Dungeons and Dragons: Negotiation and Accounting Edition

I had a low turnout for the library Dungeons & Dragons game, but I had backup plans thanks to a map of the region and the encounter tables in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. The players who arrived had a druid and a ranger as their characters, so I decided that while the rest of the party was breaking camp, those two could scout ahead. In previous adventures, there had been rumors of trouble approaching from the north, and strong monsters had been encroaching recently where they never had been seen in living memory.

As a lazy DM, I chose to forego complicated encounter balancing, and just change which list I used for encounter difficulty. The characters were level 5, so I dropped down to the tables for levels 1-4 for the terrain they were crossing. This fits the story I have in mind as a rising power in the northern wilds grows and displaces monsters. Only when the full party is assembled will they discover it also sends scouts afield to prepare the way for invasion.

Their first challenge in the hills was a manticore. Both players failed their perception checks and rolled poorly for initiative, so it got a surprise round and dealt a lot of damage with its strafing run of spike attacks before landing in front of the party for melee. However, the ranger did well with swords, and the druid finished it off with a massive blast of Call Lightning after a couple rounds of combat.

They proceeded into a small forest and encountered a bandit camp of a dozen men. The ranger crept closer, and overheard discussion of how dangerous the wild lands to the north had become, along with concerns about wandering south into lands better patrolled by soldiers. The druid then walked up to the campsite and was noticed by the bandits. The conversation was interrupted by the ranger deciding to seize the initiative and leaping down to intimidate them to surrender. It failed. Roll initiative again!

The bandits went last this time. The ranger and druid immediately slaughtered the group of five who had challenged the druid. I decided the rest were much more amenable to conversation after seeing how quickly the first group was dispatched, and a much more effective intimidation check got them to settle down and listen this time. The ranger's idea was to either send these bandits eastward away from the nearby farm towns, or convince them to join in the defense of the nearest village in exchange for room, board, and pay. The remaining bandits decided on the latter, and that led to the most intense part of any adventure: Salary negotiations!

The party owns an inn as their base in town, so after some quick remodeling plans and budget analysis, the bandits were offered room and board plus a daily stipend. Everything was written into a contract along with instructions to the innkeeper, sealed with the ranger's signet ring and candle wax, and the bandits were sent on their way to potentially reform into upstanding members of society, or at least to add more warm bodies to help defend the village should it be attacked by monsters during the absence of the adventurers.

I wouldn't do anything like that, now would I?

Once the negotiations were done and the bandits sent on their way, the druid and ranger made their way out of the forest and toward a ridge of hills where they could better see what the wilderness to the north might hold.

A phase spider absolutely failed its stealth check, so the pair definitely saw something large vanish into thin air from the road ahead. They readied weapons, and when the spider phased into the material world again to ambush them, it met with unexpected resistance. It also flubbed every single attack roll, so I didn't even have the opportunity to make the players roll any saves against poison damage. Boo! The druid morphed into a bear, and the ranger sliced it up. It tried again to vanish and reappear with a new attack from another angle, but the duo used the time to ready their own counterattacks in response. It reappeared, failed to hit, and caught a bad case of the deadness for its efforts.

From the hilltop, the pair could see an ancient scar-like chasm in the earth, a ruined tower, and a place of darkness to the north. No ominous foreshadowing there! We called an end to the adventure at that point. The rest of the party can follow their trail and catch up for the next session.

What danger lies in the badlands ahead? Will the bandits stab the party in the back or earn a place in society as respected protectors of the village? Will I come up with a suitable Big Bad to face once the party has journeyed further north to discover what is bringing monsters and more south into settled lands? Stay tuned, because I might remember to write about that!