Beyond the town lies the shadow that is Dusken Woods. The tall firs and hemlocks—the pines and junipers—are thick and still and shadowed. You know that deer roam these woods, but they are rarely hunted because Dusken Woods presents a terrible danger: a bloodthirsty pack of hungry wolves.
In Dungeons & Dragons (as well as other TTRPGs), it is common for game masters to make monsters appear fairly suddenly:
You are walking through the woods, and you hear loud crashing through the underbrush as an owlspider charges right at you! Roll for initiative!
You are creeping through a cave system, and as you enter the next cavern the light from your lantern illuminates a giant, two-headed snake just ahead!
You swallow the flower of the poisonous kanawao plant and turn to look at your afflicted companion. Now you can see that a spidery-armed soul eater is attached to their back!
But what if some monsters instead hunted like wolves: stalking their prey for days before making a move. Can this drawn-out hunting style work in an encounter-based game such as D&D?
Let us consider this together.
Table of Contents
Wolf Hunting Tactics
Wolves follow their prey for hours if not days, identifying the weakest targets. They look for ways to use the landscape to their advantage, such as forcing deer to flounder in a deep snowbank or break their legs trying to cross rocks. Wolves, of course, can walk easily on top of snow.
A wolf pack works together during the hunt, with more agile wolve herding and confusing prey while stronger wolves bring down the prey with powerful bites.
Wolves can be injured easily and must kill before they themselves are killed. They will call off a hunt if it seems unlikely to be successful.
Wolves hunt by outlasting their prey in a contest of endurance, not by ambush, as is the case for many other predators. They wait and they watch and they follow, and they are not necessarily hidden the way a giant spider or a leopard would be.
Those hunted by wolves are very aware of the danger they are in.
(Source: Living With Wolves.)
Running A Wolf Pack Hunt
A hunt should not be used as a random encounter or a similarly one-off encounter. A hunt should be the encounter in a wilderness area. A hunt is a horror-survival challenge in which the player characters must outlast the threat.
I once ran a wolf hunt for a party of level 2 characters that was very nearly deadly, and was exciting for all involved. Here is how I would (and likely will) run one again.
During the first day, the player characters notice tracks from a large-pawed animal. There should be no question that they are in wolf territory.
As dusk falls, the player characters see distant shadows that are trailing behind them. They flee if the characters approach. When night fully falls, the howling begins.
That night, wolves attempt to encircle the camp while the characters sleep. They pad silently through the shadows, quite possibly going unnoticed by anyone on watch. They will attack with surprise if possible, and they gang up on the smallest character. The wolves flee when more than one of them is dropped to half health or less.
During the second day, the wolves are just visible in the trees, following the party. Rest is not possible. The wolves will try to force the party somewhere that puts the characters at the disadvantage: at the edge of a cliff, perhaps, or waist-deep in a snowbank.
When the wolves have the characters trapped, they attack again. There should be more wolves in this attack, just enough to push the encounter to the limits of feasible defeat. This time the wolves do not flee until a third of them are dead.
Two days of hunting feels right for raising the stakes without becoming too monotonous or predictable. For more nights of a hunt, I would add complications such as a rival beast that joins the fray to defend its territory.
A Monster That Stalks Its Prey
What I have in mind is the stalking mantis, which is a creature of my own creation that is inspired by the MCDM marvorok, which I suspect was inspired by the xenomorph. The stalking mantis grabs the weakest prey and flees with it trapped in its deathly strong clutches.
I made a half-hearted attempt to include a stalking mantis in one of my games, and it was unsuccessful in part because I did not have a stat block or real features prepared, and in part because I was trying to speed through travel and did not want to take the time to give the stalking mantis the horror that it deserved.
Here is how I should have done it.
The signs of a stalking mantis are globs of sticky saliva hanging from trees and covering discarded bones that have not been touched by scavengers. They player characters might hear a strange clicking sound, as though from very large insect mandibles.
Stalking mantises move from tree branch to tree branch in pursuit of their prey, gliding softly on death’s wings. The clicking sound gets louder as they draw nearer, but they are incredibly difficult to spot when hidden.
A stalking mantis does face its prey directly. As it follows its target, the stalking mantis darts out, slashes with its bladelike arm, and retreats. It repeats this until its prey is badly injured, and that is when the stalking mantis grabs its prey and jumps quickly away. A stalking mantis will carry its catch to the upper branches of a pine tree to devour it without interruption.
If I had committed to a stalking mantis hunt, my players would have understood very clearly why the nearest villagers were afraid to venture into the mountain jungle.
Closing Thoughts
And this, my friends, is why I am so opposed to random encounters. They do not allow you to set up the level of drama and stakes that I want in my adventures.
Has anyone else run a hunt with wolves or other creatures? Did it work as well as you had hoped? I would be interested to hear your tale.
This is an area where crossover GM skills from Monster of the Week come in handy. I really recommend it if you have not tried it or another Powered by the Apocalypse game.
Happy 2025, everyone. It is a brand new year in which we will keep exploring.
(Post cover image by mila-del-monte.)
Add your thoughts