Do you like tactical gameplay to stand as equals with your roleplaying? Here's an encounter that will set you on the path to DMing tactical encounters with as much depth as the best strategy games. This encounter centers around the Icons of the Realms: Village Raiders miniature set, which you can find online or at your local gaming store; just grab these minis and you have an encounter that puts them all to use! The scenario: the heroes’ home village has come under attack by raiders! Their adventure begins as they take up arms and defend their home from a band of orcs and goblins—only to be surprised by a pair of opportunistic gnolls hoping to scavenge the carrion.

The story details of this village are left deliberately vague, so that you can invent your own story surrounding the village. Why are the raiders attacking? In what world is this burgh located? Answering these questions yourself will give your D&D campaign a personal touch, no matter how much pre-published material you use in your games.

What You’ll Need

This encounter is designed to be paired with the monster miniatures found in Icons of the Realms Monster Pack: Village Raiders. Together with this encounter and a few other free resources, the Village Raiders box is a complete "adventure in a box." These additional free resources are:

• One-inch grid paper and pencils that you can use to draw your tactical map.
• Tokens to represent the player characters and NPCs, like coins, candies, or even dice!
• A copy of the D&D Basic Rules

Additional Tools

It's easy to play a tactical encounter with simple and free tools. However, you can use additional accessories to make your encounter look prettier and help your players understand the action better. 

• The fold-out poster map used in this encounter is found in Tactical Maps Reincarnated
• A miniature for each one of your player characters (such as the Icons of the Realms Starter Set)
• Additional miniatures to represent the two allied NPCs in this encounter

Encounter Background

This tactical combat encounter is suitable for a party of four 2nd-level characters, or for a party of four 1st-level characters if their players are clever tacticians and familiar with the rules of D&D.

Read or paraphrase the following text to set the stage for this encounter:

You hear screams from the edge of the village. As the protectors of your small countryside town, you prepare for battle, equipping weapons, donning armor, and quickly preparing your spells. Minutes later, you arrive at the edge of town and find it overrun by bandits from the wastes! One orc is bashing down the door to a farmer’s cottage, and you can see a group of orcs and goblins rampaging through the mayor’s fields and attempting to break into his house.

Set up the map and miniatures as displayed in the picture below. Once you’ve set up the player characters at the edge of the map, ask them what they want to do. Their choices will affect how this battle turns out.

There are two groups of monsters attacking the village at the start of this encounter. The first is attacking the Farmer’s Cottage, and the second is attacking the Mayor’s House. A third group is hiding in the Northern Road in the northwest corner of the map, watching to see how the battle plays out. It might seem a lot to juggle all of the events of this battle at once, but the events at the Farmer’s Cottage and the Mayor’s House occur simultaneously; the raiders at each location aren’t frozen in place until the characters show up!

Combat Rules

If this is your first time playing D&D, or if any of your players are unfamiliar with the rules of combat, take a moment before playing to review how combat works in D&D. The rules for combat are explained in detail in the D&D Basic Rules.

In short, each creature has a turn in combat, during which it can move, take an action, and take a bonus action if it has a trait that grants it a bonus action. A creature can also take one reaction per round of combat. Most creatures in combat use their action to attack another creature, using the numbers in its stat block to determine if the attack hits and how much damage it deals if it hits. Once a monster takes damage equal to its maximum hit points, it dies. However, if a player character is reduced to 0 hit points, the character falls unconscious and begins making death saving throws.

Once all creatures in the combat have taken their turn, the current round ends and a new round begins at the top of the initiative order.

Gaining Surprise. If the characters approach one of the monster groups stealthily, they might be able to surprise them. However, the village is small. As soon as one group of monsters starts fighting the characters, the other group notices and can’t be surprised.

Rolling Initiative. Once this encounter begins, all combatants must roll initiative. This is true even if the creatures haven’t begun fighting each other yet. Every creature in combat makes a Dexterity check to determine their place in the initiative order, and then each creature takes its turn one-by-one in order.

Movement. Each creature’s movement is spelled out on their character sheet or in their stat block. Most creatures have a movement speed of 30 feet, which translates to 6 five-foot squares on a tactical map.

Farmer’s Cottage

This is the home of a farmer named Halim Tylleron, his wife Gressa, and their two sons and one daughter. Halim has barred the door and remains in his house in a vain attempt to protect his homestead, after tearfully urging his family to flee through the southern window.

This farmhouse has the following features:

• It has sturdy wooden doors with AC 15 and 9 hit points. They are immune to poison and psychic damage. Once a door is reduced to 0 hit points, it explodes in a shower of splinters.
• It has glass windows with AC 13 and 3 hit points. They are immune to poison and psychic damage. Once a window is reduced to 0 hit points, it shatters. A Small or smaller creature (like a goblin or a halfling) can leap through the open window. A Medium creature must make a successful DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to climb through such a small space.  

Orc. An orc has just charged at the farmhouse and is preparing to attack the door with its greataxe. If left alone, it breaks down the door and murders the poor farmer inside, then ransacks the place. Once the characters attack, it abandons the door and attacks the foe that will bring it the most glory in combat: the biggest and strongest-looking character in the bunch.  

Goblin. A goblin is hiding in a nearby tree (see the map) and is keeping lookout for the orc.

• It hides in the tree until combat begins, and then uses its shortbow to attack with advantage on its first turn in combat, since the characters weren’t aware of it.
• Then, it uses its Nimble Escape trait to hide in the tree as a bonus action. It makes a Dexterity (Stealth) check, and becomes hidden from all characters with a passive Wisdom (Perception) score equal to or lower than the result of its check.
• If a character that the goblin managed to hide from wants to attack it, they can either attack blindly into the tree (attacking with disadvantage), or use their action to make a Wisdom (Perception) check to try and see it.

Halim Tylleron. Halim is a neutral good male human commoner. He smashed a chair and is using one of its legs as a club. He think he can face off against a mighty orc raider, but he is gravely mistaken. If the characters don’t attack the orc before it breaks down the door, Halim is as good as dead. If the characters save him, he thanks them and gives them a potion of healing to help them against the remaining orcs.

Mayor’s House

This is the home of the village mayor, a portly and ostentatious—yet nevertheless kindhearted—man named Rex Griffith. He has barricaded his door with one of his many expensive chairs.

This house has the following features:

• The property is surrounded by 4-foot-tall stone walls. A Medium or larger creature can hop them with ease, but a Small or smaller creature must make a successful DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to do so. Its latched wooden gates have AC 15 and 4 hit points.
• It has sturdy wooden doors reinforced with iron bands. They have AC 15 and 16 hit points. They are immune to poison and psychic damage. Once a door is reduced to 0 hit points, it explodes in a shower of splinters.
• It has glass windows with AC 13 and 3 hit points. They are immune to poison and psychic damage. Once a window is reduced to 0 hit points, it shatters. A Small or smaller creature (like a goblin or a halfling) can leap through the open window. A Medium creature must make a successful DC 10 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to climb through such a small space.  
• Just outside the walls is a field filled with fruit bushes, root vegetables, and a few rows of grapevines.
• A small shed contains animal feed and other farming supplies.
• A well on the property is 15 feet deep and filled with water.

Goblins. Two goblins are gleefully rampaging through the mayor’s crops, tearing out vegetables, taking single bites from them, and throwing them aside. As soon as they see the characters, they squeak in fear and run to the orc for protection while shooting at the characters with their shortbows.

Orc. The leader of this attack is an orc named Garkaz Kurth. He wants to take the village’s mayor hostage and ransom him in exchange for a tithe of meat and produce each month to satisfy his raiders.

• He tries to smash the gate to the mayor’s property with his greataxe on the first turn—but just hops the wall if he fails to do so.
• If he reduces the mayor to 0 hit points, he chooses to knock him out rather than killing him, then hauls him off to the hills north of town.

Mayor Rex Griffith. Mayor Griffith is a lawful neutral male human noble. He has barricaded the front door to his house and is leaning his full weight against it to bolster it further. He holds his family heirloom rapier in his hands, and is trembling at the thought of having to battle an orc to survive. If he survives the attack, he rewards the characters generously (see “Conclusion,” below).

Northern Road

The road through the village becomes a deep trench at the northwest of the map. The walls of the trench rise about five feet up, making it hard for creatures on the grass to see creatures pressed up against the walls of the trench.

Gnolls. Two gnolls are currently hidden in the trench, peering over the edge and watching the battle unfold. Though these monstrous creatures are demon-crazed and bloodthirsty, they are not foolish. They would much rather prey upon the weakened victors like scavenging hyenas than take on two enemies at once. The gnolls are hidden, but a creature that has a passive Wisdom (Perception) score of 11 or higher notices them from the grass—and a creature that has direct line of sight to them from the road automatically notices them.

• As soon as the orcs and goblins are all dead or fled (or if the characters flee), the gnolls take one turn to pick up their weapons. Then, at the start of their next turn, they howl in predatory glee. One gnoll draws its spear and charges, while the other gnoll uses its longbow to shoot from the trench. The gnoll with a longbow dips behind the trench after attacking on each of its turns; the half-cover granted by the trench gives it a +2 bonus to its Armor Class.
• Gnolls always press their advantage, and single out weaker foes. When a gnoll in melee combat drops a foe to 0 hit points, it uses its Rampage trait to attack another foe that’s still conscious. As much as they would love to tear their unconscious foes’ hearts out of their still-warm bodies, that will have to wait 'til the battle is won.

Conclusion

Once the raiders are driven off, the survivors congratulate the characters. If Halim survived, his family gathers around him and breathlessly thanks the characters for saving his life. They offer the characters 10 gp and their family shield, a beautiful and functional heirloom with a heraldic phoenix emblazoned upon its steel surface.

If the mayor survived, he doffs his feathered cap and bows so deeply that his nose practically touches his toes. He offers the characters a golden holy symbol of Lathander worth 30 gp.

Further Adventures. The mayor (or another member of the townsfolk) pulls the characters aside after the battle and tells them that the raiders likely came from a cave in in the northern hills. If the raiders’ masters were defeated, this village and the other nearby towns would be safe from harm for at least another season. The new questgiver offers them a hunting trap, a hammer, and a set of 10 iron spikes that they can use while they explore the wilds.

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Did you like this encounter? Check out the encounters in the Encounter of the Week series. You can also pick up the adventures I've written on the DMs Guild, such as The Temple of Shattered Minds, a suspenseful eldritch mystery with a mind flayer villain. My most recent adventures are included in the Platinum Bestseller Encounters in Avernus, a collection of over 60 unique encounters created by the Guild Adepts, which can be used to enhance your campaign in Avernus or elsewhere in the Nine Hells. Also check out the Platinum Bestseller Tactical Maps: Adventure Atlas, a collection of 88 unique encounters created by the Guild Adepts, which can be paired with the beautiful poster battlemaps in Tactical Maps Reincarnated.

Thank you to our friends at WizKids for sending us their latest miniatures. You were the seed from which this entire tactical encounter sprouted!

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.