The party finds a man lying in the dirt at the side of the road, badly wounded and barely conscious. He’s wearing mismatched armor and carrying a short sword he doesn’t have the strength to lift. It doesn’t take much to figure out he’s a bandit, or was. His own crew left him behind after a job went wrong, stripped him of anything valuable, and didn’t bother finishing him off. He’ll be dead by morning without help.
If the party stabilizes him and he comes around, he’s got information worth having. He knows where his former crew is camped, how many there are, and what they’re planning next. He’ll trade that freely in exchange for his life, and he’s not in a position to negotiate terms. Whether his information is trustworthy is a fair question, and a perceptive party member may pick up on the fact that he’s leaving something out.
What the party does with him is the whole encounter. They can turn him in at the nearest town for a modest reward, assuming there’s a bounty on him. They can let him go and follow his directions to the bandit camp. They can patch him up and recruit him as a guide or reluctant ally. Or they can leave him where they found him and walk away. None of those choices are wrong, and a DM who lets the consequences of each play out honestly will get more mileage out of this encounter than the road scene itself.
Party Level: Any. The encounter is driven by roleplay and player decision-making, not combat difficulty.
World: Any
Rules-set: Any, although I originally ran this in Old-School Essentials with a group of four 1st level characters.
If this made your session better, buying me a coffee keeps the Vault stocked.
