Exploration based encounters

[Seannoss]

How do other GMs deal with this? I have played through exploration in Kingmaker and am now GMing exploration in Demon's Heresy.
The major issue( from both sides) is that the PCs can nova any encounter as they are likely to have only one encounter per day. Even in the set locations there may only be two. APs don't seem to reflect this. Do other GMs just bump the encounters to +4 or 5 above the party level?
I would also appreciate any ideas on how to make exploration more enjoyable.

[Touc]

Went through Kingmaker as well. Go old school. Instead of making your random encounter table all level appropriate, include creatures that will TPK the party (but ensure they have a chance to flee or be ignored). Include night encounters so there's never a guarantee of an 8-hour rest. Use weather events. A tornado at low levels during the spring can be a scary time. Don't overuse weather, but be aware not everything can be solved with combat.

For exploration, just have some random fluff. Not every hex has an encounter, but maybe there's a patch of rare wildflowers, or a calm brook where they have lunch, or a herd of deer. Keep a list of descriptive fluff so it's not "you find nothing. Roll a perception check." Also ensure players are accounting for food, water, shelter during cold weather. At higher levels, odds are you will want to focus more on high fantasy than the mundane, but at low levels, it's good to be ready.

[Taku Ooka Nin]

Unless the PCs have a clear path it is entirely possible that they can get lost, but you don't need to have encounters at the end of these.
Suggestions:
it is a DC 15 to avoid getting lost and avoid natural hazards, E.G. quicksand, but this does not mean that you can skirt all natural hazards if you have to traverse them.

You could stratify your hazards:

(Move at 1/4 speed) DC 15 is the most dangerous hazard. Perhaps there are cinder cones in this area, and the PCs wander dangerously close to one and must make reflex saves to avoid fire damage, while making fortitude saves to avoid non-lethal damage from the heat.

(Move at 1/3 speed) DC 20 is the 2nd most dangerous hazard. Perhaps there is a bog or swamp ahead, and the PC can discern the safest way through, but it is still very dangerous. Fortitude saves to avoid becoming sickened, fatigued, and nauseated.

(Move at 1/2 speed) DC 25 is the 3rd most dangerous hazard. Perhaps the PCs find a well tended forest, but must dodge, diplomsize, or intimidate their way past the trents and other inhabitants of the forest.

(Move at full speed) DC 30 or higher is the least dangerous hazard. Perhaps the PCs manage across an old magical path that allows them to move through the rugged terrain at full or higher speed.

It boils down to how you want to do encounters. Each check should have its own encounter table with roughly 1/3 being neutral, 1/3 being hostile, and 1/3 wanting to help the PCs--of course the PCs have no idea if the encounter is friend or foe so have them roll initiative regardless.--
The hostile encounters should be level appropriate (APL-4 to APL+3), while the neutrals and helpfuls should be APL+4 or APL+5.
Why are the helpful creatures stronger than the hostiles?
Typically this makes the PCs question IF they should attack things, but it also means that the PCs wont just ambush everything or strike first.

The PCs are traversing a cinder cone and meet three fire elementals. The elementals approach them. The PCs need to make a decision: Do they attack, ignore, or hail these creatures? It could be that these fire elementals want the PCs to help them kill the water elementals underground who are trying to halt the rise of basalt to the surface--hence killing the cinder cone,--or they might just walk up then attack the party.

Neutrals are by far the most interesting since they might later decide to attack the party. The party comes across a pack of men and women in the forest who are wearing ragged clothing and bandanas over their faces. The two parties notice each other, both draw weapons, but neither attacks. A moment later the ragged group bows, sheaths their weapons, and withdraw from the PCs giving them the road.
Two things could happen. The "ragged group" follows the PCs (their stealth checks could get beaten, so the PCs might be aware they are being followed) only to join a fight against a group of gnolls. The ragged group might help the gnolls, they might help the PCs, or they might be a 3rd party that wants to kill both the PCs and the Gnolls. Either way this neutral group is a known unknown.

If you want to have more fun you can push the open hostiles to 1/4, the neutrals to 2/4, and the helpfuls to 1/4, hence meaning that there will be more confusion.

Also keep in mind that a PAladin cannot detect evil in evil people until those peoples' HD exceed 5 or so, unless they have an evil aura (evil cleric, anti-paladin) which forces them to show up as evil at 1HD.

Remember this:
Most animals run away from people who are traveling. Mountain Lions kill a handful of people every year, but most of the time they give up when they are seen if they have not attacked yet. Other times they stumble upon someone or a group of people, then walk off because they weren't expecting to meet anyone.
Wolves, as pointed out in the Darkmoon Vale companions and such, are often times rather frightened of people. They only attack when they are starving, but at the same time if you offer them enough meat to satisfy them they leave you alone.

To do animals you could offer this: Any "Animal" or "Magical Beast" with the neutral alignment (most of them) is either starving (in the hostile group), wandering and stumbled across the party (In the neutrals), or is looking for people to lead away from dangerous areas (helpful).

Intelligent undead (lets take Vampires) can be helpful, neutral, or hostile. Sure, they are evil, but this doesn't mean that they cannot offer aid to the party if the party agrees to go kill someone for them. Use his bed, drink his water, eat his food (pillaged from dead people no doubt), and then go kill his enemies. He is happy, you are happy that you didn't have to sleep out in the wild--even though you probably held watches to make sure he didn't do anything shifty,--and the target of his malice is soon to be a deader corpse.

One of my friends did a game in the River Kingdoms, and my advice to her was to have pirates on the rivers. What kind of pirates, she asked.
STRIX PIRATES! They swoop down from making stealth checks at dawn and 200-ft up in the air. They slowly approach, then strike! Those devious little devils.

[Maklak]

Wait, there are actually modules that have maps with hexes and random encounters? Please tell me their names. All I've seen so far are story-based modules.

Quote:

Why are the helpful creatures stronger than the hostiles? Typically this makes the PCs question IF they should attack things, but it also means that the PCs wont just ambush everything or strike first.

I disagree. They may meet something relatively harmless, like a few local people or maybe a neutral Nixie (CR 1), who will only use charm person in self defence. Fey creatures playing pranks on the party, like a faerie dragon can also be fun (and make the wizard consider taking Improved Familiar). Of course some monsters or bandits masquerade as commoners, so you never quite know. It is best to be polite, but cautious.

I don't like it when a game suffers from the "lvl 15 vendor syndrome" and literally the whole world gets more dangerous just before the party levelled up. I don't have much problem with eventually going for tougher challenges once the XP from hunting goblins dries up, but if the encounters get tougher almost faster than the group gets tougher, to me it feels like being cheated out of my reward for levelling up. Plus it forces me to look up optimised builds and munchkin up instead of having fun or going with a wacky build that is rather weak, but makes some sense for RP.

Just think about the ego boost when the players are high level, decked out in gear like Christmas trees and the GM says. "You stumble upon a group of goblins. They scream in terror and run away." The satisfaction is even greater if the group had difficult encounters with goblins at low levels, even loosing a few of their members and decides to chase the goblins and make an example out of them and their families. PCs get an easy fight, satisfaction and some treasure. What's not to like?

I was thinking about an exploration game and even wrote a small script to give me random CRs with the assumption that as the players level up, they should be able to streamroll most things (in other words there is no CR scaling and it actually PAYS OFF to level up and be the biggest fish in the pond).

CR 0, neutral, friendly or weird encounters can be interesting. For example they might find a ruined temple. Apart from some animals who dwell there and try to defend their home, it was picked clean long ago. They get a nice description, a shelter for the night and a free meal (assuming they kill some of those animals.)

Animals are a mixed bag. Most will avoid them, but can be hunted for food. A few predators might try to defend their territory or attack at night. Then there are bugs who are always nasty, but I think there is a spell for that. Rats can bite, run, repeat and prevent a spell-caster from refreshing spells.

Do they have food? Waterskins? At least blankets for sleeping? Do they sleep in armour? Do they burn a fire at night? Do they post watch? At low level any of these things can bite them.

Some encounters can be a skill check (usually DC 10-15 Knowledge Nature or Survival) and resource gathering, like "You find a beehive, yay", "You find some berries that can be used as material ingredient worth 10 gp by a druid to make a healing potion", or "You find some moss that will glow for three days like a candle."

Anyway, here is my perl script

Spoiler:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @arr = (); # Array for "tickets"
my @hist = (); # Histogram of CRs.
my $rare = 0.1; # Reduction in rarity of encounters above $soft. 0-1
my $soft = 6; # Soft cap on CRs.
my $hard = 15; # Hard cap on CRs.
my $num = 100; # Number of encounters to roll.

sub fill_tickets; # Init ticket array.
sub roll_cr; # Roll an encounter CR.
sub main;

main;

sub main
{ fill_tickets();
# print join (" \t", @arr ) . "\n";
print "Soft cap is $soft. Hard cap is $hard. Rarity of tough encounters is $rare\n";
my $i = 1;
while ($i <= $num)
{ print roll_cr() . " \t";
print "\n" if (int($i/8)*8 == $i);
$i++;
}
return 0;
}

sub fill_tickets
{ my $i = 1;
my $dens = 1; # probability density
$arr[0] = 0;
while ($i <= $hard)
{ $dens = 1.0 / $i;
$dens *= $rare if ($i > $soft); # make everything avobe the soft cap proportionally rarer.
$arr[$i] = $arr[$i-1] + $dens;
$i++;
}
return 0;
}

sub roll_cr
{ my $num = rand($arr[$hard]);
my $i = 1;
while ($arr[$i] < $num)
{ $i++;
}
# print "Num: $num i: $i\n";
return $i;
}

I'm not quite satisfied with the results. The encounter levels tend to be doable at first, then TPK at some point. Although I guess that was the general idea and as a Wizard once said, "any encounter you can expeditious retreat from is a successful encounter".

For example:
Soft cap is 6. Hard cap is 15. Rarity of tough encounters is 0.1
2 1 1 4 1 1 1 2
1 5 6 2 1 3 1 3
2 1 3 5 4 2 2 4
3 1 7 2 1 1 2 1
1 4 1 4 14 12 1 4
1 2 6 3 3 1 2 4
3 1 2 2 1 1 1 2
2 3 2 1 3 1 2 2
3 2 1 1 1 2 1 2
2 7 3 6 5 1 4 3
1 6 2 1 1 2 1 2
2 4 2 1 3 2 8 1