Encounters per journey?

[Goaty14]

How many encounters should a party face when travelling from point A to point B? I just want a rule-of-thumb to work with, but I'm not quite sure myself.

On another note; I saw a DM guide somewhere in a google doc, could somebody link me that?

[zlefin]

I'd use 1-2 as a default (and not necessarily combat ones); it of course varies alot based on the nature of the journey itself, and the group preferences.

[Malimar]

I generally roll for an encounter once per hex the party passes through (or about twice per hex if the territory they're passing through is roadless wilderness) -- which doesn't mean you get an encounter every hex you pass through, just a chance for one that often. (I use 5-mile hexes, Pathfinder uses 12-mile hexes, I think I've heard of 8-mile hexes; I'm not sure what, if anything, the "standard" might be.)

[Zaq]

This sounds like a flippant cop-out answer, but it's honestly true: as many as you have fun with.

If you like designing road encounters (whether they're lovingly hand-crafted from scratch, rolled on an actual random encounter table, or something in between) and the group enjoys going through them, then absolutely mix in a handful between each stop on your journey. If those two conditions (fun for the GM to design and fun for the players to experience) aren't true, then only throw them in if you have a separate reason to do so.

You might also let the players' actions and choices determine how many encounters they have to care about. Turn the journey into a skill challenge of sorts. Good Survival or Spot/Listen checks can help the party either avoid an encounter or engage it on their own terms (perhaps even including the choice of whether to confront it or not), while bad ones might lead to the reverse (an ambush, for instance). If you want it to be more than just a couple of d20 rolls, then have the players talk through their major actions on the journey and have that be an influence (sticking to main roads versus blazing a new trail, for example, or trying to stay on high ground versus low ground, or whatever), but only do that if you can paint enough of a mental picture for the party to have fun trying to interact with it (and if the party enjoys doing that; not everyone does).

But yeah. The game honestly isn't going to be any worse if you remove random encounters that no one cares about. If your group does care about them, then have as many as you like before it starts feeling silly or starts interfering with your main goals.

Of course, you might know this already, but not all travel encounters need to be combat encounters. You can also throw in non-hostile NPCs in strange (or not so strange) situations and see if the PCs feel like interacting with them. ("As you walk along the road, you see an elf in a field about a hundred or so feet away from the main road. He's got a bucket of soapy water and appears to be futilely trying to wash some kind of blue coloration off of an otherwise normal but very blue cow. Do you approach him?") That sort of thing might lead to roleplaying or new plot hooks or whatever, if you're into that sort of thing, but it does require either some prep work or a good knack for improvisation. (Both of which are virtues when GMing anyway, but you know what I mean.)