D&D 5E When Fiends Attack: Are Balors, Pit Fiends and Ultraloths too weak?

[CapnZapp]

There is a strong argument to be made that the "default" difficulty of the creature should not depend on an individual DM figuring out clever ways to make use of the creature. And that that's what CR should measure.

Of course.

Setting a high CR on the assumption the DM will play it differently than some other creature is, essentially off-loading all the hard work on the invidual DM.

 

[CapnZapp]

In one of my games, my 12th level characters fought a Balor. You know what I did to make him scary? I gave him legendary actions.

I felt that was a missed part of the monster out of the box...very few demons (demon lords are, of course, the exception) are as iconic and (dare I say) legendary as the Balor, so they make very effective BBEGs. Give him legendary actions, legendary saves, and the fight becomes much, much more interesting. If you want, even give him lair actions (I did). This can be applied, really, to any monster you want to use as a BBEG.

That's good to hear.

The question, of course, is why the Balor wasn't given these tools right from the start, by the actual devs?

 

[MostlyDm]

All CR is a measure of is: ability to deliver damage, ability to sustain damage.

That's basically it. If a monster can live long enough to deal enough damage to maybe kill a party member of X level, then that monster is CR X.

CR rather explicitly declines to attempt to gauge most monster abilities that are in any way dependent on DM tactical ability, such as: mobility, stealth, ranged attacks, soft crowd control, etc.

CRs are largely accurate when you look at what they are actually trying to do.

 

[CapnZapp]

It is genuinely impossible for the monsters built to work assuming default rules to also work when engaging optional rules unless those rules don't change anything.

It is also genuinely impossible for monsters built to work assuming specific non-default rules and a particularly high player skill level to also work when not using those optional rules or dealing with players of differing skill level.

You seem to be very fond of the words "genuinely impossible"... but let's read on:

However, there is a very easy way in which the monsters can be scary out of the box for out of the box characters, and appropriately challenging to characters allowed optional rules and played by skilled players; Give the monsters the benefits of the optional rules too [dig at blaming DMs for stat block deficiencies removed]

This is exactly what I wish for WotC to do!

What's so "genuinely impossible" now?

There is nothing impossible about WotC publishing a product that assumes and encourages "advanced" play: advanced as in with optional rules enabled, advanced as in assuming experienced players, advanced as in assuming some level of character and party optimization, advanced as in strict limits on resource regeneration

 

[CapnZapp]

All CR is a measure of is: ability to deliver damage, ability to sustain damage.

That's basically it. If a monster can live long enough to deal enough damage to maybe kill a party member of X level, then that monster is CR X.

CR rather explicitly declines to attempt to gauge most monster abilities that are in any way dependent on DM tactical ability, such as: mobility, stealth, ranged attacks, soft crowd control, etc.

CRs are largely accurate when you look at what they are actually trying to do.

You mean, CRs are largely meaningless when you look at how important the ability to deal damage without looking at how likely the monster is to actually position itself in a space where it gets to actually deal that damage.

 

[CapnZapp]

All CR is a measure of is: ability to deliver damage, ability to sustain damage.

That's basically it. If a monster can live long enough to deal enough damage to maybe kill a party member of X level, then that monster is CR X.

CR rather explicitly declines to attempt to gauge most monster abilities that are in any way dependent on DM tactical ability, such as: mobility, stealth, ranged attacks, soft crowd control, etc.

CRs are largely accurate when you look at what they are actually trying to do.

This also completely misses the larger complaint at MM stats.

The complaint isn't "monster X should have a challenge rating N steps lower than the listed value".

The complaint is "monsters are generally not given the tools they need to function well in high level play."

Just lowering CRs would not solve that. All it would do is starkly expose how few monsters there are that truly are deserving of a challenge rating in the 16-20 range, not to speak of the 21+ range...

 

[Charles Rampant]

Well, my question is less 'is the Balor killable by level 9 characters', since that particular battle has been waged on here plenty of times, and more 'is it a problem if it can be killed by level 9 characters'. Assume for the moment that it is possible for level 9 characters to do that - what does the game gain or lose by that fact? Lots of people seem keen to focus on the CR, but that also seems irrelevant - the fact is that the Balor is the top-level Demon, the guy at the end of the Abyssal dungeon, the Cyberdemon of the Abyss. For that narrative, does the Balor need to be completely untouchable until the party is 'high level', or are you happy for him to be fightable (and killable) in the mid tiers?

 

[MechaTarrasque]

There is a strong argument to be made that the "default" difficulty of the creature should not depend on an individual DM figuring out clever ways to make use of the creature. And that that's what CR should measure. Or that if you are going to wrap up the DM coming up with clever strategy or clever tactics into the CR (i.e. the monster using its Intelligence) then you should provide advice to the DM on how to go about doing that. (One thing I really liked about 4e was that almost every creature included a block of sample encounters suggesting other creatures you would find with it. That's one way that advice on how the creature thinks strategically could be communicated).

Of course this then becomes a question of whether or not a single number like CR can really provide enough information to be useful to a DM crafting encounters outside of being a very rough guideline. I personally think that it can not - or at least not across all levels of play. That was my experience in 3e as well - the higher the level, the less useful CR was for figuring out a "balanced" encounter and the more I had to wing it. Less so with 4e's creature levels, but I suspect that was more because of per-encounter balancing of resources making it easier to judge how much of a threat each individual creature was going to be able to be than anything else.

It is funny, but the first thing I thought of when I read the OP was "this was easier in 4e, because everyone knew that artillery or controller monsters weren't supposed to stand toe to toe with the PC's." It reduced the amount of gift wrapping in these scenarios. {I also missed the suggested encounters.}

Speaking of gift wrapping: I don't think remembering that your pit fiend/balor can fly is a "clever tactic." Do we have to have "flyby attack" in their stat block to remind DM's about the flying? It seems to me the 5 9th level champions will be less effective even with their +4 swords if the pit fiend is flying 20 feet up.

I am not asking that DM's in these white room scenarios be psychotic West Point graduates, but that they remember that (to borrow a phrase from Pathfinder) GM doesn't mean "Grand Mother." I think there is a strong argument that gift wrapping Grand Mothers are more of a problem than the CR scores (at least on Enworld).

 

[hawkeyefan]

Well, my question is less 'is the Balor killable by level 9 characters', since that particular battle has been waged on here plenty of times, and more 'is it a problem if it can be killed by level 9 characters'. Assume for the moment that it is possible for level 9 characters to do that - what does the game gain or lose by that fact? Lots of people seem keen to focus on the CR, but that also seems irrelevant - the fact is that the Balor is the top-level Demon, the guy at the end of the Abyssal dungeon, the Cyberdemon of the Abyss. For that narrative, does the Balor need to be completely untouchable until the party is 'high level', or are you happy for him to be fightable (and killable) in the mid tiers?

I don't know if the game loses or gains anything either way. It depends on what the specific goals are of the gaming group in questions.

For some folks, Balors and their like are meant to be reserved until the PCs are very high level. They represent the upper echelon of the outer planes, and should therefore be end-type villains.

For others, their status isn't as important. Or the gaming group and DM in question are comfortable introducing such threats to the campaign earlier.

I think either approach is achievable, and fine. The only issue is when there is a discrepancy in what the group wants and what the group gets. However, this is largely within the DM's control.

The more likely conflict of expectation versus reality is that the group wants these creatures to function as high level threats, and finds them less threatening than they would like. In such cases, it's up to the DM to make it so....underlings, summoning, tactics, terrain, legendary actions, lair actions....all of these are the tools that the game provides to do so.

 

[UnknownDyson]

Well, my question is less 'is the Balor killable by level 9 characters', since that particular battle has been waged on here plenty of times, and more 'is it a problem if it can be killed by level 9 characters'. Assume for the moment that it is possible for level 9 characters to do that - what does the game gain or lose by that fact? Lots of people seem keen to focus on the CR, but that also seems irrelevant - the fact is that the Balor is the top-level Demon, the guy at the end of the Abyssal dungeon, the Cyberdemon of the Abyss. For that narrative, does the Balor need to be completely untouchable until the party is 'high level', or are you happy for him to be fight-able (and kill-able) in the mid tiers?

I think it is a problem when mid tier characters can stomp high level demons. It trivializes the narrative, and it downgrades the world's credibility. If we are able to kill these terrors from time immemorial and foil there 1000 year old plans in an afternoon, how are any monsters any threat at all? How are we supposed to take them seriously? "It's only a balor" should never be said. Thankfully I have a DM that plays intelligent monsters intelligently, but to be honest, I just wouldn't be able to take anything seriously if the DM was throwing high level fiends at us and we were spitting them out like old gum.