Minor Correction: Stats are *not* 4d6b3 straight down. It's free assignment, but you must assign them immediately. IE: "I rolled a 9, my character is a Merchant, I'm going to put that 9 in STR.", so you can take a small risk ("This 15 is good, but I'm really holding out for a 16 for my CHA"), and then do your swap at the end (Say, if that 16 never showed up and now your Merchant's best stat is AGL). It even says in page 24 "Assign that score to an Attribute of your choice".

14:40 I think you get to choose any of the conditions, it doesn't have to be tied to the action at hand.

There's no encounter builder because that's not how OSR style things work. You use the monsters that make sense for the setting, for the environment, for the story. Randomize them if you like but there's no math to do. If you think that the bandit group has 3-6 bandits then it has 1d4+2. Doesn't matter how many PCs, doesn't matter how experienced they are. The bandits have 3-6 members.

Quack Quack Quack