Hobgoblin Devastator (VGtM)
I suppose it’s time to talk about Goblinoids. The Goblinoids in this book are mostly divorced from their Maglubliet worshiping ways, and are instead presented as fey creatures doing fey warfare for the fey folk (or simply as humanoids with Fey Ancestry, in the case of the player races). This is kind of a deep cut, and returning them to their pre-D&D depictions. Which means their lore was changed twice-over. Gnolls simply had their creature type changed. Drow had their alternate cultures and religions shown off. And the Deurgar had a semi-new society created for them. Goblinoids are doing basically all three takes at the same time. My best guess for the reason behind this: They are getting Goblinoids ready ahead of time for one of the brand new campaign settings that is supposedly coming up soon. One that is likely going to feature the Feywild.
The Hobgoblin Devastator is a mage better suited for the battlefield than the library. And by better suited I mean perfectly suited. Their entire purpose is to act as a magical artillery upon the enemy armies, and use their magical IFF powers to prevent their allies from being burned in the crossfire.
While the Devastator is CR4, and has a fancy Multiattack with the Devastating Bolt power (for ranged damage and knocking targets prone). They are almost never going to use Multiattack, instead using their spellcasting action and their Army Arcana power to lob
Fireballs and
Lightning Bolts indiscriminately for the brief period of time that they will function once PCs figure out who is casting all the spells. Doesn’t even matter if the
Fireball is 5’ away from their own face, the Devastator is still casting it, because they can make themselves and all their allies immune to the spells that they cast as they cast them. It's amazing how effective that power is. Furthermore, the Devastator has access to nice spells like
Fly (which will never be cast on themselves, because that is just asking to have the concentration knocked from you), and
Fog Cloud (which really puts a crimp on enemy archers).
In the changeover, the Devastator lost access to a bunch of spells, like nearly every spellcaster. Most notably
Ice Storm and
Thunderwave. They also lost the Arcane Advantage power, which boosted their spell attacks when an ally was next to the target. In return, they received a Multiattack, their Quarterstaff had its damage buffed, and they got the Devastating Bolt power. Which actually deals quite a bit of single target DPR, it’s just that
Fireball is almost always going to be a superior option in combat due to the AoE aspect. Their creature type was also changed into Fey (Goblinoid).
