Encounter one: The Toll at Sarn Ford¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
The first fight of the quickstart, built almost entirely from weak bodies so the core loop does the teaching. It exercises the bank-and-push exchange, the Company-soaks-first rule, Guard against a wave, the arm-versus-leg Wound choice, and a single stronger leader worth killing out of order. Statted to the benchmark party (Knight, Skirmisher, Ranger, Witch at Level 1: Pool 14, Depth 43). Scale it with the recipe in 06-gm-guidance/level-1-encounter-budget.
The scene¶
A shallow river crossing at dusk. A brigand company has strung a chain across the ford and wants everything the party carries to pass. Bowmen wait on the far bank. The cutthroats and their captain block the water itself. And two black hounds pace the reeds on the near bank, too cold-eyed and too quiet to be dogs.
The captain thinks he caught himself a pair of war-prizes. He does not know what leashing a Barghest invites, and that is the encounter's one wrong note: a thread to pull, not a subplot to resolve here. A party that studies the hounds instead of the men will notice the reeds do not move where the hounds pass.
The map¶
Open ground, no chokepoint to anchor a shieldwall, which is the point. The river is difficult terrain, splitting the field so the Bowmen reach most of it from the far bank at Range 8. Clustering to stay shielded feeds the archers; spreading out to dodge the volley feeds the Speed-7 Barghests. There is no clean answer, only a bet.
A Double Sixes Shove into the current is worth setting up. The river counts as a hazard for the 1 damage, and footing in the water is a fair reason to rule a dropped weapon on a failed Finesse Check.
The roster (benchmark, Party Pool 14)¶
Stat blocks follow core-rules, Part Fourteen: Tier, Hit Points, Speed, Range, Keywords.
Bandit Cutthroat (×5). Trained (5-6), 2 Hit Points, Speed 6, Range 1. No keywords. The wave. Two Hits and down, the same as any levy. They cross the ford and reach the line on the second round.
Bandit Bowman (×3). Trained (5-6), 2 Hit Points, Speed 4, Range 8. No keywords. They fire from the far bank from the first round. They are the reason the party cannot simply turtle behind shields.
The Toll-Taker, Bandit Captain (×1). Veteran (4-6), 5 Hit Points, Speed 5, Range 1, Rend 2. Leads the band's die the way a Character leads a Company. His notched blade deals an indivisible 2 damage to one target, so he Falls a fresh Retainer in a single Hit. Rarely the most numerous threat, always the one worth watching.
Barghest (×2). Veteran (4-6), 3 Hit Points, Speed 7, Range 1. No keywords. Reused from 07-bestiary/orcs-and-barghests. Fast enough to cross the field and reach an exposed ranged Character in one turn once the Company screen thins.
Eleven bodies, 27 Hit Points, and 11 enemy dice against the party's 14.
How it plays¶
The party spends the first two rounds grinding the wave while their own Retainers Fall one or two at a time. The Bowmen chip at Cards the moment a Company screen opens. The Barghests and the Captain are the two threats a competent table kills first and out of order, because a Rend 2 blade and a Speed-7 flanker each do far more than a Cutthroat's die.
This is where the fundamentals become legible. Guard rewards a player who reads the wave and banks a Shieldbearer's Hit against the charge. Intercept is the Knight choosing to take a Barghest's bite so a Halberdier stands for the next fight. The arm-versus-leg choice matters differently on open ground than it would in a corridor, because a crippled leg strands a Retainer only when nothing is in reach, and on this map something usually is.
In simulation¶
Against the benchmark four across twenty thousand trials: the party wins effectively always, in about five rounds, losing between one and two Retainers, with a Character spending a Life in roughly one run in ten and never two Characters in the same fight. Real play runs a touch shorter and safer, because the simulation under-models the party's own tools (see the budget note for method and limits). This is the gentle end of challenging on purpose. It is the first fight.
The dials¶
Pool. For every point Party Pool sits above or below 14, add or remove one Cutthroat. A four-Knight party gets two more; a Warden-heavy party loses a few.
Tier, for tough parties. Past roughly Pool 18, stop adding Cutthroats and convert some into Barghests, or add a second Veteran body. A deep party clears weak bodies faster than they matter, so the fight has to gain Tier, not just length.
Depth, the reach dial. Against a shallow, Company-light party, cut the Bowmen to one and drop a Barghest, because Range 8 and Speed 7 land on unprotected Cards. Against a deep, shield-rich party, add a Bowman or a third Barghest, since their whole job is getting past the wall.