Disposable Bandits

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[Y]ou can kill smugglers and bandits and other outlaws all you like. Outlaws have no rights. Plenty of adventurers make a living from killing and looting outlaws. —Arrille, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Groups of bandits are very popular picks for the lowest power human(oid) enemies in the Sorting Algorithm of Evil in fantasy and Post Apocalyptic fiction. Their motivation is straightforward and requires little explanation, they can come from anywhere, and, while armed combatants, bandits rarely have significant combat skill and generally only have actual training if they began as military deserters (in which case their training is generally still minimal) making them some the weakest willing combatants possible. Even more important is that, unless they style themselves as champions of the poor, Disposable Bandits have absolutely no legal or social protection and the only people who have a problem with killing bandits are other bandits, so the heroes are free to slaughter them as they wish. These factors make bandits excellent Starter Villains and Random Encounters. Random encounter bandits are especially frequent in trader simulator type games as they provide reason to include combat, with space based ones using Space Pirates, while those focused on naval operations use the normal kind of Pirate. Wide Open Sandbox games are fond of this trope as well, since bandits provide an easy target for the player to kill without angering any factions, and it makes sense for them to drop usable equipment.

In tabletop games and video games it's almost always accepted for characters that slay these bandits to take possession of everything they had on them and/or stashed in their hideout, no matter how much of it is presumed stolen, and sell it for themselves without making a serious effort to to find the original owner. The only exception is when they've explicitly been tasked with retrieving a specific item or it literally has the true owner's identity indicated on it, and even then everything else in the hoard is fair game.

If these bandits are stupid enough to try attacking someone who winds up clearly overpowering them, they're Mugging the Monster. Despite the similar titles, will not necessarily have any Bandit Mooks.

Examples of Disposable Bandits include:

Anime and Manga

• All over the place in early and filler parts of Fist of the North Star. Virtually all of them are stupid enough to charge at the guy who just made their friends explode with a touch. They decrease in frequency as Kenshiro starts fighting the forces of the major villains instead, though the only real difference those new minions have is sometimes making their futile attack out of fear of/loyalty to their superiors rather than stupidity.
• A running gag in Slayers is Lina easily disposing of such, but being a Destructive Savior to the point many actually fear her more than the bandits.
• One Piece's very first villain was Higuma the Bear, the leader of a clan of mountain bandits that protagonist Monkey D. Luffy encountered as a young boy. While he and his crew do leave an impact on the plot, it's due to them serving as a three-fer plot device: we get to see how badass Luffy's mentor Shanks and his pirate crew are by watching them effortlessly wipe the floor with them, they're indirectly responsible for Shanks losing his one of his arms, and they're also indirectly responsible for him giving Luffy his iconic straw hat. Higuma and at least one other bandit are also the series' first confirmed fatalities, with the former being Eaten Alive by a terrifying sea monster and the latter getting shot out of nowhere by one of Shanks' men. This wouldn't be noteworthy if it wasn't for the fact that it's very rare for villains to outright die in this series (or any character outside of flashbacks, for that matter).
• As one would expect from a Post Apocalyptic Adventure Series, After War Gundam X features several groups of bandits who prey on the weak and get killed by the heroes. They're not as omnipresent as most series of this type however.

Tabletop Games

• Very common in low level Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder modules.
  • The entire first book of Kingmaker has the player characters slaughter loads of bandits, most of whom aren't given names with even their leader Only Known by Their Nickname "The Stag Lord" (he wears a deer themed helmet).
  • The third party Legendary Beginnings adventure series starts with The Bandit's Cave which, as the name implies, has the player characters tracking down the cave that some orc bandits are using as a base. The series is aimed at introducing new players to the medium and genre, and deliberately uses such a stereotypical beginner's quest as part of it.

Video Games

• Fights against bandits in early levels are a staple of most Fire Emblem games.
  • Interestingly, Fire Emblem: Three Houses plays this trope straight and subverts it. While bandit leader Kostas is basically a throwaway Starter Villain (as is fellow bandit leader Pallardo, who kicks off the game's Time Skip), every conflict in this game has its roots in the actions of Nemesis, former Disposable Bandit turned genocidal warlord responsible for the murder of the goddess Sothis and the near-extinction of her children. While he doesn't factor into most of the game's routes, he's the Final Boss of the Verdant Wind route where he returns from the dead as a zombified berserker and proves to be every bit as dangerous as the game's other final bosses.
• Common in The Elder Scrolls. One of the first NPCs the player meets in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind even outright tells the player such criminals have no rights under Imperial law.
  • The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a possible exception, as it never actually bothers to clarify just what those hostile humans in non-plot dungeons are doing there. The ones you fight in quests that are identified as bandits are also members of the Thieves Guild, and completing too many quests in opposition to them will lower your reputation with the guild and make it impossible to join (or get you kicked out if you are a member already). The only other consequences to angering the guild are flavor only to minor (shortcuts in a few possible quests).
• Bandit parties in Mount & Blade are generally the weakest non-civilian party on the world map and, unlike civilians, nothing negative happens if you kill them. After the early game groups of "deserters" start spawning, which are functionally identical except for being stronger fighters.
• In Warcraft III, bandits are a common type of unaligned creep. They can "Shadowmeld" to turn invisible at night, and the stronger ones have some tricks, but generally are no match for a hero with decent backup.
• Raiders appear as random encounters in every Fallout game.
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance, like most open-world RPGs, features bandits the player can slaughter for gear and money early game. Taking on a whole camp directly isn't advised, even late game, but compared to the forces of the invading army they're easily disposed of.
• Pirates are a frequent random encounter when sailing between ports in Taipan! and its Spiritual Successor Tradewinds
• Generic, unaffiliated, pirates are a common Random Encounter when sailing in Sid Meier's Pirates! and can be hunted as a way to gain booty without taking on a national government. One unique aspect of the game's implementation is that ships encountered are not automatically identified, and sticking around to identify a ship decreases the odds you'll be able to get away or have initiative in the fight, but attacking straight away runs the risk of biting off more than you can chew and attacking other-wise non-hostile targets, possibility to the extent of starting a fight with a nation.
• Dragon's Dogma is another open world RPG where bandits prowl the wilderness. Pawns will gladly remind you "They're armed master!"
• The bandit "faction" in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl serves no purpose but to be killed and looted. The sequels expand them to a full faction the player can even join, but they're still the safest faction that isn't hostile by default to pick a fight with.
• The multiple bandit factions of Kenshi nominally have a factional relationship value tracked, but they are all hostile by default and have no way to raise their disposition (short of an exploit) so you lose nothing for attacking them. Unlike most examples, they're actually reasonably competent in a fight and difficult for a starting character to solo, and require thought for even reasonably strong characters to solo without kiting.