Well, I'm not familiar with the module in question, but I daresay that you could either roleplay this, play it as a skill challenge (i.e. have the ranger track it for a while till you find a Big Ugly you pick out of the Bestiary) and so on and so forth.
Not all random encounters are monsters, y'see? I see to recall a DM having a random encounter deck including things like a wagon wheel breaking, a bridge you had to walk over that was washed out, a trader stopping for a rest, Recurring Plotline (i.e. continue a plot line dropped previously), and so on.
Also, the fear of god(s) is put into your heart when you draw a squirrel as your random encounter, and the DM decides that it is in fact a polymorphed red dragon.
Well, I'm not familiar with the module in question, but I daresay that you could either roleplay this, play it as a skill challenge (i.e. have the ranger track it for a while till you find a Big Ugly you pick out of the Bestiary) and so on and so forth.
Not all random encounters are monsters, y'see? I see to recall a DM having a random encounter deck including things like a wagon wheel breaking, a bridge you had to walk over that was washed out, a trader stopping for a rest, Recurring Plotline (i.e. continue a plot line dropped previously), and so on.
Also, the fear of god(s) is put into your heart when you draw a squirrel as your random encounter, and the DM decides that it is in fact a polymorphed red dragon.
Not all encounters need to be fights, I myself made up some homebrewed tables (more than 40 pages) for all kinds of regions (forests, mountains, hills, plains, etc) with Events as well as Encounters (drawn from Pathfinder Bestiary, Monster Manual I, II, III, IV, V, Libra Mortis, etc.) , with one particular event could be as Boxy310 had said, a passing trader, a washed out bridge, an abandoned campsite at the side of the road, a strange looking well, some old ruin of a building poking out of the undergrowth, and so on.
One of the Events I made had me roll twice on the counter table and had the players 'stumble' or sneak up on two groups of monsters fighting (of course if they werent allied even loosely, like Orcs and Goblins for example) which of course should happen, after all, monsters wander and they surely must fight on occasion....lol
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One of the Events I made had me roll twice on the counter table and had the players 'stumble' or sneak up on two groups of monsters fighting (of course if they werent allied even loosely, like Orcs and Goblins for example) which of course should happen, after all, monsters wander and they surely must fight on occasion....lol[/i]
That's a really great idea.
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Weather can be great for non-combat as well, and I'm a huge fan of encounters that don't always end up with combat. Of course, you need to be fair (don't spring a blizzard on them without telling it's winter in a frigid country).
P.S. Hollow was my first run with 100% Pathfinder material, and my players loved it. Good stuff and excellent writing.
That's a really great idea.
One of the Events I made had me roll twice on the counter table and had the players 'stumble' or sneak up on two groups of monsters fighting (of course if they werent allied even loosely, like Orcs and Goblins for example) which of course should happen, after all, monsters wander and they surely must fight on occasion....lol[/i]
Ty...lol, theres also a chance a third bunch of monsters may be involved, players get the perception tests to notice the sounds of fighting in the distance and they can sneak up and watch - they may let them fight it out and pick off the victors for example, they get XP for overcoming what was left standing accordingly, but sometimes the monsters might notice the PC's and some stragglers direct themselves at them...lol
(I let my players do the dice rolling for both sides, I dont tell them what to add, I do the calculating and such, they just wonder whats going on...lol, builds up excitement.)
A recent encounter I used was a log over the stream. Mid-crossing, I introduced a dozen or so hostile goblins. Mid-fight, the stream level starts the rapid rise to a flash flood. Loads of fun.