How often are random encounters supposed to be rolled in adventure paths? I'm running Skulls and Shackles now and can't seem to find any information on it; I've run Kingmaker before and know that it's a 15% chance per day/night exploring, but am not sure if it applies outside of that.
How often do you roll for random encounters in your campaigns?
Rarely early in the AP. I play experience so random encounters could result in the party getting ahead too quickly in the early stages. Later on I'm more flexible since they can be used to keep them vigilant.
However often you want, really. Personally, I don't use random encounters, since I don't find fighting random monster X that interesting. (And I don't use experience, so I don't need them to help the party level up.) But I'll usually create some bonus encounters to add to whatever AP I'm running, often stuff personalized for the characters' backstories and goals. I have more fun creating them deliberately than rolling on a table to see what pops up. But that's just my own preference.
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As often as you want, indeed.
I don't use XP so I don't need them for that, but they're useful for giving some filler between plot-critical events.
I've used them in the second book of Iron Gods a lot when players were exploring Scrapwall (a sort of Mad Max town), because it's a place with enough roaming gangs and dangerous vermin. So whenever the players set out to go somewhere I let players roll a die to determine if there'd be an encounter. Involving them that way really drove home the "the streets aren't safe" feel. As their reputation grew, lower-CR encounters would show up and just slink away knowing better than to mess with them. That also went down well with players who could see themselves making progress.
I used a fairly low probability (20%, with a maximum of two random encounters per day) but never told the players the odds. All they knew was that they had to roll every time they went out in the open. I also allowed them a chance to spot encounters first and Stealth around them, which they sometimes succeeded at. (The rogue could scout ahead to give them more warning time as well; reinforcing the idea that scouting does something.)
The one time our GM dropped a 'random' encounter on the party in Rise of the Runelords our party not only wiped out the encounter, we proceeded to derail for two sessions to completely eliminate the source of said random encounter for all time.
After that point, it was a polite mutual decision on the GM's part to not *do* that, and the players' part to 'keep on reasonable task'.
Kingmaker is unusual for having lots of random encounters.
The only AP I'm familiar with is Rise of the Runelords, which (in the Anniversary Edition on page 404) sets an expectation of a 20% chance of a random encounter per day of travel or night of rest. It says this chance can be raised or lowered if the GM wishes, and provides custom random encounter tables for each area the PCs are likely to frequent (intelligently basing CRs around the levels they're likely to be present there). I've adhered closely to the expectation and it's worked out well.
Depends on how you define 'random' encounter, really. I do add some content (when the group is behind XP - which I don't really use anyway but the Players like getting them, so we settled on a hybrid between getting XP and levelling up when needed - or when the party decides to do something unrelated to the written content of the path, as in investigating the Old Light in Sandpoint early in RotRL, wile they had weeks of travel befor they were able to just teleport whenever they wanted or spending time in Magnimar or Sandpoint between books or between major plot points), but the content is never 'random' and is usually tied to the narrative, the character's background stories or the specific locations or circumstances and therefore planned before the session starts. I might use encounter tables as inspiration, but I never really stick to them
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I concur with most of the sentiment here in that random encounters are generally meh and don't add much to the plot line. Also it makes you unprepared as a GM if they are truly random. As mentioned with Scrapwall example , there are places were it adds to the theme, but it is generally best to narrow the list to those encounters you have prepared to some degree. The best way to eliminate their usefulness is to stop using XP altogether ;)
As for your exact question , if the AP doesn't call it out anywhere, you can use the general tables from the Bestiary given you locale. As for the frequency, that depends on how dangerous an area you are exploring and your desires for how often you want them to happen (statically).
There are occasional quasi-random emounted that do add to the plotline. I'm thinking patrols around the perimeter that serve to inform the party of tactics/organization of whatever they're approaching. I say "quasi" because the encounter type may be pre-determined, but when/if it occurs is random.
I feel like "there needs to be a fight here" is more of a "reading the room" kind of thing than a "what we write in the book" thing. How people feel about random encounters will vary a lot from table to table.
Read the random encounters and if there's a really interesting one feel free to fit that in wherever it is, but if it's just "there's some orcs" nothing (save XP if you use that) is lost if it never happens.
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The APs I run don't use XP, we use level advancement as the story progresses, currently running Curse of the Crimson Throne.
I pretty much ignored random-encounters for the first 4 chapters, until the party set out into the open wilds. They're a big group (6 players) and they're somewhat over-powered. Every random I throw at them is a "more wealth for them" encounter, which perpetuates the wealth/power problem I am having with this group, to the point where I've actually held back one level from them.
Now that they're out in the open wilds, I've brought randoms in, but these randoms are creatures (so minimal chance at affecting the wealth curve issues).
For starters, I had the party give me a bunch of pre-rolled dice (d%, d12, d10, d8, d6 and d4s), that I've used to generate "WHAT" they encounter. This is so i can plan the encounters better
For "WHEN" they encounter something, I'm using a sliding scale for the randoms which seems to be working well. Every 8 hour period, (daytime/travel, evening, overnight) the chance of a random increases by 5%. It starts at 0% (and resets to 0% after a random occurs). Each "day" that they're out in the wilds, the party has to give me d% rolls. If the value is less than the current chance, then an encounter occurs. The idea behind this is that the local fauna (and in some cases flora), have figured out that there's food out here, and going to jump at the opportunity to feast.
The players don't know, but they're also getting a bonus of 5% per NPC in their party, as these folks know the terrain and are acting as guides (so in effect, after an encounter, the rate resets to -20%).
The idea behind this particular mechanism is to guarantee that they'll get some form of encounter eventually, but it feels COMPLETELY random, as the party can roll a d% of 5 and get nothing, but at other times roll a d% of 94 and get a random.
My simple go-to frequency is 20% chance of an encounter per day.
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I use them, especially if they have monsters from the AP Bestiary. :-)
But I like to improvise. :-)
And they don't always lead to a fight.
Sometimes, players want to see a T-Rex, without having to fight it. :-)
I don't use them unless I think they add something to the story or my players seem to need a break from the main plot. Even then, If the PCs are short on experience (which doesn't usually happen, as I tend to reward specially good roleplaying or ideas with some extra XP) I'd rather have some small plot related events to fill the story that could be added at any point.
I sometimes use some random encounter that I feel that is specially cool, but it isn't random at all.
Depends on how you define 'random' encounter, really. I do add some content (when the group is behind XP - which I don't really use anyway but the Players like getting them, so we settled on a hybrid between getting XP and levelling up when needed - or when the party decides to do something unrelated to the written content of the path, as in investigating the Old Light in Sandpoint early in RotRL, wile they had weeks of travel befor they were able to just teleport whenever they wanted or spending time in Magnimar or Sandpoint between books or between major plot points), but the content is never 'random' and is usually tied to the narrative, the character's background stories or the specific locations or circumstances and therefore planned before the session starts. I might use encounter tables as inspiration, but I never really stick to them
I actually had ONE encounter added that had nothing to do with the narrative of the AP or the PC's background story, that I now remember but forgot in the post above, but that was because we played the day David Bowie and Alan Rickman died and I wanted to pay a hommage to both of them. And it ended up influencing the campaign ever since with group getting hold of Grabthar's Hammer. But like the other encounters it wasn't really random but planned hours before we gathered around the kitchen table.