Better Bandits
October 11th, 2011
Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting Grave Plots, where we bring you new plot hooks and adventure ideas each and every week. This week is Bandit Week here at Necromancers of the Northwest. When I heard we were doing a bandit-themed week, my first thoughts were of one of my favorite video games, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. For those of you who have had the pleasure of playing Morrowind for any amount of time, the reasons for this should be obvious, but for those of you who haven't played the game, you should know that the island on which the game takes place is riddled with caves and ruins which. 90% of the time, contain bandits of one kind or another. In Morrowind, as in D&D, these bandits serve a key role: to fill dungeons and let low-level characters become more powerful. The bandits in Morrowind, however, had something that bandits in D&D (at least in my experience) rarely have: names. Maybe it was different for you, but when I was last using bandits in my D&D game (and that was some time ago) there were exactly 5 types of bandits: bandit (a level 1 warrior), bandit sergeant (this was the rogue), bandit archer (same as bandit sergeant but armed with a shortbow instead of a masterwork dagger), bandit mage (this was a bard equipped with alchemist’s fire), and a leader (who may have had a name and was a level 3 fighter/rogue who dual-wielded something). That was fine at the time, as it allowed me to produce enough encounters to keep the game diverse and, I hope, interesting, but taking some time to think about those named bandits has made me seriously reconsider my bandit policy. It got me thinking about how to create a better bandit adventure and for this week, I would like to share my musings with you so you can make your own bandit plots the best they can be.
So, when thinking about bandits I found three things to be most important: location, location, location! Only kidding, location is just one of the three important things to talk about when thinking about your bandit plot, but it is important, so we'll be talking about it first. Where your PCs encounter the bandits is tremendously important to the overall feel of your bandit adventure. Will your bandits attack a town or village in a daring raid, waylay helpless travelers (like the PCs) on the major road, or attempt to hijack a local ferry while it carries folks across a treacherous fjord? Each of these could be a major scene in your bandits’ campaign of crime and each will have different considerations for an adventure. In the village, for instance, the bandits may set fire to buildings, try to murder lords in their beds, or just sneak in like ghosts to quietly rob the local church of its tithes and charitable funds. The PCs might have guards as allies against what would otherwise be overwhelming odds; they might have to choose between saving one group of folks or another group; and they might have to fight a battle across the whole of town, changing locales on a regular basis in order to repel the attack. If instead the PCs were waylaid, however, the battle is likely to be more straightforward, though there’s still the opportunity for interesting terrain features and perhaps a surprise attack from bandits the PCs were unaware of when the fight started. As a result, it becomes important to choose a location for the bandit encounter based on the sort of encounter(s) you want.
The second important thing to remember is that bandits also have strongholds; they pretty much have to, since they've been outlawed from normal society and need to hold up somewhere. The style of stronghold varies from bandit to bandit, with some favoring caves and ruins while others prefer a well-organized tent camp or a forest clearing for their hideout. Since the stronghold is probably where the climactic action of your bandit adventure is likely to be happening, you need to put a great deal of work into it. Make some cool rooms where the bandits (and clever PCs) can gain a tactical advantage; after all, the bandits were probably expecting an attack so they should have readied defenses. Don't skimp on the little details either: where the bandits sleep and keep their animals is every bit as important as where they store their loot to make the cave or what-have-you feel like a rich and worthwhile experience for intrepid adventurers. I feel it may also be worth mentioning that while, in general, you will have better results if your PCs have a reasonable expectation of what they will find when they kick down the door of a bandit’s stronghold, it isn't strictly necessary. For example, the PCs might go to the dreaded cave of the mighty Groth to slay the foul creature, only to arrive and find that the bandits who have been plaguing the area dealt with Groth months ago, moved into his cave, and are using his dreaded reputation to cover their illicit deeds. Adventures like this can make for a nice change of pace and serve to keep the PCs on their toes without compromising your integrity as a DM. Okay, so maybe the second thing was also about location.
The last thing one should consider when making a bandit adventure is how many bandits you need. This is where all the stuff about those named bandits comes in, if you were wondering, since the fewer bandits you have, the more detailed those bandits can be, which could make for much more fascinating bandit adventures than the ones I remember from back when. If instead you have a lot of bandits, you get more warm bodies to throw at your PCs, but have to compromise a little on the details for each individual bandit in order to stay sane as a DM. Besides, the more guys you have, the less those little details are going to matter to your players, who would eventually get overwhelmed with the raw amount of flavor information and get bored or flavor-desensitized, so that when you create a scene where you really want to capture their imagination, they just won't be able to appreciate it as well. To help you figure out how to best manage your bandit flavor, I have created a handy little chart.
10 or less bandits: You should flesh out each bandit individually: make sure everyone has a name and at least a couple of sentences of backstory. Decide how and why each became a bandit, what his or her basic personality is, and perhaps where and how each member fits into the larger group.
More than 10 but less than 20: In this case, you should flesh out 5 or 6 outstanding bandits and make them somehow important in your adventure. For the rest, I would recommend writing down about 20 random personality traits and keeping a random name generator handy. That way, when the PCs inevitably take a mook bandit prisoner, you can quickly give him a name and a basic personality so that the PCs feel like they’re talking to a person and not an encyclopedia.
More than 20: If you have this many bandits, your PCs probably won’t be talking to them, Flesh out a couple of main guys, maybe a lieutenant or something, but your average mook probably won’t need more than a stat block. These extra bodies can still be used to enhance the flavor of your bandit adventure, but will have more to do with fleshing out the location rather than the bandits themselves. For instance, having 80 bandits at your disposal means you can repurpose the mess hall of the abandoned fort into a communal sleeping chamber, or that you can have the perimeter regularly patrolled.
The real challenge now becomes getting your PCs that flavor information. Perhaps the PCs know they're going to be hunting Bad Bart and his gang, so their employer or the local tavern can supply them with tales of their exploits; or perhaps the PCs capture a minion or one of the bandits themselves who can be “persuaded to talk about the others,” and during the interrogation you can slip in those flavor nuggets. If all else fails, perhaps one of the bandits keeps a journal or diary that contains, in addition to "useful" information, a log on the day-to-day activities living with their bandit comrades. If you have to try harder than that, then your group doesn't care enough for it to be worth your effort and youshould focus your efforts on making supremely interesting combats.
Well, that’s it for this week Grave Plots. I hope you join me all next week for the second animal week response article, where we'll be discussing the noble wolf.