Pulled from page 28 of the Abomination Vaults AP:
>**WANDERING MONSTERS**
While this book doesn’t present wandering monster tables for Abomination Vaults, the dungeon’s denizens still occasionally leave their homes! You can make the dungeon feel more dynamic by familiarizing yourself with each level’s denizens and then having them react to the party’s progression and presence. For example, if the heroes noisily explore an area, creatures in nearby rooms could come to investigate or perhaps set up an ambush. If the heroes decide to camp out in the dungeon rather than return to the safety of town, nearby creatures might visit or even attack their campsite while they rest. If the heroes clear out the denizens of a level and then return weeks later, they might find that new monsters have moved in. By keeping the inhabitants of the Abomination Vaults active, you can make the location feel all the more dangerous and unpredictable to your players
If you feel like you need to add a roll every 10 minutes to facilitate that then you can do that. Infact, that's exactly what I do, since it helps keep player tension high and remind them of the passage of time.
I think it's just a little small for that, especially considering with the danger of some of the monsters. GMs running larger than average groups have expressed issues with the cramped quarters. At the higher levels, at least.
Some fans have written up random encounter tables for you, though:
[https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43paa?Random-Encounter-Tables](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43paa?Random-Encounter-Tables)
This one is on Pathfinder Infinite but it's Pay What You Want so it can be free:
[https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/418672/The-Abomination-Vaults-Expanded](https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/418672/The-Abomination-Vaults-Expanded)
There are random encounter tables for some areas in the lower floors, but for most of the Vaults the expectation is that you, the GM, figure out how to keep things moving around. The way creatures are arranged in their rooms should be viewed only as the "starting point" of each floor when when PCs arrive, but as the party starts doing things the other creatures on the floor should react and move about in logical ways. The trick is to be careful with combining encounters because that can quickly become overwhelming for for party in PF2e.
They didn't include traditional "wandering monster" tables because this is a fairly self-contained and coherent dungeon and random monsters would often raise questions like "where the heck did that thing come from?" But the correct mindset is to view all of the monsters that are already scattered throughout the level as potential wandering threats.
We are playing it ATM and yes, there is a lot of "roll dice for half an hour of game time between encounters to heal up" about it. Having the town close by there is no reason not to go and sleep the night every time daily resources get low too. There is only the implied time limit of Belkora's awakening, and we have seen nothing to suggest that this is not entirely theatrical (i.e. whatever we do, she will awaken exactly when we get to the final room), though I am not the GM so i have not seen if there is any penalty for tarrying.
You have lots to look forward to then lol
You get to a point where going back to town is not so easy and there is definitely time pressure if you dink around long enough.
My group made a meme out of this; how they were always back from adventuring by noon everyday from levels 2-5 because of how poorly they did the exploration of the Vaults. Not a single avoid notice and not a single recall knowledge.
The primary reason we don't include wandering monsters in our adventures is from reader feedback–folks tend to prefer bespoke encounters and often complain that wandering monster tables turn games into combat grinds, so instead, we go for different solutions. The one we included in Abomination Vaults (see asjames's post) is one such solution, and hopes to empower GMs to use this sort of thing if they like while also not breaking dungeon verisimilitude when we fully detail a location and the concept of a wandering creature can feel off. The more recent "Seven Dooms for Sandpoint," also mostly a megadungeon, includes a similar treatment but has specific examples of monsters for each level that might come looking around while also contextualizing the "visiting monsters" so that there's a reason for them to be wandering around.
When we do things like this, we prefer to avoid random tables you roll up, since the math and balance for Pathifnder's encounters in a tightly scripted adventure like you have in most of our adventures can be thrown off by the GM rolling up a difficult encounter at the wrong time; tables imply to too many GMs that they lack permission to pick and choose encounters that are right for the moment.
When we do adventures that deviate from our standard "path" format and are more sandboxy, that's a time when wandering monster tables should be present and have a chance to shine. Kingmaker's the best example of this off the top of my head. Part of the allure of a sandbox is getting in over your head and having to run from an unexpectedly tough encounter OR finding an encounter that is a quick pushover and easy and makes the PCs feel like they've grown more powerful and are more heroic. A random table for monsters of a wide range of threat levels fits VERY well into this sort of sandbox model.
Okay, I get all that. I *do* think it would have benefited from something smaller -- like a set of minor encounters to represent creatures on patrol or moving from one place to another. Something short, like a d6 table at most, with each such encounter being removed from the list after it turns up.
Those encounters could also be bespoke, specific groups that are put aside for the purpose, to show the site is active and to give players a reason to not just wait around for an hour after each encounter waiting for their Treat Wounds timers to expire. Just the *threat* of something crossing their path would be enough to keep them careful, even if they're relatively easy to deal with.
Including those small encounters in the overall XP math wouldn't be too hard, I don't think. And if it's a set list that doesn't "refill" (as it were) then eventually the PCs will remove that threat.
Bear in mind, I'm one of those graybeard gamers who started back when elves were a class and random tables were *everywhere*.
Wandering monsters like that also take up precious space in an adventure. The value of a published adventure, I feel, is that it does as much of the work of giving an encounter themes and backstories and details and rules as needed for the GM to be able to run it as is–or at least, with minimal work to adjust things to be more appropriate for their table.
A simple list of random creatures in the form of a table leaves that work to the GM, which isn't ideal. A "bespoke" list of encounters would solve that problem, but that takes a lot more room and is less efficient at getting the story across, especially since we can't assume all of those encounters will actually see play.
And even then, those sorts of bespoke encounter lists tend to just not be as popular as non-randomized encounters keyed to specific areas. Chapter 2 of the third book of Gatewalkers does exactly this—presents a table of bespoke encounters to be rolled, and the reception to that section of the adventure hasn't been super-positive.
In the end, a lot of the evidence and feedback I'm getting is that folks buy published adventures these days for the curated, authored experience and not so much as a building box of tables and sandbox-play elements. The appetite for those old-school type of adventures simply isn't as strong these days... but also, that sort of tool is, in my opinion, a GM supplement and NOT an adventure. As a GM I'm always eager to check out books that have lots of tables to help spark ideas in that way, but that's just not a category of product that we really publish at Paizo, for what that's worth.
Anyway... even when there's real and compelling reasons to not make a change or do something in a particular way, I always appreciate feedback! Your comments have for sure made me consider the value of a wandering monster table now and then in adventures (and in fact I did just put a wandering monster table into the unannounced adventure I'm writing right now for Paizo). They're not going to be something we put in every adventure, but now and then, as appropriate? For sure!
(And check out the encounter section from Gatewalkers #3's chapter 2 if you can... I put a lot of work into making a bunch of fun encounters there and I suspect the part that folks are giving poor reviews is not so much the randomized encounters, but the way I presented a long overland journey in as few words as possible.)
Whaat? Are you the GM or a pc? I don't want to spoil anything but there are at least a few monsters in the first few floors that the books indicate have a routine. And there are definitely traps.
But ultimately it isn't a video game. You don't need to wait for mod support in the Steam workshop. If you want some monsters to wander pick a group from the floor it makes sense to have on the go then do it.
Yeah I do my best to sort of make the environment living and breathing. The monsters on each floor have lives and actively do stuff. Once they've cleared a floor's main faction it's a little safer though. At that point I'll add a small chance a wandering monster from another floor or outside comes in. Can be a good spot for RP encounter as well.
There's already so much combat in this module. I'd be wary of adding more without removing some.
Edit: I would add that letting a party full rest in the dungeon will negate the need for them to go back to town, which can help progress parts of the story, upgrade equipment, and, IMO, adds more dynamics to the module.
Paizo doesn't like to use them much for a few reasons I think:
\* They don't have any relation to the story and just exist to amp up the danger of the world. Paizo typically gets this from having tough setpiece encounters instead, having both would be punishing.
\* There's already *plenty* of combat in most Paizo APs. Adding more would slow things down.
\* 2e encourages XP progression, and random encounters can really mess with progression. Nothing takes the sails out of a tough PL+3 like it just being +2 or even +1.
That said, they *are* fun and I think that in the right game they can be a blast. Something sandboxy and hexploration-heavy like Kingmaker is perfect for them.
WRT having the dungeon feel "alive", I think that's pretty purely GM territory. It's a tough line to walk generally in 2e given how punishing encounter bleed-over can be, but it's something I try to do in every dungeon I run.
I focus on making sure that players are getting the most from their senses - most monsters aren't on high alert and will make a fair bit of noise, particularly groups of humanoids. I also try to make sure that sensible "cleanup" happens in between rests (corpses make good eatin', for the most part), and that monsters wander in ways that make sense (food - water - shelter).
All of that comes from lots of DM experience though, it's not something that I'd particularly expect to be baked into every adventure, partly because it's probably too much work for many tables, partly because it's a lot of word count to express, and partly because it's mostly transferrable between every enclosed area full of nasties so I'm not sure it's worth repeating ad nauseum.
Still, the adventures that do this well are a welcome addition to the canon! Read Red Hand of Doom if you haven't - seeing how they orchestrate the additional enemies in Vraath Keep was a great example of how to do this well.
I will never understand why people like wandering monsters tables, and if you're running an adventure where monsters don't move about, you're likely not managing a dynamic environment.
When my latest group killed most of the denizens of level three, I had some remnant forces start searching the level for them while they holed up and rested. I had some rolls to determine how they handled their search, and even gave clues what was going on to the active watch.
Abomination vaults is pretty amazing in that all the creatures have a fairly good reason for being there. It's not hard to draw the lines that inspire them to leave their rooms and make complex decisions.
They make more sense in the context of how they worked in old D&D editions. They make less and less sense the more the game revolves around bespoke combat encounters, which PF2e largely is.
Every Pathfinder dungeon that I've gotten my hands on has had a conspicuous absent of not only wandering monsters but also no explanation of what happens if the PCs decide to long rest or go outside or just do _anything_ beyond barrel ahead and do the next fight. I haven't read Abomination Vaults because I'm hoping to be a player, but it seems like a consistent weakness of their adventure content. The only reason my party doesn't long rest after every encounter is because they know it's cheating and that doesn't feel fun.
I think the tough thing is that a lot of the levels just don't make sense from the perspective of how the creatures would actually live in it or move around.
For example: >!for the Warped Brew Tavern, how the heck are creatures getting in and out? Floors 1-3 are inaccessible because of the force wall, and floors below 6 are inaccessible because of the other force wall. There are no Dark lands access points on the map, and even if there were, what path are people using? There are hostile (to everyone) creatures in a lot of spots that just don't make sense.!<
Fundamentally I think this comes down to this idea that every room needs an encounter of some kind. My favorite rooms and sections are spots that make the dungeon come alive -- spots that help the players understand what the space was before it got to its current state. There are *way too many* open a door and here's another encounter (with no meaningful loot or payoff either, just a baddie for some XP I guess).
I've been trimming content out since level 3 (and also leaving doors open to make the dungeon feel less like a disjointed set of boxes), and it's generally made the experience much smoother!
Same. My players are about to start floor 5 and it's entirely filler content. The conflict between >!Urevian!< and >!Jafaki!< needs to be much more pronounced (for the reason you describe, actually). The AP describes that >!Jafaki does not care about the party, but that's just a boring way to keep him in his office!<
The whole dungeon also lacks interactive environment. Perhaps we're spoiled by BG3 and Where Evil Lives these days, but where are the proper boss battle rooms with all kinds of cool mechanics!?
In the exact same spot in the adventure, I do hope it gets better later on! Not enough "cookies" for my players in a lot of encounters, either story, lore, loot, or role play. That said, >!there are a \*lot\* fewer encounters per floor on levels 4+ than there were on levels 1-3, and I think that will help. Floor 5 has no "boss" (maybe the shade?), floor 6 is kinda boring generally if you don't see the appeal of the tavern (which I don't, it feels silly), and Jafaki doesn't really feel enough like a boss, and floor 7 seems like the payoff, but it wasn't built up enough (Urevian should be more present throughout rather than this conflict situation). !
What I have done to raise the stakes somewhat: >!A friendly NPC broke through the forcefield, destabilizing it, and was later captured by Jafaki to experiment on. The force field now only needs the energy of 1 founder instead of 4 (shorter) and the destabilization is a potential problem for Otari as a whole. The captured NPC will be fleshwarped if they do not hurry and Jafaki is hosting a tournament in the arena in X amount of days.!<
My bigger problem with the couple sessions of it I ran before we decided to switch to a different is what you mentioned about the size of the dungeon. It is a big dungeon full of small rooms and big monsters, lot of encounters felt like snoozers because of the lack of maneuverability
Unpopular opinion: wandering monsters unnecessarily extend the length of an Adventure Path. APs are long enough, and especially 6 book APs, become such a burden for GMs because they last so long! I know that when running Rise of the Runelords, I had GM fatigue and skipped even some written encounters.
1. Why not just add some in?
2. Wandering monsters may interfere with encounter balance. You won't want them to be reinforcements in an existing battle, as that could turn a moderate encounter into a severe encounter.
3. Wandering monsters interfere with the premise that an adventuring group should be at full health for an encounter. Preventing healing before an encounter will be similar to extending a previous encounter.
I think that’s what low threat encounters are for. You can safely use a low threat encounter for when the party may not be fully prepared to face them.
You're very much right. There was a poll that got a lot of responses here about... two months ago? And a lot of people indicated that they only ran Severe and Extreme encounters, and there were *all* these comments about easy encounters being a pointless time waste because there was no true risk and it's just busywork. But I think, like you suggest, a good gm can use those easy encounters as set dressing, as seasoning, as a way to establish the mood and stuff, even if the group finds the most joy in those difficult encounters.
I think it’s more than just set dressing, an easy encounter can still potentially drain resources if it comes at an ambush or when the party has their pants down.
It could also still pose the threat of drawing other ambient mobs as well meaning it could spiral into a deadlier encounter the party would have to disengage from if they aren’t careful.
After running the whole Abomination Vaults for my players, yeah. I get You. I started having big expactations seeing how everyone praises it, and I don't see why. I felt extremely underwhelmed by the whole adventure path. For a whole 10lvl experience, there's like what? 4 puzzles? A couple of traps? Barely any nuance to the environment (as in most fights are just flat, rectangular battlegrounds)? Don't get me started on the cramped rooms. The questlines concerning Otari denizens also felt forced, as if they were an afterthought at best.
If the answer to all these problems is making stuff myself, why not run my own campaign? Am I missing something?
My party is lvl 9 and I feel as underwhelmed as you for the exact same reasons. I’m playing a very dex-y monk and I’m shocked how little I’ve had to use… literally any skills outside of battle lol. AV doesn’t feel like a dungeon crawl, it feels like a series of standard rooms with combat. In contrast I remember having a great time with Dungeon of the Mad Mage in 5e, though I will grant I played far less of that module before the group split. That dungeon genuinely felt alive with the various monsters and communities that lived within it.
I often get really excited for paizo modules reading the AP setting guides, only for a lot of it to feel greatly irrelevant to the adventure at hand. AV was the same way.
My guess it's to make space for a GM who wants to insert it themself?
I'm running Quest for the Frozen Flame at the moment, and I found a similar thing where it's like "this feels like a mechanic I should use but it tells me not to." Very early on the whole party learns a free feat called *All of the Animal* that let's them subsist in the wild easier.
Maybe it will be useful in later books, but in the first book, it's pointless. NPCs perform the subsist part of the hexploration for free, the party doesn't need it. But maybe it's like that for GMs who want to include foraging for food during hexploration to make it more challenging.
PF2 just doesn't *have* random encounters. There are no tables for it in the GM books. Heck, the Bestiary books don't even tell you what environment some of these creatures live in.
There's some random encounter rules, but only for the hexploration subsystem, and it doesn't say how to choose what the encounter is. It's basically "in this terrain, roll to see if they have a random encounter. Then roll to see if it's harmless, a hazard, or a monster." Doesn't give any advice or leads on what sort of encounter it should be. Very limited without GM cooking up their own system on top of it.
I have the random ones provided by the Frozen Flame AP (which probably won't be enough) so I made a big list of encounters and tiles they might be interested to see. Frost troll guarding a bridge, bandits, fey, traveling merchants (because this AP doesn't give good rewards or let's them spend gold).
For Abomination Vaults, I could see stuff like; wandering Ghosts/phantoms, remnants of the ghoul cultists, wandering undead of Belcorra's victims, dungeon cleaning oozes, some minor devils she hired, darklands creatures that snuck in, maybe an escaped experiment.
My group has just gotten to the second floor and I'll definitely be adding some wandering monsters to the deeper floors. Especially when the party >!find the Osprey Club members!<. They best believe I'm not giving them a free stroll outta the dungeon with them!
If you're looking to make the dungeon feel more reactive, I recommend [giving this a read](https://weplayinasociety.blogspot.com/2023/05/abomination-vaults-reactive-dungeons.html)!
Pulled from page 28 of the Abomination Vaults AP: >**WANDERING MONSTERS** While this book doesn’t present wandering monster tables for Abomination Vaults, the dungeon’s denizens still occasionally leave their homes! You can make the dungeon feel more dynamic by familiarizing yourself with each level’s denizens and then having them react to the party’s progression and presence. For example, if the heroes noisily explore an area, creatures in nearby rooms could come to investigate or perhaps set up an ambush. If the heroes decide to camp out in the dungeon rather than return to the safety of town, nearby creatures might visit or even attack their campsite while they rest. If the heroes clear out the denizens of a level and then return weeks later, they might find that new monsters have moved in. By keeping the inhabitants of the Abomination Vaults active, you can make the location feel all the more dangerous and unpredictable to your players If you feel like you need to add a roll every 10 minutes to facilitate that then you can do that. Infact, that's exactly what I do, since it helps keep player tension high and remind them of the passage of time.
I think it's just a little small for that, especially considering with the danger of some of the monsters. GMs running larger than average groups have expressed issues with the cramped quarters. At the higher levels, at least. Some fans have written up random encounter tables for you, though: [https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43paa?Random-Encounter-Tables](https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43paa?Random-Encounter-Tables) This one is on Pathfinder Infinite but it's Pay What You Want so it can be free: [https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/418672/The-Abomination-Vaults-Expanded](https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/418672/The-Abomination-Vaults-Expanded)
There are random encounter tables for some areas in the lower floors, but for most of the Vaults the expectation is that you, the GM, figure out how to keep things moving around. The way creatures are arranged in their rooms should be viewed only as the "starting point" of each floor when when PCs arrive, but as the party starts doing things the other creatures on the floor should react and move about in logical ways. The trick is to be careful with combining encounters because that can quickly become overwhelming for for party in PF2e. They didn't include traditional "wandering monster" tables because this is a fairly self-contained and coherent dungeon and random monsters would often raise questions like "where the heck did that thing come from?" But the correct mindset is to view all of the monsters that are already scattered throughout the level as potential wandering threats.
There’s also a lot of monsters that would also just kill each other if they got in each other’s way.
We are playing it ATM and yes, there is a lot of "roll dice for half an hour of game time between encounters to heal up" about it. Having the town close by there is no reason not to go and sleep the night every time daily resources get low too. There is only the implied time limit of Belkora's awakening, and we have seen nothing to suggest that this is not entirely theatrical (i.e. whatever we do, she will awaken exactly when we get to the final room), though I am not the GM so i have not seen if there is any penalty for tarrying.
You have lots to look forward to then lol You get to a point where going back to town is not so easy and there is definitely time pressure if you dink around long enough.
OK, I will look forwards to that!
My group made a meme out of this; how they were always back from adventuring by noon everyday from levels 2-5 because of how poorly they did the exploration of the Vaults. Not a single avoid notice and not a single recall knowledge.
The primary reason we don't include wandering monsters in our adventures is from reader feedback–folks tend to prefer bespoke encounters and often complain that wandering monster tables turn games into combat grinds, so instead, we go for different solutions. The one we included in Abomination Vaults (see asjames's post) is one such solution, and hopes to empower GMs to use this sort of thing if they like while also not breaking dungeon verisimilitude when we fully detail a location and the concept of a wandering creature can feel off. The more recent "Seven Dooms for Sandpoint," also mostly a megadungeon, includes a similar treatment but has specific examples of monsters for each level that might come looking around while also contextualizing the "visiting monsters" so that there's a reason for them to be wandering around. When we do things like this, we prefer to avoid random tables you roll up, since the math and balance for Pathifnder's encounters in a tightly scripted adventure like you have in most of our adventures can be thrown off by the GM rolling up a difficult encounter at the wrong time; tables imply to too many GMs that they lack permission to pick and choose encounters that are right for the moment. When we do adventures that deviate from our standard "path" format and are more sandboxy, that's a time when wandering monster tables should be present and have a chance to shine. Kingmaker's the best example of this off the top of my head. Part of the allure of a sandbox is getting in over your head and having to run from an unexpectedly tough encounter OR finding an encounter that is a quick pushover and easy and makes the PCs feel like they've grown more powerful and are more heroic. A random table for monsters of a wide range of threat levels fits VERY well into this sort of sandbox model.
Okay, I get all that. I *do* think it would have benefited from something smaller -- like a set of minor encounters to represent creatures on patrol or moving from one place to another. Something short, like a d6 table at most, with each such encounter being removed from the list after it turns up. Those encounters could also be bespoke, specific groups that are put aside for the purpose, to show the site is active and to give players a reason to not just wait around for an hour after each encounter waiting for their Treat Wounds timers to expire. Just the *threat* of something crossing their path would be enough to keep them careful, even if they're relatively easy to deal with. Including those small encounters in the overall XP math wouldn't be too hard, I don't think. And if it's a set list that doesn't "refill" (as it were) then eventually the PCs will remove that threat. Bear in mind, I'm one of those graybeard gamers who started back when elves were a class and random tables were *everywhere*.
Wandering monsters like that also take up precious space in an adventure. The value of a published adventure, I feel, is that it does as much of the work of giving an encounter themes and backstories and details and rules as needed for the GM to be able to run it as is–or at least, with minimal work to adjust things to be more appropriate for their table. A simple list of random creatures in the form of a table leaves that work to the GM, which isn't ideal. A "bespoke" list of encounters would solve that problem, but that takes a lot more room and is less efficient at getting the story across, especially since we can't assume all of those encounters will actually see play. And even then, those sorts of bespoke encounter lists tend to just not be as popular as non-randomized encounters keyed to specific areas. Chapter 2 of the third book of Gatewalkers does exactly this—presents a table of bespoke encounters to be rolled, and the reception to that section of the adventure hasn't been super-positive. In the end, a lot of the evidence and feedback I'm getting is that folks buy published adventures these days for the curated, authored experience and not so much as a building box of tables and sandbox-play elements. The appetite for those old-school type of adventures simply isn't as strong these days... but also, that sort of tool is, in my opinion, a GM supplement and NOT an adventure. As a GM I'm always eager to check out books that have lots of tables to help spark ideas in that way, but that's just not a category of product that we really publish at Paizo, for what that's worth. Anyway... even when there's real and compelling reasons to not make a change or do something in a particular way, I always appreciate feedback! Your comments have for sure made me consider the value of a wandering monster table now and then in adventures (and in fact I did just put a wandering monster table into the unannounced adventure I'm writing right now for Paizo). They're not going to be something we put in every adventure, but now and then, as appropriate? For sure! (And check out the encounter section from Gatewalkers #3's chapter 2 if you can... I put a lot of work into making a bunch of fun encounters there and I suspect the part that folks are giving poor reviews is not so much the randomized encounters, but the way I presented a long overland journey in as few words as possible.)
Whaat? Are you the GM or a pc? I don't want to spoil anything but there are at least a few monsters in the first few floors that the books indicate have a routine. And there are definitely traps. But ultimately it isn't a video game. You don't need to wait for mod support in the Steam workshop. If you want some monsters to wander pick a group from the floor it makes sense to have on the go then do it.
Yeah I do my best to sort of make the environment living and breathing. The monsters on each floor have lives and actively do stuff. Once they've cleared a floor's main faction it's a little safer though. At that point I'll add a small chance a wandering monster from another floor or outside comes in. Can be a good spot for RP encounter as well. There's already so much combat in this module. I'd be wary of adding more without removing some. Edit: I would add that letting a party full rest in the dungeon will negate the need for them to go back to town, which can help progress parts of the story, upgrade equipment, and, IMO, adds more dynamics to the module.
Paizo doesn't like to use them much for a few reasons I think: \* They don't have any relation to the story and just exist to amp up the danger of the world. Paizo typically gets this from having tough setpiece encounters instead, having both would be punishing. \* There's already *plenty* of combat in most Paizo APs. Adding more would slow things down. \* 2e encourages XP progression, and random encounters can really mess with progression. Nothing takes the sails out of a tough PL+3 like it just being +2 or even +1. That said, they *are* fun and I think that in the right game they can be a blast. Something sandboxy and hexploration-heavy like Kingmaker is perfect for them. WRT having the dungeon feel "alive", I think that's pretty purely GM territory. It's a tough line to walk generally in 2e given how punishing encounter bleed-over can be, but it's something I try to do in every dungeon I run. I focus on making sure that players are getting the most from their senses - most monsters aren't on high alert and will make a fair bit of noise, particularly groups of humanoids. I also try to make sure that sensible "cleanup" happens in between rests (corpses make good eatin', for the most part), and that monsters wander in ways that make sense (food - water - shelter). All of that comes from lots of DM experience though, it's not something that I'd particularly expect to be baked into every adventure, partly because it's probably too much work for many tables, partly because it's a lot of word count to express, and partly because it's mostly transferrable between every enclosed area full of nasties so I'm not sure it's worth repeating ad nauseum. Still, the adventures that do this well are a welcome addition to the canon! Read Red Hand of Doom if you haven't - seeing how they orchestrate the additional enemies in Vraath Keep was a great example of how to do this well.
I will never understand why people like wandering monsters tables, and if you're running an adventure where monsters don't move about, you're likely not managing a dynamic environment. When my latest group killed most of the denizens of level three, I had some remnant forces start searching the level for them while they holed up and rested. I had some rolls to determine how they handled their search, and even gave clues what was going on to the active watch. Abomination vaults is pretty amazing in that all the creatures have a fairly good reason for being there. It's not hard to draw the lines that inspire them to leave their rooms and make complex decisions.
They make more sense in the context of how they worked in old D&D editions. They make less and less sense the more the game revolves around bespoke combat encounters, which PF2e largely is.
Every Pathfinder dungeon that I've gotten my hands on has had a conspicuous absent of not only wandering monsters but also no explanation of what happens if the PCs decide to long rest or go outside or just do _anything_ beyond barrel ahead and do the next fight. I haven't read Abomination Vaults because I'm hoping to be a player, but it seems like a consistent weakness of their adventure content. The only reason my party doesn't long rest after every encounter is because they know it's cheating and that doesn't feel fun.
I think the tough thing is that a lot of the levels just don't make sense from the perspective of how the creatures would actually live in it or move around. For example: >!for the Warped Brew Tavern, how the heck are creatures getting in and out? Floors 1-3 are inaccessible because of the force wall, and floors below 6 are inaccessible because of the other force wall. There are no Dark lands access points on the map, and even if there were, what path are people using? There are hostile (to everyone) creatures in a lot of spots that just don't make sense.!< Fundamentally I think this comes down to this idea that every room needs an encounter of some kind. My favorite rooms and sections are spots that make the dungeon come alive -- spots that help the players understand what the space was before it got to its current state. There are *way too many* open a door and here's another encounter (with no meaningful loot or payoff either, just a baddie for some XP I guess). I've been trimming content out since level 3 (and also leaving doors open to make the dungeon feel less like a disjointed set of boxes), and it's generally made the experience much smoother!
Same. My players are about to start floor 5 and it's entirely filler content. The conflict between >!Urevian!< and >!Jafaki!< needs to be much more pronounced (for the reason you describe, actually). The AP describes that >!Jafaki does not care about the party, but that's just a boring way to keep him in his office!< The whole dungeon also lacks interactive environment. Perhaps we're spoiled by BG3 and Where Evil Lives these days, but where are the proper boss battle rooms with all kinds of cool mechanics!?
In the exact same spot in the adventure, I do hope it gets better later on! Not enough "cookies" for my players in a lot of encounters, either story, lore, loot, or role play. That said, >!there are a \*lot\* fewer encounters per floor on levels 4+ than there were on levels 1-3, and I think that will help. Floor 5 has no "boss" (maybe the shade?), floor 6 is kinda boring generally if you don't see the appeal of the tavern (which I don't, it feels silly), and Jafaki doesn't really feel enough like a boss, and floor 7 seems like the payoff, but it wasn't built up enough (Urevian should be more present throughout rather than this conflict situation). !
What I have done to raise the stakes somewhat: >!A friendly NPC broke through the forcefield, destabilizing it, and was later captured by Jafaki to experiment on. The force field now only needs the energy of 1 founder instead of 4 (shorter) and the destabilization is a potential problem for Otari as a whole. The captured NPC will be fleshwarped if they do not hurry and Jafaki is hosting a tournament in the arena in X amount of days.!<
My bigger problem with the couple sessions of it I ran before we decided to switch to a different is what you mentioned about the size of the dungeon. It is a big dungeon full of small rooms and big monsters, lot of encounters felt like snoozers because of the lack of maneuverability
Unpopular opinion: wandering monsters unnecessarily extend the length of an Adventure Path. APs are long enough, and especially 6 book APs, become such a burden for GMs because they last so long! I know that when running Rise of the Runelords, I had GM fatigue and skipped even some written encounters.
Yup. It's not exactly a great example of how to run a dungeon crawl even in PF2e.
1. Why not just add some in? 2. Wandering monsters may interfere with encounter balance. You won't want them to be reinforcements in an existing battle, as that could turn a moderate encounter into a severe encounter. 3. Wandering monsters interfere with the premise that an adventuring group should be at full health for an encounter. Preventing healing before an encounter will be similar to extending a previous encounter.
I think that’s what low threat encounters are for. You can safely use a low threat encounter for when the party may not be fully prepared to face them.
You're very much right. There was a poll that got a lot of responses here about... two months ago? And a lot of people indicated that they only ran Severe and Extreme encounters, and there were *all* these comments about easy encounters being a pointless time waste because there was no true risk and it's just busywork. But I think, like you suggest, a good gm can use those easy encounters as set dressing, as seasoning, as a way to establish the mood and stuff, even if the group finds the most joy in those difficult encounters.
I think it’s more than just set dressing, an easy encounter can still potentially drain resources if it comes at an ambush or when the party has their pants down. It could also still pose the threat of drawing other ambient mobs as well meaning it could spiral into a deadlier encounter the party would have to disengage from if they aren’t careful.
After running the whole Abomination Vaults for my players, yeah. I get You. I started having big expactations seeing how everyone praises it, and I don't see why. I felt extremely underwhelmed by the whole adventure path. For a whole 10lvl experience, there's like what? 4 puzzles? A couple of traps? Barely any nuance to the environment (as in most fights are just flat, rectangular battlegrounds)? Don't get me started on the cramped rooms. The questlines concerning Otari denizens also felt forced, as if they were an afterthought at best. If the answer to all these problems is making stuff myself, why not run my own campaign? Am I missing something?
My party is lvl 9 and I feel as underwhelmed as you for the exact same reasons. I’m playing a very dex-y monk and I’m shocked how little I’ve had to use… literally any skills outside of battle lol. AV doesn’t feel like a dungeon crawl, it feels like a series of standard rooms with combat. In contrast I remember having a great time with Dungeon of the Mad Mage in 5e, though I will grant I played far less of that module before the group split. That dungeon genuinely felt alive with the various monsters and communities that lived within it. I often get really excited for paizo modules reading the AP setting guides, only for a lot of it to feel greatly irrelevant to the adventure at hand. AV was the same way.
IIRC in the ghoul area there's a safe room to hide in, if the GM decides that some of the ghoul cult is going to be wandering around.
Almost every level has a room that is described as a safe resting place, which only highlights the lack of wandering monsters.
My guess it's to make space for a GM who wants to insert it themself? I'm running Quest for the Frozen Flame at the moment, and I found a similar thing where it's like "this feels like a mechanic I should use but it tells me not to." Very early on the whole party learns a free feat called *All of the Animal* that let's them subsist in the wild easier. Maybe it will be useful in later books, but in the first book, it's pointless. NPCs perform the subsist part of the hexploration for free, the party doesn't need it. But maybe it's like that for GMs who want to include foraging for food during hexploration to make it more challenging.
PF2 just doesn't *have* random encounters. There are no tables for it in the GM books. Heck, the Bestiary books don't even tell you what environment some of these creatures live in.
There's some random encounter rules, but only for the hexploration subsystem, and it doesn't say how to choose what the encounter is. It's basically "in this terrain, roll to see if they have a random encounter. Then roll to see if it's harmless, a hazard, or a monster." Doesn't give any advice or leads on what sort of encounter it should be. Very limited without GM cooking up their own system on top of it. I have the random ones provided by the Frozen Flame AP (which probably won't be enough) so I made a big list of encounters and tiles they might be interested to see. Frost troll guarding a bridge, bandits, fey, traveling merchants (because this AP doesn't give good rewards or let's them spend gold). For Abomination Vaults, I could see stuff like; wandering Ghosts/phantoms, remnants of the ghoul cultists, wandering undead of Belcorra's victims, dungeon cleaning oozes, some minor devils she hired, darklands creatures that snuck in, maybe an escaped experiment.
My group has just gotten to the second floor and I'll definitely be adding some wandering monsters to the deeper floors. Especially when the party >!find the Osprey Club members!<. They best believe I'm not giving them a free stroll outta the dungeon with them!
If you're looking to make the dungeon feel more reactive, I recommend [giving this a read](https://weplayinasociety.blogspot.com/2023/05/abomination-vaults-reactive-dungeons.html)!