Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Nightfall]

Erik,

Hey at least you have your name attached to quality work BESIDES that one. I mean Shackled City (okay didn't write it but helped!), Age of Worms, Legions of Hell, Armies of the Abyss, etc.

Faiths and Panethons...eh.

But I agree with my mate Krusty, Vhaerun should have been dropped like no one's business. Same with Orcus, now with more power, charging in and dropping Kiaranselee like she's nothing. Cause she is.

 

[Dr. Harry]

Paragon template is in the Epic Level Handbook.

Thank you. I didn't recognize it because I haven't opened that book in quite a while

But can't they still be treated that way at moderate levels, since they are far beyond the character's CR at those levels?

Certainly. But the stats are still space I won't use.

I feel your pain. I felt that way about Planar Handbook and Sandstorm with all the wasted space (IMO) on touchstone sites. Same goes for the endless wasted pages (again, IMO) on sample character for prestige classes, how to adapt the prestige classes to your campaign, and so on.

Gee, a little of those I use ... but the stuff I don't use looks and feels like filler (fairly or unfairly).

As someone who has been running an epic campaign for over a year now, I can say that I haven't run into any balance issues with monsters. The CRs for most of the epic creatures have been quite on target so far. Some of the non-epic monsters from the MMII that have CRs over 20 are vastly overrated (hellfire wyrm, mountain giant, linnorms, etc).

Thank you; I have not run this myself and it is good to know.

and

Provide a 2-3 page discussion of various philosophies regarding archfiend power levels (should they be gods? Should they be "high-epic" threats? Should they be "low-epic" threats? and why) and a few example stats at various power levels (CR 20-30, CR 35-45, deific) for a sample archfiend or two (my votes are either for completely new ones, or for Asmodeus and Demogorgon, of course!).

Amen, whereever these appear!

Oh yes, and Good one! Upper_Krust. That one's worth saving.

 

[Shemeska]

Anthraxus should have dropped that fool like a bag o' dirt...

I so rarely agree with you, but I do this time.

It was FR, which had that whole little retroactive cosmology change. So it wasn't Anthraxus, but an Ultroloth named Inthracis. Either way, the Anthraxus analog in said book was used as cannon fodder, and he was killed by a drow wizard with a cone of cold and a fireball IIRC.

 

[Aaron L]

Yes, you are. It's not a "just another monster" issue, it's a matter of internal logic. If the lords of the underworld are only CR 30 or so, how the heck do they avoid being conquered by deities? When Kurtulmak can finish Asmodeus off in a few rounds and teleport away, something is very wrong with the cosmology. Why hasn't Demogorgon been slaughtered by rival gods of the aquatic races? How did Pazuzu manage to curse the entire race of kenku, as described in the recent Dragon ecology? How did the Lords of the Nine banish the orcish and goblin pantheons from the Nine Hells?

This is why I wish they would make the archfeind stats at least somewhere reasonable in comparison to the stats provided for the gods. I LOVE U_Ks systematic treatment of the subject. I see gods and archfeinds and everything in a Lovecraftian way: These are alien beings of immense power; gods are godsnot because they have worshippers, gods have gods because we microbe like lesser beings are awed by thier power and want some scraps for ourself. I've always despised the idea that gods are powered by thier worshippers. Azathoth doesnt need any dust speck humans (or Mi-Go, or what have you) to be the primordial nuclear chaos that he is; he simply IS. I like the treatment of the Great Old Ones and Outer Gods in CoC d20. Geat Cthulhu himself is just a lowly demigod, an alien entity of such immense power that he is of divine rank by vitrtue of his ablities. Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth, on the other hand, are personifications of universal principles, and are of a whole other level of power. I see no reason why demon princes and dukes of Hell should be any different; if a being has such immense power, then he should have divine rank. A whole slew of these beings even HAVE cults and worshippers just as Cthulhu does. The only reason I can see that they DONT have a divine rank is so that it is conceivable that PCs could fight them withiout having to be upwards of 70th level, but then that throws the whole logic of the cosmology out of whack. So what we need is some explanation or mechanic as to why the gods havent eliminated these beings, but a way that it is still possible for a group of mortals to still challenge thier power and be a reasoble threat with a chance of fighting them.


I,of course, have no problem with characters needing to be in the high multiples of 10 levels to fight archfeinds (and love epic levels), but I know most of you out there dont. So some knd of scaling mechanic might be in order. Maybe some similiar to the proxie mechanic from D&Dg, or the Aspect monsters from the Miniatures Handbook; if you want your party to fight Demogorgon, you have them fight a reflection of his Abyssal monstrousness that is projected onto your planet, or whatever, but the real essence of the beast is still in the Abyss, his seat of power infusing him with godlike status, not wanting to commit full power to a fight and make himself vulnerable to gods whacking him while he's outside of his area of power, or afraid of an absence leaving an opening for some other demon lord to step in while he isnt there and possibly usurp his ties to the plane. Theres a possible idea: a mechanic whereby other fiends can establish ties to thier native plane to increase thier power, but doing so restricts thier ability to fully leave the place and they must always keep the bulk of themselves on thier home plane or some other being may step in to wrest thier power from them, but let the archfiends have Aspects the same way that gods have Avatars. It even has precedent in WotC literature. Maybe make planar bind points (somewhat like like planar touchstones) where fiends of a certain power level can establish a tie to the plane and gain a divine rank while they are at that location, but limit the number of such bind points such that they are fought over and limit the number of demon princes, archdevils, and so on.


Pardon my rambling.

 

[Bryan898]

You know what would really burn me is if they decide to stat out a bunch of cookie cutter followers ALA BoVD. That was the real waste of space IMO. Without the stupid sample followers you could have cut out half the pages used for the Archfiends/ Demon Lords.

 

[Whisper72]

Hmm... I haven't followed the thread entire, but as to the issue of why more powerful divine beings do not destroy lesser divine beings, I like the way this is treated in the Sea of Death (or however it is called) trilogy by EGG. There, a fight of such proportions sends echoes through the multiverse, and other powerful beings will swoop down to take out the weakened victor. In essence, the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction is what keeps the Gods somewhat civil towards eachother. Another issue in 1st Ed. was that a God on his/her homeground is a lot more powerful. Thus, a greater god who is on the turf of a lesser God might still be at a disadvantage. All that a diety has to do to escape destruction at the hands of a more powerful being, is to hightail it back to his own home...

May not work in everyone's cosmology, but I always kinda liked this. It keeps the possibility of gods destroying eachother in the air, but with such risks that it rarely happens...

 

[Shemeska]

Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth, on the other hand, are personifications of universal principles, and are of a whole other level of power.

The Lovecraftian trio there are probably closer in concept to DnD Archfiends rather than DnD deities. Cyric and Nerull might have an evil alignment, but Mydianchlarus and Demogordon etc -are- evil. DnD gods are largely the embodiments of their worshipper's beliefs taken form, while the archfiends tend to be the raw embodiments of that alignment personified.

Deities can be forgotten or their worshippers can die off, leaving them a petrified lump of stone in the Astral. So long as their alignment exists, archfiends don't have that issue to worry about. They're made of baser stuff. Being a true deity has its perks, such as not being tied down in your power to a plane or layer of a plane, but also carries responsibilities and risks.

In giving stats to archfiends it's certainly an enigma that you're faced with:

1) some people want to fight them at the end of a campaign, somewhere in the 20ish level range.

2) Then you've got precident of archfiends killing deities: Asmodeus rumored to have killed Abriymoch, Yugoloths having made Khin-Oin from the spine of a deity they killed, Levistus winning a protracted war against Set and Sekolah both, and the fiends (likely the yugoloths) having put a definative end to deific involvement in the Blood War by killing one nameless deity of chaos and somehow affecting every other deity involved till they all withdrew and have stayed so since that point. In DnD in most all examples the fiends are treated with kid gloves by deities, outside of rare gambles when a deity manages to kill an archfiend and pacify its kindred to avoid being curb stomped by an infinite plane of them. Deities don't interfere with the internal politics of the fiends out of actual concern, not just because it's beneath them or something contrived like that.

3) Some folks want them with stats but on the order of deities (who they also want statted)

4) Some folks want them with no stats

So somehow you have to remain true to the history of the Archfiends in DnD while somehow making one or more of the trio of perhaps mutually exclusive camps happy. Won't be easy. You have to have archfiends that can, on their own power and influence, hold infinite planes or layers of infinite planes from true deities and are viewed as largely seperate but equal powers.

A deity is nigh all powerful within their discrete domain, but outside that domain, they recognize that the fiends native there and their rulers are in control. A deity is nigh all powerful in their own discrete domain but Mydianchlarus and the layer of Oinos might as well be the same being, same thing with Demogorgon and his layer of the Abyss, or Levistus with Stygia. On the other hand that deity will have its own general (ie not within its domain) deific power anywhere, while those archfiends might have considerably less outside of their plane.

How to put that into game stats? Especially given the unfortunate precident that we have to go along with for with deity and archfiend stats in 3e? It won't be easy to reconcile those with the archfiends' history in the game, plus some folks want to use them as targets.

 

[BOZ]

it is a big mess no matter what direction you move in, isn't it? put in the weak stats, the guys who want higher stats are left out. put in higher stats, the guys who need the CR 20 archfiends are left out. take out the stats altogether, then those who want stats are left out.

sheesh!

 

[Soel]

Asmodeus rumored to have killed Abriymoch,

Where is this tidbit from?

Yugoloths having made Khin-Oin from the spine of a deity they killed

I don't think it necessarily said they were the ones who killed said deity, but I might be wrong...

 

[Staffan]

Just imagine if you'd been one of the poor bastards who had to write that beast...

I feel for you, man.

(I remembered that I had seen one of the Eriks griping about it somewhere earlier, but I couldn't remember if it was you or Boyd, and I was too lazy to check which one of you was credited on the book)