D&D 4E Random/Wandering monsters in 4E

[Nemesis Destiny]

Don't let PCs take extended rests whenever they please.

I make mine wait until they've had at least 4 meaningful encounters under their belt.

Don't allow extended rest. Perhaps the sea is churning all night, there is a constant storm, or the ship crew is rowdy, and won't let you get in a good night's sleep. Or if they are in a jungle, constant rain through the night, or the howling of wolves, or some major threat that forces them to move around constantly may prevent an extended rest. You could even reward a partial benefit if and where needed, like everyone recovers a healing surge or some such.

There are also those who run games, redefining the meaning of extended rest to be "a week's rest", or "in between adventure's rest." This allows you to have as many time as you want pass by between encounters, for it to make sense to your story. I haven't tried this approach, but it works for some.

And my preferred method... don't make one encounter days Even if there is supposed to be combat, you can narrate through the party sailing through Sahuagin infested waters, and skirmishing several groups of them along the way without major losses. It gets the point across without meaningless dice rolling.

Speaking from experience, this works. I have begun experimenting with extended rests only happening when story-appropriate, such as when the characters are in a town or comfortable area and have at least a full day or two to catch their breath. Being in the wilderness and having to forage and avoid monsters, trekking over rough terrain - these things make an extended rest impossible.

Now, I do still get players who say, "but, but, it's been 12 whole hours since our last one!" and to that I say, "too bad. I guess you shouldn't have gone nova last fight. You'll have to make do with your encounter powers this time."

I do also make characters "earn back" their daily attack powers by having to buy them back with healing surges. I also do not allow the automatic recovery of hit points. The only way to get them back is with surges, so if you go nova and run out of both daily powers and hit points, your character is going to need some serious time to recover. Choose wisely.

So far, for the most part, it's been working. Once players got used to the different pace, the nova-factor decreased, and the whining stopped. I can get away with lower-level creatures in fights, and I don't have to worry about being a master tactician to challenge the group.

 

[Pentius]

I don't use wandering monsters in 4e, either, but if I did, here's how I'd do it.

I'd go ahead and let it be one encounter, even if that meant the encounter was a single big one for the day, or even a single easy one for the day that the party blows through. No, it isn't necessarily an optimally designed adventure day, but when you start talking about having 3-4 waves, you have to ask yourself: "How much of our table time do we wanna spend fighting random local wildlife?" and also "How badly is it really gonna hurt our game if every once in awhile we spend half an hour nuking an owlbear into oblivion?"

 

[Dice4Hire]

Wandering monsters inside adventure areas, I treat the same as 3.x

But overland wandering monsters are a bit of a problem.

In 4E, healing is too easy and it is nigh impossible for a single encounter a day to use up resources that will not be fully recharged he next day. Unless of course a character dies, which seems a bit harsh for a random encounter.

Or players nova, which is not much fun either.

So what I do it make the whole trip (or a portion of it, in to a "day" for the purposes of surges, dailies and the like.

Then when there are 3-4 or more encounters over a couple weeks of travel, they mean something. Resources are used, and the characters have to be careful, just like a dungeon or adventure area environment.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

well, my point was how do you make the 4E preferred method of several encounters per day into something that also works with random wandering monsters that traditionally are a one-shot encounter.

However, your last method does sound like it has potential to work:

For example, if the party is exploring a forest, they can first encounter a group of orcs. Combat ensues and the players win fairly easily.

Then, behind that, is a group of ogre hunters, who (unknown to the PCs) just finished rooting the orcs out of their caves and were running down survivors.

When the ogre hunters don't return, an hour or two later, an ogre war party comes looking and tracks the now dead ogres and then finds the PCs.

Perhaps a skill challenge in between to figure out what is going on and/or to stay hidden from the ogre war party.

Honestly the 'one encounter day' isn't THAT much different from other editions. Very low level aside, where death is always a cat scratch away, 3.x or AD&D PCs can also 'nova' (really the wizard and cleric/druid, but still pretty effective).

I can see a few ways to have things get interesting:

1) Limited rests - This is one you don't want to overuse, but it can work. The weather is terrible, etc and the PCs just don't get back all their goodies. You can also do this as 'rest at end of chapter' instead of 1 per day. That's best done as a house rule that covers the whole game though.

2) Ongoing effects - Have the encounter be with some creature that can curse or infect PCs. Mummies, wererats, etc. will work. The encounter may be easy, but the consequences could be rather inconvenient.

3) Series of encounters or side adventure - There are a LOT of variations of this. A lair for instance. It can also be something more interesting like a band of gypsies that fall in with the party. Are they trustworthy? Is someone after them? Are they really gypsies...

4) Work the encounter in with a survival challenge of some kind. This works OK with hex crawl type exploration or long distance travel.

5) Pants down - Encounter happens at night, nobody is well prepared. Easy encounter turns tricky.

6) If the party is 'traveling heavy' you can have complications. The PCs may not be challenged. The animals, wagons, hangers-on, hirelings, etc OTOH may not be so lucky. A relatively trivial encounter could be quite tough if the party has to defend all that.

Of course none of this deals with the classic "get the party to hustle on" type of old-fashioned random encounter. Honestly for those I just have a group of monsters designated ahead of time that I can use. If the party dawdles then I hit them with it, or at least scare them with some noise, tracks, etc. I never did get the real reasoning behind rolling dice for this.

 

[MerricB]

Interesting - one of the biggest pros of 4E over 3.5E to me was that combat was so much quicker in 4E than it was in 3.5E.

That's not actually unconditionally true. 4E combat is quicker than 3.5E at higher levels. 4E combat (for 5 players) will likely take about an hour at all levels. 3E combat ranges from about 20 minutes at low levels up to 2-4 hours at high levels (15th+). 3E combat at the higher levels is painfully slow.

The trouble with wandering monsters in 4E indeed is how much they interrupt the play of the game. Actually, it's more the problem with combat in 4E: it so dominates everything else. Combat is a lot of fun - I get very frustrated if we only have 1 combat in a session - but it crowds out everything else.

Cheers!

 

[Shadus]

Wondering monsters make sense in most DND settings. It's knowing when to use them. If you have the PCs wondering to a dungeon that you only have the first part prepped might be one. Another might be that you want to give PCs some extra EXP before moving on with the story. So when the PCs set off into the wild or make camp, pick a number and roll a D6. If that number comes up, then roll a d4 to determine difficulty. (EX: you roll a 3, so the encounter will be 3 levels higher than the PCs) Then simply look in the MM to find a suitable "random" encounter the PCs may find at the level you need out the list of suggested encounters listed. After some quick role-playing, the PCs will realize that a dangerous monster lays in them path between them and their destination. The PCs may not want to fight it, in which case, try to make it easy for the PCs to find a way around the beast.

Either way, you achieved your goal. Weather that was to stall time or give PCs more EXP. Plus, it give room for character development (Would the Druid attack the wild bear just defending it's home?) and can be used to hint at what the PCs may be fighting in the dungeon. Another thing is that it require very little prep, and can be put together on the fly while the PCs take a quick break to stretch their legs. In fact, the most prep you would need is a basic knowledge of the MM to quickly think of the appropriate monsters to use. Which as a DM, you've probably looked in up these things plenty of times just building the non-random encounters.

 

[KarinsDad]

I don't tend to view it as a replacement as much as a supplement. At least as I tend to run it, the skill challenge doesn't replace the 'random encounter' itself, it replaces the 'random chance' element.

So if the party is traveling through a dangerous forest, this would be an extended skill challenge involving finding safe camp spots, avoiding dangers, scouting, etc. Whenever they hit a certain treshold of failure - they roll on the random encounter table (having attracted notice, stumbled into a monster den, etc).

Which, at least in my experience, makes for a more robust scenario than having them travel through the woods and the chance of running into a monster being "roll a 1 on 1d10", regardless of what precautions they might take or how cautious they are when traveling.

Honestly, I tend to see more favoring of the pure random element by DMs rather than by players, since it is undeniably easier to prepare for. There certainly are games (one-shots/dungeon-crawls/etc) where just randomly running into foes is perfectly palatable, admittedly, but I don't think those tend to be the default.

Odd.

As a player, I absolutely love having a combat encounter.

Skill encounters, meh.

In your campaign, my PC would purposely be missing his skill checks.

PC: (Hmmm, Stealth is my lowest skill.) "Ok, I use Stealth while walking through the woods. Darn, a 6.".

PC: "We're attacked by trolls 3 levels higher than us? Awesome!"

In fact, that tends to be the general consensus at our table. We have a PC Slayer where the player yells "Surrender!" at the start of every fight and roleplays her PC as disappointed if the NPCs actually ever do surrender. The player wants to kick ass and that's what she wants her PC doing as well.


Skill challenges replacing combat or to attempt to avoid combat is the most boring way to play D&D ever. zzzzzzzzzz

My PC is a hero damn it. BRING IT ON MR. DM!!! I don't want to skulk through no stinking woods.

 

[wedgeski]

I like, and use, random *encounters*, but not necessarily wandering monsters. For instance last session the party made camp at a crossroads and helped a group of adventurers retreating from a close call at a nearby haunted tower. They healed someone close to death and made some friends in the process... but they could have simply done nothing and let them go on their way. Took all of five minutes and vindicated the efforts made by the party to conceal themselves and organise a watch.

Otherwise I'm in the same camp as many others here: I won't drop a random combat on the party (or even something that could turn into a combat) unless the session absolutely needs it.

 

[NewJeffCT]

So if the party is traveling through a dangerous forest, this would be an extended skill challenge involving finding safe camp spots, avoiding dangers, scouting, etc. Whenever they hit a certain treshold of failure - they roll on the random encounter table (having attracted notice, stumbled into a monster den, etc).

Which, at least in my experience, makes for a more robust scenario than having them travel through the woods and the chance of running into a monster being "roll a 1 on 1d10", regardless of what precautions they might take or how cautious they are when traveling.

Honestly, I tend to see more favoring of the pure random element by DMs rather than by players, since it is undeniably easier to prepare for. There certainly are games (one-shots/dungeon-crawls/etc) where just randomly running into foes is perfectly palatable, admittedly, but I don't think those tend to be the default.

I don't think I would just roll dice randomly every 3 hours or 6 hours or whatever of game time. Most likely, I would plan out a 'set' random encounter and then let the dice determine if, when & where it will happen.

I generally will plan out, "OK, there is a 15% chance this area has a wandering monster, but only a 5% chance in this more civilized area beyond that."

 

[MrMyth]

Odd.

As a player, I absolutely love having a combat encounter.

Skill encounters, meh.

In your campaign, my PC would purposely be missing his skill checks.

PC: (Hmmm, Stealth is my lowest skill.) "Ok, I use Stealth while walking through the woods. Darn, a 6.".

PC: "We're attacked by trolls 3 levels higher than us? Awesome!"

In fact, that tends to be the general consensus at our table. We have a PC Slayer where the player yells "Surrender!" at the start of every fight and roleplays her PC as disappointed if the NPCs actually ever do surrender. The player wants to kick ass and that's what she wants her PC doing as well.

Skill challenges replacing combat or to attempt to avoid combat is the most boring way to play D&D ever. zzzzzzzzzz

My PC is a hero damn it. BRING IT ON MR. DM!!! I don't want to skulk through no stinking woods.

It's a fair point, and the group doesn't have to sneak - there has been one point where they intentionally went 'looking for trouble', hoping to find the local bandits who they had a message for. (They instead wandered into a clearing filled with green slime.)

But in general, when 'traveling' they usually have a specific goal in mind. Avoiding the native dangers of the woods doesn't mean no combat, it means "combat with the were-bear we've been sent to kill".

Now, some folks might still enjoy fighting both that were-bear and the various dangers encountered along the way, but the campaign is brutal enough (being a low-level, low-magic, curse-filled Ravenloft game) that getting into more fights than they have to isn't always the best bet.

It is also worth noting, at least for me, that the random encounter tables aren't just combats. Some are certainly just wandering monsters, others are NPCs or the like that could result in combat or negotiation, others might even just be travel dangers or obstacles - or even friendly encounters, occasionally.

Additionally, I'll usually have 'landmarks' along the way in the skill challenge. So it isn't just a series of unrelated skill checks - they might have a few general skill checks (Nature/Stealth/etc) to avoid the dangers of the woods, then they might reach a specific obstacle and have to deal with it. (That obstacle might even involve combat itself).

In the afore-mentioned "kill the were-bear" quest, the party needed to navigate through the Hagswood to find the were-bear's den. This involved crossing a treacherous swamp, calming an ancient treant, bypassing a death knight's resting place, navigating through a hedgemaze filled with murderous ravens, and solving a puzzle at a lake with three paths leading away from it.

The group ended up with a few failures on the way in, resulting in the party's cleric trying to cling to a 'log' while crossing the swamp (which ended up being a crocodile they had to kill), and another PC ending up covered in leeches which weren't noted until much later (during the fight with the Were-bear). They also triggered a combat at the death knight's burial mound, since they sent a PC to investigate it and forgot he had a curse that causes the dead to rise whenever he approaches a gravesite.

They successfully got to the Were-bear and finished their quest - but then ended up with a final failure on the challenge just as they were leaving the swamp. The random encounter they ended up with - was a very powerful enemy, one of the three Hags that ruled the swamp. Rather than just dive into combat (not a guaranteed loss, but a pretty likely one - four level 3 PCs against what they expected was a high heroic or early paragon elite enemy), they instead negotiated, bartering away a powerful item (a gem of true seeing), and being allowed to depart safely with a boon from the Hag for their offering.

Now, I do get that some campaigns thrive on just... constant random violence. But, at least in my experiences, PCs also like accomplishing goals - when the group has time to burn and just wants to kill something, they are more likely to specifically find a quest to go kill stuff and go hunting those enemies, rather than just walk out into the wild and see what finds them.

Again, it depends on what sort of random encounter table you are looking at. If they expect everything on it is going to be a straight-up fight within their ability to defeat, that does certainly work. I tend to favor more robust ones, which means both the possibility of non-combat encounters, but also the possibility of fights being trivial for the party - or difficult enough that flight might be the best option. And, at least for this campaign, it seems to be working out well so far.