Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D keeps coming up on the random encounter charts.

What happens when player characters come in contact with non-player characters? That interaction in D&D is called an encounter, and its where much of the game takes place. Some encounters happen in a set place in time, some happen at random, and some emerge from play. With all of this variability and versatility, what’s the best way to make encounters sing? We’ll take a look at that on today’s THAC0 with Advantage.

Earlier editions of D&D, especially Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st and 2nd edition, included a monster rarity in the monster stat block. Encounter tables in those editions placed monsters in encounter tables based on their rarity. Unique entities were often listed as Very Rare (Unique), and some encounter tables abused math quite a bit by putting things like demon lords and archdevils in those “very rare” slots. That means that deep gnomes would use the same slot on those charts as Demogorgon. One of those is a much nastier surprise than the other. Unless you really like tentacles. No judgment.