Filler encounters


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


This may just come down to play style, but does anybody else have any thoughts on what appear to be filler encounters in published adventures? These are the encounters that just seem to be to kill time and give PCs more opportunities for experience points. Often times, these encounters have nothing to do with the setting or plot.

For example, Room D7 in Burnt Offering's Thistletop or B15 in Hook Mountain's Ft. Rannick. At best I would allow that they offer some encounter variety from whatever monster type otherwise fills the encounter area. Just as often, though, these encounters require a bit of backstory to even explain why they're there and the PCs may never know why there's a harpy living with the ettercaps (or whatever).

Again, this likely comes down to play style, but I've taken to cutting 30-50% of the encounters in the average pre-published adventure for my group.

Any other thoughts?

Liberty's Edge

Fletch wrote:

This may just come down to play style, but does anybody else have any thoughts on what appear to be filler encounters in published adventures? These are the encounters that just seem to be to kill time and give PCs more opportunities for experience points. Often times, these encounters have nothing to do with the setting or plot.

For example, Room D7 in Burnt Offering's Thistletop or B15 in Hook Mountain's Ft. Rannick. At best I would allow that they offer some encounter variety from whatever monster type otherwise fills the encounter area. Just as often, though, these encounters require a bit of backstory to even explain why they're there and the PCs may never know why there's a harpy living with the ettercaps (or whatever).

Again, this likely comes down to play style, but I've taken to cutting 30-50% of the encounters in the average pre-published adventure for my group.

Any other thoughts?

Well let me start with: To each his own. Now I do the same thing occasionally but I often find other uses for filler. Before I go into that though I should point out that the filler in APs is harder to cut since is cuts XP which means the PCs may be under powered in later episodes unless you make up the encounters.

That said I generally do one of two things.
1. Replace the filler with an encounter that makes more sense to you and your PCs. These are great places to throw encounters at PCs based on obscure character background information. If a PC has a phobia of spiders you can bet my first opportunity I will sub in a spider encounter for something that doesn't mesh well for me. :)

2. Use it as a hook for a side trek adventure or to move your meta-plot if you have one simmering. Nudge the PCs into figuring out why those critters were there and working together. You can spin that into a whole story arc but beware derailing your main plot.

If you have your own sub plot in motion a small monster substitution or a change in an NPC can move your plot forward and neatly fold the adventure into your story. APs are tougher since they are generally the meta-plot themselves but when I ran savage tide I had a second meta-plot running in the background based on one of the PCs history. It gave me room to slide in my own and other published Dungeon stuff to give them a break from the main plot and so some deeper RP.

Scarab Sages

I cannot say I have done this for any Pathfinder modules I have run. I have run everything as is. I have only run the first 2 adventures in the AoW AP before a TPK. With Savage Tide we made it through Here There Be Monsters. I used every encounter, even adding some in sometimes.
I am currently starting Second Darkness and I haven't noticed anything yet.
The only time I have only had to cut stuff out was in KotS. MAN that module had an encounter in everyroom. I cut at least 30% if not more out. Thats how WotC seems to be with their new 4e modules.


I run the "fillers". Not everything has to fit perfectly into place. In fact, that's not very life-like.

Plus, if you cut the fillers, the party ends up trailing behind with levels, unless you grant copious amounts of quest and RP XP - or add filler encounters.


Also they buff out the adventure in alot of cases, allowing the players to fight or engage something different instead of having similar enemies in every battle/encounter.


KaeYoss wrote:
I run the "fillers". Not everything has to fit perfectly into place. In fact, that's not very life-like.

I guess. If you consider an adventure site with multiple types of occupants to be more life-like. The average dungeon I see is the fantasy equivelant of storming a Taliban bunker and having to fight off Mexican wrestlers and ninjas too.

I also think that if you need a random encounter with a harpy to break up the monotony of fighting minotaurs then you have too many minotaur encounters.

It's true, though, that cutting encounters from an Adventure Path is especially tricky because each adventure assumes the party advances at a certain rate by the end of the adventure. You're expected to start at 1st level, fer instance, and be 4th level by the final encounter of that book. I've been looking at giving double XP for the encounters I keep and I'd probably even double the treasure to keep the PCs on par if I weren't so stingy anyways.

But for the rest of you, do you ever have your players questioning why there are harpies in the minotaur maze? Have they ever investigated the secret backstories or do they just shrug them off as being part of the game?

Scarab Sages

Well I must say I have never experienced 'harpies in a minotaur maze', I have had players investigate the reason why something was out of place. I usually roll with it, I mean somethings just make sense or could be stretched to why they are there. Most of the time they figure it is just there because it was captured, lost an ally or something along those lines.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

One thought would be to move towards awarding xp based upon completion of objectives/progress in the adventure path rather than combat. I also feel like there are too many filler encounters in most published adventures, but most of that is a result of the need to obtain so much xp each session in order to meet the assumed leveling requirements.

The other advantage of tying xp to goals is that players will start to get more creative. If they need to achieve an objective rather than kill everyone they find, they tend to start coming up with novel ways of dealing with the problem, a number of which involve avoiding combat.

If you don't want to go entirely off the rails and stick with an xp-based system, you might consider replacing the combat encounters with non-combat encounters or roleplaying-based xp. That would let you remove the filler encounters and replace them with something more tailored to your party. I like to do questionnaires for my players, but I've also done things like equipment audits (great for letting you know if the treasure needs to be adjusted because some characters havfe too much/too little), painted miniatures, and critiques of my games (e.g., what did you like the best in the campaign so far, the least, etc).

Of course, the other downside with going off the rails is that it's fun for the players to overcome a difficult challenge and receive an appropriate reward for doing so. One of my fondest gaming memories was taking out a hydra with a pair of 3rd level 2e characters using clever tactics, ranged weapons, traps, and a s#~$load of oil.

Not sure if I managed to hit your original question/post or not, but generally, I agree that there are filler encounters in every pre-published adventure, and I frequently cut them.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

I try to make sure that all encounters in an adventure end up adding something to the adventure as a whole, and as such, I don't see them as "filler" encounters. Taking encounter D7 in Burnt Offerings as an example...

Spoiler:
Its main purpose is to add variety to the adventure. The PCs have been fighting a LOT of the same kind of monsters by that point (goblins and humanoid foes), and the tentamort's a specific choice to mix that up a little. It's also tied into the rest of the "dungeon ecology" in that the goblins are afraid of it (and thus if the PCs kill the tentamort they can use it's cave as a relatively safe place to hide that the goblins won't go to), and to give Lyrie something to do in the backstory. But again, the tentamort's main purpose is to hit the PCs with something different, to keep things from getting same old, same old. It's also a different KIND of fight, in that it's a single tough foe rather than lots of softer foes. And in the end, it's XP; if you remove too many encounters like this, you'll probably need to up the rate at which you give out XP or the last encounters will be too tough.

That said, you know your players better than me, and you should absolutely adjust encounters to make the adventure work best for them, whatever changes that might entail.


I think it's worth considering abandoning experience points altogether when running an AP. That way, you can tailor the party's progression to suit the natural breaks in the story (no problems with contrived breaks mid-dungeon to conveniently level up) and still ensure they reach the "appropriate" level at the appropriate time.

It doesnt make a lot of sense in my mind to rigidly stick to a whole rules subsystem just cos it's there, if you're then going to fiddle around the edges to make sure the players arent "underdone" when they meet the big baddie at the end.


Especially since, at least if you're running the Beta, XP costs have been done away with. Having to track XP numbers isn't really vital when you're never really in danger of losing them.

When we were playing Star Wars SAGA, my group decided to just level when everyone felt it was appropriate, and it worked just fine.


Disciple of Sakura wrote:
Especially since, at least if you're running the Beta, XP costs have been done away with. Having to track XP numbers isn't really vital when you're never really in danger of losing them.

It still matters for advancement purposes. I think most of the players in our group enjoy the excitement of waiting for the next magic number.

The going away of XP deductions in PF is just an officialisation of the way I've always done thing. XP costs never made sense to me (and were so rarely used).

Paizo Employee Creative Director

I've been in campaigns where XP is essentially done away with and the GM just says when you level up... but for me, personally, it's kinda nice to get XP. It's like a reward for showing up to the game sorta; a prize at the end of the session where you get to add up your total and get the thrill of seeing you leveled. I enjoy that; even if you don't get anything stat-wise for not getting enough XP to gain a level, you STILL get the XPs anyway and they're fun to accumulate.

That might just be me... but it's worth running it by all your players if you're thinking of switching to an xpless system.

I still stand by the tentamort encounter even if XP is removed, since it DOES give variety to the adventure, perhaps gives the aberration-hating ranger something to kill, and let's face it: Monsters are fun to fight. (And by "monsters" I mean things that aren't just humanoid shaped foes.)

Scarab Sages

Variety of opponent types and tactics is good.
Though I'd still want the creatures' prescence to make sense in-game and fill the correct terrain/climate/foodchain ecological niche.

Not saying yours don't, but we all remember the old zoo-dungeons of old, where two races who had irrational hatred of each other would be placed in adjacent rooms with only an unlocked door between them.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Snorter wrote:

Variety of opponent types and tactics is good.

Though I'd still want the creatures' prescence to make sense in-game and fill the correct terrain/climate/foodchain ecological niche.

Not saying yours don't, but we all remember the old zoo-dungeons of old, where two races who had irrational hatred of each other would be placed in adjacent rooms with only an unlocked door between them.

The zoo dungeon is something we consciously try to avoid in Pathfinder. The PLAYERS might never understand why a tentamort or a bunyip or whatever might be in the dungeon, but that doesn't really matter as long as the GM understands why the monster's there, so he'll be able to handle things if the PCs get curious.

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