Four Encounters on a Bridge

Every campaign starts with a road, and every road eventually narrows to one crossing. Ross’ Mountain Ravine is that crossing: a single rickety bridge over a long drop, with nowhere to go but across.

These four encounters, written for 1st–4th level characters, use the Mountain Ravine map as their primary location, and each can be run in under an hour. They play as prologue encounters –one crossing on the road to your starting town, perfect for players who want to trial character sheets before finalizing them for the campaign.

The Crossing

The road runs east to west, and the ravine runs north to south, so the bridge is the only place the two meet. The characters approach from the west. The town lies east.

General Features

The Bridge. The bridge is 10 feet wide and 25 feet long, plank over rope, railed on both sides. Two creatures can cross abreast. It moves under weight: a creature that Dashes across the span, or is moved against its will while on it, must succeed on a DC 10 Acrobatics (Dexterity) check or fall prone. If the check fails by 5 or more, they fall into the ravine (See The Drop below)

The Drop. The ravine is a 30-foot drop down to a dry streambed of broken rock. A fall deals 3d6 bludgeoning damage, and the walls take a DC 10 Athletics (Strength) check to climb.

The Anchors. Four posts hold the bridge, two to a bank. Each has AC 15, 15 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage. If both posts on one side are destroyed, every creature on the bridge must succeed on a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or slide under the rail. Drop three and the span falls.

Scree and Boulder. The loose stone on both approaches is difficult terrain. The larger boulders give half cover, or three-quarters cover to a creature crouched behind them.

Wind. Air runs the cut all day. Ranged weapon attacks made across the ravine at long range are made with disadvantage.

Random Tables

The Toll (1st Level)

Hook. The road to town crosses one bridge, and for a season nobody has crossed it for free. The town council pays 25gp to whoever clears the crossing of the bandits who charge an illegal toll.

Background. Six deserters from a broken military company took the ravine in spring and never moved on. Their leader, Ossa Vane, sets the price by what a traveller is carrying, and nobody has refused her twice. She is not trying to get rich. She is holding the only ground she can defend until the war that broke her company finishes without her, and the toll pays for the waiting.

Read the following when the characters reach the western bank:

Armed soldiers in unkempt gear stand at the near post with a rope drawn across the planks. They are armed, they are bored, and they have clearly done this many times. One of them pushes off the rail, holds out a hat, and asks what you think it’s worth to get to the other side.

The Monsters

For a weak party: Ossa Vane (Thug) and 1 Bandit

For an average party: Ossa Vane (Thug) and 2 Bandits

For a strong party: Ossa Vane (Bandit Captain), 2 Bandits

Running the Encounter

The toll is 5gp a head, and it is negotiable. A successful DC 13 Persuasion or Intimidation (Charisma) check halves it. Succeeding by 5 or more clears the crew off the road for the night.

If it comes to blades, the bandits hold the near bank and try to shove characters over the edge rather than trade hits. If you’re using Vane as a Thug, she hangs back with her crossbow, using her Pact Tactics feature to her advantage despite the windy conditions of the ravine. If you’re using her as a Bandit Captain, she fights more aggressively with a frontal assault. When half of Vane’s crew is down, the survivors break for the eastern side and scatter into the rocks.

It’s worth noting that 1st-Level characters are fragile, and even simply using a Thug and a Bandit may result in a TPK. Consider a reason why Vane might keep the characters alive; does it send a message to the town they were travelling to? Does she know one of the characters? Did something save the characters after they all blacked out? Starting at 1st-Level is daunting, but given enough thought, can be as dramatic as 20th-level play.

Treasure. Vane’s Cloak of Elvenkind is how she has survived a season in open stone. The crew’s takings sit in a strongbox beneath the western anchor: 60 gp, a handful of silver, and a tally of everyone who has paid, including two names your players will hear again.

Conclusion. The road is open, and the characters arrive with a reputation ahead of them. If Vane got away, she knows this country better than they do, and now she has a reason to use it.

What Hangs Below (2nd Level)

Hook. A collared cat lounges on the rocks as the characters approach. It leads them to the ravine where it looks down to a wagon strung up in a heap of web. Its collar matches the colour of the wagon.

Background. A wagon of provisions were meant to arrive in town last week, but the only thing to return was the wagon driver’s cat. When locals followed the cat back to the ravine, they found the wagon and its contents strung up in a heap of web in the ravine, and refused to enter the hazardous ravine to find out of the wagon driver was alive or not.

An ettercap has claimed the underside of the bridge and strung the ravine with web. It takes travellers off the deck, wraps them, and hangs them in the dark to keep. Giant spiders nest below it and do the killing when it wants a meal.

Read the following when the characters reach the bridge:

The planks are sound and the rail is whole, but the ropes are furred with grey silk, and the silk goes down. Twenty feet under the deck, long wrapped shapes hang in the web, writhing though no wind touches them. One of them is still moving.

The Monsters

For a weak party: 1 Ettercap and 1 Giant Spider

For an average party: 1 Ettercap and 2 Giant Spiders

For a strong party: 1 Ettercap, 2 Giant Spiders, and 1 Swarms of Insects (spiders)

Running the Encounter

Web sheets the underside of the span and the first 15 feet of both walls. Webbed surfaces are difficult terrain, and a creature that enters one or starts its turn there must succeed on a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or be restrained. Escaping takes a DC 12 Strength check, and the web itself has AC 10, 5 hit points, and vulnerability to fire.

The ettercap waits beneath the deck and shoots its web up through the plank gaps at anyone crossing. The spiders climb the walls and join on the round after the first character is restrained.

Cutting Them Loose. Two web cocoons are hung beneath the bridge, and another two are tucked closely to the wagon. Freeing one takes an action and a slashing attack against AC 12, 5 hit points — and whatever is inside falls unless somebody catches it. Three hold bones. The fourth holds the barely living wagon driver (Commoner).

Treasure. Wound into the highest cocoon, still on the feet of a climber who nearly got out, is a pair of Slippers of Spider Climbing. The wagon below contains 350gp worth of provisions for the nearby town; products for a general goods store, and new tankards and bottles of wine for a tavern.

Conclusion. If the wagon driver lives, he can give good word to the townsfolk about their deeds, granting them some hefty discounts at his brother’s general goods store, or free lodgings at his best friend’s tavern. If he dies but the characters arrive in town with the provisions, the locals will have a suspicious eye on them during their stay.

Oh, and the cat? Your players will obviously want to adopt it.

The Wrong Shadow (3rd Level)

Hook. The ravine stinks of corpses. On the rocks below are several travellers who, at first glance, fell to the depths. But their wounds don’t make sense for a fall; their chests have been torn open, and their hearts are missing. A drop does not do that.

Background. Perytons nest on a ledge forty feet down the eastern wall, out of sight of the road. They hunt the crossing because the crossing delivers: anything on the span is exposed, off balance, and thirty feet above hard ground.

Read the following when the characters reach the middle of the span:

The shadow that falls across the planks is a man’s, with arms out and head bowed. But nothing above you is shaped like a man. The wind carries a smell like dried meat and blood.

The Monsters

For a weak party: 2 Perytons

For an average party: 3 Perytons

For a strong party: 4 Perytons and 1 Swarm of Ravens

Two perytons dive from above, one to each side of the span. Any others come up out of the nest ledge on the second round.

Running the Encounter

The perytons open with Dive Attack on whichever character stands farthest from cover, and they aim to unseat rather than kill. A peryton will take a falling meal over a standing fight every time.

Off the Rail. The peryton trying to knock a character off the bridge takes the shove action instead of attacking.

Treasure. The nest ledge is reachable with sixty feet of rope and a steady hand. Among a season’s worth of bones lies a Ring of Feather Falling, a heavy crossbow, 15 crossbow bolts, a halberd, and a broken pistol. There is also 1d8 peryton eggs the size of ostrich eggs. These can be sold for 15gp each to a chef, or 60gp to a collector.

Conclusion. Someone in town has been waiting on one of those travellers, an outlaw known for waylaying lone travellers with his pistol. Now that his death is confirmed, the townmaster offers a reward for the party’s heroics.

The Broken Span (4th Level)

Hook. Smoke on the eastern ridge, and the road ahead is quiet in a way roads are not. Somebody is closing the only crossing between the characters and the town.

Background. A band of orcs wants to cut off a town from an important trade route to force its locals to surrender their goods for mercy. They’re here to destroy the bridge, and won’t let anyone stop them.

Read the following when the characters reach the western bank:

Orcs squat in the rocks on the far bank with axes across their knees, in no hurry at all. On the bridge itself, an ogre stands over the eastern anchor with a felling maul, working the way a man works at firewood. The post is splintered halfway through. It looks up at you, and it keeps swinging.

The Monsters

For a weak party: 1 Ogre and 2 Orcs

For an average party: 1 Ogre and 3 Orcs

For a strong party: 1 Ogre, 4 Orcs

Running the Encounter

The ogre does not fight the characters while the post still stands. Each round it goes unengaged, it deals 15 damage to an anchor, then moves to the next one when that anchor drops. The orcs’ whole job is to keep anyone from reaching it.

Treasure. A Javelin of Lightning is strapped across the ogre’s back, taken off someone who did not want to give it up. In the lead orc’s pack is a road map with three crossings circled and two already struck through.

Conclusion. These orcs are only a small sect of a larger tribe who are experts at tracking down prey. Any evidence the characters leave on the scene gives the orcs a lead to finding them later in your campaign.

After the Crossing

The party carry something from one of these encounters into your starting town of the campaign. The townsfolk may mention the problems from one encounter, and the characters have the opportunity to reap the rewards.

Support the Creators

Ian Arguilles
What do Ian, a hydra, and a hat rack have in common? They all wear many hats. Ian freelances across copywriting, short fiction, and RPG design. If you’d rather just hear him ramble about telling better stories at the table, look for Unfound Fables on Instagram.

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