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Mastering the Wild / Discovery and Exploration / Creating a Territory

Step 4: Create Random Encounter Tables

Source Ultimate Wilderness pg. 127
A territory’s CR sets the average CR of random encounters occurring within that territory. Numerous example encounter tables appear on pages 324–327 of Pathfinder RPG Bestiary, as well as throughout Chapter 7 of Pathfinder RPG GameMastery Guide, but your encounter tables don’t need to be as complex. Usually, a short table of a half dozen or so potential encounters is enough. It’s generally best to check for encounters four times per day—once at dawn, once at noon, once at dusk, and once at midnight, with a 20% chance of an encounter each time. You can even tie encounters to exploration checks, with a result of a natural 1 on such a check indicating a random encounter. Feel free to adjust the frequency of these checks and the chance of a random encounter occurring as best suits your game. Keep in mind that too many random encounters and wandering monsters can slow down the progression of your plot and can frustrate players. It’s often best to limit random encounters to one per day of in-game time.

Archives of Nethys

Rules Index | GM Screen

Step 4: Create Random Encounter Tables