Encounter three: The Alpha's Wood¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
The elite-spike fight, and the one where a well-shielded Character still bleeds. It exercises the difference between Guard and Intercept, protecting a back line under speed, and Piercing, the keyword that walks through a Shieldbearer's Guard but not a Character's Intercept. Same budget as the first two, sharper again, because the pack is fast, it fights in the open, and its leader ignores the party's best defense. Statted to the benchmark party (Pool 14, Depth 43). Scale it with 06-gm-guidance/level-1-encounter-budget.
The scene¶
Night forest. A pack is hunting, and it is not only wolves. Grey shapes move at the treeline, then black ones, bigger and colder-eyed, and at their head one larger still, first through the treeline and unhurried. Barghests, and their Alpha. Somewhere behind them a few figures keep pace who are not part of the pack and not afraid of it: hunters of a beast-cult who follow the Alpha, or feed it, and would rather the party did neither.
A Barghest is never a good omen on a road at dusk. A pack of them with a thing at the head that a shield does not stop is a worse one.
The map¶
Open woodland, and the openness is the threat. Speed-7 hounds cross the ground in a single turn and deny the party the chokepoint they will instinctively reach for, so this fight happens in the open whether the players like it or not. There are trunks to put at a back and undergrowth to slow a charge, but no wall to hold. The tactical question is not where to stand but who to keep alive: once the Company screen thins, the fast pack reaches the fragile ranged Characters directly, and that is the clock.
The roster (benchmark, Party Pool 14)¶
Stat blocks follow core-rules, Part Fourteen.
Grey Wolf (×5). Trained (5-6), 2 Hit Points, Speed 6, Range 1. No keywords. Ordinary predators, fast and fragile, the mundane end of the pack. Two Hits and down, but they are on the party at once.
Barghest (×3). Veteran (4-6), 3 Hit Points, Speed 7, Range 1. No keywords. Reused from 07-bestiary/orcs-and-barghests. Fast enough to reach the back line in a turn and tough enough to survive the trip.
The Alpha (×1). Elite (3-6), 4 Hit Points, Speed 7, Range 1, Piercing. Larger, colder, and first through the treeline. Its bite ignores Guard: a banked Guard token is not consumed, it simply does not apply this once and stays banked for a later, ordinary hit. It is the one reason a shieldwall bleeds here, and the reason Intercept, which Piercing does not touch, is the right answer instead.
Cult Hunter (×2). Trained (5-6), 2 Hit Points, Speed 4, Range 8. No keywords. The human hand behind the pack. Killing them does not stop the hounds, but it may be what turns the fight from a hunt into a rout.
Eleven bodies, 27 Hit Points, and 11 enemy dice against the party's 14.
How it plays¶
The pack forces the party apart and then punishes the split. Guard, which held the line at the ford, is worth less here, because the Alpha walks through it; the defense that works is bodies and Intercept, a Character stepping in front of the bite that a shield cannot stop. The wolves are a screen meant to spend the party's Hits while the Barghests and the Alpha get past the Company to the Characters who cannot take a hit. Kill order matters more than at either earlier fight: the Alpha and the Barghests first, the wolves last, the Hunters whenever a ranged Character has a clean line and nothing closer to shoot.
In simulation¶
Against the benchmark four across twenty thousand trials: the party wins effectively always, in about five rounds, losing around two Retainers, with a Character spending a Life in roughly three runs in ten, and never two in the same fight. The Life rate is the highest of the three encounters on an identical budget, and Piercing plus the back-line pressure is why: the same Hit Points hit harder when the defense the party trusts does not fully apply. Real play runs a touch shorter and safer than the simulation, which under-models the party's own tools (see the budget note).
The dials¶
Pool. Add or remove one Grey Wolf per point of Party Pool off 14.
The Alpha is the sharpest dial. Against a shallow, Company-light party, the Alpha is genuinely dangerous, since Piercing straight to a thin Card is exactly what those parties cannot absorb; drop a Barghest to compensate, but keep the Alpha, because it is the encounter. Against a deep, shield-rich party, add a second Piercing body (a second, lesser Barghest with the keyword) rather than more wolves; the whole point of this fight is a defense the party cannot simply shield away.
Tier, for tough parties. Past roughly Pool 18, raise the Barghests before the wolves; a deep party eats the screen and the fight has to come from the fast, tough bodies behind it.