D&D 5E Bandit One shot idea
- 3dprintsjrc
- Apr 27
- 8 min read
Hello everyone! Something a little bit different this week! I've run a few homebrew one shots/mini campaigns, I'm thinking I might start posting about them here!
PLEASE NOTE THIS BLOG IS INTENDED FOR DM's, PLAYERS READ AT OWN RISK
The breakdown: An Intro D&D Bandit one shot
Theme: Bandits trying to blow up a train the party is on
Level: 2
Difficulty: Easy
Planning: Low
Run time: We took roughly 4 hours not including character creation
Players: 4
Required materials: Battlemaps, 1-2 Boss mini's, 6 bandits
This first one is a bandit heavy encounter for new players to get them familiar with the concept of the game and keeping things simple.
I started the party out at level two and helped them make their own characters before the game, however if you wanted to make character sheets for them, level 2 is definitely easy enough to have ready to go and then the characters themselves aren't too involved with abilities/spells to be too overwhelming.
This was written in 3 "chapters" with opportunity to bail out if they're not feeling it. I was advised one of the players may struggle to engage for the full oneshot, however, they loved it, and powered through the whole one-shot.
Alrighty DM's, the nitty gritty, I write my stories real freeform, just so you're aware, I work off of a framework/idea have some key points, then work out the rest on the fly (I'll have some super specific examples below on why I do it this way, and why letting it happen this way, organically lets the players work out their own solutions.
I don't have set DC check values as that depends on how well the player roll plays the scene for me, if they're super convincing in telling me what they're looking for, you can damn well bet I'm making that an easier roll, if they say "I look in the room" it's gonna be a hard dice roll (this will come up later as an exmaple).
The Framework:
Our band of guards/adventurers have been working together for quite a while now, the Anti-Train-Derailment Team (ATDT) are in pursuit of a band of highway men who look to have turned their attention to the Dinsken Express.
It is up to the adventurers to determine if the information provided by the ATDT is credible, and to find out what the threat is to the train, its service and passengers and reduce or remove any potential harm. They are advised at the start by the ATDT: "If a fight breaks out at the station, the train will immediately depart and mission will fail." This was set up to encourage players not to immediately try and fight bandits in the open at a busy train station.
Our team starts at the Dun-geon station, the team can either immediately board the train, or **Investigate, perceive, history, arcana check** to determine who among the alighting passengers may be part of the gang and what information may be obtainable.
DM Notes: You know that these highwaymen are hired by Nurgen (a goblin artificer) and Dusty Dirk (a bandit captain), the aim of Dirk and Nurgen is to try blow up the train by placing a bomb in the cab of the train. Feel free to provide your players with whatever information you feel they earn in regards to achieving this. If the party interrogates highway men they will learn about Nurgen and Dusty Dirk and the plan.
Start scene at station and let party talk about their plan.
Invest - Perceive - History - Arcana, can do each once, each roll above 11 will allow the party to “spot” a highwayman who is trying to get on board, the party can determine what they would like to do if they manage to spot people.
This initial check to determine how many bandits/highway men they see at the station and for each pass, I put a bandit somewhere on the initial train station map we had.
Examples from our session:
Rogue went behind the ticket counter and was selling tickets to passengers, wanted to use her criminal background to perform a history check to see if she noticed or remembered anyone - Passed, put a bandit/highwayman in line at the counter and paused their interaction to move onto the next player.
Fighter didn't want to investigate but wanted to go to the front of the train to see the how it worked (wasn't feeling super into the roleplaying at the start) so I let them relieve the driver and "guard" the front of the train while they waited to board (this bit of flexibility is super improtant for later, for both story and player comfort).
Warlock passed an investigation check to see if anyone looked "shady" and tried talking to them, even with a high charisma stat, the highwayman was cold and shut off, not wanting to engage, (harder dice roll because the player was blundering the actual interaction a bit).
Barbarian was listening to the crowd to see if anyone was talking about anything that sounded like criminal activity, rolled a nat 20, let them find 2 talking to eachother.
These parts above, I improv, its not too hard to just work with what your players are giving you and to try something creatively, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't you just keep moving forward. Try having a few things you create already in mind, because there will be curve balls, there's no point in writting 10 interactions for your party to not hit any of them.
There are 20 people in the station waiting to get on, and many more already on board from different stations.
The group can chose to interrogate or "remove" highwaymen they discover at the station. If the group interrogates people in the open or not discretely, other gangers will run. Information extracted will result in easier checks to find other highway men or put the story/danger together.
My party didn't extract any information from this part, other than knowing the faces of who they were keeping an eye on.
For each one they successfully apprehend, it will reduce the amount of members in following rooms/train carriages.
Session can continue or end here, this is chapter 1.
Start chapter 2
On board the train, once the party has either prevented the other highway men from getting on the train or not, the group will now need to proceed through the carts and use their investigative skills to work out who and what the threat is.
The team will start at the rear carriage and work their way forward, in this carriage I explained to the characters that they're now in character, any discussions they have, passengers may be able to hear them when they walk out of this area and into the next. They formed their plan, and then stepped out of the room - Highlight to the party that the room they step out of says "Staff Only" and everyone on the carriage sees them come out.
This helps throw the party off just in case they're saying they'll blend in as people don't know who they are.
The aim of this chapter is to move through the cabins, remove any highwaymen, protect as many passengers as possible, and work out what the primary threat is.
Each carriage will have a D4+1 (+1 is highwayman from the platform they may have discovered or not) roll worth of highwaymen and there are 6 carriages for the party to clear.
Highwaymen used a standard base bandit profile from the 2024 MM.
If the party does not apprehend bandits properly on the carriage, or arroused suspicion at the station other cabins may be on alert and ambush the party.
The party can either just engage in combats in can also engage in story moments to do get more information about the train or plan.
I did 3 carriages of back to back small combats for the party to learn core mechanics.
Then had a "break room" in the middle of the train so they could look for resources, potions (2D4+2), bandages (used these as a 2D8 heal but must be used on the spot, potions could be taken though). Then the party continued on through to the next 3 carriages.
In each instance the party had the opportunity to go non-lethal on bandits to try get more story information from them regarding the plan, keep in mind, don't give too much away, sometimes a bandit should be scared enough of their leader to say "Dirk will kill me if I tell you anyway".
Once the party has cleared all the primary carriages and learned what they needed to learn, I gave them a final top up of health if they needed it, and sent them into chapter 3 which was the boss fights.
End chapter 2 when the party has cleared all the cabins
Start chapter 3
Dusty Dirk will be the final encounter while Nurgen attempts to set the train to explode when it arrives at the next station.
6 highway men, Dusty Dirk, Nurgen are the encounter recommendations, the party can try to deceive their way in, but as soon as initiative is rolled, Nurgen flees to the cab of the train to plant the bomb.
It will be up to the party to get to Nurgen in the front carriage within 8 turns to apprehend him.
If the party gets to the front cab Nurgen will immediately flee after a bit of monolouging, but the bomb that has been set will need to be disarmed.
Party will need to perform investigation and/or perception DC 16 - with advantage if the party has learned the plan in earlier encounters. This is to notice the bomb.
And this in particular is where and why I like to be flexible in how I run things, the party was doing horribly here, poor choices to try find if anything was out of place, EXCEPT, remember the fighter who at the start of the game wanted to go chill out at the front of the train?
"Can I do a history check to see if anything is out of place from when I was in here last" He got advantage for that, and was able to determine that the blinking orb on the dashboard wasn't there from before.
Once the party has noticed it, they will need to work out how to disarm or remove.
I made mine have a sticky surface on it, so it wasn't just quite "pick up and throw" just to see them panic as the blinking light kept blinking faster.
Arcana or sleight of hand DC15, with advantage if they’ve learned details prior.
If the party doesn't manage to difuse or throw the bomb off the train, everyone in a 15ft emanation takes 4d4 force damage.
And when that bomb blows or is difused, that ends the one shot!
Final Thoughts
As you can see, I'm pretty big on freeform DM'ing and just operate with a rough framework in mind, literally just make things up as you go, and track what you've said so you don't fall over.
This works a lot easier in one shots than full campaigns, but it's also how I did my 6 session mini campaign for some friends.
It provides a lot more organic opportunity for the party to help shape and influence the story.
If you're interested in running something like this, the majority of the models used in this one shot was a single box from our "Bandit Encounter" bundle which is available here!
Our bundles also include the stats for our Villains, like Dusty Dirk's profile, which has his own rules rather than a standard "Bandit Captain"
Nurgen was represented by this guy (and is a main antagonist in our homebrews)
And the party used a random assortment of heroes that are available here!
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