The Strand Fight
Every rule, statblock and number for the fight on the shingle — written once, for both the session that sets it up and the session that runs it.
At a glance
- Who
- The Ino of Emil Varga (×1) and the Refused (×5). Four characters at 4th level, plus Yargin from round two.
- How long
- ~45 minutes. Round one is him alone; the Refused arrive in round two.
- How it ends
- Not by killing him. Three moorings hold the board to the pier, and all three have to be severed — however the party manages it.
- The one rule
- He does not stay down. Dropping him is not the same as being finished with him.
This page holds the statblocks, the targeting, the roster maths and the three moorings that end the fight, and it is the only place any of that is written down. The read-alouds, the Developments and Yargin are on session 1’s prep read. Set up in session 0, fought in session 1.
The roster
The Ino of Emil Varga
Reskin of the Wight (MM) · Medium undead, neutral evil · one house tweak, below
Damage Resistances necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren’t silvered · Damage Immunities poison · Condition Immunities exhaustion, poisoned · Skills Perception +3, Stealth +4 · Senses darkvision 60 ft, passive Perception 13.
Sunlight Sensitivity. While in sunlight, he has disadvantage on attack rolls and on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Actions
Multiattack. He makes two attacks with Cooper’s Hands. He can use Life Drain in place of one of them.
Cooper’s Hands. Melee attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target. Hit: 6 (1d8 + 2) bludgeoning damage. (The Wight’s longsword, reflavoured — he is not carrying anything.)
Life Drain. Melee attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target. Hit: 5 (1d6 + 2) necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or its hit point maximum is reduced by the damage taken. The reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest, and the target dies if its hit point maximum drops to 0.
House tweak — He does not stay down. He takes damage and drops normally. At the end of the round in which he reaches 0 hit points, he stands back up at full hit points, and does so again every round, because he is still moored. He keeps getting up until all three moorings are severed.
- Goes for whoever is being noticed — whoever is speaking, then whoever is loudest, then whoever is visibly grieving. Work down that list and you never have to improvise a target.
- Ignores anyone silent and still, so he ignores the crowd. A character who stands still and stops speaking is safe, and should be allowed to work that out.
- He does not finish downed targets. He wants to be noticed and an unconscious person is not looking.
- No morale. He does not flee and does not stop. Fight him like a body — 45 hit points, killable, no gate, nothing to track.
The Refused (×5 — three for the stones, two for Yargin)
Reskin of the Shadow (MM) · Medium undead, chaotic evil · one house tweak
Damage Vulnerabilities radiant · Damage Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks · Damage Immunities necrotic, poison · Condition Immunities exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained · Skills Stealth +4 (+6 in dim light or darkness) · Senses darkvision 60 ft, passive Perception 10.
Amorphous. Can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing.
Shadow Stealth. While in dim light or darkness, it can take the Hide action as a bonus action.
Sunlight Weakness. While in sunlight, it has disadvantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws.
Actions
Strength Drain. Melee attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft, one target. Hit: 9 (2d6 + 2) necrotic damage, and the target’s Strength score is reduced by 1d4. The target dies if this reduces its Strength to 0. Otherwise the reduction lasts until the target finishes a short or long rest.
- What they want is the bread, oldest first — three for the offering stones, two for the loaf in Yargin’s fist. They ignore anyone not between them and it, and a character can simply hand one an offering and it will take it and go.
- Each leaves the moment it has what it came for and does not come back. They are gone or going by the time he drops — do not carry them into what comes after.
- They are queueing, not attacking. That is the tell.
- Nobody dies to these. If a character is two failed rolls from Strength 0, have the nearest Refused take its bread and walk away. Losing this is a setback, not a funeral — see Failure & Setbacks.
Scaling
Four at 4th — the Ino (700) + 3× the Refused (300) = 1,000 raw, ×2 for four creatures = 2,000 adjusted. Hard, right on the Deadly line.
Five at 4th — add two more Refused: 1,200 raw, ×2 for six creatures = 2,400 adjusted. Hard, a hundred short of Deadly. Same statblock, same wave, no new rules mid-fight.
Six creatures is the ceiling. At seven the multiplier steps to ×2.5 and the same roster reads 3,250 — well over Deadly for five. That is the whole reason the patch is two Refused and not anything more interesting.
If Yargin does not show, cut his two — back to 2,000 for four and nothing else changes. Fragile table of five: run four Refused, 2,200 adjusted.
The fifth chair is one chair. Yargin is the only fifth here; Thor takes the same chair in session three. The table never reaches six.
Environment
- Light. Six iron cressets down the water’s edge, spaced so the pools of light never quite meet. Beyond them it is fully dark.
- Footing. Wet shingle at the top, packed sand below. Nothing is difficult terrain. Twenty feet out is shin-deep, forty feet is over your head, and past forty is swimming.
- Cover. The board, the offering stones, three upturned boats, the cressets. Half cover almost anywhere near the water. No verticality — flat strand, a low sea wall behind, stone steps up to the quay at either end.
- The board is against the pier, stove in along one side and still made fast, half out of the water where it struck. Nobody put it there and nobody has been near it since. The lamps are twenty feet out, shin-deep, still floating, and they went dark one at a time — scenery now, and nothing the party have to do anything about.
- The crowd is terrain, not a mob. Two hundred people trained at nine to hold still. They do not scream, do not run, cannot be panicked or moved, and never help. Hard to move through, silent throughout.
Environment prompt
Generate an image that is a D&D battle map in 16-bit pixel art, in the style of Chrono Trigger. Overhead view of a fishing port town at night. Sandy beach, a long wooden pier, a low stone sea wall, upturned boats, torches along the water’s edge. Dark calm water. No people.
What the crowd does — roll or pick when the fight wants a beat that is not a die roll, and once more while they are taking the rite apart.
| d6 | What two hundred silent people do while you take a rite apart |
|---|---|
| 1 | Nothing. Not one of them moves. That is worse. |
| 2 | Someone at the front starts calling the claims over again, badly, from the beginning, to fill the gap. |
| 3 | A man puts a hand out to stop you getting at the pier, thinks better of it, and lets go without a word. |
| 4 | A child laughs — once — and is hushed hard enough to hear. |
| 5 | Three of them turn their backs. Not on the dead. On you. |
| 6 | A low sound goes through the whole crowd at once, and stops. |
How it ends — three moorings, severed however they manage it
Killing him does not end it. At the end of the round in which he reaches 0 hit points he stands back up at full, and does so again every round. The board he was cast off on is still made fast to the pier in three places — the three claims that were called over him and answered — and while any of them holds, he is still moored.
| The mooring | Called by | Where it is made fast |
|---|---|---|
| The work line | Otto Rask | Round the head of the pier, where the decking meets the sea wall. |
| The debt line | Ma Silva | An iron ring set into the pier, halfway along. |
| The kin line | Isa Varga | The last post at the seaward end, out over deep water. |
Sever all three and he is done. That is the whole ending. There is no check written for it and no single right answer — how they do it is theirs to work out.
- Physically. Break, lever, burn or cut away the point where a line is made fast. The pier is salt-rotted wood above the tide line and nobody on the strand will stop them.
- Or religiously. A spell, a rite, or a claim called properly by somebody with the standing to call it. If a player reaches for this, it works.
- Say yes to anything inventive. The beat is the party taking a man’s funeral apart in front of two hundred people and his daughter. It is not a puzzle with a solution, and it should never come down to whether they guessed the written answer.
The lines themselves cannot be cut. A blade goes through, there is no resistance at all, and the line is still there. Describe it exactly the first time anyone tries — one beat, and it teaches the whole thing and points them at the pier.
Once he gets back up, stop rolling initiative. The Refused are gone or going, the crowd is silent, and what follows is not a second fight. Read read aloud 3.
- All three go. Read aloud 4, and he is finished.
- They get two and stall. Speaker Dol does the last one herself — a woman who has presided at this rite for thirty years undoing it with her own hands, in front of the port. It costs her publicly, and she is the one who hands over the fourth mooring fifteen minutes later.
- They cannot manage it at all. The dawn ending — see Failure & Setbacks. Nobody dies on the shingle.
- Isa will physically try to stop them at the kin line, and only that one. DC 13 Strength (Athletics) to get past her, or a word, free, from anyone who let her talk about her father last week. One beat, not a scene.
- If they burn the pier, it works, and Onda will remember which of them set a fire under a man’s funeral in front of his daughter.