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<blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6841586" data-attributes="member: 2067">On random encounter tables: it really depends on the goal you have for them. If the random encounter table is just &quot;here's what lives in these lands,&quot; it's more the first bullet point. In that case, it's fine to have a mix of monsters and NPCs and hostilities and CR's - any monster groups that are too tough to fight will be &quot;run away,&quot; any monster groups you can fight won't be a big challenge, and any NPC groups you're more interested in talking to will be &quot;Face Time.&quot; None of these are meant to be a big risk for the party, just local color and pacing, and that's important. If the random encounter table is meant to give the PC's a significant challenge (the third bullet point), I'd treat the monster rolled as if the table said &quot;A lair of X.&quot; If I rolled a random encounter for greenhags, it might be a greenhag and her ogre servitors in their tangled swampy wilderness, or a coven of greenhags and their animated trees, or somesuch (The old 2e &quot;Habitiat/Society&quot; information for the monster, or the 1e &quot;lair information&quot; are useful here). The random encounter just becomes a seed for a &quot;random side-quest.&quot;If the random encounters are meant to be a method of resource attrition to reflect an arduous journey that not everyone survives, I'd make sure to include encounters that drain resources that a rest won't get back, or to set up some quick rulings about how you can't rest on the road in the wilderness without a skill check, or something. My own DMing mostly makes this a bit of the &quot;trolls with goals&quot; phenomenon: every time you rest, the enemies move forward. You only have a certain number of rests between you and the enemies succeeding. But that's mostly because I can't be bothered to do detailed ration accounting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> If I wanted to make the journey itself more arduous, I'd start looking into &quot;house rules.&quot; For published adventures, I think the first option and the third option have the most potential. Either the random encounter is just a bit of fluff that shows off what the environment is like (and so you can include a huge range of diversity in there, with the understanding that it doesn't matter if the party can fight it or not), or there's some system the adventure has that makes journeys more arduous or risky. Days you spend on the trail are days the villains move forward, or you gain exhaustion for dealing with certain random encounters (storms, cliffs, fording rivers) that you can't shake off until you're back in civilization. The second option is probably best suited to a more focused &quot;lairs book&quot; project.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="I'm A Banana, post: 6841586, member: 2067"] On random encounter tables: it really depends on the goal you have for them. If the random encounter table is just "here's what lives in these lands," it's more the first bullet point. In that case, it's fine to have a mix of monsters and NPCs and hostilities and CR's - any monster groups that are too tough to fight will be "run away," any monster groups you can fight won't be a big challenge, and any NPC groups you're more interested in talking to will be "Face Time." None of these are meant to be a big risk for the party, just local color and pacing, and that's important. If the random encounter table is meant to give the PC's a significant challenge (the third bullet point), I'd treat the monster rolled as if the table said "A lair of X." If I rolled a random encounter for greenhags, it might be a greenhag and her ogre servitors in their tangled swampy wilderness, or a coven of greenhags and their animated trees, or somesuch (The old 2e "Habitiat/Society" information for the monster, or the 1e "lair information" are useful here). The random encounter just becomes a seed for a "random side-quest." If the random encounters are meant to be a method of resource attrition to reflect an arduous journey that not everyone survives, I'd make sure to include encounters that drain resources that a rest won't get back, or to set up some quick rulings about how you can't rest on the road in the wilderness without a skill check, or something. My own DMing mostly makes this a bit of the "trolls with goals" phenomenon: every time you rest, the enemies move forward. You only have a certain number of rests between you and the enemies succeeding. But that's mostly because I can't be bothered to do detailed ration accounting. :p If I wanted to make the journey itself more arduous, I'd start looking into "house rules." For published adventures, I think the first option and the third option have the most potential. Either the random encounter is just a bit of fluff that shows off what the environment is like (and so you can include a huge range of diversity in there, with the understanding that it doesn't matter if the party can fight it or not), or there's some system the adventure has that makes journeys more arduous or risky. Days you spend on the trail are days the villains move forward, or you gain exhaustion for dealing with certain random encounters (storms, cliffs, fording rivers) that you can't shake off until you're back in civilization. The second option is probably best suited to a more focused "lairs book" project. [/QUOTE]

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