, discarded wineskins, etc.2) Remains of Former Expedition: Excavation.  You find signs that someone was removing rubble, digging, and shoring up loose ruins with logs.  The party can continue the excavation with 1d12 hours of labor.  50% of these go nowhere significant, 10% collapse on party for 5d50 damage unless a DC 20 craft stone check is made, 10% collapse but lead to #3 below, buried in the rubble with x4 normal treasure, and 30% lead to a 5 room dungeon containing a CR appropriate challenge and treasure.3) Remains of Former Expedition: Physical remains.  You find the bodies of an adventuring party.  Most of their gear is worthless or has been looted, but 40% have a minor treasure (art item(s) or magic item(s) worth 2d20x100 gp) which has survived time relatively intact and undiscovered which can be found with a DC20+1d12 search check.  4) Remains of Former Expedition: Victims. Roll on the random encounter table.  The party finds the physical remains of a maximum number of such monster dead among the ruins.  95% of the time all treasure has been removed, but 5% of the time some small object was missed as #3 above.5) Remains of Former Expedition: Clue.  DC 20 search check finds cryptic message scrawled on ruins in random language.  This is clue about some prepared encounter in the city.For above, you'll need to decide how recent they are.  Some might date back to the time of the tiefling empire.  'Remains of Former Expedition' could probably be its own subtable if you really worked on it.6) Evidence of Monsters: Ad-hoc religious site: Some latter inhabitant (demons, ghouls, minotaurs, tieflings) has for some reason turned the area of the ruins into a make shift shrine.  An scavanged and altered icon of some sort, rudely crafted altar, totems, sacrificial implements, stone basin, strange crudely painted runes and the remains of sacrifices are joined by bits and peices of scavanged artifacts from other parts of the city.  5% of the time a minor treasure can be found here.  50% of the time the area is Desecrated (as the spell), and 25% of the time a minor guardian (CR - 2) gaurds the site from anyone who might defile it.  Wandering monsters are checked 20 times more frequently here.7) Evidence of Monsters: Abandoned Lair: Some inhabitant of the city has laired at this site in the recent past, and the evidence of that (bones of victims, crude belongs, gauno, stench, etc. as appropriate) is evident.  Make a wandering monster check to indicate type.  There is a 10% chance that the monster will return if the party stops to do an extensive search, and only a 5% chance that such a search will turn up a minor treasure.8) Evidence of Monsters: Occupied Lair: Make a wandering monster check.  They didn't find you, you found them.9) Evidence of Monsters: Tracks: Make a wandering monster check.  It left tracks or other spore here.  20% can be tracked to a lair as #8, track DC 20+1d12.I've got to write some code, or I would.</blockquote>

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