Classic Monster Themed Bandits

>a bandit crew like pic related that is themed after "classic" D&D monsters

What would they be like?

Little John would probably be an ogre?

Think about it a little deeper. Here, I'll start with a thought I had.

>Owlbear
A large half-orc man from a rough city. Never quite seems like he's enjoying himself. He wears a set of hide armor that he attached hundreds, maybe thousands of feathers to, and an owl mask for robberies. When things get rough, and weapons are drawn, he draws none; he wrestles and throws opponents like the beast he emulates. His favorite thing to do is grab people in a bear hug (or rather, an owlbear hug) and squeeze the breath out of them while headbutting with his beaked mask. He's not in this gang of bandits because of the money or the fame, he's in it because it's the only place he can let out his aggression.

> the DM tries to shoe-horn a thinly-veiled anachronistic reference.

How about you just be fucking honest with your players and make it almost identical except for a few name changes instead of disguising your creative impotence as experimentation with the setting.

Why the aggression? This is just a random idea I had for a goofy bandit encounter, which most likely will only show up in a one-off session, if at all. I get it if you don't like the idea, but what's the point in getting argumentative about it?

> random throw-away idea for a goofy bandit encounter.

I see. So you wish to use it as Filler.

I mean, yeah, pretty much. Half of our group is out of town camping and our next gaming session is gonna be us taking turns DMing one-offs. So, yeah, it's pretty much filler, since we can't do our regular games. I didn't realize that was wrong. I apologize.

If it's filler, we need to discuss what level of interaction your players can expect from these NPCs if it's a one off.

It is unlikely that these bandits will serve as anything more than a momentary distraction.

I was toying with the idea of the players being sent out by some rumors that a pack of monsters was out harassing traveling merchants and destroying/stealing stuff from travelling nobles in the forest between two towns. Party goes to investigate it, and it turns out that the "monsters" were actually a gang of bandits that themed themselves after notable monsters, like the owlbear, beholder, bulette, rust monster, etc, etc. Naturally there would be little hints here and there that denoted the rumors weren't completely true (nobleman who was attacked: "It was like a rust monster... but it walked like man!"), but that was the skeletal idea. Keeping in mind this literally just popped into my head around three hours ago.

Man, this dude be crazy mad