Question on frequency of wandering monsters

[TerraZephyr]

I've been out of the game for a while but will be DMing again this summer and will be running LoF. In the past I never really did wandering monsters but with this campaign I would like to. However, I can't find how frequent wandering monsters are in any areas. Is there a default frequency that I am missing somewhere (which is quite possible)?

There are a couple of places in the first adventure that it notes an area would be used for when wandering monsters show up, but then doesn't say how often this occurs.

Any help/suggestions/info is appreciated. Thanks

[Evil Lincoln]

I went looking for this myself a while back. The closest I came to a definitive Pathfinder answer is from a high-level adventure site in Pathfinder #6.

Basically there's a ten percent chance of an encounter, rolling once per day and once per night.

I find this to be about right... once a week or so the party will have to deal with an encounter going from point A to point B.

[Lord Pel]

Evil Lincoln wrote:

I went looking for this myself a while back. The closest I came to a definitive Pathfinder answer is from a high-level adventure site in Pathfinder #6.

Basically there's a ten percent chance of an encounter, rolling once per day and once per night.

I find this to be about right... once a week or so the party will have to deal with an encounter going from point A to point B.

Yeah, that is about what I am doing. Anytime the characters move from one point to another, then there is a 1 in 10 chance for an encounter.

Right now they are still in book #1 of the LoF AP and are working on clearing out Kelmarane. Once they begin travelling further afield, then I may adjust the checks to once every 4 hours.

[Ryzoken]

Random Encounters appear to occur at the speed of plot, which is to say, they occur when the trip would otherwise be boring and uneventful. In truth, people build cities because (among other reasons) the hinterlands beyond the city's walls are dangerous, therefore, it makes sense for a group of travelers to routinely risk exposure to danger when traveling. Thus, the random encounter table.

In The House of the Beast, the trip between Kelmarane and THotB appears to take roughly 3-4 days, assuming travel by land on horseback. Taking my cues from the old 3.5 expected number of encounters per day, I rolled up 4 random encounters for each day, applied some spot treasure to those I deemed appropriate (no, the Dire Lion did not carry a coinpurse. Not even in its stomach.) and ran with it.

Or, I would have, except I realized at the last minute that THotB is a cesspool of hack and slash with precious little diplomacy given my players' bloodthirst. So I trimmed the randoms down to just 3-4 over the couple of days, made one of them nice and dynamic by creating a pugwampis + chupacabra ambush (the chupacabra ingested luckstones, making them immune to the pugs' bad luck) and called it a day.

I'd use them as a means of breaking tedium, awarding xp to get them back in the advancement track, or do away with them altogether if need be.