My question is at the end.
My players recently had to deal with a 'medium forest' encounter which slowed the pace of battle down, prevented easy 5' steps, and where the concealment chances turned a few hits into misses. Also, nearly everyone got +2 to AC as the trees in their squares provided partial cover.
It was certianly a change of pace to dungeon encounters and easy mobility.
Using Excel and VBA, I created a 'mapmaker' for various types of forests to create these types of encounters.
After some thought, I've created a little chart for what I would call "Course Hazards" for traveling in forest.
Course Hazards (Forest)
Player rolls a D6 every 30, on a 1, they inform me they might have encountered a course hazard as they 'discover' their way through the undergrowth of the forest.
2. Bird poops on you.
3. Animal Trail (Draw new path on map through undergrowth)
4. Box Turtle , Frog, or Bird (taking flight)
5. Nettles (if in undergrowth -1 to concentration check)
6. Large Gooey Spider Web(s), Or Gooey Mold/Fungus growth
7. --NOTHING--
8. Slippery mud (acrobatics check)
9. Fallen Log / Stump (Next move costs +1 square, or climb for +1 to attacks)
10. Centipede/Bees/Stinging creatures (-3 to concentration checks)
11. Scampering Squirrel/Mammal
12. Snake (roll to see if poisonous/aggressive)
Only a few have in-game effects. I'm thinking of switching to a 2d8 instead of 2d6 to allow for more things.
Tiny snakes, if poisonious, always have an 'attack of opportunity' vs flatfooted PC's, and simply scamper away and reconceal themselves, sort of 'mobile mines' in the forest. (They are effectivly mini-traps that do Dex damage)
Any suggestions as to things I could add or change?
1) A mauled corpse of a (insert forest animal or orc or something) partially eaten.
2) claw marks on a tree, roll d8 feet for height of marks off the ground
or if you want to have an actual (and potential non-combat) encounter, make it a treant. everyone rolls perception to notice it. (it ignores them if they ignore it.. maybe its sleepin)
or maybe its just a tree that just happens to have a few scars and knotholes in the vague shape of eyes and a smiley face.
-S
A trail of army ants.
A giant boneyard.
Also it seems that these course hazards are not ment to occur during a fight, so the penalities that the fallen log gives seems useless.
