If you get the daylight robber quest, but then side with the merchants...
You can return and report back the results, either by lying and saying they had an escort of soldiers and mages, or by technically telling the truth (I was the only one that survived, etc), but leaving out specific details so that he assumes the seekers had sent an escort. I was hoping he would turn hostile, or something.

I'm pretty sure I did get experience raiding the bandit camp, though not a lot. There was some random low level loot.