CHAPTER 12: ENCOUNTERS
An encounter is any interaction between player characters and GM-controlled elements that presents meaningful choices. A routine purchase is not an encounter. The same merchant offering a suspiciously well-priced item with no clear provenance, with a figure watching from the far end of the market — that is. The player's decision defines the encounter. A situation the party cannot influence is not an encounter; it is something that happens to them, which is different and should be used sparingly.
Encounters do not require danger. Many of the most consequential encounters in a campaign are conversations, transactions, or discoveries. What they have in common is that the outcome is not predetermined, and the characters' choices shape what happens.
Planned Encounters
The GM prepares planned encounters before a session. Two types cover most situations.
Key. A static description of what exists in a location: creatures, NPCs, traps, treasure, conditions, and sensory details. The key describes what is there, not what will happen — that depends on the players. Write keys with general notes rather than specific assumptions. A key that requires the party to arrive at night to make sense will be wrong half the time.
Trigger. A conditional statement tied to a player action. When the characters investigate, search, question the innkeeper, or open the third door on the left, the trigger specifies what they find or how the environment responds. Triggers are harder to write because they must anticipate the range of reasonable actions, not just the expected ones. GMs are expected to improvise for situations not covered.
Combined. The key establishes the location and its inhabitants; the trigger describes how they react to player intervention. This combination produces the most dynamic encounters and requires the most preparation.
Random Encounters
Random encounters serve two purposes: they populate the space between planned encounters with evidence that the world is alive, and they create pressure that rewards careful play. A party that rests for two days in a dungeon corridor should feel the cost of that decision.
The GM determines how often to check for random encounters and what threshold triggers one — 10% every hour of dungeon exploration, once per watch in wilderness travel, and so on. Not every entry on a random encounter table needs to be a monster. Distant torchlight. The sound of something large moving through the undergrowth. A horse with no rider. These build tension without demanding a fight.
Encounter Frequency Categories
| Category | 1d100 Range |
|---|---|
| Common | 01–70 |
| Uncommon | 71–90 |
| Rare | 91–97 |
| Very Rare | 98–00 |
The 2d20 Encounter Table
Roll 1d12 + 1d8 to generate a result between 2 and 20. This distribution weights the middle heavily — common and uncommon creatures appear most often.
| Roll | Frequency |
|---|---|
| 2–3 | Very Rare |
| 4 | Very Rare or Rare |
| 5–6 | Rare |
| 7–8 | Uncommon* |
| 9–13 | Common** |
| 14–15 | Uncommon* |
| 16–17 | Rare |
| 18 | Very Rare or Rare |
| 19–20 | Very Rare |
* Or two Very Rare entries, 50% chance for each. ** Or two Rare entries, 50% chance for each.
Encounter Checks by Terrain and Time
The terrain determines when checks occur and at what base chance. Time of day modifies the likelihood — nocturnal predators are more active after dark; civilized road encounters thin out past midnight.
Table 11.1: Terrain Encounter Checks
| Terrain | Base Check | Night Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Plains | 1 in 10 | +1 |
| Scrub/brush | 1 in 10 | +1 |
| Forest | 2 in 10 | +1 |
| Desert | 1 in 10 | +1 |
| Hills | 2 in 10 | +1 |
| Mountains | 3 in 10 | +1 |
| Swamp | 4 in 10 | +2 |
| Jungle | 3 in 10 | +2 |
| Ocean | 1 in 10 | — |
| Arctic | 1 in 10 | +1 |
Roll 1d10 at the check interval. A result equal to or under the listed number triggers a roll on the random encounter table.
Populated areas. A sparsely patrolled or settled area increases the check chance by 1. A densely populated or regularly patrolled area increases it by 2, but the encounters skew heavily toward civilized creatures — guards, merchants, travelers — rather than monsters.
Dungeons. Check every hour on 1d10, triggering on a 1. Increase the chance in unusually active areas. Excessive noise from the party warrants an immediate check.
Dungeon Encounters
Dungeons have a designated level representing the relative power of creatures found there. As a general rule, creatures encountered should not exceed two levels above or below the dungeon level.
Table 11.2: Creature Level by XP Value
| XP Value | Creature Level |
|---|---|
| Up to 20 | 1 |
| 21–50 | 2 |
| 51–150 | 3 |
| 151–250 | 4 |
| 251–500 | 5 |
| 501–1,000 | 6 |
| 1,001–3,000 | 7 |
| 3,001–5,500 | 8 |
| 5,501–10,000 | 9 |
| 10,001+ | 10 |
Creatures that would not normally frequent a given dungeon level adjust in frequency: weak creatures avoid deep, powerful areas; powerful creatures cluster there. When an uncommon, rare, or very rare result comes up, the GM may shift to a higher or lower creature level as the situation demands.
Wilderness Encounters in the Known World
The Known World's wilderness encounter tables should be built by region, not generically. What a party finds on the Norderenn coast differs from what they find in the forests of southern Gwan'tor, which differs again from what follows them through the ice-shelf passes above Bal'mekh. The tables below establish the framework; GMs populate them with creatures from Book III according to the regional guidance that follows.
Regional Climate and Encounter Character
Climate orientation. The Known World runs temperate-to-cold in the north and warm-to-tropical in the south. Norderenn, Bal'mekh, and Bellaria endure hard winters — genuine cold, extended snowfall, conditions that kill unprepared travelers. Gwan'tor, Urgônia, and southern Alvengaard are warm year-round. Eymanarann and the lands immediately surrounding it occupy a temperate band complicated by magical distortion.
Magical resonance. The banishment of the Darkness did not leave the world clean. The places where the final conflicts occurred still carry residual arcane charge — not dangerous in itself, but destabilizing. Spells behave slightly unpredictably. Undead arise more readily. Items of power corrode toward strange behavior. Vysandárien and Eymanarann sit at the center of this resonance; it diminishes with distance, but even a thousand miles out a GM can justify effects that would be unusual elsewhere.
The Known World's Encounter Regions
VYSANDÁRIEN AND EYMANARANN
These two regions demand their own encounter tables. The ruins are dense, the magical resonance is highest, and nothing the party finds here operates by entirely normal rules. Encounter checks are higher than elsewhere by 1 in equivalent terrain, and the undead appear at one category higher frequency than listed — what is Rare in a normal swamp is Uncommon in the Vysandárien marshes.
Ancient ruins. Eymanarynn ruins are found throughout the Known World, but here they are ubiquitous. Scarcely a day passes without the party crossing stonework that predates the current age. The ruins in this region are also the most intact and the most thoroughly picked over — what remains has survived because something protects it or because no one who reached it came back.
Vysandri ruins. The structures built in Vysandárien before the giants' memory failed them are enormous by any other standard — doorways twelve feet high, corridors broad enough for three wagons abreast, chambers whose ceilings are lost in shadow. Adventurers who stumble into Vysandri ruins without recognizing them for what they are often assume they have found giant-made construction. They are not wrong, strictly speaking. They are simply missing the scale of what the giants once were and have forgotten being. These ruins are now home to ancient dragons who find the proportions convenient.
Dragons. Ancient and Elder dragons exist in the Known World. They are not common in the sense that wolves are common — a party might adventure for an entire career without seeing one, and that career would end if they made themselves interesting to notice. The eldest of them were alive during the Second Era, young by dragon reckoning but witnesses nonetheless. They remember the Darkness. Some of them remember what the Vysandárien structures were built for, and do not speak of it. Roll for Ancient or Elder dragons in this region as Very Rare, but treat any encounter as a campaign-defining event, not a fight to be won.
Giants. Vysandárien and Eymanarann have more giants than anywhere else in the Known World outside the Dead Lands. Most have forgotten the architectural heritage visible all around them, which gives these encounters a particular quality — creatures of substantial power moving through spaces built for their ancestors' greater forms, oblivious to the history. Roll giants here as Uncommon in appropriate terrain; elsewhere in the Known World, they are Rare to Very Rare.
NORDERENN
Fifteen years of Cadmano occupation have changed what a wilderness encounter here looks like. The roads have patrols. The forests have refugees, deserters, and resistance cells. The coastline has both Cadmano naval vessels and the Val'arian traders, whom they cannot quite bring themselves to fully regulate. Wilderness encounters in Norderenn are as likely to be political complications as they are to be monsters.
Undead. The resonance here is lower than Vysandárien but not absent. Battlefields from the occupation and from earlier conflicts produce occasional undead. Not common — Uncommon is a reasonable baseline for their appearance on wilderness checks — but present enough that experienced guides know to avoid certain ruins after dark.
Cold season. Norderenn winters are severe. Any wilderness encounter during the winter months should account for cold damage mechanics, reduced movement (heavy snow is treated as difficult terrain), and the compression of encounters toward sheltered locations. Creatures in winter are hungry, closer to settlements, and less predictable.
BAL'MEKH
Vartran territory is cold, internally organized, and deeply suspicious of outsiders operating without permission. Random encounters here are more likely to involve Vartran patrol units than wild creatures — the Bal'mekhi have their borders reasonably controlled. Beyond those borders, in the mountain passes and the dead-winter reaches, the encounters shift toward cold-weather monsters, giants (Rare here, less so than in Vysandárien but more so than in the Emerald Corridor), and the occasional ruin that predates the Vartran presence entirely.
The Old Tongue. An NPC who recognizes spoken Old Tongue in Bal'mekh will not necessarily report it — the prohibition feels theoretical to many Vartrans in their homeland — but it changes the encounter's character. Outside Bal'mekh, the same recognition carries immediate social consequences, per Chapter 2.
BELLARIA AND THE EMERALD CORRIDOR
The most heavily trafficked trade routes in the Known World. Wilderness encounters here skew toward the civilized end — merchant caravans, traveling clergy, mercenary companies, bandits, and the occasional official with inconvenient questions. True monster encounters occur, but the Emerald Corridor's prosperity means the frontier has been pushed back.
Duardeen patrol range. Emerald Corridor territory adjacent to Duardeen settlements has distinct encounter categories: stonecunning dwarves are aware of what moves through their territory, and organized goblinoid incursions are more likely to be interrupted before they become player encounters. The party may find evidence — tracks, ambush sites, the aftermath of a dwarf patrol — more often than the creatures themselves.
ÁLVENGAARD
Húldar territory, and not welcoming of uninvited transit. Encounters here are more likely to be Húldar themselves — wardens, rangers, investitured Druids moving through their territory — than wild monsters. The forest does not feel dangerous in the way a dungeon feels dangerous. It feels watched. Because it is.
Druidic law. Any encounter with Húldar agents in Alvengaard will, if the party contains an uninvestigated druid or a character who has been heard using arcane magic near sacred groves, escalate rapidly. This is not a morale check situation. Húldar wardens do not warn twice.
Southern warmth. The deeper into Alvengaard, the warmer the climate and the more genuinely tropical the forest becomes. Cold-weather creature entries simply do not appear on southern Alvengaard encounter tables.
GWAN'TOR AND URGÔNIA
Warm, biologically dense, and geographically diverse. Giants here are Rare, found in hill and mountain terrain, and descended from populations that migrated south long enough ago that they carry none of the Vysandárien cultural memory their northern relatives have mostly lost anyway.
Ûrgon presence modifies encounter dynamics in their territory — a Ûrgon patrol is not a monster encounter, but it is an encounter that requires careful handling. Their oral archive means Ûrgon elders may recognize things about the party's ancestry or history that the party hasn't disclosed.
THE DEAD LANDS
Not a wilderness region to be entered casually. Eymanarynn ruins here are densest, undead are Uncommon minimum in all terrain types, magical distortion is severe, and the encounter tables should carry the explicit possibility of things that have no entry in Book III because no one has studied them long enough to write one. Giants in the Dead Lands are Uncommon in appropriate terrain — more than anywhere outside Vysandárien and Eymanarann.
GMs running expeditions into the Dead Lands should establish before the session begins what the party knows, what their preparation covers, and what the contingency is when it fails. The Dead Lands reward thorough preparation and punish the assumption that a high-level party is safe.
Surprise
When one party might be caught unprepared, roll a surprise check: 1d10 on a result of 1, 2, or 3, that party is surprised. Both parties may be surprised simultaneously.
A successfully set ambush grants the ambushing party a free round of actions. The ambushed party still rolls for surprise — a result of 1–3 means they are surprised, giving the ambushers potentially two free rounds.
The Surprise Round
Surprised characters lose their Dexterity AC bonus and cannot act. Unsurprised characters may take any normal action except casting a spell — activating an item, making an attack, moving, or using a wand. Initiative is rolled after the surprise round if both sides remain in contact.
An unsurprised party may use the surprise round to escape if their movement allows it.
Table 11.3: Surprise Modifiers
| Condition | Modifier to Surprise Roll |
|---|---|
| The opposing party is: | |
| Magically silenced | −4 |
| Invisible | −4 |
| Camouflaged | −1 to −4 |
| Has a distinct odor | +2 |
| Per 10 members in group | +1 |
| The party or individual is: | |
| Fleeing | −2 |
| In poor lighting | −2 |
| In darkness | −4 |
| Panicked | −4 |
| Anticipating attack* | +2 |
| Suspicious* | +2 |
| Special conditions: | |
| Rain | −1 |
| Heavy fog | −2 |
| Completely still environment** | +2 |
* Anticipating an attack requires a good reason to believe an attack is coming in a specific location or direction. General vigilance does not qualify. ** No ambient sound, wind, or background noise.
Encounter Distance
The distance at which parties notice each other depends on terrain and whether either side is surprised.
Table 11.4: Encounter Distance
| Situation | Distance |
|---|---|
| Both groups surprised | 1d6 m |
| One group surprised | 1d8 m |
| No surprise — smoke/heavy fog | 2d6 m |
| No surprise — jungle/dense forest | 1d10 × 3 m |
| No surprise — light forest | 2d6 × 3 m |
| No surprise — scrub/brush | 2d12 × 3 m |
| No surprise — grassland/little cover | 5d10 × 3 m |
| No surprise — night or dungeon | Limit of sight |
Encounter Size
Creatures list typical encounter sizes in their stat blocks in Book III. Use these as starting points, not fixed rules. Large predators hunt alone or in small numbers. Small predators run in larger packs. Herbivores form herds that may stampede when disturbed. Intelligent creatures can appear as isolated scouts, hunting parties, or full war bands, depending on the region and the campaign's current pressures. The right question is always: what makes sense for what this creature is doing here, right now?
Encounter Reactions
Most encounters do not require a reaction roll — the GM knows what the creature or NPC wants and plays it. When the party's first meeting with a group has no predetermined outcome, roll 2d10 and consult the table.
The PC disposition column used depends on how the party has approached the encounter — friendly, indifferent, threatening, or hostile. Apply relevant modifiers from the morale table (Chapter 9).
Table 11.5: Encounter Reactions
| 2d10 | vs. Friendly | vs. Indifferent | vs. Threatening | vs. Hostile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2–3 | Friendly | Friendly | Friendly | Flight |
| 4–5 | Friendly | Friendly | Cautious | Flight |
| 6 | Friendly | Friendly | Cautious | Cautious |
| 7 | Friendly | Indifferent | Cautious | Cautious |
| 8 | Indifferent | Indifferent | Cautious | Cautious |
| 9 | Indifferent | Indifferent | Cautious | Threatening |
| 10–11 | Indifferent | Indifferent | Threatening | Threatening |
| 12 | Cautious | Cautious | Threatening | Threatening |
| 13–14 | Cautious | Cautious | Threatening | Hostile |
| 15 | Cautious | Threatening | Threatening | Hostile |
| 16–18 | Threatening | Threatening | Hostile | Hostile |
| 19–20 | Hostile | Hostile | Hostile | Hostile |
Flight. The creature or group seeks to avoid the party or surrenders if cornered. Friendly. Willing to help, or at least holds no ill will. Indifferent. Unconcerned. Will respond if approached, but otherwise ignores the party. Cautious. Untrusting, watching closely, not yet hostile. Threatening. Seeking to intimidate or provoke without immediately resorting to violence. Hostile. Seeking to harm — through combat, ambush, or sustained intimidation.
This table is a tool for situations that the GM has not predetermined. A result of Friendly for a pack of hungry wolves or Hostile for a city guardsman whose only crime is doing his job well should be overridden by common sense.
Ancestry and Disposition
The reaction roll gives the GM a starting point. In a world shaped by eleven centuries of specific history, where a character comes from — and what their ancestry represents to the people watching them walk through the door — adjusts that starting point before anyone has said a word.
Set the regional disposition when the party enters a new nation or territory, not mid-scene. Individual NPCs can deviate from the baseline in either direction — a Cadman merchant who has spent twenty years trading with Ûrgon partners reads differently than a priest who has never left his diocese. What the table provides is where the average person in this region starts before the characters have done anything.
Four tiers, each applied as a modifier to the 2d10 reaction roll:
| Tier | Modifier | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Welcomed | +2 | Actively valued — commercial dependence, political alliance, shared faith |
| Common | 0 | No particular weight attached |
| Watched | −2 | Known history, theological classification, or political friction — NPCs start cautious |
| Marked | −4 | Active persecution or formal enmity — presence draws attention |
Table 12.6: Regional Disposition by Ancestry
| Val Cadma | Occ. Norderenn† | Solara | Bellaria | Alvengaard | Urgônia | Endoras | Gwan'tor | Bal'mekh | Nara'baraan | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human: Cadman | +2 | −2 | −2 | −2 | −2 | −2 | −2 | −2 | −4 | −2 |
| Human: Solaran | −2 | +2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | 0 | −2 | 0 |
| Human: Norderenn | −4 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −2 | 0 |
| Human: Bellarian | −2 | 0 | 0 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −2 | 0 |
| Aelár | −2 | +2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Húldar | −4 | −2 | 0 | −2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −4 | 0 |
| Duergar | −2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 |
| Duardeen | −2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | −2 |
| Ûrgons | −2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | +2 | +2 | 0 | 0 |
| Badakis | −4 | 0 | 0 | −2 | 0 | +2 | 0 | +2 | 0 | 0 |
| Val'arians | −2 | +2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Vartrans | −4 | −2 | 0 | −2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | +2 | 0 |
† Occupied Norderenn: the table reflects local civilian NPC disposition. Cadman military and Church authority figures use Val Cadma's column instead.
Aelár in Alvengaard: the baseline reflects routine interaction. An Aelár whose Húldar parentage is visible or known adjusts to −2 — what they represent to Húldar elders is not what they are, but the distinction requires the elder to make it.
The Undead in the Known World
Undead in the Known World are less uncommon than in most regions of the broader cosmology, and the reason is specific: the banishment of the Darkness left residual magical charge throughout the land, and that charge is unstable in ways that affect the boundary between the living and the dead. This is not a metaphysical argument about evil, but a practical consequence of a cataclysmic event. The Darkness is gone, but what it disturbed has not fully settled.
This means that when building random encounter tables, GMs should adjust undead frequency upward from the default. A creature that would be Rare in a standard fantasy wilderness is Uncommon in regions of high magical resonance. A creature that would be Uncommon is Common in the Dead Lands. The specific adjustments vary by region.
The Church of Tar'amaan uses this reality as a theological argument: magic itself is corrupting, its practitioners invite this destabilization, and only through Tar'amaan's cleansing doctrine can the boundary be maintained. That position is not supported by what scholars actually know about the source of the resonance. Still, it is a rhetorically effective position in regions where people have been watching their dead rise. GMs should bear in mind that this is a real phenomenon the Church is exploiting, not an invention they fabricated from nothing.
Ruins and Architectural Evidence
Eymanarynn ruins appear throughout the Known World. A party traveling for more than a week in most regions outside major cities will encounter at least one structure — a collapsed tower, a foundation, stone columns half-buried in vegetation, walls whose construction predates anything currently being built by several centuries. Most of these ruins have been picked over. Most of them are empty.
Most of them.
GMs building encounter tables for ruins should weigh the probability toward the region. Ruins near Eymanarann and Vysandárien are denser and more intact. Ruins elsewhere are more fragmentary, more thoroughly looted, and more likely to be occupied by whatever found them useful as shelter.
Vysandri scale. Ruins in and around Vysandárien are built to a scale that stands out even when ruined. The corridors are wider, the ceiling heights are wrong, and the stonework — when it survives — has an engineering quality that suggests the builders were solving a different problem than the ones current architects face. Adventurers who recognize Vysandri construction know they are in something old and large. Most adventurers do not recognize it until they notice that the doorway they just walked through was twelve feet tall, and they never looked up.