Second Period
In the case of the city of Minas Mandalf, the vast area within its one mile diameter walls was crying out for development, so I assumed most things such as merchants would go there regardless of where they might be initially encountered. Alternately, I could have ignored everything but Minas Mandalf and assume all encounters happen in that hex or an adjacent one as I did in the first 3 months, but that would not have had the same flavour.
Another option with the above map; you could easily imagine Fordebridge and/or Murkwell being the capital instead of Minas Mandalf, they could actually be separate domains, or they could even accrue their own encounters for the single Domain in addition to the other 3 (I'm not going there though).
Another way to look at weekly encounter generation is that the Domain gets one encounter for its "capital", and two more for its road, if it has one, and these latter encounters can occur anywhere along the road's length within the region the Domain patrols.
Second Period Encounters
The "Uninhabited" table no longer being required, these were the results of the first normal month of encounters on the "Inhabited" table;
- Week 1
- 200 Merchants (d6 result 4)
- 200 Merchants (d6 result 4)
- 150 Merchants (d6 result 3)
- Week 2
- 160 Gnomes
- 80 Bandits
- 150 Merchants (d6 result 3)
- Week 3
- 120 Elves
- 300 Merchants (d6 result 6)
- 1 Hill Giant
- Week 4
- 150 Merchants (d6 result 3)
- 90 Berserkers
- 200 Merchants (d6 result 4)
Suitable Encounters
- Duty at 2% = 5400
- 10% Luxury Goods Tariff at 5% = 1350
- Sales tax of 10% = 27,000
- Entry Fees (I assume these are incorporated into the gate guards' salaries)
- 5cp per head of people = 1350 copper pieces
- 5cp per animal (10 animals per 5000gp merchandise) = 2700 copper pieces
- Total 4050 copper pieces
- Short Sword +1
- Shield +2
- Shield +1
- Leather Armor +2
- Plate Mail +2
- Plate Mail +1
- Sword +1
- Short Sword +3 [Unusual Abilities: Int: 14, Alignment: Lawful Good, Communication: speech, Languages: 2 (Manticore, Gnome), Powers/Abilities: detect precious metals, kind and amount in a 2" radius, strength, 1 time/day (on wielder only)]
- Sword +2
- Miscellaneous Magic
- Wand
- Miscellaneous Magic
- Miscellaneous Magic
- Wand
- Miscellaneous Magic
- Rod
- Potion
- 1-7 High Elves
- 8-9 Wood Elves
- 10 Grey Elves
Unsuitable Encounters
Using a d12 plus d8 combo like this as suggested on pg 138 of Monster Manual 2 |
A likely ambush spot |
Again, anything plausible is good enough to start with, and the DM can choose to micro manage as much or as little as he wants to. I imagined that the Berserkers had a plan, and this is what it was;
By mingling with the locals in Fordebridge, they learnt of the Merchants who would be travelling the road and picked their spot above. However, they did not know about the construction of a Pegasus Express tower just south of this location.
Wikipedia entry |
Resolution
The Berserkers achieved near total surprise, attacking from the forest just as the sun was going down. They fell upon the merchant troops who took significant damage, but their morale held. Since it was a case of foot versus horse troops, the berserkers' plan was to then retreat into pre-prepared locations in the nearby forest with whatever loot they'd managed to grab, attempting to draw the enemy in to a killing zone.
However, the Machodorian Dervish escort troops galloped in and intervened to prevent pursuit of the enemy, assuring the merchants that all would be well. The Pugmen, who had formed part of the escort where the road passes through the forest near Tregard, were sent in to cut off any retreat via the forest, if possible, and if not possible to track them. Then a message was relayed by Pegasus express from the nearby tower to Minas Mandalf, enabling Macho Mandalf to teleport to there by morning.
The Berserkers had slipped away by then; but, as it is hard to evade the nose of a Pugman, they had been tracked to their secondary base further into the forest.
With this camp identified Mandalf then relied once again on the proven process of using clairvoyance and aerial servant to locate and capture the leaders. The remainder refused to surrender however, so they were forced out of their position by the use of the 5th Level Cleric spell Insect Plague, and defeated in detail. None survived.
So tough they fight without shoes! |
Leader Execution ( 3 Level 7 and 1 level 10) XP = 5170. 100% of this XP goes to the Domain Patron.
(Other combat XP assumed to be split between the various supporting forces, essentially lost in this case)
Berserker treasure
One item of Jewelry worth 3000gp, 10g gem, 1000gp gem, 70gp gem, 2000gp
Monetary XP 6080
Magic Items XP 20750
Total XP 26830
50% of this XP goes to the Domain Patron. Where it is possible to identify them from the nature of the encounter resolution, the other 50% of the XP can be allocated to Henchmen, Commanders, etc.
Total Domain XP = 26830/2 + 5170 = 18585
Prologue
That was a fairly straightforward month worth of encounters to resolve. Next time I'll go into detail on another month with quite different encounters and show how I use a certain generator to make life a little easier.
I'm curious as to why you rolled a D6 instead of 5d20 for the inhabited encounter table seeing as how it goes up to 100. I'm still getting into AD&D so I could be missing something.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your question. I guess you are asking about where I say "(d6 result 4)" etc.
DeleteThis is just noting down the base number roll for Merchants, as this same result is used to determine the value of their merchandise later. I use a d100 for the Inhabited Encounter checks.
Thanks for the reply! I'm really trying to get into this so I gotta ask these questions lol
DeleteThat's great, I'm happy to help.
DeleteI dig this series so far! One thing, though:
ReplyDeleteIf you wanna have your random encounter tables more closely match the Frequency percentages from page 5 of the Monster Manual, roll 1d10 + 1d4 instead of 1d12 + 1d8. Type both into anydice.com to see what I'm talking about. Here's the jist of it:
Put your Common monsters in the 5 to 11 slots; your Uncommon monsters at 4 and 12; Rare at 3 and 13; Very Rare at 2 and 14.
The percentages don't line up exactly but they line up very, very close. Note:
Common: 65% in MM; 70% on a d10+d4 table.
Uncommon: 20% in MM; 15% on the table.
Rare: 11% in MM; 10% on the table.
Very Rare: 4% in MM, 5% on the table.
Of course, to stay totally faithful to the Frequency metrics in the MM, you'd have to use d%, but a d10 + d4 roll is a very close second.
I hope that all makes sense!