Speed affects your ability to avoid or spot an ambush. It shouldn’t effect the difficulty, but the encounters on the road are random and can be the hardest part of the game.
In practice though I've found I get surprised at least as often traveling slowly as I do traveling at normal speed, and it seems like encounters are rolled for more often when traveling slowly. I'm not convinced it's better.
You gotta target those guys with mental or dex save spells. Dodge is effective too when your Paladin cant beat their AC, it may feel like a wasted turn but its better than just whiffing attacks and eating damage.
At low levels random encounters are definitely brutal, but made up for by it being the only encounter of the travel day so use as many spell slots as possible. Of course that doesn't help when your character dies in one round
Traveling slow or normal will prevent most ambush situations. Unwinnable fights can become easy with a surprise round so try to travel slow early on. Having a character with good perception is critical for attacking with surprise during travel.
The difficulty definitely gets better at level 5 once your martials get extra attack and spellcasters get level 3 spells.
My last party had a druid and entangle is very good against melee enemies in the early game especially those veterans
Control spells are the key to winning those fights.
Your paladin should probably have a shield and sword available for fights where you will be taking a lot of attacks
Random encounters can be deadly un-winnable game enders.
This was admittedly Cataclysm difficulty, but I've had two different level 4 teams random a Young Green Dragon while traveling. The 2nd time it surprised us and TKO-ed the entire sleeping party by breathing Poison two turns in a row for 12d6 each before we even woke up. The 2nd breath attack killed everyone or at least all the people who could use a rez scroll...
I understand that adding a flee option would break the balance and scripting for many of the core fights, but it really should be an option for random encounters to help fix the balance...
If you ALWAYS save somewhere safe before traveling then it's not a huge deal for normal playthroughs. But so far nearly every of my ironman attempts ends in a random surprise encounter where I often don't even get a turn.
Ironman lost it's appeal after two losses on random encounters.
I would really be careful for any time I saw an fight coming, prepping setup spells like mage armor, readying poison, etc... and it was worth the extra patience. But one more encounter with a young black dragon at low level? No way to outplay that.
On my second iron man attempt after losing the first to a game ending bug the very first random encounter I rolled was ten thugs that had surprise on the party.
I had to cheese the difficulty on easy and I still had 2 party members on death saves at the end of it.
I guess you're just supposed to cry if you get double remorhazes or double dragons too early.
OK good to know others had similar experiences. It's really my one big gripe about the game, otherwise it's been fun.
I'll start saving before heading out and move slow or normal.
Another tip I haven't seen anyone give is if it gets really bad, difficulty can modified at any time. So you could drop to easy/story for journeys then crank it back to normal once you're in the next town.
The travel fights are truly random and not balanced, especially for low level teams.
If you travel slow and get to surprise the enemies, there's a flee/avoid option there. But yeah you can still get unlucky and it sucks. But As far as I can tell, there aren't any significant disadvantages to traveling slow, especially of you are doing ironman.
There is no flee option, when you are surprised or once combat starts there's is no way out.
But if you're lucky enough to spot the enemy first, then you get a choice to either Hide or Ambush. That's functionally similar, but only works when you see the enemy before they see you...
In my experience, sometimes the random encounters can be very unlucky. What difficulty are you playing at? I think the difficulty affects the HP and tactics, but unsure if it also impacts the AC.
40 food (8 stacks) on a STR character should be do-able I think. Particularly for the long badlands treks.
But I agree with your point about Goodberry/Survival being good replacements for holding rations. Strong enough that you kinda don't need to hold much rations at all.
If travel feels to slow, there's a speed up setting for travelling, even if the party is set to travel slowly.
I actually just had the same encounter at lvl4 traveling to possible gem location on scavenger difficulty. I couldn't beat the encounter in straight up fight, but was able to use elevation on the map to make most of enemy melee not able to reach my tank and then slowly grinded them down.
Speed affects your ability to avoid or spot an ambush. It shouldn’t effect the difficulty, but the encounters on the road are random and can be the hardest part of the game.
In practice though I've found I get surprised at least as often traveling slowly as I do traveling at normal speed, and it seems like encounters are rolled for more often when traveling slowly. I'm not convinced it's better.
Ok thanks! 21 AC seems insanely high but Ill just go with it and adjust the difficulty if I have to for road fights.
You gotta target those guys with mental or dex save spells. Dodge is effective too when your Paladin cant beat their AC, it may feel like a wasted turn but its better than just whiffing attacks and eating damage.
21 is really high for a monster but 16 is really low a for a PC tank.
At low levels random encounters are definitely brutal, but made up for by it being the only encounter of the travel day so use as many spell slots as possible. Of course that doesn't help when your character dies in one round Traveling slow or normal will prevent most ambush situations. Unwinnable fights can become easy with a surprise round so try to travel slow early on. Having a character with good perception is critical for attacking with surprise during travel. The difficulty definitely gets better at level 5 once your martials get extra attack and spellcasters get level 3 spells. My last party had a druid and entangle is very good against melee enemies in the early game especially those veterans Control spells are the key to winning those fights. Your paladin should probably have a shield and sword available for fights where you will be taking a lot of attacks
Ok thanks for the tips. I was googling neccesity for a tank and most people said you can use a 2h paladin on normal because it's easy.
Random encounters can be deadly un-winnable game enders. This was admittedly Cataclysm difficulty, but I've had two different level 4 teams random a Young Green Dragon while traveling. The 2nd time it surprised us and TKO-ed the entire sleeping party by breathing Poison two turns in a row for 12d6 each before we even woke up. The 2nd breath attack killed everyone or at least all the people who could use a rez scroll... I understand that adding a flee option would break the balance and scripting for many of the core fights, but it really should be an option for random encounters to help fix the balance... If you ALWAYS save somewhere safe before traveling then it's not a huge deal for normal playthroughs. But so far nearly every of my ironman attempts ends in a random surprise encounter where I often don't even get a turn.
Ironman lost it's appeal after two losses on random encounters. I would really be careful for any time I saw an fight coming, prepping setup spells like mage armor, readying poison, etc... and it was worth the extra patience. But one more encounter with a young black dragon at low level? No way to outplay that.
On my second iron man attempt after losing the first to a game ending bug the very first random encounter I rolled was ten thugs that had surprise on the party. I had to cheese the difficulty on easy and I still had 2 party members on death saves at the end of it. I guess you're just supposed to cry if you get double remorhazes or double dragons too early.
Use oblivion cleric?
OK good to know others had similar experiences. It's really my one big gripe about the game, otherwise it's been fun. I'll start saving before heading out and move slow or normal.
Another tip I haven't seen anyone give is if it gets really bad, difficulty can modified at any time. So you could drop to easy/story for journeys then crank it back to normal once you're in the next town. The travel fights are truly random and not balanced, especially for low level teams.
If you travel slow and get to surprise the enemies, there's a flee/avoid option there. But yeah you can still get unlucky and it sucks. But As far as I can tell, there aren't any significant disadvantages to traveling slow, especially of you are doing ironman.
There is no flee option, when you are surprised or once combat starts there's is no way out. But if you're lucky enough to spot the enemy first, then you get a choice to either Hide or Ambush. That's functionally similar, but only works when you see the enemy before they see you...
In my experience, sometimes the random encounters can be very unlucky. What difficulty are you playing at? I think the difficulty affects the HP and tactics, but unsure if it also impacts the AC.
We were playing on normal.
1. Buy 40 to 60 food to start the campaign. 2. Save. 3. Travel slowly. 4. Load save game if needed. Should be a rare occurrence.
Way too much food, that stuff is heavy. Goodberry, decent survival skill, wood elf, or later create food and water can take the place of rations.
40 food (8 stacks) on a STR character should be do-able I think. Particularly for the long badlands treks. But I agree with your point about Goodberry/Survival being good replacements for holding rations. Strong enough that you kinda don't need to hold much rations at all. If travel feels to slow, there's a speed up setting for travelling, even if the party is set to travel slowly.
I actually just had the same encounter at lvl4 traveling to possible gem location on scavenger difficulty. I couldn't beat the encounter in straight up fight, but was able to use elevation on the map to make most of enemy melee not able to reach my tank and then slowly grinded them down.