Campaign Balancing

[SilverNines]

A couple of different threads of conversation came together and I thought I'd sound out an idea.

On the one hand, wandering monsters are cool but they're a bit out of the game at the moment as they arrive in the middle of nowhere.  Can their arrival be any more interesting?

On the other hand, playing in a game where you're the one warband who's well behind on the development curve is painful, is there anything that can help that?

So, I had a thought to make wandering monsters more interesting.  They arrive on the usual 16+ on each treasure pickup but the difference is that they arrive from a piece of terrain.  The story being that rather than wandering in from elsewhere they've actually been disturbed by the movements of the adventuring warbands.  Each wizard rolls a D20 (surprise!) and the monsters arrive from the nearest piece of terrain to the wizard of whoever rolls the highest.  This means that wandering monsters will generally speaking get into combat quickly and often with the wizards unless they keep bodyguards with them.   

Alongside this, if you'd like to try balancing things a bit then add the wizard levels to the dice rolls for where the wandering monsters arrive.  This means they'll naturally bias towards the more developed wizards but it's not a forgone conclusion unless the levels are vastly different.  This would be explained by their attraction to the power emminating from the more advanced wizards.

It's not definite that any monsters arrive and it's not guaranteed they go for the higher level wizards but it's more likely (and becomes more so as the imbalance in wizards becomes greater) so it seems a decent mechanic.  Thoughts?

[Polkovnik]

I like this idea and I think it's a much better way of balancing a campaign than just artificially penalising the more experienced warband or boosting the less experienced one. It makes sense that monsters (well the more intelligent ones anyway) will attack the warband that has collected the most treasure. You could even imagine that some monsters will have heard of the successful wizard / warband and have deliberately come in search of it. 

[Helznicht]

Just messing around solo, I placed spawn points on the map in tucked away places.  I used HS order makers cause they were numbered already 

This and a d8 (1-4 markers, 5-8 sides)  worked well for me.

[Mutter]

I really like this idea!
Think it's very neat, and does two things at once, like you explained.

My stepson tried to create a mage in his first game that controls everything (animals, constructs, undead) and was thoroughly disappointed when he learned that creatures appear so seldomly, and then way out west.

I think with those rules, his approach might make more sense ...

[Fencing Frog]

We have been deploying on creature per treasure token on the board from the beginning of the game. Each play places 3 just like they do Treasure tokens using the same rules.  It makes for a more interesting game and especially when there are powerful creatures on the board it makes Frostgrave itself the enemy with the other guys war band being just one more threat.

We have only done one off games in my group so I won't speak to the campaign.

[SilverNines]

We have been deploying on creature per treasure token on the board from the beginning of the game. Each play places 3 just like they do Treasure tokens using the same rules.  It makes for a more interesting game and especially when there are powerful creatures on the board it makes Frostgrave itself the enemy with the other guys war band being just one more threat.

That's an interesting change, there would be a lot of monsters then   Might propose we try that, though probably toned down in the starting number with the threat of more arrivals.

[Fencing Frog]

That's an interesting change, there would be a lot of monsters then   Might propose we try that, though probably toned down in the starting number with the threat of more arrivals.

its worked for us...

[SilverNines]

So, after a week or so not being able to arrange a game we tried out the modification to the wandering monsters arrival in a 3-player game where the levels were 12-9-6.  The level 12 wizard didn't attract all of the wandering monsters but he did get most, it tied in perfectly with him wandering past a ruined building that was clearly a crypt as a handful of skeletons emerged over a few turns.  The wizard made it away to safety and even took some treasure with him but the skeletons did slow him down and took on a few of him templars that would otherwise have been causing havok with the less experienced warbands.

We'll certainly be trying this again, it was particularly cool how a particular ruin then became part of the story, why are all the skeletons coming from there?!

We also seeded the board with wandering monsters too and so lots of new stuff and it mostly worked.