
Just as there is no daytime result to roll for ghouls on the Wilderness Encounters table in Chapter 3: The Spider’s Web, there’s also no nighttime result to roll for the ogre. It would appear that ogres are afraid of the dark or, at a minimum, have enough sense to realize they’re at a disadvantage stumbling around in the night without the benefit of darkvision.
Since I’m a fan of just choosing the encounter I want rather than letting the dice dictate, I’ll make up a nighttime encounter for the ogre anyway:
Through the evening gloom, a faint fire flickers atop a distant hillock crowded with shadowed pines. Silvered by moonlight, a thin finger of smoke curls above the hill’s treetops.
Any curious character who gets close enough to investigate the source of the fire spots the silhouette a large ogre, tunelessly whistling to himself through his front teeth as he flays a humanoid corpse sprawled across a large boulder.
A passive Wisdom score of 12 or higher spots several scalps hanging from a nearby tree branch, another skinless humanoid corpse hanging upside down from the boughs of another tree, as well as humanoid bones littering the ground of the ogre’s campsite.
Adding Dexterity (Stealth) checks to get close enough for a glimpse of fire’s attendant could make for a fun challenge. Failing the check alerts the ogre to a noise in the surrounding trees, but not enough to convince him to investigate. As such, the ogre is not alert to the presence of the characters. But it’s also not possible to surprise the ogre for a combat encounter.
However, a failure of the check by 5 or more alerts the ogre to danger, motivating him to go searching for intruders in the shadows. I’d be sure to impose disadvantage vs. the ogre’s Wisdom (Perception) checks to spot the skulking characters, using the lowest Dexterity (Stealth) result of any player who failed the check as the DC for the ogre to make his Wisdom (Perception) check against. A success by the ogre means he spots that particular character.
Treasure: a search of the ogre’s sleeping furs uncovers a scattering of coins (5 gp, 22 sp, 167 cp).
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