Balder
Balder — The Encounter
Radiant Aesir god of light, beloved and beautiful · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Balder
Of all the children of Odin, none was loved as Balder was loved. So radiant was his beauty and so gentle his temper that his mother Frigg went out among all created things—fire and water, iron and stone, beast and bird, sickness and serpent—and won from each a solemn oath never to do her son harm. Thereafter no blade could cut him and no flame could burn him, and the gods made sport of hurling spears at the laughing god to watch the weapons turn aside. Yet Frigg, thinking it too young and too small to swear, passed over a single sprig of mistletoe—and that omission would one day undo all the world. Where Balder walks, shadows shrink and despair loosens its grip; the sick are mended, the frightened steadied, and even the dead remember warmth. He is the noon of the Aesir, and his fall is the first toll of Ragnarok.
Run Balder in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the bane. Beloved Invulnerability halves the first hit each turn and steals advantage—only a DM-declared mistletoe weapon bypasses it. If nobody at the table has that bane, expect a grind.
- Open with Dawnbreak when two or more PCs cluster: a 15-ft. cone of radiant, with disadvantage piled on undead and fiends.
- Run Radiant Aura as your control lever—toggle it on a bonus action to blind whoever steps adjacent, off when you don't want to blind your own allies.
- When bloodied, stop trading blows and play defense: spend Ward the Innocent and Purifying Step every round to keep the flagship boss standing.
- Three ways to run him: radiant artillery (Dawnbreak + Searing Touch from range), bodyguard (reactions on the boss), or beautiful wall (Aura on, soak hits, dare them to find mistletoe).
Balder
Medium celestial, lawful good
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEBeloved Invulnerability. Signature. All things have sworn never to harm Balder. The first time each turn an attacker hits him, he can choose to halve the damage; if that attack used a weapon, the attacker takes no benefit from advantage on it. This protection fails only against mistletoe (a weapon a DM declares attuned to that bane), which ignores it entirely.
Radiant Aura. A creature that starts its turn within 10 ft. of Balder and can see him must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution save or be blinded until the start of its next turn. He can suppress or resume this aura as a bonus action.
Actions
Multiattack. Balder makes two Searing Touch attacks, or makes one Searing Touch attack and uses Dawnbreak (if available).
Searing Touch. Melee Spell Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 18 (3d8+5) radiant damage, and the target sheds dim light in a 5-ft. radius until the end of its next turn and can't benefit from being invisible.
Dawnbreak (Recharge 5-6). Balder unleashes a burst of pure light in a 15-ft. cone. Each creature there makes a DC 14 Dexterity save, taking 27 (6d8) radiant damage on a failure, or half as much on a success. Undead and fiends have disadvantage on the save.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Purifying Step. Bonus Action. Balder ends one disease or the charmed, frightened, or poisoned condition on himself or one ally he can see within 30 ft.
Ward the Innocent. Reaction, when an ally Balder can see within 30 ft. is hit by an attack: he wreathes them in light, reducing the damage by 11 (2d8+2) and granting them resistance to the triggering damage type until the start of his next turn.
A fair-faced Aesir in gleaming ceremonial plate stands haloed by a great runic solar disc, one hand thrown open to pour light upon the field while his cloak falls like dusk behind him.
Balder, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEMistletoe Bane (signature). This bound mote of grief carries the one thing that can wound the beloved god. Its attacks ignore Balder's Beloved Invulnerability and any radiant resistance, and deal an extra 7 (2d6) damage to celestials.
Actions
Sorrow-Cast Sprig. Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, range 60 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+4) piercing damage.
Reactions
Mourner's Veil. Reaction, when an ally within 15 ft. takes radiant damage: it dims the light, reducing that damage by 9 (2d6+2).
A drifting funereal mote that remembers the one oath Frigg forgot—useful to a party that must hold the line against light gone too bright.
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 with Dawnbreak into the cluster, then stand over an ally and use Ward the Innocent to soak the biggest blow. Kill-priority for the party is whatever carries his bane—without mistletoe his Beloved Invulnerability halves your best hits. Pair him with a melee bruiser; he is the support and screen, not the wall.
Open by lighting up the front line with Radiant Aura active, then Multiattack the squishiest caster. When clustered, lead with Dawnbreak. He plays as the beautiful, near-untouchable anchor of a Norse warband—pair him with a flagship boss (Odin, Thor) and let Ward the Innocent keep that boss alive while the party hunts for mistletoe.
Run him as the unkillable lieutenant: Beloved Invulnerability plus radiant resistance makes brute force a losing game, so he tanks the front while allies flank. Open with Dawnbreak, sustain with Multiattack and Searing Touch to deny invisibility. Kill-priority for the table is the bane-bearer; until that lands, focus the rest of his warband instead.
Put Balder 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 Balder?
Natively CR 6 (Tier 2, ~2,300 XP) as a support/screen add-on. Drop him to CR 2 numbers for levels 1-4 or scale up to ~CR 9 for levels 11-15 using the tier table—traits and actions stay identical, only AC, HP, to-hit, and DC change.
Can Balder be a companion or ally?
Yes—he is a natural protector NPC. His Ward the Innocent reaction and Purifying Step bonus action make him an outstanding bodyguard for a frontline hero, and his Radiant Aura punishes anyone who closes on the party. He is not solo_capable: deploy him beside a flagship Norse boss rather than as the lone encounter.
Why is Balder so hard to damage, and how do we beat him?
Beloved Invulnerability reflects the myth that all things swore never to harm him—mechanically it halves the first hit each turn and denies advantage, on top of his radiant and nonmagical resistances. The intended counter is mistletoe: arm one PC (or the Hringhorni-Light companion) with the bane weapon, which ignores his invulnerability entirely, then focus him down.
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
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