Mother of All Encounter Tables

[DM_Jeff]

Does anyone have this and can give me a general impression? Searching for reviews on this have turned up nada for me. I remember reading back when it first came out that it was written in tandem with the Tome of Horrors creatures too? Or does it just feature SRD monsters?

I wondered how they filled an entire hardcover with monster lists, but then I saw it has a handful of "Toolbox-like" tables too to make encounters interesting. I've never seen it in a FLGS to flip through. It says you can "populate the lists with your own monsters". So what's that? Blank lines where you write them in?

Any overall impressions, uses in your game or answers to the above would be appreciated. I suddenly had a need to populate a jungle trek my players are taking soon, and wished I had a chart of all WotC and Necromancer Games monsters by region and remember this product.

Thanks in advance!

-DM Jeff

 

[Twowolves]

Well, it doesn't have any blank slots that I could see. It is printed vertically once in the tables section, so you turn your book 90 degrees to read it, and you roll d1000 for entries. It contains the Monster Manual, the original Tome of Horror, and Creature Collection 1 and 2 in it's monster lists. It's broken down by climate, with each table having terrain columns to roll on (so you have a "temperate" table with columns to roll on for Desert, Mountain, Plains, Swamps, etc etc). It also has aquatic and subterrainian, I believe. It also has a smaller weather table and a caravan generator (through which it's possible to discern the value per pound of mithril, darkwood and adamantine, I might add) including goods, size, guards, etc etc. I don't recall it having just a lot of urban tables, if any, and it doesn't even attempt to break things down by CR, other than saying players should have the common sense to run from things they can't handle, or else the DM should have the common sense not to run whatever shows up on any given roll of the dice (instead of the dragon eating the party, he wants to talk, or it's the corpse of a dragon, or it's not a dragon at all, it's a re-roll).

Hope that helps!

 

[Glyfair]

Does anyone have this and can give me a general impression? Searching for reviews on this have turned up nada for me. I remember reading back when it first came out that it was written in tandem with the Tome of Horrors creatures too? Or does it just feature SRD monsters?

MM, Tome of Horrors and the Creature Collections.

It says you can "populate the lists with your own monsters". So what's that? Blank lines where you write them in?

Well, the main suggestion is use the slots for books you don't have for your own monsters (say you don't have the Creature Collections),.

Other than a few pages of explanation and examples of using the book, it's all tables. Note that they aren't separated by CR. For example the "Temperate Creature Encounters - Night" has both 2-4 Atomies, 1-6 Eye Tyrants (from the "MM" and listed alphabetically under "B" ) and 1 Red Dragon.

 

[mkb152]

I have it and use it from time to time if players go somewhere I had not forseen. If it comes up with a monster from the CC that I don't want to use, I figure something from the MM2-4 or FF that will fit.

I also *like* that the encounter table is not split by EL. If you want to go play in the Barrier Peaks despite warnings in town about what they've heard about the mountains, be ready to rumble.

All in all, I like the encounter sheets in the FR DM Screen better. Even if you don't use FR, it's a pretty good little booklet that has MM monsters and some from MoF, most of which have been updated.

 

[Glyfair]

I also *like* that the encounter table is not split by EL. If you want to go play in the Barrier Peaks despite warnings in town about what they've heard about the mountains, be ready to rumble.

What I would have liked was 4 encounter charts for each area. There would be a low level one, a mid-level one and a high level one (along with the existing one). That would allow options for how to use it.

Still, I realize that's impractical for space purposes. It might work for an electronic product. The program could do the adjusting based on input. In fact, you could create your own entries in the tables. I'm suprised someone hasn't done this yet (I guess it's because random encounters are pretty much out-of-fashion).

 

[DM_Jeff]

Thanks, all, it sounds like a pretty nifty book, but with a little homework one rainy weekend I could put something like this together with MM 1-4, FF, and all 3 Tomes of Horrors. Still, I suppose I will take extra effort to page through it at GenCon this year.

All in all, I like the encounter sheets in the FR DM Screen better. Even if you don't use FR, it's a pretty good little booklet that has MM monsters and some from MoF, most of which have been updated.

Hey, I have this! Wow, I almost forgot about it, and I used it alot in early 3E. I will dig this out tonight!

-DM Jeff

 

[freyar]

What I would have liked was 4 encounter charts for each area. There would be a low level one, a mid-level one and a high level one (along with the existing one). That would allow options for how to use it.

Still, I realize that's impractical for space purposes. It might work for an electronic product. The program could do the adjusting based on input. In fact, you could create your own entries in the tables. I'm suprised someone hasn't done this yet (I guess it's because random encounters are pretty much out-of-fashion).

Try out the Sulerin Encounter Generator. You can ask for up to 20 monsters, filtered by type, alignment, environment, and CR. There is a huge list of sources included, running back through 2E. If I want a random encounter table, I use this, copy it into excel, and adjust numbers to get the right ELs and enter die roll values.

 

[Twowolves]

Thanks, all, it sounds like a pretty nifty book, but with a little homework one rainy weekend I could put something like this together with MM 1-4, FF, and all 3 Tomes of Horrors.
-DM Jeff

I guess you could do something like this, but unless you are WAY more industrious than I am, you won't get it done in just one weekend! The tables are dense and the pages are packed. There is no way to break these tables down further into CR ranges without more than quadrupling the size of the thing. Perfectly fine for a computer program, but impractical for a print product.