Demon Lords and Princes: How *Bad* Should They Be?

[diaglo]

*gasp!* Not going with the 1E approach?

it is a poor imitation of the real thing.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Within the in game history of the planes, there's an almost monolithic precident for true deities and archfiends largely staying out of one anothers business, and when they do come into conflict, the archfiends have tended to slap the deities around like five dollar whores. See the examples I gave earlier in the thread. Call it home field advantage, define it as you like, but the record is rather clear in the context of planar politics and affairs that the fiends have an upper hand on their own planes when dealing with deities who also inhabit those same planes.

Simply untrue on all counts. The 1e situation was as follows:

1) Deities had better stats that archfiends. So did solars. (Rip, you can talk about theoretical lower limits to divine stats all you want, but the fact is that there IS a theoretical lower limit. It's represented by Lolth.)

2) EGG and Ed Greenwood proposed moving the goblin, orc, and kobold pantheons out of the Nine Hells in order to avoid the question of "why don't these deities rule the Hells themselves?", NOT because of some in-game story reason that the archfiends had kicked them out.

3) As to "slapping the deities around":

Yugoloths carved Khin-Oin from the spine of a deity they killed,

How many yugoloths? And what power of deity? It's not like the yugoloth race couldn't field a force capable of taking down a true god, whatever the stats for the top yugoloth bosses are.

they also forced true deities out of active involvement in the Blood War,

Never heard of this. Chapter and verse, please.

Prince Levistus is shrinking the size of Set's deific domain in a protracted war,

That's Dicefreaks canon, AFAICT. I don't see any evidence for it in WotC material.

and Asmodeus forced Gruumsh and Maglubiyet out of Avernus and into Acheron.

Again, chapter and verse. Planes of Law rather clearly states that the goblin pantheon is "long established on Acheron," while the orcish pantheon has moved from Gehenna to the Hells to Acheron. That doesn't imply Asmodeus forcing Gruumsh to do anything.

Certainly, both the 1e MotP and Planes of Chaos note that not many deities settle in the Abyss because "few deities wish to contend with the upstart demon life that inhabits the plane." That hardly sounds like getting slapped around to me.

Personally, I can see it going any number of ways. However, I tend to want to give my archfiends good reason to desire deific ascension and to be something apart from true deities (as "canon" clearly suggests). So, I use the following approach.

1) On their home planes, they're treated as having a divine rank of sorts ("cosmic rank": Thanks, Serge, Kain, and all the 'Freaks!) that allows them to control their planes in a manner analogous to that of true deities. On and off their home planes, they have the ability to resist salient divine abilities and deific powers in a manner appropriate to their relative cosmic rank.

2) In general, the personal power of the archfiends IMC ranges from the mid-20s (the Dukes of Hell and lesser demon lords) to around 50 (the mightiest demon princes). That puts them within the reach of pit fiends, balors, and high-level PCs at the low end, and on par with lesser deities at the high end (and, in any case, Lolth, Demogorgon, etc. are effectively deities anyway). My reasons for this are:

a) I don't use HD-advanced fiends. A pit fiend is a pit fiend is a pit fiend; that's the nature of Law. (Balors may vary by a few HD, as well as in size, aspect, and various powers, but that's the nature of Chaos, and they don't always vary upward.)

b) I prefer the approach taken in Ed Greenwood's 1e Nine Hells piece, in which there are clearly various rivalries and power plays going on at all levels of the diabolic hierarchy. If the Lords of the Nine are greater powers compared to the pit fiends at the lower end of the nobility, there's hardly the possibility of any power struggle. I prefer a situation in which pit fiends and balors form the lower end of the diabolical/demonic nobility (as they did in 1e), and there's a relatively linear progression upward from there.

c) Lesser power status is plenty. Combined with control over the Hosts of the Hells or the hordes of the Abyss, devious politicking, and the "home field advantage," this would allow the archfiends to hold their demesnes in the face of the deities without just putting them right on par with the greater deities, which is something I don't want since deities and archfiends serve different roles IMC. The Hells are expected to tremble at Bane's or Mystra's approach.

As to "slaying archfiends and taking their stuff," one could easily make the same argument with statted deities. A campaign that's geared around treating Demogorgon like a big monster with no agenda other than a fencing dummy's can equally be played with Zeus; he's got hit points and Armor Class and everything. That said, I do like archfiends to be within the grasp of fighting for epic-level PCs, with the true deities slightly less so. My PCs/NPCs are unlikely to ever get past 30th level (although I do play past 20th), so while they might be able to face down a Duke of Hell or outfox a demon lord, they still won't be able to take on a demonic paradigm like Demogorgon or a master manipulator like Dispater without divine help.

 

[Gold Roger]

My closure on the argument:

Some things are seriously out of wack and proportion, but the demonlords aren't the problem, they are simply the point where the problem becomes apparent.

The actual problem is that there is no real unified measuring stick for power in D&D as is, which, in the light of 3.X design philosophy of modularity and unified guidelines, is a huge failing.

The proponents of epic level play may not like it, but epic level play could never be that measuring stick. Epic level play is per definition without limit, it is the very principle of breaking the actual power limit of the game for the fun of it. For every epic power user power levels are defined differently.

That means the game has to use it's natural power level as core assumption of power levels. In 3.X that's level twenty. If we use level twenty as standart assumption power level, we have to define if we want beatable archexemplars (archfiends, celestial paragons, Slaadlords, Primus) and indeed even gods. I say yes we do. I mean, this is the game of "kill things and take their stuff" as much as every other game. If don't play it that way (and I don't) and think demon princes and such should be unapproachable by mortals, you don't need stats.

So Billy and Sue can kill demogorgon for his phat loot, so what? Let them have some good high school fun. Does that lessen your enjoyment of your own game, where you don't have Billy and Sue, or perhaps five years older Billy and Sue that have by then "risen above such"?

I don't think the FC1 aproach is perfect. A mortal shouldn't just go up to a archfiend and slay him, I would have loved to see rules for actually defeating archfiends, which, while still taking a battle, should be more about binding and imprisoning them.

The true failing is that some power levels are way out of proportion (true dragons, balor). It's the consequence of lacking guidelines for power level, a truly sad thing.

Again, I know that fans of epic level may not like this. I know Shemmeska plays an epic Sigil (the original isn't really epic. Yeah, the factols are level twenty and the duke has even been munchkinned to 19/20, but these guys are pretty much holding the most powerfull positions mortals can get, they are epic in almost every sense of the word, but by original, still at the limit of mortal power), Spulchrave is well known for his excellent epic level play and I can certainly simpathise with Razz's love for Naruto/Bleach like "real ultimate power" as a fan of those manga myself. But it just can't be the guideline, for a guideline needs limits. If you break the limit, don't wonder that you're out of limit.

 

[Umbran]

Please don't whine and snivel when I make generalized comments or suggestions in the form of a statement. It is immature and petty.

Moderator:

Kain, please tone it down. In The Rules we use around here, #1 is "Keep it civil". We ask you to be polite, even if you find what other people say less than pleasing.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I'd like to see what was done with the Demon Lords' CR be an indicator for what could be done with the entire upper end of the Core CR scale.

Since many campaigns start to implode when they get into the teens maybe the iconic base stats should be lower CR while allowing for advanced hit dice and class levels for tougher versions.

I dislike the fact that the campaign will break up before Balors, Maraliths, and even Nalfeshnee become appropriate foes much less having a custom advanced and levelled version.

For me the issue isn't that the Demon Lords are too weak but that the other creatures start their progression too high.

Sounds kind of 1e, I know, but maybe the cool creatures should be more appropriate to where the fun is (closer to 8-13 level). (Not that levels 14+ aren't fun but usually my group is ready to move on if they've actually played through all of those levels over the course of 2 years).

 

[Mirtek]

How many yugoloths? And what power of deity? It's not like the yugoloth race couldn't field a force capable of taking down a true god, whatever the stats for the top yugoloth bosses are. Never heard of this. Chapter and verse, please.

Wel I don't believe that the loths killed this deity, at very least not directly. I guess, if the deity was truly slain by the yugoloths, it's the deity that they slowly killed at the dawn of the blood war by slaying her mortal followers. Or they simply stole the spine from the astral plane.

That's Dicefreaks canon, AFAICT. I don't see any evidence for it in WotC material.

No, that's planescape canon, DF just adaopted it from PS

1) Deities had better stats that archfiends. So did solars. (Rip, you can talk about theoretical lower limits to divine stats all you want, but the fact is that there IS a theoretical lower limit. It's represented by Lolth.)

Well, some had worse stats than some deities, other had equal stats than some deities. Yet all archfiends were considered lesser gods.

2) EGG and Ed Greenwood proposed moving the goblin, orc, and kobold pantheons out of the Nine Hells in order to avoid the question of "why don't these deities rule the Hells themselves?", NOT because of some in-game story reason that the archfiends had kicked them out.

Correct, after this OOC change there were some ingame rumors that the LotN were responsible, but it was never mentioned as a fact. And even if they were responsible, that could have been the work of 9 lesser gods using the right circumstances.

I never liked the "archfiends need to be able to slap the gods around however they like to". But that still doesn't mean that the truth why Asmodeus is hiding in the darkness of Nessus should be because he is afraid of the hellfire wyrms outside

 

[Psion]

How many yugoloths? And what power of deity? It's not like the yugoloth race couldn't field a force capable of taking down a true god, whatever the stats for the top yugoloth bosses are.

Knowing the Yugoloths, this is just as likely to be screed.

One thing I really appreciated about Faces of Evil, probably the last "definitive" work on fiends as a whole, is that while it fuelled you with lots of ideas, it came across from an angle of a mortal sage in a setting in which the premise was that anything about yugoloths (or well, any fiends, but especially yugoloths) was just as likely to be true or false. So it was a book that it was safe to let your players get snippets of without having to worry about whether anything it said out of necessity and obesience to canon would invalidate the GMs game.

That said, the spine of a god thing is sort of cool... I think it would be a fun thing to plot out an adventure around how this really happened. And again, knowing the yugoloths, the entire event would not be something that is forcasted in CRs or stat blocks, but very sly trickery.

 

[reanjr]

Sounds pretty good to me. Most of them have absolute hordes of underlings and I have next to no interest in epic gaming, so CR 25 puts them well out of the reach of players, right where they should be.

Beyond that it doesn't really matter at all. They're more like plot elements that creatures made to be attacked. They could give them all ability scores of 3 for all I care.

 

[Shade]

I like my archfiends, celestial paragons, etc. in the CR 25+ range.

I like the dukes, viceroys, etc. in the low to mid 20 range.

If I need one to challenge my players at a lower-CR, I'll use an aspect or proxy.

 

[reanjr]

To keep on topic, having them this low makes them ineffective by the rules. When the WEAKEST pit fiend stands a chance at usurping the demon lords, then what do the 54 hd ones do?
Dicefreaks is a good measure for me. I'm not opposed to scaling on principal, just the insane scaling.
Scaling demon lords from 30-50 is scaling and extreme at that. Just how much power can these cr 20ish demon lords actually wield.
Someone once told me they thought if he wanted his 1st level party fight the evil necromancer that terrorized the land, then that necromancer should be level 1 or 2. There is no "terrorize the land" at level 1 or 2. The same thing holds true of the bigger bads. Anything that can tell pit fiends what to do needs to be MUCH higher in cr than the weakest pit fiend. Especially since pit fiends reach considerably higher cr's than 20. Especially since pit fiends can show up in groups of 4. Why would a pit fiend not destroy a demon "lord" that is its inferior? What exactly is the CR of a 54 HD pit fiend again? Given that the demon lord base stats are as weak as the base stats for a non lord devil there is a problem here.

This all mounts down to the question of why the PCs don't kill all the 10th level aritocrat kings and topple the kingdoms. Comparing celestial rank with CR/HD/level/etc. is a pretty worthless comparison. I could drop a 5th level goblin in as an arch villain for my 10th level PCs no problem. A 2nd level necromancer can certainly terrorize the land without problem. The yugoloths can probably have a god killed and certainly have some political sway over many of the them. Demon princes are not going to be able to be assaulted by pit fiends.