Random Wilderness Encounters

[TheCleverGuy]

What are some good sources for random wilderness encounters, either in rollable table form, or just a list of ideas? I'm currently running a group through The Sunless Citadel, and I'm planning ahead for what to do if they want to continue playing once the written adventure is over.

I'd like to continue on to Forge of Fury, but rather than just time-skip to the party arriving at the Stone Tooth, I was exploring the option of having them do some overland traveling to reach the site of the next adventure.

[P. G. Macer]

Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has rollable tables for numerous environments, divided by tiers of play. They aren’t perfect—the appearance of a tiger in your not!European forest can be jarring—but they’re quite useful.

[TheCleverGuy]

Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has rollable tables for numerous environments, divided by tiers of play. They aren’t perfect—the appearance of a tiger in your not!European forest can be jarring—but they’re quite useful.

Thanks! I knew I had seen a table like this somewhere, but I couldn't find it in the DMG so I thought I'd imagined it.

[Boci]

There's also this one: http://dndspeak.com/2018/02/100-forest-encounters/

[Demonslayer666]

I highly recommend donjon. It has a slew of random generators.

Here's their encounter generator:
https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/random/#type=encounter

[JeffreyGator]

The fun thing about random encounters is that they can let you encounter more interesting monsters.

Given that these are often 1/day fights, you can potentially send higher level hard/deadly solo monsters against them.

So I strongly recommend planning the random encounters as stuff that is going to be interesting even if it doesn't drive the stories.

In the past flail snails,
a hag with scarecrows that took over a village
a barghest with a bunch of goblins
the silver dragon in STK
a wandering fire giant in STK
a wight with zombies along a road
the very first encounter with an owl bear
have all been memorable encounters

[Sam113097]

I like this one (http://creaturespotlight.blogspot.com/2015/02/random-wilderness-encounters.html), from the Lair because it also includes a list of non-combat random encounters like interesting locations or strange little objects

[BurgerBeast]

The d30 Sandbox Companion is good if you like the old school feel.