Dungeons & Dragons' Dungeon Master's Guide offers various ways to check for random encounters, suggesting anything from once an hour to just once during a long rest. The standard method usually involves rolling a d20, with an 18 or higher (a 15% chance) indicating an encounter. The problem with this approach, which has been a common issue with random encounters for a long time, is that it lumps every possible living thing into one big pile. In the vast wilderness, the odds of encountering humanoids are often much lower, while the chances of running into a curious beast are far higher. But as I learned from the challenging Philmont hike, there's another crucial factor to consider: how smelly the party is.
What are "Smellables"?
A smellable is anything with an odor that might attract a creature, especially those with a keen sense of smell like bears. Importantly, bears aren't typically attracted by human scent itself, but by things humans bring with them. This includes obvious items like food, candy, and garbage, but also less obvious ones such as flavored drinks, soap, medicines, lotions, and even blood. Any container that has ever held something other than water can also be a smellable.For adventurers, this expands to many spell components. Organic materials from animals (like rotten meat, bits of fur or bone, guano, or even adder's stomachs) are prime attractants. Similarly, some plant materials (licorice root, rhubarb leaf) and certain minerals (sulfur, incense) can give off strong odors.
A good rule of thumb: PCs shouldn't use anything with a strong odor at least two hours before sunset, as many creatures are most active at night.
The Bear-muda Triangle
In real-world wilderness training, hikers learn to establish a Bear-muda Triangle (so named because it's meant to avoid having bears enter the camp, and keep them away from it) at their campsites. The goal is to keep all activity involving smellables within the first three areas, which roughly form a triangle. The fourth area is where the campers are sleeping away from the triangle:- Cooking Area: Where adventurers prepare, cook, and eat food (often near a designated fire ring).
- Smellables Storage: Where all the party's smellables are securely stored.
- Sump: A designated area (like a pipe in the ground in established camps) for disposing of wastewater.
- Tent Area: Where characters sleep.
Setting Up Bear Bags
Properly securing smellables is crucial for wilderness safety. At camp, adventurers should begin by locating designated areas for cooking, smellables storage, and wastewater disposal, ensuring their tents are pitched 50-100 feet away to form a Bear-muda Triangle. This minimizes scent near the sleeping area.To set up bear bags, characters will need two strong ropes (about 150 feet), a carabiner (common in the Forgotten Realms, though they weren't invented until the 1800s), and sturdy bags. First, create a loop in the middle of one rope with an overhand knot and toss it over a bear cable or sturdy limb about twenty feet high. Once the loop is reachable, attach a carabiner, and then secure the main smellables bags to the rope with lark's head knots, balancing the weight.
Next, run the second rope through the carabiner for the smaller "Oops" bag, which holds essentials like a healer's kit for quick access. Hoist the main bags using both ends of the first rope until they're out of reach, then tie off each end to separate trees, wrapping them several times for security. Finally, raise the "Oops" bag up to the carabiner and secure its rope ends to different trees as well. This dual-rope system ensures that if one rope fails, the other still protects the party's precious smellables from curious creatures.
Consequences for Random Encounters
With these procedures in mind, the chance of a random encounter should be significantly lower. It's not possible to entirely eliminate an encounter, but proper precautions dramatically reduce the risk. During a Long Rest, the baseline chance for a random encounter could easily be a Natural 20 on a d20 check.Failure to follow these precautions, however, increases the encounter chances significantly. Here's how different factors can modify that baseline 20:
- Unmanaged Smellables: Leaving any smellables out adds a +1 to the encounter roll (meaning an encounter occurs on an 19-20 instead of just 20). Many organic spell components (rotten meat, guano, specific herbs, sulfur, incense) are inherently attractive to creatures. If casters don't properly seal and store these, they count as unmanaged smellables, adding a +1 to the encounter roll. However, resourceful adventurers might use sealed containers or even magical pockets like a bag of holding to effectively hide these scents, negating this penalty.
- Efficient Bear Bag Procedures: A party that meticulously practices all Bear-muda Triangle principles and fully isolates all scent sources (using bear bags, burying waste where appropriate, etc.) effectively prevents the +1 modifier that would otherwise be applied for unmanaged scent attractants. A party demonstrating exceptional wilderness discipline might even reduce the target number for an encounter by 1 (e.g., from 19 to 20).
- Lifestyle: How a party lives in the wilderness also impacts their scent profile. Unlike city living, a "wretched" lifestyle is often ideal in the wild—it means living cleanly, with minimal extravagances that can create tempting odors. Conversely, the fancier a party chooses to live, the more likely they are to be scented by creatures, with a +0.5 modifier (rounding down for the total modifier) applied to the encounter roll for every lifestyle step above "Wretched." For instance, a squalid lifestyle adds +0.5 to the roll, while poor adds +1, and modest adds +1.5 (which rounds down to a +1). An aristocratic camp, with its major tents, fine amenities, diverse foods, and possibly even personal mounts or servants, creates a significant and far-reaching scent footprint. However, opting for a more comfortable lifestyle does offer trade-offs against environmental factors. According to Xanathar's Guide to Everything, a DC 10 Constitution saving throw is necessary per 24-hour period to avoid suffering one level of Exhaustion without sleeping the full 6 hours of a Long Rest. A more comfortable lifestyle might reduce this DC (e.g., an Aristocratic lifestyle could reduce it to DC 7), though adventurers should remember the DC increases by 5 for every failed consecutive 24-hour rest.
Why This Matters
Managing smellables is a key wilderness survival technique that anyone proficient in the Survival skill should know, including those with the Guide background or classes like Barbarians, Bards (if they choose the skill), Druids, Fighters, and Rangers. Having one of these characters hoist a bear bag can be invaluable in staving off wandering monsters. Knowing the Bear-muda Triangle procedure ensures that even when an encounter does happen, it's directed away from sleeping adventurers, minimizing surprise and maximizing safety.While these might seem like minor details in what is likely the daily life of an adventurer, the additional detail can mean the difference between nature-dwelling characters who have a healthy respect for local wildlife... and a giant monster waking up the party for a midnight snack.
