Running Random Encounters
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- Опубліковано 16 лип 2021
- In many D&D and RPG games, a random encounter signifies a bunch of enemies that attack the characters. However, is that what random encounters in Dungeons & Dragons should be? Enemies that simply attack? And if so, what point might random encounters serve in the game then? In this video, I discuss a better way to DESIGN and RUN random encounters in your RPG or D&D game.
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"The best way to do a random encounter is to create a planned encounter."
Mission Board: "Goblin encounters in the woods, (scratched out) 1 silver per ear, (replaced by) 2 silver for the whole head."
While out in the woods, you run across a pack of goblins with only one ear, due to previous adventurers convincing them to let them cut one of their ears off before letting them go.
It's random for the players, not for you. Why should anything you introduce be random? You're the DM, act like it.
that is how I do it.
@@TheRealKLT I'm just being glib and turning a phrase. I rarely use truly random encounters in my games.
However, I do feel like the threat of a random encounter can be a good motivator for players, so I keep them in my back pocket for situations where the party decides to do something reckless which might leave them exposed.
@@TheRealKLT Rolling for the encounter can make it random on your end, but not that the events within the encounter are random. Makes it more interesting and entertaining for the DM. For example, a random encounter could be that cultists from the evil Moon God that the players are investigating approach and attempt to apprehend the party.
The "when" of this occurrence or whether it even happens doesn't really matter, but its still relevant to the current plot at hand.
Thumbnail had me thinking: “random encounters suck unless you drop Moloch, the maligned demon prince, on your unsuspecting party.”
When the rant about the horse started, I couldn't stop laughing as I was reminded of John Mulaney's "horse in the hospital" skit.
"There is a HORSE! LOOSE! in the dungeon!"
"Get Bobby the horse catcher!"
"The horse has fired Bobby the horse catcher."
@@solvamstudio yesss!
Mulaney is awesome
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought this
An entire campaign can be looking for the BBEG:
"Where's Francis?"
I understood that reference.
I have something different in my head :
"JASON ! JASON JASON ! JAAAASOOOON ! JASON ! JASOOOON !!!"
Counter-argument:
Random Encounters don't need to be cute little "interesting" stories on their own right. Even though I love the sentiment, that could often distract from the main quest or story with endless little sidequests actually padding the lenght of the game even worse than "generic combat from a table Nr. 4".
In the OSR philosophy, wandering monsters; rampaging orcs, prowling direwolves, etc. are not pointless, they are a tool to apply pressure on players. If a system focuses on getting to the gold hoard rather than getting XP from killing stuff, players will want to avoid penniless monsters showing up by the hour that will just drain their ressources. This is intented to pressure players to move forward, take less rests, use stealth, find shortcuts, focus on their objective. Etc.
Yes, though in 5e the main purpose is to drain resources like spell slots, which is part if why i prefer OSR games.
It works better with the dungeoneering processes from older editions (B/X is where i get the rules i use)
@@greasysmith3150 It feels to me hardly anything in 5e is worth or even possible to drain. Infinite cantrips, short rests, lack of torches (because everyone seens in the dark anyway) generous health rules and mostly toothless monsters makes random encounters more of a nuisance than a serious concern.
Random Encounters can easily be both.
Encounters that connect directly to the main plot but don't force combat is probably the best use of Random Encounters, imo. For example, in my game, a random encounter involves the characters finding the knife (regular dagger) of the character they are searching for. There is also a nearby trail leading them to a place the character had once visited on their travels. If they follow that path, they could either find the character or someone that knows the character and their current whereabouts.
Yet, this is a random encounter. The party may decide to completely ignore it or keep it in the back of their minds. Or they may simply never actually have that encounter occur. While having that encounter occur may bring them closer to their goals, it never sidetracks them or makes them wonder what the point of the encounter is.
Another good use is to establish themes in Random Encounters. For example, I was running a goofy campaign where it was more roleplay than gritty combats and one of the encounters was a witch pranking a village by turning all their clothes invisible until they wore them. Just a goofy scenario. Contrast that to a gritty steampunk encounter where a murderer drugs and kills prostitutes for his own self-righteous ideals and it doesn't take much to realize that this game isn't the same one as the one with a prankster witch, even if its the same DM.
I agree that tying a random encounter to the main plot or themes is important for coherence and to invite the players to plan ahead, etc. But your examples don't sound much like _random_ encounters, just.. encounters : P The fact they can have them or not doesn't make them random, you even say the party may _decide_ to completely ignore it, which makes it the opposite of random. It's the product of plot and choice rather than of circumstance and chance. Which is perfectly fine, I just think it's a different tool. Now if your players had a 2/10 chance each hour to be attacked by the witch's/killer's minions or by random criminal bands while looking for clues in a bad neighbourhood, then _thats_ a random encounter.
random encounters are mostly part of traveling and exploration. problem is that 5e has horrible ruleset to run that very important aspect of the game properly. that is why many new dungeon masters have no idea how to run wilderness exploration, and by extension random encounters, properly.
If you just kill the big bad , the underlings all just got a promotion, they don't just stop villaining...
The party is hired to stop warring gangs in the city - behind the scenes, their employer is consolidating power, becoming the head of a much larger gang. When the party realizes this, they must now fight their former employer.
just write some fun things and do them when the game goes slow and you feel like you need something to shake it up.
Seriously, just take a memo of every random idea you get, no matter how stupid, write it down, make a voice recording, just note them down.
My last random encounter i put into my game was literally just a woman who ran to the party and cried ogres stole her sheep, and it turned out the sheep was her boyfriend, cursed by a necklace she made him wear for cheating on her. Didnt even end up in combat, our bard convinced the ogres that one wanted to poison the other one and they took the sheep while the ogres were fighting each other.
Negotiations/ tricking sentient beings can sometimes be more enjoyable than just killing them
*taking note*: "sheep boyfriend."
So the boyfriend was.... Baaaaaaad?
@@adamkaris He was just _ramming_ someone else
"There is no right way to run a module" *Looks at every 5e adventure* Damn it, he's right...
I love my Curse of Strahd campaign for how off the rails it went. Several canon characters are dead or vampire spawns.
heck i run pathfinder adventures this way (combat tactics and morale are spelled out, I don't check unless i remember off the top of the head)
**Looks at every adventure ever written, D&D and more**
Yep.....
There are some things that you can have happen to make a "Random" encounter, work as well as a "Planned" encounter.
1) As the DM you need to make the players think it IS a planned encounter. If you can't think of a way to do that. Just don't do it. As soon as the players know it's "Just a random encounter" they will lose a certain amount of investment in the session unless they are simple murder hobos. If they ARE murder hobos its probably fine to do away with the entire adventure and just roll on a table to determine the body shape and tone of green of their next victims. They won't care...
2) Prepare your "Random" encounters in advance. This sounds a bit contrary to the nature of "random" but its not. Depending on how you select what random encounters you will use there will some sort of list for you to refer to.
So, refer to that source before the game and have the various results already rolled up and noted down on a card or sheet of paper or document on your computer/device. They take very little time to do, they take up very little space in a folder, throw a quick map in there and by the time you have finished stat blocking it all, you will normally have evolved a more thorough idea of what the encounter actually IS... And a pre planned "Ambush" works ten times better than "Suddenly, a goblin archer takes a shot at you from behind a rock/tree/dead horse, roll for surprise/initiative/lack of interest..." Depending on what system you use for mapping, knocking together a "Road with some trees" is not a huge task. Even using things like Dungeonfog and roll20, these can be cobbled together in 5 minutes along with a description of the "Encounter" and saved for when needed.
Make it feel planned and the party will act accordingly.
(Eventually, if you as the DM appear to treat all encounters the same way, you may even get them into that sweet spot that players can sometimes reach where they don't think in terms of "How does the DM want/expect me to react to this", and just have their characters realistically react to whatever is in front of them without thinking about whether or not this is "Part of the adventure".)
3) Do NOT allow the players to hear/see you roll the dice then start flipping through pages, accompanied by a "Sigh"... and for Gods sake don't do something dumb like apologise that the dice have decided that they have met a random encounter. If you are annoyed at having been forced to run the encounter because "Dice rule the world," then guess how they will feel when they know that the thing they are about to risk their characters lives over is a trivial distraction to YOU, and that you are already shifting the blame for their potential demise away from yourself in a world where you are literally more powerful than the Gods in terms of their character's life and death!
4) Don't allow them to be just random death squads of self sacrificial lunatics. Treat them the same as any other monster/NPC. If you do that, so will your players. There are lots of ways an encounter can be "Not a fight to the death with some ugly creature hell bent on killing you". If the players have missed bits of the plot that impart important information have a group of travellers happen upon their way... given the right approach and interaction, THEY may be able to give this information to the players... Merchants, rival adventuring parties, military messengers who might want the safety of a group for a while as they themselves are being pursued... loads of possibilities.
5) Remember there is a difference between a "Random Encounter" and a "Wandering Monster" (whatever the terminology being used in the adventure decides to use). A Wandering Monster is something that already exists within the planned adventure area, it's purpose and goals will already be understood. They normally exist in game terms to keep players on their toes in a dungeon type situation to avoid them just parking their butts in a room and taking a rest and occasionally throw a spanner in the works of their carefully laid plans. Random Encounters are usually there to break up travel sequences to avoid them becoming stale. Treating them this way in terms of choosing when to use them will help you a lot.
If the party are on their way home and have just had a big fight, and are happily role-playing between themselves, then it's up to YOU whether you even want to bother rolling for a "Random" encounter.
Most Important Rule that, if you run games anywhere near the way I do, applies to pretty much EVERYTHING in the game is this...
Do NOT let the dice ruin a perfectly good game session! Remember YOU are the DM, YOU tell the GODS what to do!
I wish I could save this mighty comment. Nicely said
I have to disagree a bit with #3. Doing random encounters "by the book" ensures that the players know you are playing fairly, ie nonhostile. If they know (and they'll figure it out, I assure you) that a module asks you to roll for a random encounter once every half hour of travel, they know you're not cheating them when you roll a pack of dire wolves or some other thing from the tables.
If you want to fib, do it within the encounters themselves; give a foe a miss when they might have hit, or lower a foe's HP by just enough so they don't get another turn at a critical moment. That's what DM screens are for.
@@Gevaudan1471 Gonna have to point out #3 is more of a "judgment call" point. If you (GM) are annoyed at rolling another random encounter, even when the module calls for it... there's a point when you should just stop and reconsider...
Maybe the Players are enjoying the frequent combats or encounters... Maybe it's time to look around and "read the Table" and notice they're getting as irritated as you are...
If it's actually depleting the fun of the Game... It's okay (as Luke pointed out in the video) to "throw crap out"...
There's no right way to run a module. It's just a set of resources to add to your Campaign/Adventure as you (GM again) see fit. If there's something you don't like about it, either change it or toss it...
The oldest Cardinal Rule in GM'ing is "Never EVER let the rules get in the way of the Game."
...meaning, YES... we do need rules for the Game to function. It DOES need structure, and sometimes the purpose of a rule is to be inconvenient... purely so the Players have to think outside the box and get creative at problem solving... BUT when there's a rule (like a roll every half hour for random encounters) that's just dragging the WHOLE experience and game-time down... It's time to change the module to better fit your Table and Style. ;o)
I mostly agree sith your list. In regards to point 2:
- I would let my players roll to see whether there is a random encounter.
- However, I would preroll the type of random encounter that might take place.
- This does mean that you have to prepare several REs since there are factors that might lead to different random encounter tables: e.g. time of day and location.
- If no Rnadom Encounter happens during the session you can carry over the prepared encounters to the next session.
@@Gevaudan1471 That's fair, but I would always put the current tone of the session above the need to obey the rules. I'll be honest and say that in 40 years of DM'ing, this new-age thing of "Players knowing that I'm being fair" has never ever reared its head.
That's because the players are too busy thinking about what THEY are doing to wonder whether I'm sticking to the number of rounds I need to roll for random encounters. If your players are worried about you playing fair, there is probably a reason you have given them in order for that to happen.
If one of my players challenged me over whether I had stuck to some arbitrary rule of how many times I'd checked compared to what the rules say, I'd just ask them to tell me which where the "Random" encounters and which were the "Planned" encounters out of the session they had just played.
If they got it right, (which they wouldn't, for the reasons I gave in my original post) I'd concede to their argument and say, "OK, you got me... was the game any less fun because of it? Or are you only annoyed now that you know?"
Hey Luke, big fan, but you might wanna double check the properties of find steed. Not only can the paladin make his Mount disappear at will (as an action), but they can also communicate telepathically for up to one mile. So one could send the warhorse to scout, have the horse alert them when they see enemies, and then promptly disappear. Sure, the enemies might be alerted that something is up, but the players would be aware of what’s ahead without technically being seen. Using find steed to scout isn’t such a bad technique after all!
In 5e telepathy isn't like "comic book telepathy" it doesn't allow the paladin to use the steeds senses, and must be initiated by the paladin ("you can communicate with it telepathically"). The steed can't make the phone-call, they can only receive from the paladin.
Luke is wrong about some aspects of the spell, but so is the asker and the player who is using the ability. That said, I would compare it to Find Familiar and what the spell is intended to do (which is not to create an expendable creature for scouting).
@@shashankwarudkar5091 but the steed can understand speech, with its intelligence bonus. Can the steed not be commanded to make noise, telepathically, at the first sight of an enemy, at which point the paladin can force the steed to disappear? It does not specifically say the steed cannot communicate back.
@@connortonight no, telepathy in 5e doesn't establish a permanent two-way communication. If you have telepathy, you can contact another creature, and they can respond, but they can't just "think at you" for you to receive messages from them. The steed can understand you, and can receive commands, but by RAW it can't send messages back on its own.
@@connortonight It's actually in the Monster Manual, Pg 9 describes the nature of telepathic communication between creatures "...A creature without telepathy can recieve and respond to telepathic messages, but can't initiate or terminate a telepathic conversation". And the GOO Warlock's Awakened Mind feature was confirmed to be 'one-way' in a tweet from Jeremy Crawford. Thus it can be inferred that if a spell allows you to "telepathically communicate" with a creature it should use the same rules; since Find Steed does not explicitly state that the steed can communicate back to you, that's how I read it.
@@shashankwarudkar5091 i would think conversation implies that the other party is able to respond. he says in that same tweet that it can be ruled either way
Reasons your dungeons need doors: Familiars, wildshaped druids, invisible rogues, echo knights and arcane eye. Unless you prefer to hand your players the map before they step inside, you should really put a door on it.
"Orcs stampeding over a hill" Easy, they're having a running competition.
*laughs* omg! The potential shenanigans.
The Orclympic Games!
I started watching and thought "why is this sounding super familiar" and then I remembered I actually caught this stream live 😄
My Big Bad, an archmage, needed to have a conversation with the party (Level 3s).
They listened, then attacked, even though he was clearly out of their league.
Round 1: Hold Person on the fighter.
Round 2: Sleep on the Warlock and Ranger.
Round 3: He looks at the elf Druid, the only one still able to do anything, and says, "I was being polite. Do not push my courtesy further" and uses dimension door.
That's awesome! :D
sounds like a big talker instead of big bad
@@tomatotomato9813 Poor thing.
You don't understand story development :(
@@MrGreensweightHist youre entitled to your interpretations, good luck with your *big bad talker/conversationalist* who *needs to have conversations* with tier 1 adventurers, maybe bring diapers next time
@@tomatotomato9813 And off to block you go.
You're clearly just interested in insulting people who don't play hack and slash
Stupid Orcs?! My Orcs would shoot arrows at the party horses until the horse died then run. That leaves the party on foot, easy horsemeat when the party moved on, and slow heavily armed parties could be attacked via missile weapons if the Orcs wanted so sometimes the Orcs demanded tribute to leave the party alone!
Fey wild forest in the material plain could also act as an "outdoor" dungeon of sorts. The forest is too dense to move through and it's alive enough to create it's own corridors, rooms and doors. Vine doors :P
Respect on the redhead pick Kevin :)
The horse issue: This is no different than using familiars to scout ahead. Sometimes they die...
Our DM countered by saying that, because the spell didn't specify it, the summoned creature (be they celestial, demon, or fey) is limited by the intelligence of the creature that it's taken the shape of, similar to the Polymorph spell, just of a longer duration. So you can send them scouting, but that spider has an intelligence of 1 and a wisdom of 10, even if it's really an imp (11 and 12, respectively).
@@leonielson7138 The imp case is different, it specifies that "Its statistics are the same in each form, except for the speed changes noted." in its shapechange ability.
My favorite random encounter I ever rolled was three giant badgers stumbled apon the players camp. They were completely non-hostile, just scavenging for supplies. So the players actually decided to go out of their way to scare away the animals WITHOUT violence. They used a spell to cause harmless tremors after a few failures.
13:57 I actually burst out laughing when you just looked at the camera and just shouted ITS A BIG HORSE!
I thought that same thing with the mad mage. My solution was he started to become more coherent the more damage he took. This got my players to think oh something isn't right with this guy and did cartoon logic if we hit him enough he might go back to normal. And I liked how my players came up from a non-murderhobo solution so I went with it
Just murder hobo adjacent
I hope this doesnt come off as annoying, but you mention how "Orcs Attack" isnt a good random encounter, when the first in your Random Encounter List is literally an Orcs Attack, does the Wall of Disease intruige carry into the encounter?
Well, only Sith deal in absolutes. Clearly, he's not a Sith, so he knows that even the best rules should have exceptions.
You could make a forest a confined space by making it magical, as the trees was "moving" and making a strict path. I took this idea from LOTR, when the Hobbies goes through the Old Forest between Shire and Bri.
As someone who grew up around horses, I disagree with the idea that a horse cannot manipulate a doorknob...
I'll be honest that if the situation was laid out the way you assume with the find steed then sure you are right... But you know not all situations are as you assume. (A halfling oath of ancients paladin named Tacis Obaltoe uses his find steed to summon his Mastiff mount(reflavored German shepherd) and plans to ask him to slooth along the outskirts of a bandit camp and comeback with the number of enemies that are on guard.) This is the kind of situation i thought of when I heard the question as I assume the best of the players.
Eh Phandelver’s encounter table at least came with a corresponding list of descriptions. Depending on how they’re played, they didn’t need to all end with fighting.
I love the way you handle random encounters. Inspiring.
Our Dm let our paladin take a grizzly bear as a steed. At like, level 5, or whenever you get the spell. It was BROKEN, doing more damage than the barbarian every turn, and the DM never had a problem with it. Eventually the paladin player just stopped using it because he could tell the rest of us were getting pretty annoyed that he was usually doing 3-4 times more damage than anyone else.
That thumb ring completes you
I introduced the main villain of my campaign to my players very early. They tried to take him on, and a few of them got one shot by the villan (down, not dead). This villain wanted to emiminate the group because he saw them as a potential threat to the organization (cult) he leads. My players in an epic escape leaped off the side of a cliff, and all managed to dodge the pointed rocks at the bottom, landing safely in the water. They know there are several other cities they can go to, and defeating other bad guys there will weaken the big bad enough to where he is fightable at the level they will be (if they dont conquer each town he will have a much larger army).
Thats how i dealt with my players meeting the big bad. Not sure if its the most effective, but my players really enjoyed it.
Doors are monsters they are the greatest enemy of an adventurer. Forget about demons, monsters and eldritch abominations. Doors are the boogeyman of all true heros. If you ask an adventurer what they fear most and they don't answer "DOORS!" be suspensious
This is so obvious and perfect. Thanks for sharing this.
Over the last 15 years, we have mostly ran adventures outdoors. It is not a real problem.
We've ran from level 1 all the way up to 20, fighting anything from Moon Rats to the Tarrasque.
In most cases it does not matter if there are walls or a roof.
I actually find that dungeon crawls need a lot more artificial limitations, or players will just use magic to bypass most of the dungeon.
Thank you.
I recently asked DM Lair about open world adventures without dungeons and he went on a big spiel about how outdoor adventures need artificial limitations to emulate dungeons and I was just shaking my head because he missed the whole point of the question.
By any chance do you happen to have any good resources you could recommend for a GM looking to run Outdoors?
took a cab to a new dms place and was ready to play along with the other two people. We fought a monster from a random encounter that the DM made us fight cause he and I quote said "I'm bored now." (our first action in the game was to leave the village for some reason...) He rolled on the chart and got a monster that was to strong for our three man party so all we did was sit around as the DM downgraded the monster til it was a challenge but not a tpk.
In the outdoors, I feel random encounters demonstrate how dangerous or not the area is - a random encounter with a chimera swooping down and snatching up a pack horse is a totally different encounter than a random encounter with a naiad arguing with a beaver about damming her stream. Inside a dungeon, they represent things like patrols and beings that live there actually LIVING there, and the way I run it, if a given encounter happens, it's removed from the list, and a reroll of that number means no encounter.
An outdoor encounter doesn't even need to know the party encountered them. In the BOOK form of The hobbit, they see a pair of stone giants off in the distance, tossing boulders together for fun.
And yet, sometimes, the entire purpose of random encounters IS just to fight and drain the party's resources - of healing potions, spells, HP, etc. ahead of the BBEG or mini boss encounter. Sometimes the drain of resources forces players to think more strategically about the boss encounter - either with better tactics or avoiding combat altogether.
The question was about the mount scouting in a forest
How about an entire dungeon made of doors and only the creatures who live there know which ones lead anywhere
all doors are mimics. no other enemies needed
Pick-a-door: Nightmare Edition
7:42 "You can make an interesting encounter, it doesn't just need to be orcs stampeding over a hill"
No, of course not. You'd rather they come screaming from a copse of trees.
I’d argue that random encounters also serve the purpose of helping to make your world feel more alive. Definitely doesn’t need to be 100% combat encounters but these little encounters with beasts, people, and other weird things makes you feel like there isn’t this void between point and and point b. Add interest things the players will run into. Make it feel like the world has other things going on than just this one main plot. If you can connect the plot to these little encounters, that’s even better (e.g., players running into a family that has been horrifically affected by something the big bad has been somehow involved with). Also if the worry is it takes too much session time to do a fight and you and everyone at the table knows the encounter is trivial, you can always just do a quick roll fight where you have players say what they want to do and roll 2d6 to determine if they were able to do that very thing they set out to do in the fight. If they roll 10+ they do exactly that, if they roll 6-9 they do what they said they would with one complication, and a 5 or lower is a failure and something not so desirable happens).
I LIKE these video formats better than the regular ones you do where its more pandering
I'm about to run Storm Kings Thunder, and I think the random encounter section they present in that module is pretty good.
7:48 well i sometimes use random encounters for a grind, to weaken the party a bit while their going through the dungeon or whatever
I am currently running a modified version of Lost Mine of Phandelver. It’s actually a well designed module in that it has everything in it you might need, but is still very flexible for both the DM and the Players. The middle of the module is very sandboxy with lots of options the players can take in any order, or ignore all together. Lots of NPCs and options for players to align with various factions and organizations. Many of the side quests involve two or three day’s travel between locations, and the module offers multiple random encounters (and describes the mechanics for running them) to liven up the traveling. I originally intended to NOT use the random encounters, but at least three or more of the possible locations might only involve additional information and a bit of role playing interactions with no combat at all. The DM could just divulge the information without the side quest mechanics, but that is relatively boring. And if the travelled to encounter only involves 10 minutes of dialog, it’s super boring. I find that the random encounters really spice up the traveling, plus convey more effort from the party in gaining information. Granted, I modified the encounters a bit and completely replace the roll table, but the encounters are worthwhile. Also, the final dungeon of the campaign is huge. The map is 8 feet by 5 feet with multiple possible routes. The module has specific encounters listed for key locations and events, but much of the dungeon is based on random encounters. I think this makes the dungeon crawl much more interesting. The party can’t be sure that the area behind them will remain unoccupied, and taking too long to decide their next action creates a greater likelihood of being attacked. I say that the random encounters CAN enrich the game if the DM uses them well.
What I do with random encounters is have the players preroll 4 or 5 times during session zero. Then type up the encounters and shove them into an envelope. So when the random encounter pops up, I say, this random encounter was brought to us by Bob. So if you do die. Blame Bob. Random encounters are combat pools to strange in world people.
Big fan, especially the intros.
The thing with LMoP is that it's the Starter Set -it's an introductory adventure for new DMs and Players. The idea behind the random encounters included is to illustrate dangers of the world and make the environment feel more dynamic/reactive. Like Luke said, it (random encounters) is a tool for DMs to use, and the module demonstrates a very general way to use the tools they provide. Unless Wilderness Exploration is a big part of your campaign/adventure, outdoor travel can just be hand waved if you and your players would rather focus on the main quest(s).
...Were I a DM, and I rolled on a random encounter table, and I rolled, say, a dragon for a low-leveled party, I’d have the dragon be injured and not initially hostile. That said, I’ve never even played, let alone DMed, so...
Indeed both are good options. The dragon can also give them a fetch quest. A group of bandits/goblins/ravenfolk might have stolen some of the dragons hoard and the dragon will pay handsomely for its return. Don't assume a encounter is always a fight.
Time to find a table !
GL
A bigger problem with random encounters is it how it fails with the adventuring day. You frequently get all your abilities, spells, and hp back on each side of the encounter.
Find Steed: 1 mile telepathic communication, choose elk. It doesn't die when it hits 0 hp, it instead functions like a familiar, and you can summon it back with a lvl 2 slot, no other cost. Still yeah, I would recommend murderizing it if it scouts alone, regardless of what type of steed it is.
When I introduce a bad guy, I often have the players find out that it's a secret/framed/misunderstood good guy and that the guy who sent them on the quest is the real bad guy
An interesting twist for the beauty pageant encounter, you talked about. What if it was like the judgement of Paris. Where the three offered rewards for whoever choose them? and to add to this. You, the DM. Secretly treats this as a monkey's paw. You choose the ghost that offers a hot wench as a rewards, then a trojan war scenario takes place as a consequence. Do to this wench being a princess or whatever. Would make some further interesting encounters as a consequence to their choices.
I don't generally do 'random' encounters. If I want an encounter to take place during travel, or during a long rest in a dungeon, I will create a bespoke encounter based on that specific surrounding. If they're exploring a forest looking for a bandit camp, I will not roll on a random table to see if they face 2d8 orcs or 1d4 displacer beasts or 1 owlbear or 2d12 bandits, I'm going to have them encounter a group of bandits, or potentially a group of people fleeing from or otherwise affected by the bandit presence 100 times out of 100 times.
Also, during travel, what I like to do with combat encounters is sort of simulate a 'mini dungeon' by having the encounter lead to some bit of information that queues up a time sensitive second encounter, which queues up a third encounter. A party comes across a group of spiders chasing an injured adventurer, they can intervene and fight off the spiders, or let the adventurer get caught and killed. If they save the adventurer, he'll tell about his allies who are caught up in the spiders' nest. The PCs go kill all the spiders, but find no captured adventurers. Turns out, they just got hoodwinked by a rival group to complete their quest for them, and are going to go get paid for having cleared out the spider nest. The PCs might come to blows with the alternative adventurers, particularly if the rival adventurers sense the PCs are weakened from the fight, or will return for revenge later. The PCs get to kind of modulate the level of involvement they want to have with the series of encounters, being able to eject at any time if the micro story seems or becomes boring to them, but also they have a reason to track daily resources like HP without having a single encounter be screamingly difficult. Ideally there is some information conveyed through the series of encounters about the area or the villains the PCs are in the area to deal with as well, so it's not a complete non sequitur to the story.
About the Find Steed thing, also the steed understands a language, but it cannot speak it. It's not like the telepathic link between a wizard and its familiar as far as I can see.
So the horse can see if there are monsters and maybe get away, but it can't comuunicate clearly what it found and also it most likely got spotted and there are lots of places where a horse is out of place enough that the monsters would get that this is most likely a mount for other people.
I have come around to random encounters are for world building. They are useful for introducing features of the background setting which your players might otherwise not encounter
Cue "There's a horse in the hospital" bit from John Mulaney.
I think there is merit in using the paladin's steed for scouting. It has telephaty and it only costs the casting time and the spell slot. Even if it gets captured or killed, it can tell the paladin useful information.
This guy should have waaaay more subs...
random encounters are great for buffering your prep (don't let them know you haven't prepped Rivendell yet)
random encounters are great opportunities to practice improvising in a known format
Remember, there's no right way to do it, but here's how you should do it. Okay...
I, personally, think a random encounter can be "Oh, a bunch of orcs show up to fight you" as long as it seems likely to happen. If you're passing through an area where orcs wander, you might run into some and they'd be angry to see you there. As long as there's a reason for them to be there, it's fine. Random encounters can be more interesting than that, but their primary reason for existing is for resource depletion. To burn through your player's resources and make them weaker against the boss monster.
As for wanting to redirect players from the villain, you should come up with this before you start the adventure, I think. I have an adventure where I introduced my villain early on, and the way I keep them from fighting him right away is 1, I have both the players and the villain going after the same objects which could make either of them theoretically have amazing draconic powers, and 2, the main villain is hidden away. They have no idea where he is, so they can't just go and fight him. They have to go after the artifacts that the villain is after in order to have any chance of getting closer to him.
With a spider familiar, the spider can find cracks or gaps to crawl through. So the dungeon maker should make sure that there are no spaces at all for bugs to slip through. Make that dungeon air tight.
Actually, it's quite easy to put doors in a forest... They're useless, but you can put them there. Well, I suppose you can have the doors placed onto the trees to make the trees have interiors to explore, or you could connect the doors with walls of force, if you like.
I think the original purpose of random encounters was to deplete party resources. My encounters tend to be 1/3 "monster" that has a reason to be in the area and may attack the party, 1/3 stand-alone micro-stories, and 1/3 adventure/lore hooks.
In older editions, or in games that emulate that style, random dungeon encounters mostly served to penalize inefficient use of time in-universe (searching every patch of 10x10 area, for instance). The idea being that every certain number of turns, there was a chance to run into trouble, and certain actions would occupy turns, even if they were quick to resolve and narrate. In more contemporary play, where it's possible for the entire party to have dark vision, as well as unlimited access to magical light and magically conjured food and water, and where XP is divorced from the acquisition of treasure, things like timekeeping, random encounters and strict encumbrance make less sense.
Yes ! My 3 player at lvl 1 after they tricked the first miniboss and thus gained a guide for the mid bad guys lair, they wanted to descend on a castle like the angels of death ( little fluffy angles wit safety scissors) The miniboss had to spell it out, hat on the 6 of (1 goblin 1 wolf 1 bugbear and 3 lvl1 PC) us is not enough and he don't want to make a suicide mission. :D
The rant about the pcs wanting to kill the villain right away. I would redirect and build some obvious plot armor right now. And to misdirect them I would make mini bosses that work for the BBEG that they would need to tackle first.
You sir are a good teacher, you are patients with everyone (even the clueless), this is a rare thing BRAVO 😄
Sometimes, a random encounter of.... say... orcs come screaming over a hill to attack the players... is to thwart players propensity to take too many rests, or sit around in a deadlock unable to make decisions. Kind of like a consequence of not taking an action. A slap in the face bit of action to get their adrenaline pumping. Besides.. some of my best friends are orcs.
I've seen that video.
I'm running LMoP for my kids. My random encounters have been a group of hobgoblins bounty hunters with a crudely drawn portrait of one of my player's pc with wanted by the black spider.
The second encounter there were more hobgoblins & two wanted pictures. The thrid time they meet goblins are raiding phandalin stealing kids. The party managed to save all kids expect carp (who has been an active pc in the game since session 1) the party tracks the raiding goblin party to cragmaw cave. (this replaced Thunder tree Town I felt it was a pointless mission)
They fight their way through the cave and save carp. On the way home carp tells them that the goblins aren't happy with the black spider. Once home a pc over heard a hobgoblin talking with two hooligans (second upstart of red brands) telling them the cragmaw's aren't happy with how they're being treated.
I planted this hoping the party with try to negotiate with king grol and have a neat social encounter. I might have king grol's (grohl) commander Novoselic a magic using hob goblin, who they witnessed in phandalin with the hooligans, join them for wave echo cave.
Here’s how I keep my players away from my villains;
“Law states you can’t do this or that”
“You can’t pass through here without a license”
and
“HALT YOU HAVE VIOLATED THE LAW, PAY THE COURT A FINE OR SERVE YOUR SENTENCE”
alternatively
“You have to make a survival check to know which direction your heading” followed by “You glance up through the dense trees but the time of day is too unclear to you, you assume the direction you look in is north” and then sending them the opposite direction for a few hours before they come across a lake or something not on their map and go “wait a second where are we?”
And then obviously the “You don’t know where he is” works as well
wow some solid advice about random encounters. Color me shocked, sadly like literally every random encounter table isn't written with the "interesting thing happens with x" creature in mind.
not going to lie i thought the "how to handle the paladin scouting with a mount" question was hilarious. only thing i said to myself was be lucky it wasnt flock of familiars.
My players did not have to fight the BBEG when they last saw him. He was teleporting away dropping minions on the players to keep them busy. The warlock used counterspell and refused to let him leave. For context the players just finished fighting an ancient red dragon in what i can best describe as power armor and are low on resources. The players ran away in the end, narrowly escaping, it wasn't the first countered teleport that was the problem, it was the second. The players learned how much of a threat the villain is and now need to figure out how much stronger they are gonna need to be to stand a chance, that and don't provoke the BBEG when you just fought a dragon.
Door in the forest is two of my random encounters. 1 opens to a magical potion shop. 2 is just a creature hiding behind the door. If players open the door it stabs them and runs away while the others in wait start the ambush.
Door in "anywhere strange" is the perfect excuse to an entrance into the infinite staircase.
Hi Luke, I use your resources a lot. In matter of fact I created a campaign around your single adventures. I am about to run Siege On Gauntlet Hall which happens outside. One of my players have Boots of Flying and one of may players have Fly spell. Any advice would be highly appreciated. (You said in this video that most of the module's adventures happens inside)
Gotta comment about the social contract argument around 9:00, since you have said this numerous time in many videos. I'd like to propose an addendum to your rule "follow plothooks because you want to play DnD". I would say that it is ok for the PCs to ignore a plothook if they A) Already have something else to do (important and time-sensitive) B) Are very distrustful/suspicious of the source of the plothook (this criminal is offering us a shady job, and we want nothing to do with him). I could probably think of more examples, but the point is - if you wanna ignore a plothook, you should have a VERY good reason to do so, but if you do, it should be ok!
simple pit trap would stop a steed running through the dungeon...learned that one by using a giant badger to scout ahead from my bag of tricks, he got burned by acid and then impaled on spikes
I design random encounters as a way to emphasize whatever themes are present in my campaign. If there is a military conflict going on random encounters could include ghouls feasting on the dead, people searching for lost family, bandits taking advantage of the chaos, raiders of enemy kingdom, etc. These encounters serve to emphasize the chaos and turmoil war creates. If the campaign is centered around the misuse of magic random encounters could be evil spellcasters roaming the countryside, eldritch abominations and demons summoned from other planes, battalions of mage slayers. Sometimes it's fun to just find some weird random monster in the book and throw it at the players but it should be there for a reason
I use Xanathar's random encounter list to decide what they face. If it fits with the story i.e fighting a druid or certain monsters, I work it into the plot. They've also helped a farmer with their pigs, got a chamber pot dumped on them, and helped an apple farmer fix his cart, which was hilarious because the human fighter and the Dwarven Paladin couldn't lift it, but the Halfling Rogue could.
Horse *walks into a group of orcs”
Orcs “looks like meats back on the menu boys!”
I foreshadowed the bad guy and gave them location to a dream dimension the night hag controls. They are about to be taught some humility lol. There where other leads they could have gone with but didn't and they have been to aggressive and don't talk to NPCs enough.
What if a spider was able to bypass the door by going through a crack in the wall or something? Also about doors; If I don't put a door, its because that sh!t's a trap. Maybe a tripwire that activates an explosive glyph of warding, or a flaming/psn arrow trap. Be creative with it. My goal in that case would be to say "Sure there's no doors, but you still can't barrel through the dungeon" without literally saying it, thereby catching them off guard.
Soooooooo…. When the horse returns from scouting can the horse talk like Mr. Ed from the 60’s show and relay what’s going on in the orc camp? 😂
Another fix for the too early discovery of the BBEG would be the "Straw Man " option. The BBEG places an easy to defeat decoy for the players to trounce. Like The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 who turns out to be Trevor, an English actor hired to pose as The Mandarin. Not the BBEG himself. Not yet, anyway ...
As a GM I always feel that there should be some kind of rewards when I throw random encounters (RE) at my players... Sure, you kan spice up the game with RE but it might feel pointless to the players if it doesn't move the story forward or give them any reward other than XP. I might be completly wrong but for that reason I find it very difficult to throw RE at my players for just no reason. What's your thought about that?
Superb advice, except the mount question specified “in the forest”. Most of the advice still holds true, tho. The paladin is sending a poorly prepared creature alone into a dangerous forest.
I'm a fan of deliberate encounters. So things that ties together with either the adventure or the world.
Yup. "Random encounters" are ideas for random things that happened. I prefer to pick which encounter, or tailor it to further the storyline.
Or to further develop the sense they're in a living world. But not something that would detour the entire story. And not every encounter has to be a combat.
I remember one group, we were on a final march to the bbeg, on a time crunch and in the woods we found a tower. If we had explored it though the bbeg would have succeeded (I dont remember exactly what other than the clock was ticking). So we voted to keep going and come back later. Sadly we never did :( we did defeat the bbeg though. Maybe in an unspoken epilogue we did and established a keep. :)
@@benjie128 I completely agree with your philosophy on this.
You know, another issue with using Find Steed to scout, the animal in question has an Int of 6 and the ability to understand a language you know. This means that it can not speak the language, mind you, only that it understands your spoken commands without issue. So, unless your horse is really good at drawing pictures in the dirt or something, you are really not going to get anything all that useful out of it.
I would tend to agree about the random encounter idea except for one thing, but it's really not that important. In my gaming group, there is always a point where we get a classic Random Encounter versus bandits. At this point, it's really more of a running gag and we just use the bandit random encounter as a joke encounter.
Personally though, i usually use this encounter as a power check too, as I want to know what my PCs are capable off. I find it interesting to join the humourus aspect of that running gag with that way to grasp the combat performance of my players a bit better.
Beside that, again, I totally agree that random encounter should be more than just a standard fight. Actually, another aspect I like with random encounters is how it help me practice my improvisation skills. You roll something on the spot and you need to think about what you want to tell as a short story or a little setup to make it believable. I also let my players tell part of the stories either by letting them draw the battle or encounter map or adapt what is happening with what they tell me.
If a door is not crafted by a serious craftsman, I think it might be reasonable that some gap at the top or bottom of the door would exist that something as small as a spider could get through. Idk, just a thought
My step-dad made a plot hook, he planned 4 roads out of town and had npc's set up to send us on these roads... I started asking questions around the bar looking for some gruff guy in the corner that looked like he was drinking away something he desperately wanted to forget... my step-dad, delivered another plot hook that he didn't expect me to cling to... my character started asking questions around town about this which got the attention of the other party members (that's how we got the characters together) and we set on investigating path #5, the plot hook my step-dad had nothing written up for yet, he even tried to hard core railroad us back to his other 4 paths and we plowed through it. Just saying, even if the DM has the story and the plot hooks all set up, the players don't always follow them (even if it is unknown, he didn't tell us until after session that we weren't supposed to take that hook)
If the goal of random encounters is to give players obstacles to simulate realistic resting, travel, etc, then an alternative to traditional random encounters (i.e. fights) is to give them 'encounters' that are solved in different ways and have different consequences.
E.g. players are abusing rest, rather than spamming random encounters at them, have thieves steal their stuff, or have a poisonous snake bite one of them during the rest, inflicting damage to one of their ability scores, or have an objective change (such as an important NPC has left the area). Of course, give the players a chance to use their abilities to resolve or avoid these if its appropriate. Point is, there are alternatives to 'well you have to fight monsters now'.
To be fair, random encounters I feel has the purpose of familiarizing yourself with combat. So that you can make your own stuff up later that is relevant to the story. Also you can learn to tie random stuff to the bigger picture to make your players feel a bigger narrative or world come alive.
About the villain problem: you could weaker that NPC, let the players fight it and discover this bad guy is just a lutennant of another villain. I think going with the flow and adapting is the better way to do it.
I have a random encounter that I put in all my games. It may not happen or it may. I start it out at like a 5% chance up to a 25% chance. It won’t ever have a combat and it’s always been interesting. I have a leprechaun that appears. Depending on how the party treats him he’ll either help, or hurt the party in many ways lol.
I made my own "random" encounter charts and for the last session I ran I had my player roll the random encounter and that's creature was used to flavor the real encounter I planned. Usually it was being beaten by what I had planned.
Exactly.. My random encounters either drop clues for the main plot or to expend player resources before they face the main threat.
Players has to use their abilities wisely.. fight or talk or deceive or stealth out or something else.. it's totally upto them.
The other side acts as per player's actions.
All Good Villains need a HYPE man to directly interact with the PCs. These dudes build up their boss by literally telling the PCs how scary he is.
I would treat a scouting steed the same way as I would a scouting familiar. Which is the same as I treat a scouting character. Which is that they still have to make stealth checks. Though I give some advantage depending on the size of the creature or if it's in its natural habitat or not. Also, is the paladin going through all the work of taking on and off the barding so it would be less conspicuous or not.
Random encounters should ideally show players something about the world relevant to them or the story. It’s good to ask “why include this? And do it in this way?”. If you are having trouble determining those, you probably don’t need the encounter.
Some reasons can include showing the financial hardship in a locale players are heading toward, revealing that local bandits are actually being paid by a mysterious benefactor, showing than an area is haunted and has a depth of story to it that shows off the cruelty of the tyrannical local lord, or so many other potential reasons.
That’s my personal belief anyways :)
Find Steed doesn't have to be a horse. It can be anything equivalent the caster wants that the DM agrees to