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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5682899" data-attributes="member: 61155">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.</blockquote>

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