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Frankly I build them depending on the area the pcs are in. I build them with the average CR of the party in mind with some encounters being easy (APL-1 or more) or some encounters being epic or more (APL+3). After all you are walking into the dark swamps territory of [insert cool black dragon name], yeah there is a good chance that you will face Black Dragon passing by looking for a meal. Of course usually in those cases, I let my pc finds way to avoid the encounter or in some cases, some encounters turn out to be new quests giver or helpful.
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Frankly I build them depending on the area the pcs are in. I build them with the average CR of the party in mind with some encounters being easy (APL-1 or more) or some encounters being epic or more (APL+3). After all you are walking into the dark swamps territory of [insert cool black dragon name], yeah there is a good chance that you will face Black Dragon passing by looking for a meal. Of course usually in those cases, I let my pc finds way to avoid the encounter or in some cases, some encounters turn out to be new quests giver or helpful.
Already have that in a spread sheet with over 300+ entries and a CR range from 1/2 to 19 meant to cover a massive hex area ala kingmaker that is themed to the environment and region the party will be romping through.
The problem I have is that that can be a bit, well big and like rolling for weather time consuming. I would really love to have a program that I can punch it all into so that I can just hit a "roll encounter" button and have it spit out which one we are running rather then me needing to do 4+ rolls to get an encounter.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The problem I have is that that can be a bit, well big and like rolling for weather time consuming. I would really love to have a program that I can punch it all into so that I can just hit a "roll encounter" button and have it spit out which one we are running rather then me needing to do 4+ rolls to get an encounter.
Do you have a copy of MS Access? If you're using spreadsheets, you could make the small jump to ms Access and gain all that dynamic power you need.
Do you have a copy of MS Access? If you're using spreadsheets, you could make the small jump to ms Access and gain all that dynamic power you need.
I second this. Using a little bit of VBA you can create a form that allows you to input the CR, number of players, and then have it generate a random encounter for you.
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The problem I have is that that can be a bit, well big and like rolling for weather time consuming. I would really love to have a program that I can punch it all into so that I can just hit a "roll encounter" button and have it spit out which one we are running rather then me needing to do 4+ rolls to get an encounter.Do you have a copy of MS Access? If you're using spreadsheets, you could make the small jump to ms Access and gain all that dynamic power you need.
Unfortunately no. Though my laptop is new I only have the lame trial versions of all the microsoft products which is both incredibly annoying and extremely unfortunate.
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I think you might be overthinking it a little bit. Random encounter are just there to spice things up here and there. Frankly there is no shame in stealing from your favorite movies/books/comics or games.
Frankly when it comes to random encounter I just roll them twice per day with a 1d8, if it comes up as 1 or 2, they have an encounter. Once in the morning and once at night, so they still keep some kind of a night watch. Of course it doesn't matter if they go safely to the main town before nightfall.
If you have the gamemastery guide, they give plenty of cool ideas that you can add to the scenery.
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I think you might be overthinking it a little bit. Random encounter are just there to spice things up here and there. Frankly there is no shame in stealing from your favorite movies/books/comics or games.
Frankly when it comes to random encounter I just roll them twice per day with a 1d8, if it comes up as 1 or 2, they have an encounter. Once in the morning and once at night, so they still keep some kind of a night watch. Of course it doesn't matter if they go safely to the main town before nightfall.
If you have the gamemastery guide, they give plenty of cool ideas that you can add to the scenery.
But that's not really something I'm interested in. I've got planned encounters and story based encounters all up and down but this campaign is about exploration and discovery and random encounters help give that room for the odd and crazy stuff to happen on the open untamed wilds that just a bunch of planned encounters really doesn't capture. Think kingmaker, which is a great example of a game that is in a lot of ways defined for a lot of people by the random encounters that happen in between the big plot beats.
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oh yeah I'm forgetting its kingmaker all about exploration, frankly for those kind of encounters I could only recommend checking the gamemastery guide and be very familiar in why and interact with other creatures etc to make a random encounter entertaining. Sadly this means, that would prepare the encounters as much as story ones.
In that case, I would just make a table with 5 to 6 possible encounters at most that's enough work for random encounters.