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<blockquote data-quote="Philotomy Jurament" data-source="post: 4701358" data-attributes="member: 20854">&quot;Old school&quot; wandering monsters present to challenge the PCs, but not necessarily as a combat encounter to be vanquished.&nbsp; Wandering monsters are a danger if you waste a lot of time, forcing you to spend party resources on them when you'd rather be spending those resources on your goal.&nbsp; They're certainly NOT living piles of XP, since the older editions do not reward you with much XP from monsters (a typical split is probably something like 80% of XP from treasure and 20% from monsters), and wandering monsters have little or not treasure.&nbsp; They're a challenge that is best met by avoiding them, wasting as few resources as possible.&nbsp; They're a nuisance, but certainly not pointless.&nbsp; The handling of wandering monsters by a party is one measure of skill.&nbsp; A party engaging in &quot;good play&quot; will try to make efficient use of their time, not spending too much time sitting around or engaging in pointless tasks.&nbsp; They might have a plan for avoiding, distracting, or evading wandering monsters, rather than fighting them.&nbsp; As a result, that party will preserve their resources (hit points, spells, et cetera) and spend them on activities that have a greater chance of reward (i.e. treasure, in most cases) than that of a party that wastes a lot of time (more WM checks), bulls through and fights everything, et cetera.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Philotomy Jurament, post: 4701358, member: 20854"] "Old school" wandering monsters present to challenge the PCs, but not necessarily as a combat encounter to be vanquished. Wandering monsters are a danger if you waste a lot of time, forcing you to spend party resources on them when you'd rather be spending those resources on your goal. They're certainly NOT living piles of XP, since the older editions do not reward you with much XP from monsters (a typical split is probably something like 80% of XP from treasure and 20% from monsters), and wandering monsters have little or not treasure. They're a challenge that is best met by avoiding them, wasting as few resources as possible. They're a nuisance, but certainly not pointless. The handling of wandering monsters by a party is one measure of skill. A party engaging in "good play" will try to make efficient use of their time, not spending too much time sitting around or engaging in pointless tasks. They might have a plan for avoiding, distracting, or evading wandering monsters, rather than fighting them. As a result, that party will preserve their resources (hit points, spells, et cetera) and spend them on activities that have a greater chance of reward (i.e. treasure, in most cases) than that of a party that wastes a lot of time (more WM checks), bulls through and fights everything, et cetera. [/QUOTE]

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