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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PatrickLawinger" data-source="post: 2915596" data-attributes="member: 2735">Wandering monsters and random encounters tend to get people taking sides. They always have. I generally prefer to have/use pretty extensive encounter tables with extremely small chances of running into more difficult creatures. Animal encounters predominate in most wilderness and are either ignored with a simple "You spot a group of deer in the distance." or something similar. Sometimes I'll say, "<character name> gets off a quick shot, looks like venison tonight." Wilderness encounters are almost always avoidable if the PCs are careful. The style of your players can have a profound effect on the use of random encounters. If they attack everything on sight, well, that could get bad.If you roll a 2 on the Survival check (because nobody has ranks in it) and camp right above a cave smelling of carrion, well, that could be bad too ...Encounter tables for my world also generally follow rumors the PCs might get of certain areas. For example, there is an area of mountains known to contain groups of giants, trolls, and tribes of kobolds (that happen to specialize in use of alchemical fire and fire magic-reasonable due to the many trolls; they also have small cave entrances...). The chances of running into trolls, hill giants, or kobold hunting or war parties is much higher there. The chance of running into human brigands etc. is practically non-existant. Wider swaths of wilderness I do use Mother of All Encounter Tables but I am happy to throw away results that don't make sense. I do not, however, tailor things due to CR/EL etc.Oddly, any deaths I have had from random encounters have been at the hands (or tusks) of something below the Party's challenge level and were all due to incredible bad luck (or good, depending on your point of view) with the dice. Nobody has ever had bad feelings about those deaths and most circumstances surrounding them were actually quite funny.There are tons of ways to give PCs hints that there are "bad things out there man, bad things ..." the forest might be eerily quiet and devoid of life, scorch marks along the trail road, the decimated, clawed wreck of a caravan, etc. When you roll an encounter you don't have the ancient red dragon drop out of thin air onto the party saying "what's up doc?" I view a random encounter as a chance to add flavor to the world, give it some spice and danger and imbue it with some fear. If the PCs respond appropriately, perhaps simply by changing direction or hiding, then they can avoid the encounter entirely, marking it on their maps and burning into their memories, "here thar be dragons."Patrick</blockquote>

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