The Darkwater Scourge and the Black Mists

Introduction

This is an encounter I ran with my Level 15 party of 7 players in Champions of Runeterra. At this point in the campaign, they have a fleet of warships, so threatening them requires either a rival fleet or a massive sea monster. I chose the latter. I also have a video guide I will link to at the bottom that explains some of my thought process behind specific features. In this Encounter Overview, I will provide the following:

Goals
Narrative Introduction
General Mechanics
Creature Stat Blocks & Tokens
Creature Tokens
Water Map
Reflection from the Encounter

Goals

The goals of this encounter were to include a massive sea creature that
utilized the player’s navy; was a roughly even match that threatens the party, their property, and their allies; introduced the Shadow Isles and the Black Mist, and utilized the Creatures of the Mist.

Narrative Introduction

This is a cleaned-up version of what I said to my players.

The midnight sky shines bright above. A generous moon and myriad stars provide more light than you’ve seen this late in a long while. The ocean is calm, but not still. The quiet waves collide with the hulls of the fleet’s ships rhythmically, almost enough to put you to sleep.

The party concludes its evening festivities, leaves the galley, and meets the night watchmen of the crew on deck.

“Something stirs,” says the Second Mate. “Something big.”

As the Second Mate recounts his concerns, the tide seems to drop noticeably in an instant, and only an instant later, it rises up again, higher than before, as a massive spectral kraken materializes through the surface of the dark blue sea. Immediately, tendrils of mist explode from its tentacles and apparitions of the dead manifest, creating wraith-like mages and soldiers on deck.

“Creatures of the Mist,” the Second Mate whispers, stunned. “And the Darkwater Scourge itself.”

Alarm bells ring, overpowered by the roar of the Darkwater Scourge as it slams a tentacle onto the bow of the ship.

Roll Initiative.

General Mechanics

I took some liberties with the Shadow Isles mechanics of Runarcana, ideating that the Darkwater Scourge itself was a source of the Black Mists, so once it’s dispatched, the Creatures of the Mist begin to fade and lose their powers.

Important Mechanics used were:

Creatures of the Mist only die if their maximum HP is brought to zero
Radiant, Lunar, and Luminary damage reduce the max HP of Creatures of the Mist
Creatures of the Mist heal for 5HP at the start of their turn, even if they are at 0HP
Because the Black Mist is at the Tentacle Strength, Non-Necromantic healing is halved.
Disregard Dark Exhaustion, as they will not be in the Black Mist for a full hour
The Darkwater Scourge has three Epic Actions to use after players’ turns, prioritizing those who deal the most damage
The Ship Cannons all fire concurrently at Initiative Count 1. They are “Huge Cannons” from the weapons page, and there are 4 on each of the two ships. Because they have a capacity of 2, they fire on turns 1 and 2 and must be reloaded on turn 3.

Creature Stat Blocks

This Encounter features a Darkwater Scourge Elite, Several Mist Mages, and Several Mist Soldiers. Because the Darkwater Scourge is Elite, it is a good fight for 2 players. To balance a good, challenging fight, consider 3 Mist mages (Grunts) and 2 Mist Soldiers (Minions) for each player beyond the first 2. (I did fewer and the fight was only two rounds.)

For example, a Party of 5 might face: One Darkwater Scourge, 9 Mist Mages, and 6 Mist Soldiers

The stat blocks are below. Click them to enlarge them and see the details. The only important note to make that isn’t covered clearly on the stat blocks is that for my Mist Mages, I pre-selected the levels at which they cast their spells and pre-selected a choice for Bestow Curse so that I could just track mana and not need to think to hard or spend more space than needed. If you want more flexibility, just take note of the spells and deal with them normally.

You can find the full stat blocks to copy from on this Google Sheet of my Homebrew Creatures

Creature Tokens

These are all from the Runarcana Drive that has tons of tokens that Arddhu set up, but from left to right, this is the Darkwater Scourge, Mist Mage, and Mist Soldier as I used them.

Water Map

It’s literally just water that’s darker at the top; you can use any water. But even for small things like this, I like to make my own things.

Reflection

Overall, the theory behind the encounter was awesome, but it was really short. My players are extremely strong, working in various editions of Runarcana, and have some insane boons, features, weapons, etc. The 650 HP of the Darkwater Scourge was depleted in one round. One player did 108 Damage with the rune Luminary Spear, my Marksman has the most kitted-out and advanced sniper imaginable and did 200 damage across his shots, my Mercurial did almost 200 damage in one shot between all of his runes, sneak attack, weapon bonuses, etc. There were more crits in this round from my players than I normally see across several encounters. Crit range and Crit multipliers on Snipers are wild.

Because the Darkwater Scourge that created the mists died first, the Creatures of the Mist lost their special features. It took one additional turn for my players to kill all of the Creaturse of the Mist.

However! It required a lot of strategizing and thought for them to do this. They thought the mechanics were cool, combat was satisfying, and they loved doing tons of damage.

I did misunderstand that minions are not intended to really exist beyond the first few levels, and that’s something the creature time is working on, and I also thought that it was 2 grunts per player, but it’s actually 4.

Another error I made was not rolling initiative for the Creatures of the Mist in favor of just putting them at the bottom of the round for convenience. This made them not seem like a threat despite the mages dealing a ton of Area of Effect damage.

The last thing I would have done differently is have the Darkwater Scourge proactively try to grab who is perceived to be the highest damage instead of waiting to use Epic Actions after it saw them deal a big blow.

All in all, it was a really cool encounter, and I think if I had a few more grunts that went a bit earlier in the turn order and the players didn’t crit as much, getting one more round of combat with the Darkwater Scourge would have been huge, since he can deal ~70% of most of my players’ HP in one hit, and he hadn’t even targetted the ships yet.