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Wandering Monsters - yea or nay?
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<blockquote data-quote="Hautamaki" data-source="post: 5472417" data-attributes="member: 42219"><p>I don't roll random wandering monsters, but I do give the party seemingly random wandering monster encounters where appropriate.</p><p></p><p>When I will throw 'random' wandering monsters at a party:</p><p></p><p>1) The session will have had too much roleplaying to satisfy the more combat-oriented players/characters without a 'random' wandering monster encounter.</p><p></p><p>2) A player designed his character to counter a particular monster type, not realizing the coming adventure has no monsters of that type--give him something his character was optimized to kill to make him feel better about what was in actuality an unwitting bad choice.</p><p></p><p>3) One character needs just a little more experience to catch up in levels to the rest of the party.</p><p></p><p>4) The party in general is about to unwittingly wander into an adventure they do not have the strength/resources to overcome--wandering monsters might either give them the experience boost they need to gain a level, drop some equipment to power them up enough for the adventure, or drain them of enough resources to send them back to town for recuperation and equipment upgrades.</p><p></p><p></p><p>As a DM I usually prepare ahead of time some NPCs with good equipment drops, and at least one wandering monster encounter for every character in the party to shine against. Then I can insert them whenever needed. Right now my party consists of a berserker, a paladin, an assassin, and a ranger. For the next adventure I'm preparing a dire bear for the Ranger to calm/befriend, an orc warband for the berserker and paladin to shine against, and a rival assassin NPC for our assassin to elude/counter-assassinate. I'm not sure when I'll use these encounters exactly but I'm sure that the appropriate opportunity will arise in the course of their adventuring.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Hautamaki, post: 5472417, member: 42219"] I don't roll random wandering monsters, but I do give the party seemingly random wandering monster encounters where appropriate. When I will throw 'random' wandering monsters at a party: 1) The session will have had too much roleplaying to satisfy the more combat-oriented players/characters without a 'random' wandering monster encounter. 2) A player designed his character to counter a particular monster type, not realizing the coming adventure has no monsters of that type--give him something his character was optimized to kill to make him feel better about what was in actuality an unwitting bad choice. 3) One character needs just a little more experience to catch up in levels to the rest of the party. 4) The party in general is about to unwittingly wander into an adventure they do not have the strength/resources to overcome--wandering monsters might either give them the experience boost they need to gain a level, drop some equipment to power them up enough for the adventure, or drain them of enough resources to send them back to town for recuperation and equipment upgrades. As a DM I usually prepare ahead of time some NPCs with good equipment drops, and at least one wandering monster encounter for every character in the party to shine against. Then I can insert them whenever needed. Right now my party consists of a berserker, a paladin, an assassin, and a ranger. For the next adventure I'm preparing a dire bear for the Ranger to calm/befriend, an orc warband for the berserker and paladin to shine against, and a rival assassin NPC for our assassin to elude/counter-assassinate. I'm not sure when I'll use these encounters exactly but I'm sure that the appropriate opportunity will arise in the course of their adventuring. [/QUOTE]
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