Idea: Random Encounters With Same Enemies

[Leliel]

Anyway, I was playing Fatal Frame 3 the other day-and not coincidentally, visited the Manor of Sleep in my dreams-and I realized something: In the games, many of the enemies you encounter-even the random ones-are actually the same people (which makes sense, given that they're ghosts).

This gave me an idea-What if, should I make a Random Encounters table, if certain enemies on there-possibly ghosts and other undead, but not always-are actually the same exact creatures, having retreated in previous fights with the PCs only to show up again should I roll their number.

This seems like a good idea to me because (A), it makes a good story hook if the PCs wonder why these guys keep showing up to harass them, (B), keep some monsters appearing at various levels, but with new abilities the players have to adapt to, and (C) allows me to be lazy.

So, do you think this is a good idea?

[Zarrexaij]

...isn't that basically what a villain is? :p

[Griffin131]

I do it with memorable encounters -- if theres an Orc that the low level party keeps whiffing and eventually either routs them or runs away himself, I'll level him and bring him back eventually, with references to their earlier encounter. It can be fun if done right.

[Leliel]

...isn't that basically what a villain is? :p

No, not a major villain like a BBEG-just a mook who, for some reason, just won't give up.

[chiasaur11]

No, not a major villain like a BBEG-just a mook who, for some reason, just won't give up.

Sounds good if you don't fudge too much to keep the mook alive.

[Falrin]

Love it

Bugbear in service of necromancer leads an attack on the PC's and gets killed.

Necromancer makes him a vampire and sends him out again
+2 CR vampire, -2/-1 Loss of back-up.

He comes back again as a vampire, but with 2 spawns.

He defends the necromancer in his throneroom (where his coffin is hidden somewhere)

The Massing negative energy when the PC's leave the killed undead throneroom form one, big festering undead pile of limbs with a wellknown head for a final showdown.

[Chronos]

...and (C) allows me to be lazy.That depends on how much detail you put into your mooks. Most DMs, when throwing random orcs at their party, will just use the default orc stats out of the Monster Manual for all of them. If you do this, then you're not saving yourself any trouble, since it's just as easy to look up the stats in the Monster Manual as it is to look them up in your notes from old encounters, and even if you did re-use specific orcs, there'd be no way to know, since they all look alike.

Now, if you're in the habit of giving all of your random mooks their own builds, complete with customized class levels, feats, etc., then re-using them would obviously save you a lot of work, but many folks wouldn't put that much work in on them in the first place.

[Crow]

You could have the first encounter be with a bandit, then the next one be with the zombie created from his corpse, and then the next one be with his skeleton, and then finally the last one would be his ghost.

:smallbiggrin:

[FMArthur]

It's better if you don't plan ahead who is going to survive, because that's usually going to require a good fudging. I ran one campaign where I would actually keep track of the enemies that escaped from them (just a note in my binder beside the entry: *survived*), or enemies who they knocked unconscious and left them there at higher than HP -5 in an area they were likely to recieve help. It worked out pretty well. The survivors of previous battles formed an organization dedicated to hunting them for revenge. It wound up with a fairly caster-heavy makeup for obvious reasons, but that was part of what made them unique and special.

[Stormageddon]

In the current campaign I'm in we keep running into either a brown bear or giant eagle. We've at least run into these things 10 times each. So much that it's become a running joke in the party. The DM swears up and down he's not doing it on purpose, but it's pretty funny.