I must be sounding like a broken record. Everything I’m working on these days involves wilderness and wild animals. Today is no exception. Here are some thoughts on how to handle animal encounters:

Rangers and Druids are underserved in D&D. Consider the core exprience of these classes. They hunt and track. They manipulate weather. The beasts see them as equals, if not masters. They are uniquely attuned to nature. Out in the woods, they shine. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be.

Think about your own games. Have you played a Ranger? Did you ever GM a group with a Druid? Were there any moments in-game that delivered that experience?

Without at least a few defining moments, the Druid just turns into a Storm Cleric and the Ranger is just a lightly armored Fighter. We can do better. It just takes a litle fore-thought.

Let’s say a party of PCs is trudging through a jungle. The GM rolls a random encounter. A tiger. It’ll pose a decent fight if you just have it pounce the party, but we have a chance to make this encounter more meaningful. Lets think about what the tiger gets up to in a day. What could the tiger be up to when the party finds it?

Prowling – The beast is hungry. It has been stalking small prey. It will creep around, hidden, following and watching any adventurers that happen by. It is not desperate enough for a full on attack. It may pick off badly wounded PCs or animal companions if there is a chance for easy escape.

Eating – The beast has slain a pig. The pig is too heavy to move, so the tiger is eating what it can. It will defend its kill, but only from weak animals. It will run if it sees a proper threat.

Sleeping – The beast dozes overhead on a low branch. As PCs approach, it will wake, but remain motionless. The beast’s natural camoflage make it difficult to spot. The tiger would rather get back to sleeping, so it simply waits for intruders to wander off. If startled it will try to flee, or scare off aggressors.

Panicked – The beast is mad with starvation or fear. Something is happening in the wilderness to drive the creature to reckless violence. The creature attacks without regard for self-preservation.

So there we have four different tiger encounters. They all seem pretty plausible as far as real-life tigers go. Note that in most of the examples, the tiger is not immediately hostile. Animals (and PCs) tend not to survive long if they attack everything indiscriminately. If a ranger or a druid were to encounter this tiger in one of these manners, they could use their skills or spells to interact with the tiger, possibly learning from it, or befriending it. No matter the outcome, the PC has a chance to shine.

So how do we pick the version of tiger that the PCs bump into? We could roll randomly, but we can do better. Let the PC with the highest Survival skill check roll. If they roll high, let them pick which tiger they encounter. If they roll low, go ahead and roll randomly.