Wandering Monsters: How Tough?

[Garnfellow]

I seem to remember a passage in the DMG that discusses appropriate encounter levels for placed encounters and wandering monsters. The gist being that typical wandering encounters should be a little easier than placed encounters, and have an EL of something like party level -X.

I can't find this passage in my 3.5 DMG. Was it in the 3.0 DMG? Or am I thinking of a past edition? Or maybe I am just plain crazy.

 

[Vrecknidj]

A brief glance at page 77 in the 3.5 DMG didn't give me an EL suggestion. On the page with the sample encounter tables, there's a piece of advice to go looking at the CR and EL section of the DMG to make your own tables with the right balance. So, it looks like their advice is to have a wandering monster have the same likelihood of being at, above, or below the party's level as any other encounter.

Interesting. I've never really put that much thought into it--I tend to turn all "wandering" monsters into planned encounters anyway though.

Dave

 

[Klaus]

I don't recall any such guidelines, but if I use a wandering monster, I'll set it at 3 or 4 lower than the party's average level. It's supposed to be just window dressing, and I don't want to waste one hour on that. It's either a 10 to 20-minute battle or nothing at all.

 

[Ipissimus]

Definitely a good idea not to make these too challenging. A few bad rolls and you can swamp the party in random encounter after random encounter and nothing will be achieved in the whole game session.

 

[EricNoah]

It depends, though -- if they are travelling for days and this might be the only encounter they have today, I don't mind smacking them around with a tougher encounter. Let them pull out all the stops and then rest up afterwards.

I like to use random encounters to help cement the setting in the players' minds-- using creatures that are quintessential to either the terrain/climate, or to the setting's flavor. That's one purpose they serve. Another is to just have a fun combat for no reason. A third is to introduce red herrings. Sometime's a plot is too A-to-B-to-C -- a weird random encounter with a clue that leads nowhere can be fun now and then.

 

[dcollins]

I seem to remember a passage in the DMG that discusses appropriate encounter levels for placed encounters and wandering monsters. The gist being that typical wandering encounters should be a little easier than placed encounters, and have an EL of something like party level -X.

I don't really see that in 3.0. DMG is set up with dungeon wandering monsters at same EL as dungeon level.

 

[Klaus]

It depends, though -- if they are travelling for days and this might be the only encounter they have today, I don't mind smacking them around with a tougher encounter. Let them pull out all the stops and then rest up afterwards.

I like to use random encounters to help cement the setting in the players' minds-- using creatures that are quintessential to either the terrain/climate, or to the setting's flavor. That's one purpose they serve. Another is to just have a fun combat for no reason. A third is to introduce red herrings. Sometime's a plot is too A-to-B-to-C -- a weird random encounter with a clue that leads nowhere can be fun now and then.

For me, even if the characters are travelling for days, the players and I have a finite ammount of time to game (and it seems it gets shorter and rarer each time we do), so unless it's a combat that the PCs can wrap up in 20 minutes of real time, it's just not worth it, and I'd rather just skip to a non-random encounter.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

I use MoAET, and let the dice fall where they may, balance and CRs be damned.

 

[dren]

I heavily use wandering monsters whenever PCs are travelling in wilderness regions. I usually do up my own tables for each region and the players know the liklihood of encounters: rolling 1-2 / night in remote regions. The tables are arranged into good, bad, strong, weak or neutral creatures with a higher degree for weaker creatures and inhabitants. These are sometimes harder than the main planned combats, as the planned encounters are never set higher than their EL, however, random monsters are just that and I let the dice (and the bodies) fall where they may.

Because players know this is random (based on their own rolls), they understand its part of the brutual reality in the remote regions which is a price they pay as adventuers to risk the higher rewards. It's a really strong incentive for them to utilize travelling caravans as there is strength in numbers, which is part of the pseudo-medieval fantasy setting I wanted anyway.

 

[LostSoul]

I'd have a table where the monsters ranged from APL (average party level) -2 to APL +4.

I'd have the main range (like 70% of the table) be APL. 10% for both APL -1 and APL +1. 4% for both APL -2 and +2. 1% for APL +3 and +4.

If it was just monsters I was going to put down. I'd also throw non-combat encounters in there as well.