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Goblin Coast · area boss LXXXIX

Malbrek Dredge, the Shorechain

Come To Him, Or Be Brought

Wreckers do not chase. They put a line on a hull and let the sea do the rest. Malbrek fights the same way, and every instinct a party has about where to stand is the wrong one while the chain is out.

CR 11Humanoid (Orc) · Fighter 5 / Lasher 6resref gc4_malbrekspawn table 183 · always, 12% · count 1

Stat Block

Race / Class
Humanoid (Orc) · Fighter 5 / Lasher 6
Challenge Rating
11
Hit Points
148 (expected ~110)
Natural Armor
4
Str
20
+5
Dex
18
+4
Con
18
+4
Int
12
+1
Wis
12
+1
Cha
12
+1
Feats — Weapon Focus (Whip), Weapon Specialization (Whip), Improved Critical (Whip), Lashing Whip, Improved Disarm (Whip), Improved Knockdown (Whip), Disarm, Knockdown, Expertise, Power Attack, Toughness, Great Fortitude, Dodge
Skills — Discipline 14, Intimidate 12, Spot 8, Listen 6
Spells — — none. A Lasher is a pure martial prestige class; the chain is the whole trick.

The Fight

Whenever the chain is free, after two rounds of re-coiling

Throw the Chain

Thrown at the enemy standing FURTHEST away, out to 25m — the back line, not the person in his face.

Any round the held target is more than 6m out

Haul In

The chain drags them bodily back to him for 3d8+6 with a Reflex save against being put on the ground. Running is the wrong move.

Any blow landed on Malbrek by anyone else

Chain Feedback

35% of it runs down the links into the held target instead, and heals him for the same. No prior mechanic in this bestiary shares damage between the boss and a player; focusing him is the wrong move too.

Any round the held target ends within 2.5m of him

Slack

The line falls off, clean. Walking straight into the thing chaining you is the only way out — the inverse of every other positional puzzle here, which are all solved by getting away.

Why These Numbers

CR11, the batch apex and Goblin Coast's new ceiling, two notches over Barknuckle's CR9 and level with Ilqaeth. Everything under him on the coast is CR9 or lower and the trash caps at CR6, so he is the one fight there that a party genuinely has to be ready for.

He is the bestiary's first Lasher. Fighter 5 / Lasher 6 carries the class's real whip feat chain (Lashing Whip, Improved Disarm, Improved Knockdown), and the blueprint carries a real whip — gc4_chain, cloned from PRC's own whip blueprint for the correct model parts with every item property stripped, so his damage comes from his statistics and his mechanic rather than from a magic weapon a CR11 kill would drop.

The tether releases cleanly on his death, on the held target's death, and on an area transition, so it cannot strand a leftover flag on a player.

No spells, no epic spell — a martial prestige class at CR11.

How It's Wired

pattern
new build — cloned from BELE_CORCe, the Brinehowl Bloodguard (already ran real j_ai_* AI)
blueprint
gc4_malbrek.utc, gc4_chain.uti
scripts
gc4_mb_inc.nss, gc4_mb_spawn.nss, gc4_mb_round.nss, gc4_mb_death.nss, gc4_mb_damaged.nss
area wiring
goblincoast.git · sparky_variables, enc14 → 183