Looking for encounters

[Aleolus]

Hey, all. I am looking for some help. I have a campaign I'm running, and I need a list of possible random encounters. I am drawing a complete blank myself, other than various animals. The party consists of three level three characters, and they are in a temperate forest area, which for story line reasons has no sentient creatures in it, so nothing with an Int of higher than 2 or 3. I'm more concerned with combat encounters, but I won't turn away other ideas

[Fizban]

The 3.5 DMG has a list of MM monsters sorted by terrain and CR in the Wilderness Encounter List section, p96. Non-animal/vermin in a useful range include Satyr, Dryad, Assassin Vine, Centaur, Unicorn, Giant Owls and Pegusai (these speak), Werewolf, Very Young Green Dragon, Pixie (with Irresistable Dance).

But by adding an extra int restriction on top of the environment you're gonna have almost nothing, so you'll need to ignore the environment (the only two I see that match both are Asassin Vine and Spider Eater, the latter of which is over-leveled and quite capable of TPK). If you're just looking for anything with low Int, you've got animals, vermin (monstrous spiders), skeletons, zombies, animated objects, and occasionally other types. Most of the MM plants are mindless or low int, you could rule that oozes are fine in occasional sunlight (there's no rules against it anyway), you could rule that elementals are actually beast-tier intelligence (making a lot of things a lot less uncomfortable), etc.

[Seward]

I don't know why but this problem screams "Giant Ants" to me.

It lets you have a fairly complex set of encounters, you can scale the difficulty, even a sort of dungeon if you want to mix that in as a change of pace should they go after the queen. Real ants have pretty interesting behaviors without being sentient.

[Raven777]

As Seward said.

Or for a similar effect that taps more into known tropes: harrying from a persistent pack of wolves enacting The Grey (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheGrey) on your players.
Do you need specifically CR 3 creatures, or can you also throw groups of 3-4 wolves at the party?

[Biggus]

Owlbear
Rat swarm

[Paragon]

Hey, all. I am looking for some help. I have a campaign I'm running, and I need a list of possible random encounters. I am drawing a complete blank myself, other than various animals. The party consists of three level three characters, and they are in a temperate forest area, which for story line reasons has no sentient creatures in it, so nothing with an Int of higher than 2 or 3. I'm more concerned with combat encounters, but I won't turn away other ideas

When I'm looking for inspiration I go there (https://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20monsterfilter/) it's a legal & free tool in which you can filter srd content to build encounters with. Really useful to get started

[Raven777]

From Paragon's tool, some suggestions :


An Ankheg burrow (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ankheg.htm) (should make anyone who played the first Baldur's Gate happy to recognize the critter).
A statue garden to creep out the PCs, until they run into a cockatrice (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/cockatrice.htm).
A Huge Viper (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/snake.htm#viperSnake) in a swamp, with possible complications from dealing with the poison.
An unseen foe that's actually a predatory invisible sentient mushroom (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/phantomFungus.htm). Best used at night to up the creep factor. Or maybe in an abandoned cabin, using the first few rounds growling and throwings objects about like a ghost.
A Giant Praying Mantis (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/giantPrayingMantis.htm). Run it like the much feared Giant Crab: grab a PC and run off into the undergrowth, forcing the rest of the group to give chase.