Tactical Encounters is an encounter series that delivers tight, strategic D&D combat encounters—plus all the opportunities for roleplaying and storytelling you’ve come to expect from your favorite D&D adventures!

In this encounter, the characters are trained adventures arriving in a small cave in the hills. The raiders camped out in this cave have been raiding local villages, causing widespread poverty and death among the common folk of this land. The adventurers have followed the raiders’ tracks back to their hillside lair, and enter the cave with weapons drawn and spells components at the ready. A group of adventurers already went to the monsters’ lair to try and slay them, but they never returned. Just a day ago, the mayor of the village received a ransom note, demanding that 100 lbs. of food be delivered to the mouth of their lair, or the captive adventurers would be killed and the raids would continue.

Beyond this, the story details of this encounter are left deliberately vague, so that you can invent the finer points to suit your campaign and setting.

You can play this encounter as a sequel to Tactical Encounters: Village Raiders, or as a standalone mini-adventure. You can bridge the gaps between these two encounters with a few scenes of the characters following the raiders’ tracks through the hills and to the cave. You may wish to simply allow the characters to advance to 2nd level before the start of this encounter, or confront them with one or two random encounters during their wilderness exploration to give them the experience points they need.

What You’ll Need

This encounter uses part of the Arcane Hideout map, one of the many full-color battlemaps in the Tactical Maps Reincarnated map pack. You can purchase this map individually on the D&D Beyond Marketplace, or buy the entire map pack—the Tactical Encounters series will eventually use most, if not all, of the maps in this pack! If you buy a map individually and then decide you want the whole pack later, what you paid for solo maps will be deducted from the price of the entire pack.

Using digital maps works great if you’re playing online, using D&D Beyond character sheets and compendium content, the Avrae Discord Bot, and a virtual tabletop tool. Check out New Player’s Guide: How to Play Online for more tips and tools that you can use to play D&D digitally.

If you’re playing in person, all you need are a vinyl wet-erase battle map and tokens (like coins, candies, or even dice!) to represent the hostile creatures, players, and allied NPCs. However, it will be much easier to play this encounter with:

• The monster miniatures found in Icons of the Realms Monster Pack: Cave Defenders
• A miniature for each one of your player characters
• A copy of the free D&D Basic Rules
• Additional miniatures to represent other, non-hostile characters in this encounter

Using the Map

This encounter uses only part of the Arcane Hideout map. If you fold the physical map in half or crop out parts of the digital map, there will be edges of the map that don’t have cave walls. You can treat these abrupt edges as walls, or as unmapped tunnels that you can attach other dungeons to.

This map is a snapshot in time, showing the starting positions of all the creatures involved in this area at the precise moment that the adventurers enter the area. The characters can start play anywhere within the blue square. The hostile creatures marked in red and the neutral creatures marked in green start in their assigned locations, but don’t just wait there. They move, act, and react from moment to moment as you see fit.  

Map Features

This cave is cold and moist, and smells strongly of sweat and wet fur. It has the following general features.

Ceiling. The ceiling of this cave is roughly 20 feet high throughout the entire complex.

Floor. The cave slopes and rises gently throughout the complex, but not enough to disturb movement. Any square on the map filled with stone or debris is difficult terrain.

Light. This complex is dimly lit by thin beams of light that filter down through holes in the ceiling. These holes vary in size, and provide both fresh air and light to the cave. They were carved by the cave’s original inhabitants, several years ago.

Tactical Encounter: Cave Defenders

This tactical combat encounter is suitable for a party of four 2nd-level characters. If you have a party of three or fewer characters, six or more characters, or if your party is higher than 2nd-level, you can use the D&D Beyond Encounter Builder to add or subtract monsters to fit their needs.

This encounter is designed to be challenging and test the characters’ tactical skill. If your players aren’t familiar with the intricacies of the D&D rules, then this encounter is instead suitable for a party of 3rd-level characters.

This section describes how the monsters in this area act. Any notable items or terrain are described alongside the monsters nearest to them. Read or paraphrase the following to set the scene for this encounter.

You enter the cave mouth and emerge into a series of tunnels, dimly lit by tiny beams of light that filter in through holes in the ceiling above. A thick, animalistic musk fills the air. The tunnel forks into three branches before you. The central passage is filled with rubble, and you hear something grumbling and hurling things around in it.

Bugbear

There is a bugbear and a bugbear chief named Grippz hidden from sight in caverns near the entrance to the cave. They are both making noise, chomping on hunks of meat and sifting through rubble for treasure. If the characters enter the cave stealthily, they can make a DC 11 group Dexterity (Stealth) check. On a failure (or if they don’t approach stealthily), the bugbears hear their entrance and immediately stop making noise. The sound of the growling and shuffling is suddenly and noticeably quieted as the bugbears hide in place and ready an action to attack the first unfamiliar humanoid that they see.

Surprise Attack! Characters with line of sight to either bugbear must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom (Perception) check to notice them. If a character doesn’t notice a hiding bugbear, it makes its first attack with advantage. This first attack deals extra damage from the bugbear’s Surprise Attack trait. Once either bugbear enters combat, it howls in Goblin for its ally to come to its aid. This howl alerts the kobolds to the south, who sneak up to investigate. The stupid ogre to the west notices the sound, but ignores it since it doesn’t speak Goblin.  

Rubble. Any space with rubble or debris in it is difficult terrain. A character that spends 10 minutes digging through a 5-foot-square space of rubble can make a DC 15 Intelligence (Investigation) check. On a success, the character finds 1d6 gold pieces, and any future investigation of that space turns up no loot. No more gold can be found in this way once characters have looted 25 gp from the rubble.

Supplies. The stolen supplies in this area have mostly been eaten by the raiders, but 50 lbs. of preserved food, 50 gallons of clean water, and 20 cases of red wine are still intact. The bugbear chief moved any small valuables such as gold or jewelry to the location where the captive adventurers are imprisoned.  

Kobolds

Three kobolds lurk in the southern chamber of this cave. They were sleeping and lazing around when the characters entered. The kobolds wake up if a creature gets within 30 feet of them, unless that creature makes a successful DC 8 Dexterity (Stealth) check. They also wake up if the bugbears or the ogre call for aid.

The kobolds investigate any noises throughout the dungeon, and attack from range using their slings. They use hit-and-run tactics to move, attack, and then move again in order to always end their turn at least 30 feet away from their foes, ideally with a cave wall between them to give them total cover against ranged attacks, too. If one of the characters ever attacks a kobold or targets it with a spell, the kobold flees from combat and hides until the characters leave the cave—assuming the kobold survived the attack.

Ogre

The ogre Gurekk is a recent addition to the gang of monsters. He’s pitifully dull, but incredibly strong and will follow any order the bugbear Grippz gives him, so long as he’s sufficiently rewarded—preferably with humanoid flesh to snack on. His current orders are to patrol from north to south along the western tunnel to make sure the captured adventurers don’t escape.

Even though Gurekk is a poorly educated fool, he has learned one thing about the cave: the magic circle that the bugbears and kobolds are too scared to enter dulls his pain after he gets in fights. If the ogre is attacked, he roars for help and runs to the magic circle. The kobolds rush to his aid, but the bugbears approach cautiously. The ogre is expendable to them, and they instead use this time to set up an ambush.  

Magic Circle. This cave used to be the lair of a group of evil clerics of the demon lord Orcus many years ago. Their cult disbanded after their leader was killed by a paladin, and their lair was abandoned. However, their unholy ritual circle remained. The circle’s power has faded slightly over the years, but some remnant of Orcus’s profane power lingers. Evil creatures within the circle gain a +2 bonus to Armor Class and regain 1d6 hit points at the start of their turn.  

Captive Adventurers

The characters aren’t the first adventurers to go after these monsters. Two days ago, another adventuring party set out to kill these raiders, but they were ambushed in the hills. Two were killed by the ogre, and the other two were captured by the bugbears for ransom. One is a brash female human thug named Dalena, and the other is her friend, a male half-drow spy named Leth’dyssar. They’re terrified that the ogre will get bored and decide to eat one of them, and have nothing but breathless praise for anyone who saves them. They don’t have any reward for the characters, but Dalena swears to aid the characters in their next adventure as thanks, and forces Leth’dyssar to join her.

The adventurers’ armor and weapons are shut in a chest that Grippz stashes all his valuables in.

Chest.  This chest contains the captive adventurers’ equipment, as well as any coinage and jewelry the raiders plundered from the region’s villages. It contains 30 gp, 100 sp, and 1200 cp, as well as a silver necklace worth 25 gp, a dozen pewter rings each worth 1 gp, and a gold wedding ring with a shockingly beautiful diamond worth 50 gp.

Conclusion

Once the monsters are defeated, the characters are free to return to their village. If they retrieve the stolen foodstuffs, perhaps after hiring a mule-drawn cart or two from town and returning to the cave, they are rewarded further. Rex Griffith, the mayor of the village the characters were staying in, writes them a letter of commendation for their heroism and recommends that they travel to Margravine Fyone's castle. She is the lady of the realm, and she can reward the adventurers appropriately for their great deeds—and perhaps even tell them of greater adventures to be had.

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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.