Wilderness Encounters

[Anubis]

Okay, I dunno about 3.5, but the wilderness encounter system in 3.0 is ridiculous, stupid, unrealistic, and unbalanced. Chances PER HOUR?!?!?! That means that on average, PCs will have twoi full encounters per day of traveling, three every other day! This is obviously NOT a good thing, as wandering monsters do not have treasure, meaning PCs would accumulate far too many XP for their wealth.

How do the rest of you do wilderness encounters? I'm looking for a reasonable system here. Encounters should ideally happen only once per 5-10 days of travel, and even then, should not be able to give too many more XP than the PCs' wealth suggests.

Ideas?

Also, anybody know if this is fixed in 3.5?

 

[Crothian]

For me it really depends on where in the wilderness they are. There are wild places that a few encounters a day are not out of line. And why don't the PC track the creatures back to their lair anyway? So, no one system can fit every place.

 

[Aaron2]

Originally posted by Anubis Okay, I dunno about 3.5, but the wilderness encounter system in 3.0 is ridiculous, stupid, unrealistic, and unbalanced. Chances PER HOUR?!?!?! That means that on average, PCs will have twoi full encounters per day of traveling, three every other day! This is obviously NOT a good thing, as wandering monsters do not have treasure, meaning PCs would accumulate far too many XP for their wealth.

Wow! Rediculous, stupid, unrealistic and unbalanced. That's way worse than "broken".

2.5 isn't so bad. I've never been in a D&D wilderness, but I've done enough hiking to think that seeing two interesting things a day is reasonable. However, if it were 2.5 encounters with CR 8 monsters that attack you on sight, then I might have a problem.

Necramancer is coming out with the Mother of All Encounter Tables. They are pretty good at making interesting non-combat encounters.

Aaron

 

[fba827]

Okay, I dunno about 3.5, but the wilderness encounter system in 3.0 is ridiculous, stupid, unrealistic, and unbalanced. Chances PER HOUR?!?!?! That means that on average, PCs will have twoi full encounters per day of traveling, three every other day! This is obviously NOT a good thing, as wandering monsters do not have treasure, meaning PCs would accumulate far too many XP for their wealth.

How do the rest of you do wilderness encounters? I'm looking for a reasonable system here. Encounters should ideally happen only once per 5-10 days of travel, and even then, should not be able to give too many more XP than the PCs' wealth suggests.

Ideas?

Also, anybody know if this is fixed in 3.5?

Well, if you already know that you do not want encounters more than once every 5-10 days or travel then simply go ahead and 4+1d6 days; roll at the start of each traveling period and see how many days into travel the encounter will occur. Repeat when they go off on more travels.

(Basically, use what you want as the baseline and devlop the rule / dice roll chance accordingly)

 

[Shin Okada]

Well, I often run wilderness adventures. In my experience, wilderness encounter rule is not so ridiculous nor broken. Characters will meet a lot of things. But in civilized area, most things are just harmless travellers. And, in wilder area, though PCs see a lot of critters, they often see the critters in distance without being noticed then just ignore. Or, just not hostile. Don't remember to use NPC attitude rule for all the creatures. Not all the intelligent creature wants a fight against PCs even if they are evil. And not all the carnivores are hungry when they met PCs. Thus, not become an actual "encounter" which must be overcome by PCs (and provides XPs).

But I admit that this is rather annoying to handle all the not-so-important encounters. If you want want to handle really important encounters only, reduce the number of encounters and put only hostile or important encounters on the table.

 

[dcollins]

I agree with the original poster, the 3.0 chance of wilderness encounters are far too high.

The book explicitly states that these don't represent mundane critters in the distance -- "The chance for an encounter assumes a significant encounter -- not an encounter with a blueay or a squirrel... A significant encounter is one that is worthy of your and the players' attention -- a monster, a threat, or a challenge of some sort..." (DMG p. 132) Table 4-37 and the example on p. 136 make it pretty clear that they're supposed to be challenging (I agree with that, it's the frequency that makes it questionable.)

Furthermore, you can sort of figure from Table 4-36 that hostile monsters make up about 8% of the encounter chance, while civilized travellers only make up another 0-4% depending on terrain. Even in wilderness areas that becomes about 50% chance for encounter per 8 hours.


What do I do? I use 1st Ed. encounter tables for overland travel -- 1 in 10 (or 12 or 20), checked between 3 and 6 times per day. (I once saw FRCS tables somewhere that modified 3.0 chances up or down depending on camping/ avoiding/ or seeking encounters, but overall they about averaged the same.)