Kalithra
Kalithra — The Encounter
Twin-blade dancer whose strikes keep a rhythm older than memory · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Kalithra
Kalithra of the Lyrian clans learned the blade-dance before she learned speech, drumming her paws on stretched hide until the rhythm lived in her bones. The elders say her strikes follow cadences older than memory itself, patterns the first hunters beat out against the dark to keep their prey from circling back. She does not parry so much as anticipate; she has heard the same beat ten thousand times and knows where the next blow must fall. Those who duel her describe the disorienting sense of fighting a metronome that bleeds, every motion arriving precisely a half-beat before they expect it. She takes no lord and swears no oath, drifting between warbands and caravans wherever the song of conflict still plays. When her twin cleavers fall silent, it is only because the rhythm has, at last, run out of dancers.
Run Kalithra in Sixty Seconds
- Read the dance Kalithra is a rhythm-skirmisher, not a brawler: she wants to hit ONE target twice per turn to unlock the bonus damage and advantage. Deny her by spreading her attacks across bodies.
- Open on the back-line Send her 40 ft. straight at the softest caster or healer; two Twin Blades plus the rhythm bonus can nearly drop a squishy in one turn.
- Mind her exits She Disengages or Dashes as a bonus action and ignores most opportunity attacks, so don't waste reactions — she will simply not be there next turn.
- When bloodied she leans fully defensive: Off-Beat Parry plus Stutter-Step to kite, picking off stragglers until reinforcements or her drummer restore her tempo.
- Three ways to run her (1) lone duelist who isolates and kills one PC; (2) flanking partner to a heavier boss; (3) warband assassin with her Drumskin companion keeping the beat — break the drummer to break her.
Kalithra
Medium humanoid (beastfolk), chaotic neutral
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINECadence of the Blades. Signature. Kalithra keeps an unbroken rhythm. Each time she hits the same target with both blades on her turn, her next attack roll against that target before the end of her next turn is made with advantage. Whenever she hits a creature, she may move 5 ft. without provoking opportunity attacks.
Feral Footwork. Opportunity attacks against Kalithra are made with disadvantage, and she does not provoke them when she Disengages as part of a Multiattack.
Actions
Multiattack. Kalithra makes three Twin Blade attacks.
Twin Blade. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d6+5) slashing damage. If she hits the same target twice in one turn, the second hit deals an extra 7 (2d6) slashing damage as the rhythm lands true.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Stutter-Step (Bonus Action). Kalithra Dashes or Disengages, weaving between foes.
Off-Beat Parry (Reaction). When a creature she can see hits her with a melee attack, she adds 3 to her AC against that attack, possibly causing it to miss.
A lithe beastfolk skirmisher with a feral muzzle and pricked ears, stripped for speed in leather wraps, a heavy curved cleaver spinning in each hand. She fights to an inner drumbeat no one else can hear.
Kalithra, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEKeeper of the Beat (signature). While within 30 ft. of Kalithra, Kalithra (or a bonded ally) regains the use of Cadence of the Blades even if her rhythm was broken, and gains a +1 bonus to initiative.
Actions
Goading Cleaver. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) slashing damage, and the target has disadvantage on its next attack against anyone other than Kalithra.
Reactions
Counter-Rhythm. When an ally within 10 ft. is hit, Kalithra stamps out a beat; the ally adds 2 to its AC against that attack.
A broad, scarred clan-drummer who never stops tapping a rhythm, anchoring Kalithra's dance even when chaos tries to break it.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open by closing 40 ft. and hitting one squishy target twice to bank advantage. Stutter-Step away each turn so melee bruisers can never pin her. Pair her with a tankier front-liner; alone at this tier she folds to focused fire.
Open on the back-line caster: same target twice triggers the bonus slashing and advantage on the kill blow. Off-Beat Parry the party's heaviest hitter, Stutter-Step out of reach every round. Kill-priority her drummer companion first to break her rhythm; run her flanking beside a bigger bruiser, never as the lone threat.
Use her as the assassin of a warband or lair, darting in to delete one PC per round before melting back. Have minions hold the line while she repeats the same-target combo for burst. Pair her with a heavier flagship threat; she punishes whoever the party leaves unguarded.
Put Kalithra on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Kalithra?
Her home build is CR 6 (2,300 XP) for a Tier 2 party of levels 5-10. The block also scales down to roughly CR 2 for Tier 1 (levels 1-4) and up to about CR 11 for Tier 3 (levels 11-15) using the listed numbers; her traits and actions stay identical, only AC, HP, to-hit, and save DC shift.
Can Kalithra be a companion or ally?
Yes. As a wandering blade-dancer who swears no lord, she slots cleanly into a party as a hired skirmisher or rhythm-bonded ally. Use her Drumskin companion block alongside her, or let a player adopt her Cadence of the Blades trait as a duelist NPC.
How do you shut down her rhythm in a fight?
Break her tempo. Force her to split attacks across multiple targets so she never lands both blades on one creature, kill or stun her Drumskin companion to deny the rhythm reset, and use forced movement or grapples — her footwork beats opportunity attacks, not effects that simply drag or hold her in place.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
Played Kalithra at your table? Log in with your Obsidian Tavern account to leave a balance note, a war story, or a file issue — the sharpest reports get the block revised.
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