Random Encounter Tables
We are irrationally excited about our releasing our new random encounter tables. They support a more improvisational style of play that we feel our gaming world needs more of!
Once we had our Monster Quill working well, we realized that we had a lot of data that made encounter tables an obvious next tool to create for you. We had earlier scoured information about where monsters live, though that information is not, in fact, conveniently mentioned in monster stat block entries in the Systems Reference Document. No troubles, though. ‘The truth is out there’ and we were able to put all of the SRD monsters into appropriate environments.
The first draft of our encounter tables listed monster encounters for each of the eleven environments and adapted to the party level entered from 1 to 20.
The next step was combo encounters. We scoured far and wide in various descriptions of monsters, looking for references to relationships between them. For example, goblins are famously known to associate with wolves and worgs. I wonder where DnD came up with that? Anyway, we collected all of this data and were able to use it to sprinkle the random encounter tables with combo encounters.
A little bit of chatting with the friendly folks at /r/dndbehindthescreen encouraged us to add a party size setting to the tables, so we have now done that. We were already doing the math, but now we let you generate appropriate encounter tables for any size party from one to a dozen characters. As you can imagine, the range of monster challenge ratings can vary tremendously.
Another option we’ve made available to you is the option to include or exclude monsters from our Robinloft collection of monsters, as well as from your own personal collection of custom monsters. Want certain monsters to appear in your encounter tables? Go to town in our monster editor and those monsters will appear in the appropriate random encounter tables.
Probably the most unique feature we offer is that we tell you, for the party size and level that you entered, how many monsters the party should encounter for an easy, medium, hard, or deadly encounter. Nobody wants to do that math and now you don’t have to!
So there we have it. We think these are some of the best, most flexible, and most complete random encounter tables of SRD and custom monsters you can find anywhere.