🌊 Fluid

The Journeyman — the fight

The climax of A Good Day to Die — her father’s oyster house, the book he was sent for, and the two she did not tell him about

At a glance

Who: Dalton, two archers and a caster. Four characters at 4th level, plus Thor from the end of round 1.
How long: ~45 minutes. Round 1 is four PCs against four bodies. Thor comes through the doors at the end of it.
How it ends: He walks out with the ledger, without it, or without a fight. He does not die for a route he only inherited, and he is not trying to kill anybody.
The one rule: While Thor is standing, neither of his exits fires. The party’s two cleanest ways out of this are switched off by the man helping them.
The fork: Did they take Dita’s deal? If they did, she is in the building and has three interventions. If they did not, the roster is the same and nobody is helping.

This page holds the statblocks, the tactics, the scaling and both morale clauses. The read-alouds, Thor’s whole arrangement and what happens after are on session 3’s prep read.

The roster

Dalton, the Journeyman

Medium humanoid — Gladiator (2014 MM), run as printed · boarding stave for the spear, no house tweaks

Armor Class16 Hit Points112 Speed30 ft CR5 (1,800 XP)

Str18 (+4) Dex15 (+2) Con16 (+3) Int10 (+0) Wis12 (+1) Cha15 (+2)

Saves Str +7, Dex +5, Con +6 · Skills Athletics +10, Intimidation +5 · Senses passive Perception 11.

Brave. Advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Actions

Multiattack. Three melee attacks, or two ranged.

Spear. +7 to hit, reach 5 ft or range 20/60 ft: 11 (2d6 + 4) piercing damage, or 7 (1d6 + 4) two-handed.

Shield Bash. +7 to hit, reach 5 ft: 9 (2d4 + 4) bludgeoning damage, and a Medium or smaller target must make a DC 15 Strength save or be knocked prone.

Reactions

Parry. +2 AC against one melee attack that would hit him. He must see the attacker and be holding a melee weapon.

He was a Veteran and he is not any more — changed 8/22/2026. CR 3, 58 hp and +5 to hit could not threaten this party, which is why the last two fights went the way they did. The Hook-haul house tweak is gone with it: Shield Bash already is that move, printed, and it does not need inventing.
He opens by putting the biggest person on the floor and standing on the prize. Shield Bash, then two spears into whoever is still up. After that he fights like a man who has done this for wages his whole life — positioning, prone, the doors at your back and never at his.
He goes for whoever is holding the book, and then for whoever is between him and it. He is not picking the weakest target; he is picking the one with the ledger.
He is here for the ledger, not for bodies. Nobody in this arc has died yet, on the shingle or in the alley, and he is not the one who changes that. He drops people and leaves them dropped. If the party insist on making it lethal, that is the party doing it.
Alive and talking is something they have to choose. It is not the default, nothing prompts it, and the fight does not pause to offer it — but he is the only person in the room who knows who sent him. The crew cannot answer it and do not pretend to.

Thor is a PC, not an NPC — a guest’s character for this fight only. He arrives at the end of round 1, not at the top of initiative. What he wants, what it costs to buy him, and why he is a trap as well as a help are on the prep read.

The archers (×2)

Medium humanoid — Scout (2014 MM), run as printed · no house tweaks

Armor Class13 Hit Points16 Speed30 ft CR1/2 (100 XP)

Keen Hearing and Sight. Advantage on Perception checks that rely on hearing or sight. · Skills Perception +5, Stealth +6, Survival +5.

Actions

Multiattack. Two longbow attacks: +4 to hit, range 150/600 ft, 6 (1d8 + 2) piercing damage. In melee, two shortsword attacks: +4 to hit, 5 (1d6 + 2) piercing.

16 hp each. They die to one good hit and they should. They are the reason the party cannot stand in the open, not a second fight.
They take the gantry and shoot whoever is casting. If the party close, they drop to shortswords rather than give ground — they are paid to keep people off him.
Morale: first one down and the other gives ground. Wage men, hired off the quay that morning. One who folds can be taken.

The caster

Medium humanoid — Cult Fanatic (2014 MM), run as printed · the same statblock as the two in the alley, and he has the same house action

Armor Class13 Hit Points33 Speed30 ft CR2 (450 XP)

Spellcasting. 4th-level caster, DC 11, +3 to hit. Spiritual weapon and hold person are the two that matter.

Actions

Multiattack. Two dagger attacks: +4 to hit, 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage.

The Pull. House action. One object a creature is holding, within 30 ft. The holder makes a DC 13 Dexterity save. On a fail the object tears loose and lands in the caster’s hand. On a success it hits the floor between them.

The Pull is why he is here, and it is the whole reason the caster earns his place. Dalton came to collect a book. He brought somebody who can take it off whoever is carrying it without going through four armed people first. Expect this in round 1.
He is the third one the party have met. Two stood in the alley in session 2 and nobody has decided who sends them. Do not decide it here.
Watch hold person. DC 11 is low and it lands rarely — but paralysed next to Dalton is every hit a critical, and Marellius has 26 hit points. This is the one thing at this table that can kill a PC tonight, and Dalton killing nobody does not cover it. If it lands and the maths goes bad, that is what Dita is for.
Morale: he leaves the moment he is able, with the book or without it, same as the alley.

If they took Dita’s deal — three interventions

She is in the building and she is not on the initiative order. No statblock, no turn, nothing to track. She has three interventions and you spend them when you want to — there is no trigger list, and she does not announce herself. Nobody sees a caster. Things simply happen.

She catches somebody at 0. The wound closes partway and they come back up on a few hit points. This is the valve that keeps nobody has died yet true at this difficulty, and it is the one to spend first.
She tears the ledger loose. The Pull, run backwards — the moment Dalton or the caster has the book it goes out of their hands and onto the floor. She is protecting her reading, not the party.
She takes a spell off the board. A hold person that should have landed does not, and the caster knows something in the room is working against him.
She buys a round back. The lamps go out, or Dalton is held where he stands for a turn. Spend it if Thor drops and the fight is about to end early.
Spend them on the party’s worst moment, not on a schedule. That is the whole point of her being a dial rather than a combatant: you find out mid-fight how hard this actually is, and you have three things to do about it.

She never appears and she is never a target. If the party go looking for her afterwards she has gone, and she will be at the corner table next week as though none of it happened.

Scaling

The full roster. Dalton 1,800 · two archers 200 · the caster 450 = 2,450 raw, ×2 for four bodies = 4,900 adjusted. Against four at 4th plus Thor — Easy 625 · Medium 1,250 · Hard 1,875 · Deadly 2,500. That is 196% of Deadly, and both the 2014 DMG and Improved Initiative read it the same way.
Read the raw number too. 2,450 raw sits just under Deadly 2,500 on its own. Everything above that is the ×2 multiplier, which exists to model action economy — and here the party have the action advantage: five turns a round against four. Three quarters of the raw XP is one creature, so the multiplier is doubling a problem that is not in this room.
Round 1 is the hard part, and no budget model can see it. Thor is not there yet, so it opens four against four: 4,900 against a four-character Deadly of 2,000, or 245% for one round. The party have to survive the opening, not win it.
Check it with damage instead. They put out about 41 a round if everything hits — 31 of it Dalton, concentrated on one person. The party hold 156 hit points across the four; the roster holds 177. Four rounds, both sides burning down at about the same rate.
The one real danger is Marellius. 26 hp, AC 12. Dalton hits AC 12 on a 5, so a full multiattack on him is about 26 expected damage — he drops in one round if Dalton picks him. That is not a balance fault, it is the thing to know before you sit down.
Four brakes the number cannot see. Thor at the end of round 1 · Dita’s three interventions, if they took the deal · Dalton leaving below 30 hp rather than fighting to the death · Dalton not trying to kill anybody.
Scale the crew, never him. One route, one man who inherited it. Drop an archer for a lighter night — 2,350 raw, 4,700 adjusted, which barely moves because it is all multiplier. Adding bodies is the wrong dial; the danger here is one man, on purpose.
The fifth chair is one chair. Thor is the only fifth, the same arrangement Yargin Brightwood had in session 1. The table never reaches six, so Improved Initiative’s party-size shift never fires.

Environment

Dita names the ground, and it is her father’s. Losam Ferrante is the wealthiest man in Onda and an oysterman, and the oyster house on the quay is his. She has a key to it because of who she is, and she does not explain further. If they refused the deal, it is the same building anyway: Dalton picks it, for the same reasons she would have, and they walk in without knowing the room or whose it is. Nothing else about the fight changes between the two branches.

The Ferrante oyster house — on the quay, loading doors open onto the pier

Cover everywhere, and it is the reason the party live. Stacked baskets and crates in rows, seawater tanks on trestles, salt in sacks on pallets, a cargo net. Half cover almost anywhere on the floor. Three of the four shoot or cast — standing in the open is how this fight is lost.
A gantry along one wall, ten feet up, reached by a ladder at each end. The archers take it in round 1. Anyone who wants them has to climb.
The loading doors stand open onto the pier. Daylight in a long slot across the floor, water past it, and a drop off the end. That is Dalton’s exit, and everyone leaves by it when he does.
A stack can be brought down on somebody — AC 13 · 15 hp, the same numbers as the board on the strand and the crates in the alley. Either side can do it, and the archers will if the party crowd the ladder.
Nobody comes. It is a working quay at a working hour and there are people fifty feet away, and not one of them walks into a Ferrante building uninvited. Onda does what Onda does.
Dita is up there somewhere, if they dealt with her. Do not place her, do not describe her, and do not let anyone find her.
Whether the Ferrantes find out is a lever, and it is not pulled tonight. Somebody wrecked Losam’s oyster house and his daughter arranged it. Nothing in this session resolves that — see Story Beats.

Environment prompt the warehouse

Generate an image that is a D&D battle map in 16-bit pixel art, in the style of Chrono Trigger. Overhead view of an oyster warehouse interior on a harbour quay, in daylight. Rows of stacked shellfish baskets and crates, long wooden seawater tanks on trestles, sacks of salt on pallets, a cargo net, a raised wooden gantry along one wall with a ladder at each end, wide loading doors standing open onto a pier with water beyond. Dusty light in a slot across the floor. No people.

How it ends — two exits, both shut while Thor stands

He leaves when the job is over, and there are two ways for it to be over. Neither of them is killing him.

Burn the ledger in front of him. There is nothing left to collect and no reason to be in the room. He goes.
Put him below 30 hp with the ledger out of reach. The arithmetic stops working and he is a professional. The floor moved from 15 with the statblock — 15 out of 112 is not a morale clause, it is a death, and he does not die for a route he inherited.
The crew breaking does not move him. They are wages and he is a contract. Losing both archers and the caster costs him the room, not the job.

Both are suspended while Thor is on his feet. He does not walk away from this man twice, in front of people, whatever it costs him. If Thor drops, both clauses come back on mid-fight, and a table that works that out has found the real lever.

He walks out with it. Legitimate. The choice becomes a different conversation, and a shorter one.
He walks out without it. The party hold the ledger and have to decide what it is for.
They keep him alive and talking. Only if they choose it out loud, and it is the one thing in this room that answers who sent him.
They kill him. Allowed, and it closes that question for good. Nobody in this arc has died yet; let the table notice that they are the ones who changed it.