Encounter Generators?

[Korak The Boisterous]

I'm looking to run a game I thought of some time ago and I'm looking for a generator to help create the encounters. I need it to be highly customizable. For instance, the beginning of the campaign would be the characters mentors sending them out on a mission to hunt down something that's been killing the town's livestock.

I need to be able to choose templates and enemy types, and it give me options for the CR I input. For instance my first thought for this was wolves, but wolves hunt in packs and will take out first level characters, so I make them young, just before reaching full maturity. Now I've built this encounter the old fashioned way, but I will to a degree be making this as we play.

So do you guys know any generators that will get the job done?

[Galinaar]

As you specify 'highly customizable' as a key criteria, I'd recommend the TableSmith software - a free download of the shareware version

It's relatively easy to set up, and has more complex functions should you require them And from what I recall, it wasn't costly to register

[Korak The Boisterous]

Uh. that doesn't sound like an encounter generator.

[Victor Von Fausten]

Make your own. Determine what are appropriate encounters for the characters. Assign random numbers. Roll dice. You have an encounter generator. You may have to prepare encounters that you don't use, but such is the life of a gm.

example:
(die roll)
(1) Lone wolf

(2) 3 fire beetles

(3) 1 giant spider

(4) 3 monstrous roaches

(5) 4 kobolds

(6) 3 goblins

(7) 2 hobgoblins

(8) 1 goblin snake

(9) 4 orcs

(10) 1 orc and 3 goblins

And who knows, maybe one of the goblins has a treasure map on him that he couldn't read, but he kept it because it's pretty.

The great thing about creating your own encounter generators is that you can customize them to your world and your party. Have fun.

[Galinaar]

Korak The Boisterous wrote:

Uh. that doesn't sound like an encounter generator.

It might not 'sound' like it, but you can easily/quickly create any tables for the encounters you want using your own probabilities/dice rolls. You can make them as specific as you wish - whatever you need for your campaign/scenario.

As it's shareware you can try/test it out for yourself. No limit, no charge. And no, I don't have anything to do with the software.

Victor's suggestion is by far the easiest and simplest method. The quick listing.

If you were to use TableSmith, the programming may be something straightforward like this:

:Start
1,[Encounter]

:Encounter
1, One Lone Wolf
2, {1d3} Fire Beetles
3, One Giant Spider
4, {1d3} Monstrous Roaches
5, {1d4} Kobolds [Treasure]

:Treasure
1-10, No Treasure
11-20, {2d6} Copper Pieces, {2d4} Silver Pieces

Just click the 'Run' button and you have your encounter generated. You can change any of the variables, text, lists to whatever you want.

The developers own site for TableSmith is here. Which has a few more details and info.

[Thanael]

donjon.bin probably has one... No templates for PF though.

Also Dinglesgames.

[-Grijm-]

Thanael wrote:

donjon.bin probably has one...

Here

[Korak The Boisterous]

I checked out donjon, in fact I had pretty much been planning to use it before I found out the template problem, And I think you guys have failed to understand that I'm trying to avoid the math of building all these encounters, thus, "make a table" doesn't help me.

Edit, whoops, not the one I thought it was.