Statblocks for Heralds

[Trusk'our he/him]

I noticed in the campaign that there are no statblocks for the Heralds. Yes, I know there is a reason for this- they're just too powerful to conceivably be defeated or meaningfully harmed by the PCs that should currently be present in the game.

However, smart explanations have never gotten in my way before, so now is hardly the time to let that begin.

I'm going to try and build my own statblocks for a Herald, but I'm wondering if anyone else would like to add some ideas. I'm all for hearing them out, especially since I'm very new to the Cosmere RPG and its mechanics.

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Here's one.

Herald of the Almighty "Insert name here"

Level: Don't

Strength: Worry/Speed: About/Intelligence: The/Willpower: Numbers/Prescence: Just/Awareness: Run

I kid of course.

I guess it wouldn't be out of the question for all of them to have a minimum of 5 or more in every stat, and at least one stat being 10 or above for their 'specialty' stat, like Taln having 10 Strength or higher. They are meant to be pretty much Demigods, and we've only seen glimpses of just how powerful they really are with Nale using his 'True Skills' to instantly put Kaladin on his ass and Taln beating the crem out of a ton of Fused with his bare hands and breaking the sound barrier without Surges or Stormlight. 

Maybe give them some kind of special skill on their stat sheet that gives them a big buff in most of their stats, not out of them getting stronger, just them deciding to get serious.

Edit:

On second thought, wouldn't it make sense for all of them, sans Taln, to have a low Will stat? Their whole thing is that they all broke from torture on Braize, and that they've all gone crazy. So, all of them besides Taln having Will as a dump-stat makes sense doesn't it?

Edited January 10 by JustQuestin2004

[Trusk'our he/him]

9 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Here's one.

Herald of the Almighty "Insert name here"

Level: Don't

Strength: Worry/Speed: About/Intelligence: The/Willpower: Numbers/Prescence: Just/Awareness: Run

Lol, probably closest to cannon.

9 hours ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

I guess it wouldn't be out of the question for all of them to have a minimum of 5 or more in every stat, and at least one stat being 10 or above for their 'specialty' stat, like Taln having 10 Strength or higher. They are meant to be pretty much Demigods, and we've only seen glimpses of just how powerful they really are with Nale using his 'True Skills' to instantly put Kaladin on his ass and Taln beating the crem out of a ton of Fused with his bare hands and breaking the sound barrier without Surges or Stormlight. 

Maybe give them some kind of special skill on their stat sheet that gives them a big buff in most of their stats, not out of them getting stronger, just them deciding to get serious.

Ooo, that's a good idea. Like they should have some strong stats normally, especially mental and spiritual (except Willpower as you mentioned, which is extremely fitting and I am now going to steal that) but they do have some real upper limits when not holding Stormlight or using whatever their Heraldic abilities are.

Basically they have at least two enhance abilities, one being standard Stormlight (assuming they have their Honorblades) or their super speed/strength innately.

 

We've seen Chana appear to survive a lethal Shardblade injury, albeit very briefly, and both Taln and Ash had a great deal of superhuman durability even without Stormlight. So that should be in there.

A lot of their skills should be pretty high, with some probably exceeding the five normally allowed- they've had millenia to hone their skills beyond mortal capacity.

Nale was able to leech the Stormlight right off of Kaladin and Szeth, so add in the Larkin power, maybe boosted a little- may only work on specific Investitures they're tied to if it is working the way I'm thinking, but it may not be canon enough to restrict like that. 

Immortality is in there, though with some obvious limits tied to the Desolations.

They can track the Connection of their Honorblades.

 

Anything else besides ludicrously high health and level?

Edited January 10 by Trusk'our

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

11 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Nale was able to leech the Stormlight right off of Kaladin and Szeth, so add in the Larkin power, maybe boosted a little- may only work on specific Investitures they're tied to if it is working the way I'm thinking, but it may not be canon enough to restrict like that. 

Not quite, he wasn't leeching Stormlight out of their bodies, he was beating them handily in a tug-of-war of pulling stormlight out of spheres. Before that point, we'd never seen what happened if two Surgebinders tried getting Light out of the same gem at the same time, now we do and it turns out that higher Oathed Surgebinders have 'priority' and can override lesser Oathed Surgebinders attempts to breathe in Stormlight.

Very interesting that.

11 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Anything else besides ludicrously high health and level?

A skill/debuff denoting their madness, tied to whatever their obsession is. Nale is incapable of flat-out breaking the law, Shalash has a need to deface art of herself, etc.

Could be their main weakness, allowing players a fighting chance against them if they can figure it out. Like quoting laws at Nale like you're supposed to in the Stonewalker Campaign or playing 'fetch your fanart' with Shalash to get her off your back for a minute.

[Trusk'our he/him]

1 hour ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

Not quite, he wasn't leeching Stormlight out of their bodies, he was beating them handily in a tug-of-war of pulling stormlight out of spheres. Before that point, we'd never seen what happened if two Surgebinders tried getting Light out of the same gem at the same time, now we do and it turns out that higher Oathed Surgebinders have 'priority' and can override lesser Oathed Surgebinders attempts to breathe in Stormlight.

Very interesting that.

Dang, I need to read that scene again. Thanks for the clarification. 

 

1 hour ago, JustQuestin2004 said:

A skill/debuff denoting their madness, tied to whatever their obsession is. Nale is incapable of flat-out breaking the law, Shalash has a need to deface art of herself, etc.

Could be their main weakness, allowing players a fighting chance against them if they can figure it out. Like quoting laws at Nale like you're supposed to in the Stonewalker Campaign or playing 'fetch your fanart' with Shalash to get her off your back for a minute.

Ah, I like that.

It would certainly lend to some creative appliances if the PCs needed to confront the Heralds. Or, maybe it can be woven into the villains' plans. . .

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

2 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Ah, I like that.

It would certainly lend to some creative appliances if the PCs needed to confront the Heralds. Or, maybe it can be woven into the villains' plans. . .

Could be a plotline where an ambitious Fused ends up discovering Shalash's obsession and tries to set a trap with an old statue from a previous Desolation. Maybe even give this OC Fused some backstory with Shalash, maybe something along the lines of some old beauty contest she lost to Shalash thousands of years ago before the first Desolation and became a Fused entirely because of that petty grudge and wants Shalash herself to be permanently disfigured?

I dunno, just spitballing.

[Frustration]

Any progress?

[Trusk'our he/him]

29 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Any progress?

A little, though mostly it's just figuring out the basics for statblocks so I don't completely break the game.

 

I've been looking at the way minions, rivals, and bosses are built to find patterns for balancing, and I've got a few takeaways.

Rivals appear to have HP that matches the 3rd PC level of a given tier if there are no high strength bonuses or talents (like Hardy) that would be given to a PC to boost their HP, with a deviation level less than 10, but typically closer to 5 tops.

For example, all tier 1 rivals have a max HP pool of around 20, give or take 5 which comes to the minimum HP that a PC has at level 3. Tier 2 rivals have about 40 HP give or take 5, which is roughly the amount PCs should have at level 8 with no bonuses (technically 42 HP, but it's close). Tier 3 rivals have about 60 HP each with PCs clocking in at 59 HP by level 13. There are very few tier 4 rivals, but they clock in around 70 HP, probably to match players who would have 71 HP by level 18.

Minions are weirder, with tier 1 minions around 10 HP each- the minimum for a PC at level one, and their tier 2 counterparts (of which there are only 2 I could find and they're in the Advanced Adversaries ebook) have an HP of about 20. Which is a super small pool to be looking at, so it's not entirely fair to say this, but I think it's reasonable for them to have half the HP of their rival counterparts. You could probably just say then that tier 3 minions you homebrew would have a rough HP count of 30 since it would be half that of tier 3 rivals.

Bosses also have a fairly limited pool to draw from, but it appears that tier 1 bosses have 40-50 HP (based on the crime boss and Stonewalkers' Veth), tier 2 are somewhere around 125 and 145 (based on the Yu-Thorak and Yu-Nerig respectively), tier 3 is just under 200 HP, but can match or exceed it in the case of the Magnified One and Thunderclast. Tier 4 is more varied, with the Servant of Yelig-Nar clocking in at 240 HP while the Focused One only has 190 (though to be fair the Focused One does scary amounts of damage and can have a very high deflect).

There are those that break this model, like Larkin, which are a tier 2 rival with only 14 HP. Stonewalkers has Ylt, who is a tier 1 boss with 80 HP (though he's technically meant to fight tier 2 players, which makes me think he's more of a 1.5 tier boss).

 

Damage is a little more fickle, though the basic strikes seem to be fairly consistent for many rivals and minions of tiers 1-3, dealing between 5-10 damage, and many double actions (like the Devastating One's Devastating Touch and the Altered One's Exhale Toxins) dealing around 20 damage. Some tier 3 rivals (like Heavenly Ones and Midnight Essence) deal roughly 16 damage on their basic attacks though, so it's not a perfectly simple system. Bosses can vary more, but most tier 2s have a damage output of about 15 for basic single-action attacks, tiers 3-4 do closer to 20-30 depending on the boss. 

Bosses can also have numerous abilities to confer negative status effects onto PCs though, and some abilities that do very high damage (like the Focused One's Decompress Grip dealing 8d12 damage and giving a guaranteed injury).

 

Since I'd like the Heralds to be more "lore accurate" I'm thinking they should be tier 5 bosses. Sooo, HP wise, perhaps closer to 300, though it's pretty wonkey since tier 5 PCs barely increase their HP per level and a meat shield isn't necessarily very fun to fight against. Their power really should come more from their abilities, I'm thinking.

[Frustration]

On 5/2/2026 at 2:44 PM, Trusk'our said:

Since I'd like the Heralds to be more "lore accurate" I'm thinking they should be tier 5 bosses. Sooo, HP wise, perhaps closer to 300, though it's pretty wonkey since tier 5 PCs barely increase their HP per level and a meat shield isn't necessarily very fun to fight against. Their power really should come more from their abilities, I'm thinking.

Make them the equivelant of a boss if the players had the stats of Focused Ones.

[Trusk'our he/him]

16 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Make them the equivelant of a boss if the players had the stats of Focused Ones.

Hmm, might be a good idea.

I'm mostly gearing them up for a group of 3-4 maxed out players.

Weird thing is, I don't think level 21 and above count for much- technically you can level up indefinitely and keep getting a very small number of HP per level, but skills cap out at tier 4, talents can only synergize up to a certain point, and attributes don't increase at all barring artificial aid.

I'll probably also want to update them as new Cosmere content is released, since Heralds should remain at the top of what can be fought.