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View Full Version : Ways to spice up wilderness encounters?



bigbadvlad
2008-05-16, 04:44 PM
I'm running a campaign now in a setting that has TONS of underpopulated wilderness between cities, and if it goes on for very long I'm afraid my encounters will start to get stale. I'd feel a bit silly just having an endless litany of natural and magical predators assaulting the party.

So far, most of my ideas have been terrain-related - getting around difficult terrain and tactical disadvantages, mostly. I'm also planning on putting them through the middle of a wildfire in the next session. After that, well... I'm coming up short.

What sort of things would you do as a DM to give more texture and flavor to wilderness encounters? What kind of monsters would you throw in as curveballs?

mostlyharmful
2008-05-16, 04:49 PM
try having some settlers, carving a life out of the wilderness, at first needing protection and eventually thriving or maybe even doing too well and competing with druids/fae/whatever. Makes for a nice moral diellema with conflicting loyalties and priorities within the party. Encounters get much harder when there isn't a right and a wrong:smallsmile:

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-16, 04:53 PM
I'm running a campaign now in a setting that has TONS of underpopulated wilderness between cities, and if it goes on for very long I'm afraid my encounters will start to get stale. I'd feel a bit silly just having an endless litany of natural and magical predators assaulting the party.

So far, most of my ideas have been terrain-related - getting around difficult terrain and tactical disadvantages, mostly. I'm also planning on putting them through the middle of a wildfire in the next session. After that, well... I'm coming up short.

What sort of things would you do as a DM to give more texture and flavor to wilderness encounters? What kind of monsters would you throw in as curveballs?

Make the players face David Hasselhoff. THAT would be a pretty random encounter. It'll keep them on their toes.

Lucyfur
2008-05-16, 05:00 PM
Druid Gnolls

Spiryt
2008-05-16, 05:01 PM
Also, weather is always qiute unused, probably conidered boring or something.

Finding shelter from pouring rain is quite unhoroic, yet vital quest:smallwink:
Also fighting in such condition can be real challenge.

Aside from effects mentioned here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/weather.htm#rainSnowSleetAndHail), rain can also for example made ground slippery and slushy (grease ?).

Rare plants ec. which players can use for brews, poisons or something, if they have sufficent knowledge is also fun.

RTGoodman
2008-05-16, 05:02 PM
If you can get some of the environment books, that could add all kinds of cool stuff. Frostburn has stuff for arctic and mountain campaigns, Sandstorm has desert stuff, and you might even be able to use some of the Stormwrack stuff. Also, the Swampgas project in my signature has a lot of homebrew swamp-related stuff, including monsters and a few environmental hazards, and I'm betting some of it'll work for you.

If you've got Complete Divine, make a Blighter that's going around deforesting the wilderness and make the PCs have to stop him (especially if you've got a Druid). If you want a planar adventure hook, start throwing some animals with the (Complete Arcane) Pseudonatural template at them, and then have them explore a rift between planes or to the Outer (Lovecraftian) Planes.

My suggestion is to do some cool stuff in the wilderness, but just look at it as a starting point, not a setting for the whole campaign.

AslanCross
2008-05-16, 06:05 PM
Fey. There are a bunch of hostile or downright evil fey in the Monster Manuals. Tackling an enclave of evil fey could be a whole sidequest. You could also run into some elementals too.

If you have some nature-oriented PCs, you could probably even have them encounter a magical epidemic in the animals or a fast-spreading blight and find a cure for it. Pretty cliche, but I think it would work.

Bizarre weather conditions could be a good challenge.

KillianHawkeye
2008-05-16, 06:27 PM
Just remember that random encounters don't have to be combat encounters. You can pretty much put ANYTHING out in the wilderness as long as you figure out what it's doing there and what will happen when the PCs find it. If you think about it, is it more likely that the creature will be hostile than it is for it to be friendly or indifferent?

xPANCAKEx
2008-05-16, 07:18 PM
throw a couple of a "pointless" (ie: non-consiquential to the plot) conversational encounters at them to see how they handle the RP side of things

better yet... give them an entrance to a cave, which has a door inside with a lock that can't be opened (by any means available to them). They will spend HOURS trying to figure out how to get in. Sadistic? Quite.

Seffbasilisk
2008-05-16, 07:36 PM
I always liked Assassin Vines. Had a party of PCs level 9 who were terrified of CR 3 beasties.

Add to that a search for shelter, fatigue for sleeping in armor without the endurance feat, insects, rain, hail...

EvilElitest
2008-05-16, 07:53 PM
read the 2E DMG random encounters sections, i wonder why 3E didn't do that
from
EE

wakazashi.juice
2008-05-16, 08:59 PM
Crazy Druids who don't like trespassers on their sacred grove. They collapse trees with sharpened branches on the PCs.

Awakened animals.

Parasitic plants who take control of one of the PCs minds (yellow musk creeper, orcwort).

Magical weather.

Other people lost in the woods.

Copacetic
2008-05-16, 09:04 PM
You could have the players walking merrily along, minding their own business, when they come across a glade, with a deer in it. As soon as they move closer, the ground beneath the deer collapses and what looks like a giant mouth shoot out of the ground and eat the deer whole. Oh, you said spice up encounters, not spice up the wilderness. Oh well. :smallamused: It would still make them paranoid for a long time.

Burrito
2008-05-16, 09:14 PM
Out in the middle of knowhere is always a good place for a lone Wizards Tower, or some haunted castle ruins.

You can't go wrong with finding a Green Dragon nest either.

A Hivemaster Druid with lots and lots of angry giant bees.

The Gilded Duke
2008-05-16, 09:48 PM
Nocturnal predators.
Why wait until the party is fully rested?
I think the most interesting part about wilderness encounters is that the party is not in ideal conditions. Getting eight hours rest can be difficult. Knowing where to go can be difficult. You might not be fully rested, you might not have food. There is going to be difficult terrain. You can throw in weather effects. They might not be able to see.

bigbadvlad
2008-05-17, 12:00 PM
Gosh, there are some really great ideas in here.

I'm definitely not using the wilderness as the entire campaign setting, I'm not nearly talented enough to do something like that and make it work. My players would all reroll druids, or possibly kill me with a d4 right between the eyes. The setting I'm using just needs to feel HUGE, so I'm using wilderness to spread everything out and make the world a scarier place. I want them to feel relieved every time they enter a new town, because it means now there's a wall between them and the big bad woods (and deserts and so on).

In that spirit, Frigs, your suggestion was pure gold. Clearly I should not spend very much time on these forums, in case I get too creative and wipe the whole party in an effort to make them more paranoid...

Tsotha-lanti
2008-05-17, 12:37 PM
Nocturnal predators.

Wouldn't the majority of wilderness predators be nocturnal anyway? It's an important fact to keep in mind, though. Encounters during the day are likely to be rare, or with other travelers or local inhabitants; encounters during the night are likely to be with whatever picked up your scent and suspects you might be edible...

Jayngfet
2008-05-17, 12:59 PM
I'm making a wilderness based inevitable, I'll link it when I'm done.

Trog
2008-05-17, 01:43 PM
Give the players a map. Have your map reflect something entirely different. Ruins where there was supposed to be a city. Villages not on the map. Rivers that were not on the map. Maybe a band of creatures controls one of the few narrows in the river where the PCs can pass - and even there there is no bridge and no easy way across.

Bandits on the road are always fun to slaughter.

Dead huge carcasses of beasts. What could be killing them?

Noises in the night. They keep getting closer each night.

A small ruined roadside inn. At night the former patrons rise up from the earth.

A barbarian tribe which welcomes the PCs as many of their warriors have died to try and rescue their stolen totem from creatures in the hills.

Reoccurring ruins of a bygone age. An ancient dwarven civilization that spread across the region that, it is told, were wiped out by the very land they sought to rape for minerals and wealth. Elementals seem common in this region for some reason.

Thiel
2008-05-17, 01:50 PM
Landslides and floods are fun. You can hit the PC with them or you can hit their surroundings. For example: The party is travelling from city A to city B. To do that they have to cross a big river, unfortunately the bridge has been flushed away by a flood. They now have to figure out how to get across.

Spiryt
2008-05-17, 01:55 PM
I'm definitely not using the wilderness as the entire campaign setting, I'm not nearly talented enough to do something like that and make it work. My players would all reroll druids, or possibly kill me with a d4 right between the eyes. The setting I'm using just needs to feel HUGE, so I'm using wilderness to spread everything out and make the world a scarier place. I want them to feel relieved every time they enter a new town, because it means now there's a wall between them and the big bad woods (and deserts and so on).

In that spirit, Frigs, your suggestion was pure gold.

It's Spiryt. I'm glad that you like it.

Anyway, your wilderness idea is pretty climatic, certainly most medieval folks were feeling just like that if they're forced to march trought the forest.

Another ideas:
Considering wilderness is treated like something to go trough, to reach something players wish to reach - good, old Ribbon Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribbon_lake) would help.

Located just in the middle of PC's path, 20 miles long - means 40 miles of additional march trough the forest. But it's only half mile wide, so why not cross it right here?
But maybe your players dumped swim, beacuse they tought that UMD would be more useful?(Anyway swimming trough the lake with gear isn't easy, especially if it's not summer) But it's up to players.

Best effect if it's surprise of course - lake isn't on hte maps/players never checked one. The main problem is that one 5th level wizard can overpass it by little something called "Fly". But that's the problem with the system, really.

Also other simple things are always good - behind some dense bush, entrance to the never discovered underground cave. Nothing even had to happen in there, there can be just amazing views inside.

Or it can have connection with the Mysterious Tower (TM) which is hard to achieve frontally, from some reason...

bosssmiley
2008-05-18, 08:29 AM
How about a gaslamp golem (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4333938&postcount=94) and the evil Satyrs that subsist on the leavings from its 'kill all humans' rampages through the snowy wastelands? :smallwink:

Cheesegear
2008-05-19, 04:34 AM
My best (so far) wilderness encounter, I have two words; Vampiric Animals.

Basically, you're in a super-dense forest, so that the canopy lets in little-to-no sunlight. The BBEG is a Lawful/Neutral Evil Vampire. Or, you could DM-fiat and make him a Chaotic Good vampire (depending on how you read the next sentence, and to put in a dilemma for your 'Good' party members).
For whatever reason, the vampire in question wont 'eat' people beucause it's bad. Maybe he retains some memory of his former life where he was a Cleric/Paladin/whatever.
So, he's fled into the forest-with-no-light and now feeds on animals.

Some/Most of these animals also turn into Vampires. Yeah. Vampiric Animals. So, it creeps your players out when they find out they can't actually kill a simple rabbit who wants to rend their flesh - they'll eventually figure it out. Bonus points if they try for a Holy Hand Grenade. Anyways, because the animals now need to have blood, they wont be afraid of humans, and they'll actually attack at any time of the day. Now the animals are nocturnal as well, so they'll attack at night when the party needs their rest.
a) The casters can no longer memorise their spells because they never get the time. Seriously gimping them.
b) The party becomes fatigued and can't do anything properly because they don't get any sleep/rest.
...My players hated me for this.

Has hooks for Paladins/Clerics, Druids/Rangers,Necro-themed Wizards. Change the scenario to suit.
Oh...Don't forget. Vampiric. Dire. Bear.
A vampire that can grapple (with ridiculous bonuses) as a free action is not pretty. It probably will make your players cry.

Funkyodor
2008-05-19, 10:20 AM
Well, we had the PC's meet a group of thieves in a saloon. Beer, food, and pleasant banter later. In comes the Law (made to act like wild west Rangers) asking pointed questions acting prickish. Well the PC's were on the run from the law too, so that's where it got interesting.

Horse rustlers along a wide trail in the woods. Have the encounter be toward night time with the offer of pleasant company / food from a homely mom & pop kinda family. They chat & try to steer the players either to buy horses for cheap, or trade up their older 'models' per say. The following afternoon have some Sheriff looking for 'em meet the PC's and think they are involved because of the stolen merchandise.

If you are involving a forest fire, having a stampeding herd of wild animals (you could use the swarm template) come blasting past. Good starter of forest fires might be fire salamanders let loose by some earlier PC 'good' deed, like the removal of some cool looking Gemerald out of a stand in a random dungeon.

MorkaisChosen
2008-05-19, 10:49 AM
Cinnamon dryads.

Sorry...

Things that aren't what they appear to be are always good. Depending on the group, scantily-clad women that turn into fanged monsters could be effective...

Storm Bringer
2008-05-19, 10:57 AM
Ideas:

the players spend the night at an semi-fortified inn deep in the wilderness. At some point during the night (i.e. before spells have been restored, the tavern is attacked by a large force of bandits, much bigger than previous attacks. the players are caught without armour on and with muitlpe hostiles in close proximty to freindly NPCs and incoocent bystanders. the PC's have to protect the women and children, get thier armour and gear on, and fight the bandits off before they kill to many of the NPC;s.


the players must cross a large river. thier is a village with a ferry on the far bank, but it when the arrive at the river, they see that the village has been destoryed and that the ferry is on the far side of the river and no one is thier to bring it over. The players must get across the river, work out who attacked the village and get to civilisation without suffering the same fate.

the party must cross a river. Thier is a bridge, but when they get to it, they find that two local nobles have drawn up armies over which of them has the right to levy tolls on the crossing. the players must either talk the barons into a compemise, find a way to sneak across, or help one of the barons defeat the other.