Encounter tables / wandering monsters: what do you use or do you create your own? If the latter, how do you balance them?
Another GM-esque question to follow up my room contents question. If you're creating your own, do you "balance" the encounters? For a party or a lone hero? Are there "quick" ways to test this out?
I'm familiar with a few methods: the Rules Cyclopedia, for example, has a Total Party Level vs monster "individual hit die score" that give some ratios. I've also seen methods for balancing by xp value, etc. I'm curious what everyone does and what else is out there.
Interested in the answers you get.
ReplyDeletein Bivius encounters and dangers are always balanced with characters level.
ReplyDeletelostpangolin.files.wordpress.com - lostpangolin.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/bivius-tunnels-dragons-beta-5.pdf
I like to use the encounter tables that come with a game, at least as a reference.
ReplyDeleteFor balance, I really like Blades in the Dark's clock system. BitD has 4 dice outcome; low, middle, high, and critical high. Rolling low & middle means there is a consequence, such as marking a tick on the "Wandering Monsters" clock if the consequence was "used more time" or "made a lot of noise".
I sometimes roll story cubes and pick the first monster that comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteI have a giant pdf of premade NPCs, I usually use the loom of fate to determine a faction, and then I roll a custom D to pick one off the list.
ReplyDeletei make my own but point is to keep ppl moving
ReplyDeleteBack a few years ago I put together this hex crawl encounter generator based on AD&D 3.x and ACKS. I use the BOX Generator more than the encounter generator itself. alesmiter.blogspot.com - Utilities
ReplyDeleteI make my own and, mostly, balance them to party strength. Every once in a while my imagination gets the best of me. For balancing purposes see the tables in the DMG.
ReplyDeleteDepends on the game. For LotFP, I was using the B/X D&D encounter tables as a base, but whenever something that didn't seem to fit I used tables from Best of Dragon Magazine vol 1 to randomly generate weird creatures on the fly.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I am happier when games have setting-appropriate encounter tables built-in.