The eighth Encounter Box: 12 big maps for your journey

This is my eighth encounter box, which is all about making the journey of your campaign as exciting as possible. With their size, the differences in height and the possibilities of cover, the maps are designed to experience the most interesting fights on them.

In addition to the maps, I have a few encounter ideas for you below which go beyond the usual "X opponents appear and attack you". It is of course a bigger effort to prepare, but I believe that thanks to stories like this your world can come to life and the journey between the places can become a highlight of your game.
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Sizes:

1: A forest by the sea [30x50]

2: The Forest of blood [50x50}

3: Pool party in hell [40x50]

4: Blood on Ice [40x50]

5: A road in a hilly area [45x50]

6: Druid Circle [40x40]

7: A watercourse through meadows and forests [30x50]

8: Lunar Forest [30x50]

9: On hot paths [30x40]

10: Hot springs during snowfall [40x40]

11: Crater in the wild [40x40}

12: The Serpent's Pass [80x40]

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3 Encounter stories:

(Summaries at the end of the post)

The sheep in wolf's clothing

Condition: Your heroes should have a relatively low level and respect powerful boss monsters.

Our heroes encounter a group of frightened and armed peasants. There is an incredibly terrible beast nearby! The farmers recently discovered it here and fear that their sheep will be killed. They ask our heroes to slay it for gold, they themselves will watch from a distance.

Indeed, there is a large monster very close by. Four-legged and two and a half meters high and terrible to look at. It is a real beast, full of pointy hair, some of which form spines. There are also feet with long claws and a dark slime flows down the legs. The head itself is low, almost dragging across the floor, pointing forward and revealing a terrible mouth with huge teeth. The whole face is covered with a bloody liquid as if it had just torn a living being.

In addition, every magician will feel that a powerful dark magical aura is emanating from the beast. Anyone who tries to attack this beast will have to do a wisdom saving throw to avoid running away in fear.

If our heroes manage to attack the creature, it will bleat loudly and try to jump away.

Denouement: This beast belongs to an almost extinct sheep species. In the course of evolution, this has evolved to appear as dangerous as possible so that carnivores no longer attack it. The spines are only decoration and the mouth is also fake. Actually, this is the back of the head and the right sheep's mouth is down. When it is grazeing, it looks like the fake face is its real face. No normal predator would be crazy enough to attack it.

But in the age of heroes and other madmen, the number of these animals has fallen sharply.

Will your heroes realize this soon enough before they kill the beast? What will they do then?

One possibility: They could catch it and give it to the farmers who can cross it with their sheep. The mucus that the animal secretes is highly magical and can fetch good prices. But the freedom of our monster sheep would be gone.

Goblins on meth

Our heroes are attacked by goblins. But unlike other goblins they have met, these are completely turned up, feel no pain and are even crazier than normal goblins. They will fight full of madness (time for crazy fighting maneuvers and descriptions). If our heroes somehow end the fight and there is still a goblin alive, they can find out their background.

Background: These goblins lived peacefully in seclusion and were not robbers when a human came by one day. They invited him to their fire and gave him food. As a thank you, he shared his pipe with them. The whole tribe has been on meth ever since.

In a possible next quest, our heroes can try to penetrate their caves and, while they want to spare the goblins as much as possible, overthrow the "cook" who rules the tribe with his drugs.

Paramedics

This encounter needs more preparation. Also, no character should have a lot of healing magic or even a mass healing spell. It will be a serious encounter with a heavy topic and less jokes.

In front of our heroes is a caravan consisting of several wagons and many people. Suddenly a stone loosens on a slope and a rock fall hits the entire caravan. In addition to falling rocks, there are also victims that arise when a cart full of funds for alchemy and magic falls over, catches fire and spreads its contents everywhere.

Our heroes must save them. The twist here is that it is not just about medicine throws and the use of healing magic, but that this can be a fight of its own.

Initial situation: We have a lot of people with various injuries.

The injuries receive the stats of monsters and will attack their victim every turn until they kill the injured.

The first goal of our heroes is to identify the respective "monsters" that are injuries with medicine throws. Minor injuries can appear like serious wounds, but do not cause life-threatening damage and, once recognized, can be ignored for the time being.

Healing magic is used up at some point. Then the “monsters” must be treated with appropriate “attacks”.

(What follows is a collection of ideas on how your heroes can "attack" various wounds. And how you could re-enact a disaster with many injured people. Much is simplified or shouldn't be done by laypeople.)

Examples for wounds and their treatment:

Open wound: burn it out, bandage, give water, blood transfusion

Open facial fracture: bandage who takes care that everything stays in place (dexterity)

Burns: give liquid, cover wound to prevent infection

Etching: remove acid with neutral liquid, cover sterile

Magic wounds: Anti magic spells (Remove Curse, Restoration etc.)

Poisoning: Let the patient eat coal, let him throw up if swallowed, Antidote

Hypothermia: Warm up slowly with a blanket and a light fire (do not move him and do not warm up too quickly, otherwise the rescue death will occur and the cardiovascular system collapses)

Blood in the lungs: pierce the lungs with a sharp object so that the fluid can drain out

Shock: elevate upper body 

Concussion: operate on the brain

Open abdomen: stuff everything in, close open wounds, cover sterile

Choking: When it is swollen over the neck ram a sharp object into the throat (Dex)

Resuscitation: electric shock, heart massage, cutting open under the ribs, grabbing the heart through the stomach, pressing the heart with the hand (for real: very effectively)

What is always good: warming, antibiotics, proper positioning of the body,

In addition, every injury has a “light” type. These look like the others, but do no or hardly any damage per round, but must be identified and can then be ignored for the time being.

There is also the “fatal” injury type. This injury hurt something vital. The person is still alive but will soon die without a miracle. Treatment is of no use.

A critical 1 in an action can make a wound one step worse.

A critical 20 for the better.

More things that might happen in such a situation:

Some people will be so badly injured that they cannot be saved. Triage must be done and they must be left to die so as not to waste time saving others.

The lightly injured will panic and require treatment when others need it more.

Panicked light injuries want to help, but are quite useless and must be prevented from causing any greater harm.

It is possible that those responsible for the falling rocks also come into play and have to be fought with the sword.

The aim of the encounter is to save as many people as possible. Everyone saved gives XP. There are also gifts from the rescued. At the same time, our heroes can also face anger. For example those who lost their relatives, or those who felt that they were treated badly or too late.

Summary of the encounters:

The sheep in wolf's clothing. Summary: Farmers want to see a terrible beast death. During their attack, our heroes realize that the terrible beast is actually completely harmless and that its appearance only serves to scare off carnivores.

Goblins on meth. Summary: Just a bunch of meth goblins with a tragic story.

Paramedics. Summary: An encounter following an accident with many injuries. Our heroes have to "fight" the wounds of the injured in the role of paramedics.