|
Post by Scott on May 4, 2016 14:23:10 GMT -5
One of my least favorite parts of DMing is random outdoor encounters. How does a random encounter in the wilderness with 300 orcs, or bandits, gnolls, hobgoblins, etc. not wreck your flow. How many base monsters? How many leader types? Any special guards/pets? How are they organized? What is their strategy? Blah! How do you handle it?
|
|
|
Post by geneweigel on May 4, 2016 20:33:07 GMT -5
Use the rules for random wilderness terrain on page 173 in the DMG but use the judgement of how the campaign has gone to see if you can put in more or less terrain. The "depression" roll signifies a cave which is an easy throw together. If its a land that is well known then the large group encounters are mobile armies or new construction.
|
|
|
Post by Scott on May 5, 2016 14:37:07 GMT -5
A good supplement would have been a collection of ready to run random encounters of the cumbersome sort. A large orc tribe, hobgoblins, etc. Like the Rogues Gallery Bandits, etc. but with additional detail. Maybe less generic, and with marching order and tactics.
|
|
foster1941
Warlock
Duke of California, Earl of Los Angeles, Knight Bachelor
Posts: 475
|
Post by foster1941 on May 5, 2016 15:24:04 GMT -5
I veered back and forth between having some pre-rolled groups (that would get used over and over with at most minor cosmetic changes) and just winging it, trusting that the party would almost always try to flee or hide or negotiate rather than actually engage such groups in combat, even at high levels.
A book like you describe - two or three detailed sets of each type of tribal monster, including both traveling and in-lair versions of each - would've been about a million times more useful than Jim Ward's "Book of Lairs" (i.e. book of lame mini-adventures with no maps) and is actually what I was expecting that book would be when I first saw it mentioned in the "Coming Attractions" section in Dragon magazine.
|
|
|
Post by geneweigel on May 5, 2016 15:58:42 GMT -5
Honestly? I always throw armies at parties so its their death if they think its all going to be padded or standard BTB BS that they can "paladin snowplow" through.
|
|
|
Post by geneweigel on May 5, 2016 16:14:17 GMT -5
BOOK OF LAIRS (1986) might have been the D&D death knell for me because I can still remember how I thought it was going to be awesome and trying to find something to use. I might still have it but I believe that I tossed it when I purged the hanger on monster books from second edition. All those 2E GH boxed sets had pullouts in that format as if it was somehow a winning style.
As for Jim Ward its hard to like him. He makes Arneson look like a river of ideas.
|
|