ORCUS! EXCLUSIVE! ESCAPIST!

The Escapist has an awesome preview of Orcus himself! And by preview, I mean the stats -- along with some background features for Out of the Abyss. He's a CR 26 monster, wielding his famous wand. Also interesting his the quote from Chris Perkins, who clarified that the PCs would not fight him directly, but that "Fortunately, Out of the Abyss gives characters the chance to amass a small army and also turn the demon lords against one another, thus weakening them. There are also a couple other ways to banish the demon lords back to the Abyss, which is the party's ultimate goal."

For more, click on either of the images below! For tons more Out of the Abyss coverage, click here! It comes out September 15th (or the 4th in preferred stores - that's next Friday!)

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[Ristamar]

There are a fair number of "ruthless DMs" out there whose idea of "ruthless" is to change the stats and/or the rules. Even you yourself just suggested arbitrarily increasing Orcus's HP. You'd need to get a DM who is good at being ruthless within the constraints imposed by RAW--and even then there is some question about what exactly he can do in his Time Stop. (Clearly, casting Animate Dead counts as affecting another creature/object and ends the Time Stop, but what about conjuring undead with the wand?)

I never insinuated the DM should change the rules or his stat block.

And not using the exact average hp is arbitrary? I certainly wouldn't classify it as coloring outside the lines of RAW, so to speak.

 

[Zaukrie]

The fact that one of the most powerful beings in the multi verse has to be hiding in his lair to be scary.....Not sure I like that. How does he or any demon lord look outside it's lair?

 

[Sacrosanct]

The fact that one of the most powerful beings in the multi verse has to be hiding in his lair to be scary.....Not sure I like that.

Well that's all relative, isn't it? I'm pretty sure that Orcus taking a stroll down a meadow is still scary to pretty much everyone on the planet. How many groups of level 20 PCs are there wandering the world?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Now that I'm looking at the book, his lair actions make him even more badass:

Lair actions:

DC23 power word kill. Doesn't need to see the target. Just needs to know the target is in his lair somewhere

6 corpses rise as skeletons, zombies, or ghouls anywhere in his lair

20ft square area causes skeletal arms to raise up. DC23 strength save or restrained

 

[Zaukrie]

Who said stroll in a field, what about when he is out of his lair, or is he in it all the time? I would expect him to occasionally fight other demons. We likely just won't agree, and I am ok with that.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Who said stroll in a field, what about when he is out of his lair, or is he in it all the time? I would expect him to occasionally fight other demons. We likely just won't agree, and I am ok with that.

SPOILER WARNING


....


In OotA, you don't fight him. It's actually all the demons fighting each other. The only demon you fight is Demogorgan, and only then when he's weakened. Honestly, I can't see any scenario where Orcus wouldn't be in his lair except when forced by major magic (like the aforementioned OotA), but then you'd have to fight them all if you wanted to get involved. That is to say, if your adventure is to go out and kill Orcus, I'm betting it would be in his lair on his ground. I imagine demon lords have had enough adventurers try to kill them over the eons that they are prepared for most tactics.

 

[Zaukrie]

And I imagine demon lords that like to fight are out fighting, not sitting in their lairs. Like I said we just won't agree.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

And I imagine demon lords that like to fight are out fighting, not sitting in their lairs. Like I said we just won't agree.

Orcus's lair is his capital city. Demon Lords don't go out fighting out in random in the abyss. Doing so could result in their permanent deaths.

 

[jedijon]

People on the first page of comments are talking about typos. That was what jumped out at me just now too.

Anybody who HAS the book comment on this?

We've got the aforementioned "the Orcus", the roll on TYPO madness table, but ALSO everything wraps w/hyphenation...which looks awful...and moreover, manipu late is two words NO hyphen (so we're loosing either way c'mon, 2 letters on one side of a hyphen!? Madness!), there's the resistance section in the stat block...what is that semicolon there for...to separate the mention of non-magical sources of dmg thereby limiting it to the three dmg types?...that's sloppy, and unless "legendary actions" are described elsewhere - the text is completely ambiguous as to whether Orcus gets to make them from a choice amongst three AND after any other creatures turn in an unlimited #/round...OR from amongst choices (of which there happen to be three) a maximum of three points-worth/round...i.e. he's got 3 action points to spend each round...or maybe we should be satisfied with the context clue the one of 'em costs 2pts...???? Clarity people. Even in run-on sentence rants!

I can't go for slop. This has grammatical slop, stylistic slop (for the love of commas!), and semantic slop.

Too sloppy! Don't kill our prerelease momentum! With actual content

 

[charcoalninja]

If we're talking about level 20 PCs, there's nothing stopping the cleric just Divine interventioning the entire party adjacent to the big guy the moment they discover through whatever means where his lair is or where he's at. Boom surprise round, boom 405 hp cut down by more than half. Unless people are going to imply that Orcus can somehow stop Lathander from beaming his super clerics into his business?

Probably better to analyse prospective Orcus slayers at 15th level where most of these paths seem to end at.