Welcome to my first attempt at creating a series of levelled encounters built around the same battlemap premise. In this Encounter map, I intended to set up a classic bandit ambush on a forest road. The Encounter ideas are scaled up for different level parties and are of course subject to DM discretion. The purpose of these posts is not to provide perfectly balanced encounters, but to give a variety of challenging encounters for your players. I don’t often follow the Challenge Rating system from 5e and prefer to design exciting and challenging match ups for players, using elements of Matt Colville’s Action-orientated monsters as well as the use of hazards, traps, terrain and dynamic environmental events. If you feel the encounters are too difficult or not difficult enough, it is up to you as a DM to alter the encounter as you see fit to match your party.