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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinneus" data-source="post: 5662575" data-attributes="member: 48215">One of the biggest problems I have running wilderness encounters is the five-minute adventuring day. If you plot things out realistically, PCs are probably only going to have a single encounter a day, if even that. It's hard to challenge PCs when they have all of their resources every single encounter, and they know they're going to get them back after at the end of the encounter. Of course, you could put some sort of arbitrary time constraint on them to discourage extended rests, but since this sounds like an exploration adventure stemming from the PCs own perogative, that might be difficult to shoehorn in. Your other option to make things challenging is to have one encounter after another, but this can be difficult to justify. If the adventure is taking place in a massive wilderness, then how come every bandit, predator and wandering monster just happened to stumble across the PCs in the same eight-hour timeframe? The best solution to creating a challenging, realistic environment in the middle of nowhere is scavengers. Say the PCs just bested a group of human and troll bandits. Hurrah! Time to move on, right? Unfortunately, that's when your PC with the highest passive Perception notices a dark shape moving the nearby underbrush. Some big, scary predator (Owlbears, I'm thinking, for your particular level) have spotted all the fresh carrion your PCs just created. And they're moving in, and they're likely going to try and take the PCs down, too, or at least scare them off so they can eat unmolested. It doesn't take much to explain; the monsters heard combat, smelled blood, were very hungry, and so came a-runnin'. And bingo, back-to-back combat sufficient to challenge your party with. P.S. - While the party watches the owlbears circle, working up the nerve to attack, I'd give them a short rest. I'm simply of the opinion that depriving a party of a short rest should be done very rarely, if ever. If you do decide to have the scavengers charge right away, be sure to scale the encounter down a bit to account for the party having fewer Encounter powers, including the all-important Healing Words and Healing Word-look-alikes.</blockquote>

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