Here's the Abyssal Sibriex From Mordenkainen's Tome

This....thing...is....AWESOME!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Unless those minions can take a hit for it, this thing will still be vaporized in the first round. It's one of the flaws of 5E monster design. Nothing can stand up to focus fire to use as a solo or big boss. Basically anything that is intended to last more than a round or be remotely memorable needs about 50hp per party level.

Given that it's intelligent enough to know how much damage a party can dish out (I know my group of non-optimising role players don't do anything like so much) it would make sure never to be in the same room with the party until it has already crippled them.

I remember one game a long time ago the party's lich enemy teleported into the camp whilst they where resting, used Finger of Death (or some other 1st edition insta-kill spell) on the character keeping watch, then immediately teleported away again. It's pretty easy for smart monsters to make the party's life miserable.

 

[Dausuul]

It is a bit like the outsiders in the Dresden Files. Demons and Sidhe are alien and unknowable, but at least they come from this reality, they are immensely powerful and possess abilities unlike anything humanity has, but they have to play by the rules. When stuff leaks in from Beyond the Outer Gates (or the Far Realm) stuff gets serious and you get weird alliances to stop whatever reality warping/destroying thing they are doing...

See, this is exactly why I think the Far Realm is silly and redundant. Because what you just described? That's the Abyss! Demons are the entities warping and destroying reality, forcing everyone else to make unlikely alliances (e.g., devils with angels) against them. They follow no rules. Their whole purpose is to annihilate the multiverse, sweeping everything back into primordial chaos. When the Abyss leaks into the material plane, it spreads corruption and insanity. The demon lords have cults of demented worshippers practicing unspeakable rites.

The Abyss does everything the Far Realm wants to do, but it also weaves it into the broader "order versus chaos" theme of D&D. The Far Realm is just a bit of H.P. Lovecraft imagery bolted onto the side of D&D because Bruce Cordell wanted to write a Lovecraft-themed adventure back in 2E.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

Given that it's intelligent enough to know how much damage a party can dish out (I know my group of non-optimising role players don't do anything like so much) it would make sure never to be in the same room with the party until it has already crippled them.

I remember one game a long time ago the party's lich enemy teleported into the camp whilst they where resting, used Finger of Death (or some other 1st edition insta-kill spell) on the character keeping watch, then immediately teleported away again. It's pretty easy for smart monsters to make the party's life miserable.

As written, this monster has no ability to do what you described by itself. He could use other agents to do such a thing if he had a way to contact them, but this demon has no ability to planeshift or teleport at will.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Given that it's intelligent enough to know how much damage a party can dish out (I know my group of non-optimising role players don't do anything like so much) it would make sure never to be in the same room with the party until it has already crippled them.

I remember one game a long time ago the party's lich enemy teleported into the camp whilst they where resting, used Finger of Death (or some other 1st edition insta-kill spell) on the character keeping watch, then immediately teleported away again. It's pretty easy for smart monsters to make the party's life miserable.

""Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?""

Eventually your friends gets tired of readied action BS cheese and negative play experience, and even then a boss monster should last a few rounds. Strahd is the exact same way. Vaporized the instant someone catches him or you fail in a parallel processing race against 5 other players. All because WOTC keeps designing HP's assuming everyone is playing some chumps with no feats, a 13 in their attack stat, no magic items, refuse to wear armor because it clashes with their hat, and no tactics or coordination.

I can auto kill the party any time. "You're pooping and the tarrasque appears and kills you". Still not satisfying. Giving things the "+500 HP juice" actually works pretty well.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

""Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?""

Eventually your friends gets tired of readied action BS cheese and negative play experience, and even then a boss monster should last a few rounds. Strahd is the exact same way. Vaporized the instant someone catches him or you fail in a parallel processing race against 5 other players. All because WOTC keeps designing HP's assuming everyone is playing some chumps with no feats, a 13 in their attack stat, no magic items, refuse to wear armor because it clashes with their hat, and no tactics or coordination.

I can auto kill the party any time. "You're pooping and the tarrasque appears and kills you". Still not satisfying. Giving things the "+500 HP juice" actually works pretty well.

Player skill and style is obviously going to vary widely between different groups. Thus CR can never be anything more more than a rough guideline. If you think your players can best a CR18 monster at level 9, then have them fight it at level 9, and put them up against a CR 30 monster when they are level 18. Or a dozen CR18 monsters.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

See, this is exactly why I think the Far Realm is silly and redundant. Because what you just described? That's the Abyss! Demons are the entities warping and destroying reality, forcing everyone else to make unlikely alliances (e.g., devils with angels) against them. They follow no rules. Their whole purpose is to annihilate the multiverse, sweeping everything back into primordial chaos. When the Abyss leaks into the material plane, it spreads corruption and insanity. The demon lords have cults of demented worshippers practicing unspeakable rites.

The Abyss does everything the Far Realm wants to do, but it also weaves it into the broader "order versus chaos" theme of D&D. The Far Realm is just a bit of H.P. Lovecraft imagery bolted onto the side of D&D because Bruce Cordell wanted to write a Lovecraft-themed adventure back in 2E.

Exactly. When you look at the AP Out of the Abyss, you can see the similarities in ''reality warping effect'' the pure madness of the demon lords bring with them and classic Lovecraftian themes. It also makes Old Ones more threatening to the players because they are not from another dimension non-related to theirs, they come from the dark recesses of the Abysses. Even when looking at the GOO warlock, you notice that the features are closer to the themes of the demon lords than the ones from the fiend pact.

In my games, even psionic powers, chaos magic are somewhat fueled by the eccentricities of the Abyss and the demons, doing with magic the same thing the demons does with reality: warp it in impossible/illogical ways.

 

[dave2008]

I don't mind if they drop the name "obyrith," but it'd be a real shame to lose the concept: An elder race of demons whose presence warps reality, and the sight of them is enough to drive you mad. I've always thought obyriths were vastly superior to the Far Realm as a way to integrate Lovecraftian horror into the D&D mythos. The Far Realm always felt bolted-on, whereas obyriths fit right in with the Great Wheel cosmology and the insanity of the Abyss.

I guess I disagree. I don't see a need for an "elder" race demons. Why can't they just be demons?

If you need / want them to be something else (obyriths), then be somewhere else (far realm or whatever), leave the Abyss to the demons

Never had much use for the great wheel myself, so no loss to me.

 

[BookBarbarian]

""Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?""

Eventually your friends gets tired of readied action BS cheese and negative play experience, and even then a boss monster should last a few rounds. Strahd is the exact same way. Vaporized the instant someone catches him or you fail in a parallel processing race against 5 other players. All because WOTC keeps designing HP's assuming everyone is playing some chumps with no feats, a 13 in their attack stat, no magic items, refuse to wear armor because it clashes with their hat, and no tactics or coordination.

I can auto kill the party any time. "You're pooping and the tarrasque appears and kills you". Still not satisfying. Giving things the "+500 HP juice" actually works pretty well.

Basing Monsters on games without optional rules and a non-optimized is by far the best way to do it. They have to target the lowest common denominator, and like it or not that is the lowest common denominator.

You're free to expect an out of the can monster to work with against an optimized party without modification but I think that is an expectation that is bound to lead to frustration.

 

[Rossbert]

See, this is exactly why I think the Far Realm is silly and redundant. Because what you just described? That's the Abyss! Demons are the entities warping and destroying reality, forcing everyone else to make unlikely alliances (e.g., devils with angels) against them. They follow no rules. Their whole purpose is to annihilate the multiverse, sweeping everything back into primordial chaos. When the Abyss leaks into the material plane, it spreads corruption and insanity. The demon lords have cults of demented worshippers practicing unspeakable rites.

The Abyss does everything the Far Realm wants to do, but it also weaves it into the broader "order versus chaos" theme of D&D. The Far Realm is just a bit of H.P. Lovecraft imagery bolted onto the side of D&D because Bruce Cordell wanted to write a Lovecraft-themed adventure back in 2E.

That can be valid, but then the Abyss needs to be pulled out of the multiverse, and should have any spot on the great wheel. Uncomprehendable horrors from beyond our existence are hardly from beyond our existence if they are a quick jaunt from a big city, and no farther than the realms of faeries, angels and astral ninjas. But

They don't seem to be functioning outside our existence, they warp reality and are scary, but that can describe dragons, fey lords, archdevils, deities and basically anything that makes it to Legendary status. But then you'd need something new to fill the spot between Slaad and Devils.

If anything my dissapointment is that the Far Realm doesn't do enough, but then I suppose we don't get many Far Realm creatures per se, I mostly just remember the 3e snippet about being utterly inconsequential in the Far Realm because even if you could hold any sanity, you don't exist in enough dimensions to interact meaningfully with it, much like an immobile stick figure really doesn't have much impact on a three dimensional being who experiences time.

But you can't really quantify unimaginables can you?

 

[MechaTarrasque]

""Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?""

Eventually your friends gets tired of readied action BS cheese and negative play experience, and even then a boss monster should last a few rounds. Strahd is the exact same way. Vaporized the instant someone catches him or you fail in a parallel processing race against 5 other players. All because WOTC keeps designing HP's assuming everyone is playing some chumps with no feats, a 13 in their attack stat, no magic items, refuse to wear armor because it clashes with their hat, and no tactics or coordination.

I can auto kill the party any time. "You're pooping and the tarrasque appears and kills you". Still not satisfying. Giving things the "+500 HP juice" actually works pretty well.

This is one thing I miss about 4e. When someone would write something like this, all you had to say was "what part of lurker don't you understand?"*. In 5e, you have to hope the commentator has enough system mastery to understand that, a) even though they don't use officially use monster roles in 5e, they certainly do have underlying roles (unless you really want to try to convince us the lich is supposed to pick up a battleax to fight the PC's and not cast a spell; if so, please do, I could use the laugh), and b) what those roles are.

In short, Stahd is a lurker and Sibriex is a controller. Neither one is a soldier to soak up PC damage. If either was one, it would clearly be built that way.

* I suspect this accounts for half the reason Pathfinder is going with monster roles for PF2....and honestly, even if WotC didn't want to assign any mechanical values to them, they could have saved us a lot of trouble by including the roles as keywords.