2 D&D Encounters That Aren’t Just Another Fight
When you are planning a D&D session, it is surprisingly easy to end up with a lot of combat. The characters leave town and encounter bandits on the road, reach the forest and find a pack of wolves, then arrive at the dungeon where something unpleasant is waiting behind the next door. Combat is an important part of the game, but it is not the only way to make an encounter interesting, and sometimes giving the players something they cannot solve by reaching for their weapons can lead to much more memorable moments at the table.
1. The Monster in the Well
The villagers have a problem with their well, and they have already decided what the solution should be. For the last week, buckets have been disappearing, strange noises have been coming from beneath the village, and one farmer swears that something caught hold of his boot while he was drawing water. Nobody has actually seen the creature responsible, but that has not stopped the villagers from deciding that a monster has moved into the well and needs to be removed, so when the adventurers arrive they are offered a few coins to climb down and deal with it.
What they find at the bottom is not quite what anyone expected. The creature has made a small hiding place among the stones and is doing everything it can to avoid being noticed because it has been hiding from something that has been hunting it across the countryside. It is hungry, frightened, and considerably more interested in finding somewhere safe than it is in attacking a group of armed adventurers who have just appeared at the bottom of its hiding place.
That does not mean the creature has to be harmless, and there are several ways you could develop the encounter depending on what suits your campaign. Perhaps it has been responsible for a few incidents in the surrounding countryside, or perhaps the thing hunting it is genuinely dangerous and has followed its prey all the way to the village. The characters may even discover that the villagers have been blaming the creature for problems that have nothing to do with it.
The party might decide that the creature is too dangerous to leave alone, but they could just as easily choose to help it escape or investigate what has been chasing it. A job that began with the simple instruction to kill the monster in the well can therefore turn into something considerably more interesting once the characters realise that the villagers have only given them half the story.
2. The Merchant Who Won't Take Gold
A travelling merchant has stopped beside the road with a wagon full of goods, and the characters are likely to be pleased when they discover that he has several things they could use. His collection includes healing potions, old maps, useful pieces of equipment, unusual magical objects and a handful of strange curiosities that might be worthless or might turn out to be extremely useful at exactly the right moment. The only difficulty is that none of it has a price attached, because the merchant has no interest in taking gold.
Instead, he prefers to trade for things that have some personal value, which means that the characters are going to have to come up with something more interesting than a handful of coins if they want to do business. He might exchange a healing potion for a favour, offer an old map to someone willing to tell him a secret, or hand over a magical object in return for a promise that the characters will perform a particular task if he ever comes looking for them.
The merchant is not necessarily trying to trick anyone, although he clearly enjoys watching adventurers become increasingly frustrated when they discover that their wealth is of no use to them.
The characters can negotiate, offer an item of their own, tell the merchant a story, or decide that whatever he is selling is not worth the trouble. They might even discover that something they have been carrying around for months is considerably more valuable to the merchant than it is to them. If they do agree to one of his bargains, make a note of it, because the merchant has an excellent excuse for becoming a recurring NPC.
Several levels later, when the characters have completely forgotten about the promise they made beside the road, the merchant can appear again to collect what he is owed. A favour that seemed insignificant when the party was struggling through their first few adventures could become considerably more complicated once they are experienced adventurers with reputations, enemies and considerably more important things competing for their attention.