Facing demon lords at full strength

How about your allies help by being crushed to death in the Glabrezu's claws? The Glabrezu grabs and is crushing them, but then the allies refuse to let go, holding on tight despite the pain and not letting him use his claws. Maybe they tie metal bands around his claws that have the heat metal property and then hold them tight? Like the bands they put on live lobster claws. But they're stuck in the claws!

This takes away two of its 4 attacks, but leaves its spells and two attacks, plus a ton of HP. I would have the summoning auto fail--he wastes a round trying, then curses his luck and blames the ally in his claws, smashing him on the ground.

In the aforementioned Out of the Abyss, Zuggtmoy was a dread foe that nearly took out the PCs. The fight with a weakened Demogorgon took longer, but they were better-prepared and had a solid plan for that, so it wasn't as close a battle.

I will agree, demon lords should have some back-up and additional allies. When a larger or higher level party can focus fire on a single target, that has to be some monster to last for long.

5atbu said:

Could I risk a Glabrezu?

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No way. It will just swat your 3 3rd level PCs aside. Unless there are a huge number of allies, and then is it really the PCs' victory?

The only way a group should face a demon lord alone and at full strength is a DM fail.

Not really. When I ran OotA they had three encounters with Demon Lords.

1. Grazzt - the party was 7th level ish at the time I believe. Party of 6. They nearly fought him to a standstill. He was down to less than 100 HP before they fled though a portal to escape. He was MAX HP ad all Demon Lords should be IMO. Paladin Smite Crits are devastating as are any crit on an attack with bonus dice! Actually the power of crits in 5e make combats swing from hopeless to cake walk back to hopeless quite frequently. My biggest dislike of 5e to be honest. I was like "that had to be luck", it wasn't really.

2. Yeenoghu - They were 9th level or so at the time. Honestly it was again down to the wire but that last round of attacks by Y were devastating and they lost 5 of 6 PC in that fight. But a bit of dice luck may have had him on his knees.

3. Final boss fight of the campaign. Demogorgon! I gave him MAX HP and he was at full power despite the fiction of him just fighting off the rest of the demon lords. The party of 6 L10-11 PC pimp slapped him in 3 or 4 rounds. Made their saves and again bonus dice crits dominated the combat. No losses in combat, no real drama, just a total stomp of the immortal prince of demons. Was anti-climactic and honestly deflating. I ended the campaign at that point as I figured they would just recruit a couple paladins, gnome paladins preferably, and head off to clean out the Abyss. That game world is now a realm of harmony and peace as evil was wiped out in 6 months. Its a land of sunshine and puppies now.


If I ever run 5e again I will change crits to max damage, not double or any bonus damage. They make the fight too much a crap shoot and more about lucky rolls than anything else.

All IME, YMMV, etc.

What a bummer! My party of five 9-13 level folks spent almost two hours fighting him. I was surprised that no PCs were killed in the process, but by the end, a few of them had to switch to defensive/healing actions to stay alive.

I don’t mind it if luck and/or strategy give PCs an easy win now and then, but for beings like Demogorgon, Tiamat, Acererak and the like, I feel like they should be a gripping, Dark Souls-style, hard-fought win.

Flexor the Mighty! said:

3. Final boss fight of the campaign. Demogorgon! I gave him MAX HP and he was at full power despite the fiction of him just fighting off the rest of the demon lords. The party of 6 L10-11 PC pimp slapped him in 3 or 4 rounds. Made their saves and again bonus dice crits dominated the combat. No losses in combat, no real drama, just a total stomp of the immortal prince of demons. Was anti-climactic and honestly deflating.

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The Balor's stat block screams "bodyguard" to me, You flame whip the pesky paladin (or any other armored nuisance) from 30 feet away, and then fly up as high as you can go. That leaves the squishy part of the party ripe for the demon lord (good saves, magic resistance, and legendary resistance makes for a bad day for casters who don't have someone in front of them). If the paladin escapes the whip, you just fly down and repeat. If the paladin does manage to fight the Balor (not easy without a good climb speed and paladins are lacking good ranged attacks), it explodes when it dies, so you have separated, delayed, and likely hurt at least one front liner.

Also, you don't need somebody sitting next to the demon lord. If the party attacks the DL, and a shadow demon (or two) sneaks in the back and hits a concentrating caster, that can seriously complicate the PC's plans.

As a DM, I find that if a party is about 17th or higher and there's 4 or more of them usually, they can take on just about anything.

Like two years ago I run out of the abyss. In the first half the players understand more or less what's going on. At the time I had just receive a shiny new Tome of Beast book. So it was obvious for me that I should use some of the weird new demon lords on my library. So I pick up Akishigal (don't remember exactly how to spell it). I created a mini dungeon for him. I think he has a LOW CR, this is important because they already saw Demogorgon at that time so they knew how a powerfull DL looks like. I wanted the party to face a DL to death and this was the only one with low CR still he fought in his hive full of cockroach men and rust monsters. It was amazing and players truly believed they were in danger. This was the DL of trickery. He didn't have the power to invade the material plane but he fooled another DL

When creating the stats for … ahem, myself … based on the OotA Demon Lord stats, I noticed the lack of ranged attacks and AoEs. So to make myself a difficult challenge, I considered the idea that a Demon Lord ought to influence / corrupt the very nature of matter around him. Among other things, my new improved version of myself can innately cast the 9th-level spell Storm of Vengeance and let it run - no concentration or other bothersome limitations involved - centered on one of them, harming the heroes every turn, once per "day" (read: Big Boss Fight). I might add other top-end spells to make a list for random or surprise Legendary Actions.