Ghouls are the only monster on the Lost Mine of Phandelver’s Wilderness Encounters table (Chapter 3: The Spider’s Web) that does not call for a daytime encounter, and I approve! These are creatures of the night, and they’ll make for a more memorable encounter when they go bump in the dark.

That being said, there’s no harm in putting ghouls on the party’s radar with a daytime non-combat encounter.

The roadside grass is churned to mud around a shallow pit, its edges clawed and ragged. A burial shroud, ripped and filthy, lies crumpled nearby, amongst dislocated skeletal remains. The bones have been gnawed clean and cracked for their marrow. Above the desecrated grave, the air is black with flies. A faint path of trampled grass and scattered soil leads away into the wilds.

There’s some opportunities for skill checks to get the players rolling some dice. If you want to give characters an opportunity to shine, limit the checks to those who are proficient in skills that might be useful in examining the site, raising the possibility that ghouls are afoot:

• How often do we as Dungeon Master’s call for Wisdom (Medical) checks? Give the good doctor at your table a chance to shine! Perhaps a DC 12 Wisdom (Medical) check notes that the teeth marks gouged into the bones look more humanoid than animal. Or perhaps one of the ghouls lost one of their gnarly black claws while digging in the earth, further evidence that it was no carrion animal that dug up the body.
• There’s a faint path of trampled grass to follow away from the site of the desecrated roadside grave. Every so often, the trail produces a clawed, humanoid footprint. A successful DC 12 Wisdom (Survival) check or DC 12 Intelligence (Nature) check is sufficient to suss out that whatever humanoid made the tracks, they appear to be feral. If a character proficient in Intelligence (Religion) identifies the tracks as such, or simply overhears a conversation between other characters about these findings, perhaps they’re able to put 2+2 together and – without need for a roll – ascertain from the evidence on hand that this grave desecration was the work of ghouls.

Let’s be mutuals over on Bluesky! If you’re interested, I’m @ticklecorn.bsky.social. I always follow back.

If you’d like to support my work, please consider checking out my supplements for Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak over on Dungeon Master’s Guild! All of my titles are Free/PWYW offerings.