Can you define the role of the Balor?

[WhatGravitas]

Another vote for 'brute' - they're big critters, that are monsters in melee. Being a brute doesn't mean they don't get spells, it just means their focus is melee. Probably elite brutes, who can smash things with their swords, and do nasty stuff with their whip at the same time (doing fire damage, 'grappling' characters).

Cheers, LT.

 

[Nifft]

Nah. A balor is an opportunity to say "you're a balor? It will be an honour to spit you on my blade". Like what we did to that balor in the last dungeon of Age of Worms, or maybe that was a pit fiend.

Don't make me create Bothered About Low Risk Outsider Generals.

Cheers, -- N

 

[hong]

Don't make me create Bothered About Low Risk Outsider Generals.

Cheers, -- N

For every C, there exists E such that characters above level E will find monsters of difficulty C low-risk.

 

[Nifft]

For every C, there exists E such that characters above level E will find monsters of difficulty C low-risk.

Obviously, this is only true if E can grow without bound. If E were restricted (to 1 ≤ E ≤ 30, for example), you can see how it could be possible.

Cheers, -- N

 

[hong]

Obviously, this is only true if E can grow without bound. If E were restricted (to 1 ≤ E ≤ 30, for example), you can see how it could be possible.

Cheers, -- N

Curse your topological nifftyness. Curse it, I say.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I may well be wrong, but I was under the impression that monsters were not divided into roles as such, rather that monsters would be represented as kind of templates which could be layered over the basic framework provided by the role.

As such, you could have a Balor Brute, a Balor Skirmisher and so on. Depending on what role you wanted it to take in the fight. This might explain the lack of the disguise self and so on SLAs in the spined devil writeup - the "Skirmisher" version doesn't get them (because it doesn't need them to skirmish) but the "Infiltrator" (or whatever) version might.

No, pretty much everything I've seen means they are using roles to define how to create a monster. The role is per monster, however SOME monsters who are intelligent might have different versions of them already in the monster manual with different roles.

For instance, in 3rd Edition, you'd say: This monster is a Demon, which means it has all sorts of magical abilities, it's chaotic and evil, and immune or resistant to magic and all sorts of energy as well as has a bunch of cool powers.

In 4th edition the goal is to simplify monsters as much as possible to make them easy to run and to help explain to the DM what to do with them. So, in this case, you'd say: What do we want to DO with this monster? It should stand toe to toe with the PCs biggest fighter, shrug off its blows and do a lot of damage with its sword or whip. So we give it a big attack power and a power to increase it's ac or absorb damage, and a lot of hit points. Done. Does it need all sorts of magical abilities? No, because it will 95% of the time spend all its rounds attacking. So, ignore the corner case and remove the 5% by removing those abilities.

Also, for other people, roles in 4th Ed are combat based. A role defines what a creature does from rolling initiative until the end of a combat.

 

[Knight Otu]

To my knowledge (from the threads on the Monster podcast), the monster roles are:

[B]Horde		BBEG[/B]
Brute		Soldier
Skirmisher	Artillery
Ringleader	Controller

There are also the two "metaroles" or "superroles" of Minion (replace a regular monster with four minions of currently indeterminate lower ability) and Elite (replace two regular monsters with a monster with higher ability, presumably including some extra actions). Balors are definitely a candidate to be Elite, but their actual role strongly depends on what abilities they retain. A mix similar to the one they currently have would slightly point towards a controller role, though about every of the roles could be justified.

 

[Neil Bishop]

With the pit fiend also in the game, the balor's role is that of the fifth wheel.

Yep the balor is a crappy legacy monster.

Tanar'ri are immune to electricity; baatezu have no resistance to it. Logic would dictate, even the logic of the chaotic abyss, that the balor would be a living storm of electricity. Its body flames would instead be a lightning storm. That way the balor would be able to fulfil its role of taking the battle to the baatezu instead of looking like a pit fiend clone.

Strangely enough it took until 3.5E for the balor to actually be immune to fire. I wonder if that will go away in 4E?

 

[hong]

Yep the balor is a crappy legacy monster.

Tanar'ri are immune to electricity; baatezu have no resistance to it. Logic would dictate, even the logic of the chaotic abyss, that the balor would be a living storm of electricity. Its body flames would instead be a lightning storm. That way the balor would be able to fulfil its role of taking the battle to the baatezu instead of looking like a pit fiend clone.

See, this wouldn't have been a problem but for that crappy legacy conflict known as the "Blood War".

 

[pawsplay]

Yep the balor is a crappy legacy monster.

You just called balrogs a crappy legacy monster.

Out!