the Doom-Bound
He does not speak. He does not rest. He simply turns, every time, to face whoever has come down this far.
Four levels down from the nave, past the crypts Prior Cairnbell still keeps a bell for, the air stops carrying any sound but footsteps. Ser Aldric Vayne was sealed here for an oath broken in life - the record of which was broken with him - and he has had centuries to forget everything except the fighting stance he was trained in.
He is the only one of this batch built as a straight martial threat: no spells, no venom, no curse that isn't delivered on the edge of a greatsword. What makes him dangerous is that he doesn't escalate the way the rest of the crypt's dead do - he changes how he fights, and then keeps fighting that way until something forces the next change.
Feats
Skills
His opening stance, and the one he defaults back to if nothing else has triggered yet.
Every 4th round: Vault Strike - one driving blow on whoever's nearest for 2d8+6 slashing. A failed Reflex save adds 2d6 on top and puts them on the ground for a round.
Nothing here is unusual for a fighter-type boss - it's the baseline the other two stances are measured against.
Drops Warbind for good the moment he crosses 66%. He stops trying to knock people down and starts marking whoever he's actually fighting.
Every 3rd round: Doom Brand on his current target - a Will save or take a stacking curse, up to 3 stacks, each one dropping their AC by 1 and adding 2 fire damage per stack to every hit he lands on them afterward, for the rest of the fight.
A target that eats all three stacks is being cooked from the inside for the remainder of the encounter - the brand doesn't fall off, and doesn't get weaker.
Fires once and never turns off. He stops holding anything back.
Every round from here: a real cleave against everyone within melee reach (2d6+4 slashing each), and he drinks back half of everything he deals as healing.
This is deliberately the only phase in the whole batch of five that's a standing, permanent state rather than a triggered ability - by the time he's here, the fight is a war of attrition either way.
Aldric is the only pure Fighter in this batch, and Fighter d10 hit dice with a real Str 26 carries a lot of raw HP on its own - 251 sits inside the audited band for his new 20 total levels without needing an inflated Con score to get there, which felt right for something built entirely around a blade rather than a body. The revision from CR 7 to CR 20 came entirely from checking Cathedral Level 4's real ambient ceiling - his identity didn't need to change, just his scale.
The three-stance structure was a deliberate answer to the last few bosses running a little too close together mechanically - pulse an aura, ring out a fear effect, scale up a stat. Aldric doesn't pulse anything. Every stance is a standing state change: what he does every round is different, not just what he does on a timer inside one behavior. Warbind and Brand are each other's opposite (knockdown vs. a lingering mark), and Ruin throws both away for a third thing entirely - straight attrition with lifesteal. None of the three phases' DCs or damage dice changed in the revision; they were never the problem, his level relative to the room was.
| Var | Meaning | Value |
|---|---|---|
| BOSS | bypasses the drop-rate roll entirely | 1 |
| LOOPS | loot generation passes | 2 |
| CLEAR | inventory cleared before filling | 1 |
| TYPE | item category rolled | 26 (Boss Drop) |