sup /tg/
I'm planning on running a campaign with a lot more overland travel than I generally do and wanted to use some random encounter tables to make it more interesting. However, I'm having a hard time coming up with tables that balance interesting non-combat encounters with balanced combat encounters.
Am I doing something wrong, or am I just finding really shitty tables/generators? I've fiddled with some random sites online, and mostly tried generating stuff with Donjon, but, especially the random encounter generator, feels kinda lackluster.
Is there a place that has some I don't know about, or should I be building them myself more? If so, any tips for building encounter tables that spark something a bit more than an appropriate difficulty combat?
The secret is that there's no difference between a combat and non-combat encounter. Rely on a reaction table and treat terrain like a creature and you'll have all you ever need.
>treat terrain like a creature
I don't have any idea what you mean by this. Could you tell me more?
(I swear I'm not bumpgay, I legitimately am curious)
If terrain is notable enough to form an encounter and not already on the map, then get a table with it. 3.5 has a nice one for that sort of thing in the DMG IIRC. Climbing a cliff or fording an uncharted river are both encounters which should be able to be rolled alongside goblins and bandits.
I will admit that I normally just rely on mapped out terrain difficulties like rivers but it is my hope to retrofit that aformentioned 3.5 table at some point.
Oh that makes sense.
I imagine you're talking about something more interesting than just a pass/fail skill check here. Could you give me an example of how that plays out? Or point to some resources for that? I'm always a little bit weak on non-combat design.
Giving the players a choice, complication, or better yet a situation where they need to come up with a plan is generally the best option.
So if they came to a cliff, you could have the rock be crumbly when they try to scale it. At a simple level that means that if they're not careful about checking the rock before ascending one of them takes a nasty spill, but if you wanted more depth you could let them know the rock was loose before they tried to climb it, maybe with a skeleton because skeletons are fun. The players can then try to find a way around, or get a rope hooked to something stronger, or another option because players always find another option that's better than anything you can come up with.
It's fine to have a simple encounter too. Sometimes you can just say "The forest is thick and hard to navigate through here, do you want to continue?" and let the players decide if they want to go around or push forwards.
Also please keep in mind I'm just some jackass who runs a three hour game every friday with a terrible homebrew system on Google Jamboard.
Thanks! This is all useful stuff.
>Also please keep in mind I'm just some jackass who runs a three hour game every friday with a terrible homebrew system on Google Jamboard.
And I'm just some jackass who usually runs premade modules and just started trying to do custom stuff. Any input, advice, or help is appreciated. Thanks, anon!
Balanced encounters are also not real and never have been.
It might seem counter intuitive, but if there's going to be excessive overworld travel, you could find ways to handwave some of it away. Before the group departs, they could encounter merchants with horses and wagons, a caravan, and they could either tag along for free, or maybe they want to enlist some power for in the event of a bandit attack. So no longer do you roll on a table, you can just flip a coin if the passage was safe or you can throw on one of your default combat encounters with bandits. Not every trek need to be eventful, it could just be, you guys arrived safe and sound, consumed so many rations ect, and you're now at your destination.
Thanks for the input. But isn't this sort of covered by having blank results in the table? Or having doing a curved results (2-3d6 etc) and having common results either be positive or "nothing happens"? Either way thanks for the input!
Excuse my ignorance but what does encounter distance effect? I've never seen it used.
I'm definitely planning on using reaction tables. Monsters just showing up and always fighting to the death sucks.
I'll look into those tables! Thank you!
As for encounter balance, I'm not talking always CR appropriate stuff, but I don't want to dump things on the players they both can't fight and can't get away from. I could just build tailored tables that avoids that sort of monster, true but is there anything else I could do?
>what does being far away or close effect
Is this a real question? Are you actually unable to extrapolate with your imagination the difference between noticing something 50' away and 250'? Have you never done anything physical in space over time before?
Sure but if you generate a group of monsters 500' away what is the functional difference between that and rolling that nothing happens? I can see some specific monsters and whatnot having justifications for those things following the party or being able to interact at that kind of distance, but it seems like most times things would be meaningless after a certain distance.
I might be in the wrong here, of course, but, like I said, I've never seen any guidelines for an encounter distance table, so I'm not sure what I'm dealing with here.
There are always contextual factors for encounters. Its not a videogame. You have to be able to use your brain to figure out how the various creatures and things will interact based on different variables like distance, weather, what its aims are, etc.
Some of them will have the ability to see farther than the party, some of them can fly, some of them are in larger numbers, some of them will follow the party, some will parley, etc.
Its all contextual. You're asking as if you're thinking of them all as some sort of uniform entity or something weird. Might help you out if you make a short list of different creatures that exist in the biome you're making an map for, then figure out what they're up to. Doesn't have to be much, even just
>Hobgoblins of the Shattered Knee are on a religious migration.
will give you something to work with.
5e is likely not well suited to what you're trying to do. There might be bits about rolling for encounter distance in the dmg but its a ways from how it seems like the game is played. pre-wotc editions have more on exploration.
Alright. Yeah. It definitely seems like I was overthinking it. I assumed the distance would have a codified effect on the encounter, but its more like a way to add variation to what is otherwise just a random number of monsters. A group of wolves generated 20' away is definitely going to act different than one generated 500' away. Basically a way to inform my own "improv" on the situation, more than a specific set of rules. That makes sense.
Thanks for clarifying, anon.
np, a lot of it is about procedural methods that make the randomness into bits you can use rather than hard coded effects on the encounter itself. There are a few different hexcrawl/wilderness exploration guides that might help. This pdf and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=eC-h1haFSIA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fduckduckgo.com%2F&feature=emb_title
were pretty helpful for me.
The /osrg/ is a bit of a mess at times but there are likely a few other suggestions there.
If you're doing overland travel but worrying about encounter balance you're playing the wrong edition for overland travel.
Things that are likely not part of the edition you are playing:
>encounter distance
>reaction rolls
>variable terrain
Get some random terrain generators, even the DM's Miscellany Wilderness book will do for features to use. D4 Caltrops' random terrain is actually good but might not be where you're at.
Roll for encounter distance, keep in mind how far away things can be seen to give players time to react, flee, parley, etc.
Roll for reaction , adjusted by creature type, faction relations, etc.
Adjust your tables with a 2d6 curve, having the more common and less deadly encounters towards the middle and the apex predators and really deadly stuff at either end.
It would help us if you told us system/setting, too.
Its 5e, unfortunately. Easing some newcomers into TTRPGs with the 5e bait.
Setting is a pretty generic thing of my own making. Its nothing special, but intelligent "monsters," are a bit of a rarity. Justification is that the players are stuck on a one way plane. Almost everyone there got there via some magical mishap or interaction. The total number of things with souls is capped by the number of things with souls that stumbled onto the plane, but things without them can breed just fine. So while maybe a group of orcs got magiced there somehow, they would have trouble making a self sustaining population.
That at least eliminates other setting-specific options, anyway. You won't find a Chaos menhir with a minotaur lurking nearby in 5e, for example.
General examples I'd give would be things like bands of traveling pilgrims, troops camped beside the road hassling travelers, other travelers who're butting heads over something stupid which threatens to escalate into violence.