tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post7845538730551652423..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: About EncountersAlexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-91979319259287708172013-03-16T11:46:10.819-06:002013-03-16T11:46:10.819-06:00The main problem would be, I think, is that it doe...The main problem would be, I think, is that it doesn't apply to humans, right? More intelligence = lower density doesn't actually follow. In fact, the higher the intelligence, the more likely it should be for them to live together in relative peace, while non-intelligent creatures are constantly destroying and eating one another.<br /><br />I haven't worked out a system. This is one of those pesky problems, and I appreciate your weighing in on it.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-86124770213160076522013-03-16T11:41:31.052-06:002013-03-16T11:41:31.052-06:00This post is stupidly ancient, and I have to apolo...This post is stupidly ancient, and I have to apologize for even posting a comment here in 2013 (not that I haven't done this before), but in fiddling with these numbers and concepts, I'd like to fish out the following.<br /><br />You mentioned the issue with there being 11-12 Hill Giants per hex, and that this is stupid high. We also, naturally, don't want to mess with numbers that can fit for actual wildlife.<br /><br />So, what if the Hit Dice for "monsters" or rather, any creature that is living by hunting/foraging rather than agriculture of some kind, were multiplied by intelligence, plus one to mitigate the number of "zero" creatures?<br /><br />I.E. the Wolf, with 2(+1) INT and 2+2HD (I rounded up in such cases, to 3HD) would be valued at 9 Hit Dice per wolf.<br /><br />Taking then the Deer, Stag we get 1+1 INT times 3 HD for a value of 6 HD in encounter space per deer.<br /><br />This would cut the number of large, intelligent fighters down significantly, perhaps even spreading them to singular digits over a few hexes.<br /><br />More importantly, it makes unintelligent herbivores more frequent than the creatures that are likely to hunt them.<br /><br />I'm sure you've worked out your own system by now (worse, I'm certain there are mathematical holes in this idea that I can't spot), but I thought it might jog the subject interestingly at least.Pandredhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03917809464727878157noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-45295331685705258932009-09-24T11:33:08.490-06:002009-09-24T11:33:08.490-06:00It's not a bad idea, but I think a cohesive pr...It's not a bad idea, but I think a cohesive principal for all animals would be problematic.<br /><br />I've been working irregularly on an encounter table meant to solve some of these problems, but as yet I haven't emphasized its creation in my overall efforts. I hope to get to it this winter once I've got some of my trade issues worked out.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-53624182403458106082009-09-24T08:49:22.670-06:002009-09-24T08:49:22.670-06:00I have been going through your archives, so I don&...I have been going through your archives, so I don't know if you have revisited this issue yet.<br /><br />Perhaps rather than "Intelligence" as an additional metric it should be something like "Aggression". After all, an intelligent weak creature is not going to attack a party of level 7 adventurers, but an Aggressive one might. (The level may not be immediately discernible, but some other metric of their fighting capability might be.)<br /><br />Wolves do not generally attack human(oid)s in general, especially adults, armed humans, or a group of humans. All of these things are true for an adventurer party. If a Hill Giant is 4 times as aggressive as wolves are then instead of eight wolf encounters for each hill giant you have two.<br /><br />The aggression could be modified on the fly; say a drought or over-hunting triples the aggression of wolves or something.<br /><br />The downside is that unlike Intelligence, these monsters don't already have an "Aggression" stat, you'd have to come up with your own numbers for your 800 monsters, and they would even change with number maybe. A pack of 8 wolves would be much more daring than a pack of 4.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12155181974954942164noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-18450127988759358472008-08-08T07:04:00.000-06:002008-08-08T07:04:00.000-06:00I feel like just skipping the boring encounters. I...I feel like just skipping the boring encounters. I'll just skip it all the animal encounters and only stop if the party does in fact meet a hill giant.<BR/><BR/>Example overland travel:<BR/>http://campaignwiki.org/wiki/InMemoryOfJeffar/2008-07-08_Transition<BR/><BR/>An alternative would be to prepare a handful of interesting wilderness encounters, and just pull one of them out of your hat when you feel like. Instead of worrying about verisimilitude I'd focus on cinematic flow of the story.Alex Schroederhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17104864340940538702noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-3928132583981451222008-08-06T09:48:00.000-06:002008-08-06T09:48:00.000-06:00I've had the same problem. I now just make a list ...I've had the same problem. I now just make a list of native monsters for an area and pick from the list when a "wandering" monster shows up.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-46729227391453650482008-08-04T09:06:00.000-06:002008-08-04T09:06:00.000-06:00Did your site get hacked or something? There were...Did your site get hacked or something? There were some very "weird" posts here this morning.Hakdovhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00162408897716036685noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-81360324199729417552008-08-03T22:58:00.000-06:002008-08-03T22:58:00.000-06:00I've made encounter tables for the areas that my a...I've made encounter tables for the areas that my adventurers are likely to walk to in two weeks. I limited the maximum hit dice of the creatures in the areas because of their proximity to civilization and because I don't want the characters to find a dragon just yet. I figured that the higher hit die, more dangerous creatures were hunted down or chased further into the wilderness as the characters are in a particularly civilized area controlled by a group of powerful and benificient giants. The further the move from the center of that, the more dangerous the world becomes.<BR/><BR/>At present, I'm doing a lot of hand-waving over the ecology of the world. I don't know how much creatures need to eat before they start ranging, and there's also the question of a magical creature's diet -- what would an earth elemental eat, for example, and how often does it get hungry? I suppose I'll research some kind of <I>potential calories per square mile</I> figure for the various land and climate types.<BR/><BR/>I think I'm going to use the system I've derived from your posts on economics. It will be more-or-less the same as the one I've been using to track the land, labor and capital of the world. I know which monsters and animals I'm going to use. For the animals, I'll reference geographically similar Earth locations to place them. I'm already doing this with the livestock. For the monsters, I'll establish a total population of say, Manticores, and then assign references to zones in the world. Placing them where I think it would be interesting.<BR/><BR/>If I were using Earth, I could reference mythology and place the critters in those zones according their 'traditional' homes. Coatl live in Brazil, for example. Determing population numbers for magical creatures will be an exercise in imagination, but you could choose a corollary between particularly exotic creatures and some rare real-world species.<BR/><BR/>Since I'm using a fantasy world, I can put them where I think my players and I will find them most interesting. I've been dividing the world into zones for 'wildlife' and again, my rule is the further from civilization, the higher the potential hit dice of the creatures encountered.<BR/><BR/>I've divided the non-humanoids into Animals, Monsters and Specials categories. Animals are as they are and include Dire Animals as a nod to the recent Paleolithic era. Monsters are a bit more complex, ranging from mythical beasts who are generally of animal intelligence, up to low-level organization creatures like goblins and ogres and some undead. Pretty much anything that would operate in a pack when grouped together and isn't a real animal is a Monster.<BR/><BR/>Specials are usually the very intelligent monsters although the really high hit die, unthinking engines of destruction are Specials, too. Golems, elementals, roc, ghosts, dragons, demons, devils and so forth are on this list.<BR/><BR/>I'll probably keep my proportions to 1 Special to 2 Monsters to 4 Animals. I can use survey data from areas similar to Earth to establish the appropriate Animal population, which I've done for a few zones already, and then place Monsters references according to the proportion of animal references and so on.<BR/><BR/>Eventually, I'll achieve a system where I just know which animals and monsters live in the forest where the characters are tromping around looking for that fort they read about in the old book.<BR/><BR/>For now though, I'll use my best-guess tables and roll.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com