1st level encounter?

[denthor]

You hired by a cavan to go through the valley of the sun.

Of late caravans have been attacked by humans. Well known on both sides of the 4 day route.

As the DM the pc group starts with no alignment. The encounter sets the stage for that.

There is at least one NPC chaotic evil barbarian. There could be others depending on the party the of them the less NPCS needed.

Caravan starts on day 2 your attacked. A group of people rush from both sides starting 90 feet away. 2 rounds till inpact. The barbarian NPC frenzied at attack kills.

DC 10 spot check sees no armor or weapons on attackers

DC 15 see a cleric of pelor normally (NG) he is crossing to
CN does not cast spells since this his plan to get the flock to the afterlife, cheerleadering the charge. Any one taking a full round spot gets a check.

If you take one of the attackers a live you find out DC 5 depomacy or DC 20 intimidate . The people are trying to get someone to kill them so the can get to the afterlife. They have 4 hit points some have less due to age.

PC actions dictate good, nuetral or evil.

How would you tweak this encounter. Is something you could make work.

[Albions_Angel]

Dont make them totally unarmed. Unarmed attackers would be fairly obvious - far more so than your DCs. But by all means, give them poor weapons though. Thrown rocks, farmers implements. Treat them as improvised weapons dealing 1d4 (thrown) or 1d6 dmg. No one is taking a group of totally unarmed "attackers" seriously.

Honestly, I wonder if the premise is a little much. The NPC frenzy barbarian can easily party wipe if they try and stop him. Even if you try and pull your punches. Maybe drop him? The whole point of frenzy is he cant control his actions, so even making him evil is sort of unnecessary. Presumably he is there to be a "thats what evil is, guys" type lesson?

The problem is, you risk making this too obscure for the party. Either they are playing real world, in which case they see unarmed attackers, and either assume its A) some sort of trick, in which case they defend themselves and their caravan with violence, which isnt evil, just a little bit reactionary, or b) not a real attack, in which case they knock them out and leave them. OR they are playing with a D&D mindset, in which case they have been hired to protect a caravan against attack, and oh look, some free XP has turned up to attack them. Also not evil as its literally what the DM expects of them (or so they will think), and making them evil after that is a bit of a silly move.

Think of it like this. How many ways do a party of 4 level 1 pcs, probably somewhere in the region of Barbarian/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric, have to peacefully stop an attack from 2 sides AND quell a barbarian in rage? At level 1, even a raging barbarian is going to struggle to grapple reliably, and only one thing at a time. I can count the rogues that actually take a sap at level 1 on the fingers of NO hands. Cleric at level 1 has buff spells/healing spells/self buff spells 99% of the time. That leaves the wizard. If they took sleep, fantastic! Maybe they took colour spray? Well thats a couple of shots at 3 or 4 on each side, but what if they took magic missile twice? Trying to make a non-lethal attack with lethal weapons is at -4 attack, which will hurt a level 1 party. Basically, this isnt going to work, and some, if not all, of those attackers are going to die, which leaves you with either saying "they were justified, good and neutral alignments all round", or "well they murdered innocent people, evil for everyone!"

The ONLY way this works, is if you tell your party "yeah, this will affect your alignment. Pick it now, on the fly, and either kill them, or dont."

[The Kool]

Don't require the spot check to take a full round. Have it be a part of the initial observation, and if they want more information then they have to spend actions observing. Agree with everything A_A said, but also... the premise of the cleric seems a bit sketchy. To be totally honest, he sounds evil and I guarantee your players will think so too. I suggest an alternative...

The farmers are being persuaded that the only way into the afterlife is by dying gloriously in battle. Sucks for them that this cleric of 'Pelor' is actually a cleric of Nerull. He cares nothing for their souls and only wants them to off themselves so he has corpses to make his undead minions. (It doesn't matter that he's not high enough level to create undead minions yet. The players won't know that, and he'll never get the chance). A high spot check would show no symbol of Pelor on his person, despite him crying out things in Pelor's name. A knowledge: religion check (DC 15?) would identify religious garb of a follower of Nerull. Let the players make the connection, but an Intimidate check would convince him to talk.

There's a clear Good and Evil course of action here. Make it apparent that the farmers are acting in the name of a good deity and are walking into the slaughterhouse by taking on this fellow sellsword in your caravan. The Good action is to spare their lives. The Evil action is to let them die. Consider that your players may take a completely unexpected direction, for example, and try to work with the cleric. Maybe they side with the sellsword and want to murder everything. If you want to make the sellsword a high example of evil, make him a level 1 rogue instead of a barbarian. Not so great in an up front fight, but can competently help if needed. After the fight though, he's ready and willing to start slitting throats and will do so if not stopped.