If you started playing Dungeons and Dragons the way I did, the first mission you had to do was deliver supplies to a town called Phandalin (from the starting adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver). It becomes apparent quite quickly why a group of adventurers was hired to do this, because the world of Dungeons and Dragons, the Forgotten Realms to be exact, is a very deadly place for common folk.
I’m interested in knowing what the chances are of a group of travelers, say merchants, of arriving at their destination unscathed, or not at all.
Travelers in the Forgotten Realms, or any other Dungeons and Dragons setting, would encounter a variety of creatures on their travels. We can even consult the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything to see what the exact chances are of encountering something deadly.
You decide when a random encounter happens, or you roll. Consider checking for a random encounter once every hour, once every 4 to 8 hours, or once during the day and once during a long rest – whatever makes the most sense based on how active the area is.
Dungeon Master’s Guide (p. 86)
Because we don’t want to kill our travelers, let’s say they have a chance to encounter something twice a day. Once during the day and once during a long rest.
If you roll, do so with a d20. If the result is 18 or higher, a random encounter occurs.
Dungeon Master’s Guide (p. 86)
Rolling an 18, 19 or 20 on a d20 has a 15% chance. This chance increases exponentially when rolling more often. If you want to know the exact chances of rolling a 18 or higher on multiple d20’s, check the table below.
| Travel Time | Distance | Chance of a Random Encounter happening |
| 8 hours | 24 miles | 15% |
| 1 day | 24 miles | 27.8% |
| 1 week | ~170 miles | 89.7% |
| 1 month | ~730 miles | 99.9% |
As you can see, a merchant that travels a lot, has no chance of avoiding an encounter. But would that stop him from travelling, maybe the encounter isn’t that deadly.
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has a large variety of Random Encounter tables for a large amount of different locations and difficulty levels. I’d expect a normal road would be safe enough to be represented as a Level 1-4 encounter. Around 50% of the encounters in these tables can, and would, attack a wandering traveler either to consume it or to rob it of its valuables. With this info we can adjust our table.
| Travel Time | Distance | Chance of a Commoner (CR 0) Dying |
| 8 hours | 24 miles | 7.5% |
| 1 day | 24 miles | 14.1% |
| 1 week | ~170 miles | 44.9% |
| 1 month | ~730 miles | 49.9% |
Whether I’d be travelling a week or a month, a ~50% chance of dying is far too high for me to ever consider leaving the safety of my village/town/city. And don’t forget that this is just the chances of dying when traveling along a normal ‘safe’ road. Going off road in my Dungeons and Dragons campaigns would definitely put you on an Encounter Table more akin to difficulty levels 5-10, which increases the chances of encountering something deadly to 90%. The results of which can be found in the table below.
| Travel Time | Distance | Chance of a Commoner (CR 0) Dying |
| 8 hours | 18 miles | 13.5% |
| 1 day | 18 miles | 25% |
| 1 week | ~130 miles | 80.7% |
| 1 month | ~550 miles | 89.9% |
I hope this information will help you create realistic tradesmen for the world’s greatest roleplaying game, or whatever.