Quoting everything I'd like to respond to would be a bit of a pain in the neck, especially with the amount of cutting down I'd have to do, so I'm just going to paraphrase the key points (both the ones that are really there and those that seem to have been inferred by others):
Well-traveled roads shouldn't use the MMO spawner
Roads shouldn't use the MMO spawner, period
Roads should only use the MMO spawner near the lairs of various monsters
I generally agree. The bandits and kobolds north of the FAI, the beetles and ogres on the Lion's Way, the goblins on the road to Beregost, the wolves on the Northern Trade Way... Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely in favor of getting in a scrap around those parts on occasion. But the Trade Way is supposed to be the most well-traveled road on the server. Why is
the main artery of the region's commerce completely impassable to anything not escorted by a level 10+ character?
That being said, the MMO spawner has its uses. Less-traveled roads, like Thundar's Ride (I imagine) or the Fields of the Dead, are certainly hazardous enough to warrant its use. Monster lairs are another good use of that spawner, as exemplified by the gnolls on the Lion's Way or the main bandit camp north of the FAI (or the goblin ruins in that same area).
The ambush spawner should trigger more often, with difficulty scaling and even elite mobs from time to time
Ambushes shouldn't spawn right on top of the party
Yeah! Despite my tone above, the problem isn't (entirely?) that the roads are too dangerous. It's that they're too consistently, and too
unavoidably dangerous. Now, if gangs of marauding bandits periodically popped up, sometimes right on top of you and sometimes well out of range (you could even set a minimum range based on the party's Spot/Listen scores!), it would be something else entirely. Suddenly it stops being "Grrr, gotta punch my way through the local wildlife" and becomes "Okay, let's try not to get caught by bandits...", which makes more sense IC and feels more palatable OOC.
As an exterior zone, roads fill an important role in XP grinding and should not be changed
I strongly disagree. We have plenty of exterior zones elsewhere. Based on the CRs on the wiki:
1: Chionthar East (technically a road, but we can excuse that as being a less-traveled one).
1.5: BG East, Graveyard
4: Cloakwood East; Boareskyr Bridge
6: Ulgoth's Beard, Island
7: Thundar's Ride (day; again, technically a less-traveled road... though most players seem to prefer it to the Northern Trade Way)
8: High Hedge; Woods of Sharp Teeth; Cloakwood Central
12: Cloakwood North-West
13: Uldoon's Trail, North of Nashkel
14: High Moor South (this should really not be a CR14 zone, not with those hobgoblin mages...); Xvarts; Fields of the Dead
15: Misty Forest; South of Beregost, Road (just the wyvern lands on the east half, mind you
)
16: Corm Orp; Durlag's Exterior (again, the magic/special abilities of this zone may warrant a higher CR)
16-17: Nashkel's Mine Exterior
18: Troll Claws
19: Cloud Peaks
20: Yuan-ti Hills (it's called Serpent Hills, but whatever)
23: Reaching Woods
24: Stone Giants (citation needed - I've never been there); Forest of Wyrms
27: Graypeaks
28: Speartop
It's not as smooth a progression as the interior areas, but there's two things to note here:
- The progression does not significantly change if we add the CR2.5 "Trade Way, Road south of BG", the CR5 "Northern Tradeway, Road south of Soubar", the CR5-6 "Lion's Way, Road south of FAI", and the CR6 "North of Beregost, Road" maps.
- The CR estimation is really messy on some maps.
I will, however, concede that magical attacks are far less common on the maps I'm excluding. In my opinion, it would be preferable to reduce the magic of some of the other maps on the server than to leave the roads unchanged.