Hordes of the Abyss.

[BOZ]

Ah, alas, you missed my explanation on post #207 on one major reason why upgrading is harder than downgrading. Downgrading is a simple process of lowering the HD and SR, whereas raising the HD to upgrade is not enough. #207 explains it pretty thoroughly, but I'll hint that it has to do with the demon lords special attacks and qualities compared to the power of ELH monsters.

i didn't miss it. i just couldn't, in good conscience, agree with it. it's not at all harder to give a weaker monster a SA or SQ which an ELH or Demonomicon monster has - just give it to them. harder to create one? perhaps so, but only as limited by one's imagination. in a lot of ways, it is harder to make a monster weaker, because if you have a really powerful unique SA, how to you depower that and still keep the spirit of the monster alive? if you want to make a monster more powerful, all you need to do is add more power.

Want to be a little surprised and hopeful after some of the disappointing news) that there is at least a new, accurate, and (gods help us) cool picture of Demogorgon, the true Prince of Demons (sorry, Nightfall, but Orcus is not Demogorgon ).

well keep hope alive, my brother. as i understand it, you have at least one thing to be happy about.

Included are the following planes with leader; Pazunia (Pazuzu), Azzagrat (Graz’zt), Demonweb (Lolth), Thanatos (Orcus), The Grand Abyss (none, contested), Twelvetrees (none), The Iron Wastes (Kostchtchie), The Wells of Darkness (unclaimed), The Gaping Maw (Demogorgon), Hollow’s Heart (Fraz-Urb’luu), Shedaklah (Juiblex and Zuggtmoy), Yeenoghu’s Realm (Yeenoghu), Androlynne (Pale Night), Shendilavri (Malcanthet), and The Endless Maze (Baphomet).

Cool, 15 layers is probably more than enough given the overall pagecount. that, and we have the full list in the appendix. Compare to this list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abyss_(plane)

Appendix I: Lords of the Abyss, provides a breakdown of different demon lords with name, title, concerns, and layer. This includes those detailed here, as well as those mentioned in previous books, but not detailed. For example, Rhyxali is the Queen of Shadow Demons on layer 49, Shaddonon.

Good deal. let me change the question I asked earlier. Does this appendix contain the majority of the lords listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_lord_(Dungeons_&_Dragons) ? any omissions? Any new lords not on that wiki list?

The Demonomicon demon stat blocks will hover around CR 24 to CR 32 or thereabouts. Some might go lower, some higher. In other words, if I do a Demogorgon Demonomicon, his CR may or may not be changing. It's too early to say.

well, that is refreshing news. i wouldn't be at all upset if Demogorgon, Orcus, and Graz'zt waited until 2007 to get their coverage, as it would be nice to see some neglected lords get their days in the sun first.

 

[catsclaw227]

The Iron Wastes (Kostchtchie)

I might be ignorant to the many different pieces of information in all the official and unofficial demon lore (Dragon Mag, D&D - all versions,Planescape, Book of Fiends, DiceFreaks, etc) but I thought it was The Icy Wastes or The Ice Wastes.

 

[BOZ]

could be an alternate name?

 

[Erik Mona]

A lot of these places have lot of different names. Kostchtchie's layer is alternately called the Icy Wastes and the Iron Wastes in existing material. I thought "Iron" sounded cooler, so there we have it.

Demogorgon wins the award for most official names for the same layer, giving us Gaping Maw, The Brine Flats, and Abysm, depending on which source you're talking about. I went with Gaping Maw, but used the other two names for locations within the layer (I think Abysm was alway meant to be his palace name, but they got it wrong in the 3e Manual of the Planes).

--Erik

 

[Mirtek]

You're correct....I just finished running that campaign with my group earlier this year. However, the difference is that at that point, Tenebrous was an undead *Power*, not an archfiend. He was of a level of power greater than he had been as Orcus.

Actually no, in 2e Orcus was a lesser god. As Tenebrous he was lesser in power than he had been as Orcus.

I am bothered by the low stats for archfiends too. Yes, I think working fluff is more important than usefull crunch. If ordinary balors can grow up to 60 HD, then the so called "Prince of Demons" has to be able to cow such a 60 HD balor into submission or he won't be holding his title for long.

I prefer a design ideology that is accomodating to the way that many different people play

While that is a valid point, where is this supposed to end? Why should a player ever be forced to play something as uncool as a cleric instead of just being the deity himself? If Demogorgon can't be more than CR 27, what about the 20th level fighter that wants to slay the god of war? Shouldn't the god of war be made CR 27 too?

It's only really starts to get ugly if these stats simply can not match with the place these entities are supposed to hold. In Champions of Ruin they made none of the Elder Eternal Evils of Toril higher than CR 2X (IIRC). That can work, but in this case it requires that anything else on this world is below them in power (with the PC as grand heroes of the world being the execption and the ones to finally slay the EEEs). But if you can't turn a rock on this world without finding a level CR 35 NPC underneath, it just get's laughable to see this "doom of the world" creatures

My big concern is that a great wyrm red dragon shouldnt be in the same class powerwise as Demogorgon and Orcus

That's the point: If Demogorgon is not too weak, than many other creatures are just too strong

If they had said that the demon lords as presented represented their actual true selves, I'd be complaining bitterly with the other folks grousing about inconsistancy with Planescape canon. But they didn't, so I'm not.

As far as I have understood the earlier posts, the line that these stats only represent them outside their homereals has, for whatever reasons, not appeared in this book. So these are the stats for their true selfs.

And "they didn't write these are the stats of their true selfs, so these aren't the stats for their true selfs" is no argument.

The PHB didn't write "a first level fighter can not fly at a speed of 60 feet per round and with perfect maneuverability". So does this mean that my first level fighter actually can fly at a speed of 60 feet per round and with perfect maneuverability?

 

[Kyanus Ren]

The Demonomicon articles will continue to run in Dragon, more or less in the same format as they have been. For those seeking tougher, CR 25+ versions of the demon lords, this is where they'll be detailed. It's of course too early to reveal who's going to get the treatment in the future (or even who's next in the series) but demon lords like Demogorgon, Orcus, and Graz'zt are certainly in the running for Demonomicon articles.

Good news then! Thanks for the reply. That way, with just a little patience, we can all have the best of both worlds. Looking forward to this book and future Dragon Magzine articles. Here's to hoping that James and Erik dont leave Dragon any time soon!

 

[James Jacobs]

Bringing up the advancement rules for demons (such as those 60-HD balors) is an excellent reason NOT to peg down the demon lords at static CR or power levels. Although I'd assume that 60-HD balors are rare, the Monster Manual infers that they do exist, so it makes sense that the demon lords should be beyond such monsters. This is, in my view, an argument that demon lords shouldn't have stat blocks at all.

Also; what makes a good demon lord stat block in one campaign fails in another. In the Forgotten Realms, there are numerous NPCs and mosnters with Epic CR scores; in this campaign, it makes sense to have the demon lords be around CR 30 or higher. In Eberron, where there aren't as many high or epic-level creatures running around (yet), demon lords at the CRs listed in Fiendish Codex might be the way to go. In Greyhawk, they should probably fall somewhere between these two extremes. We could have included stats for all three power levels for all 14 demon lords, but that would have taken up a LOT more room. Since space was such an issue in this book, we had to choose which version of a demon lord's stats to present.

Essentially, demon lords have an infinite advancement. If there are 60 Hit Die balors in your campaign world and you want the demon lords to be able to push them around, by all means advance them all by 60 hit dice as well (which basically increases their CR scores by 60 as well, although at this point the concept of CR kind of becomes meaningless, I think).

For those who wish to place demon lords on the same footing as deities (which makes a LOT of sense, as they do control vast, often infinite, regions of the multiverse), I recomend that you use the stat blocks in Chapter Three of the Fiendish Codex as powerful aspects or avatars of the demon lord in question. This way, you can even have your PCs encounter multiple aspects of a demon lord at once. Leave the actual demon lords themselves as creatures that mortals cannot hope to face in combat and survive.

No matter how you want to use demon lords in your campaign, remember that the sections about each demon lord's appearance, personality, goals, and tactics should be useful to you; this information exists apart from their stats. And of course, Chapter Five of the book gives you a LOT more information about many of them as well (in the context of the various Abyssal layers they control).

In any event, fans of the Adventure Paths we've been doing in Dungeon who are nervous about how the demon lords will be handled in the latter adventures in Savage Tide (our third Adventure Path, scheduled to start in issue #139) needn't worry about demon lords being used simply as monsters to fight (or even being creatures you can defeat).

 

[Nightfall]

That last paragraph assures me then I'll be extremely pleased with Savage Tide. Thanks James!

 

[DaveMage]

Bringing up the advancement rules for demons (such as those 60-HD balors) is an excellent reason NOT to peg down the demon lords at static CR or power levels. Although I'd assume that 60-HD balors are rare, the Monster Manual infers that they do exist, so it makes sense that the demon lords should be beyond such monsters. This is, in my view, an argument that demon lords shouldn't have stat blocks at all.

Yeah, but honestly, I think the 60-HD balor is a design flaw of the balor, rather than something the demon lords should be based on. It may have been better design to cap the advancement of non-lord demons (and devils) at 30 or 40 HD in the MM 3.5 (since the lords had been defined in the BoVD).

 

[BryonD]

Bringing up the advancement rules for demons (such as those 60-HD balors) is an excellent reason NOT to peg down the demon lords at static CR or power levels. Although I'd assume that 60-HD balors are rare, the Monster Manual infers that they do exist, so it makes sense that the demon lords should be beyond such monsters. This is, in my view, an argument that demon lords shouldn't have stat blocks at all.

There seems to be quite a gulf between this reasoning and CR21-23 presented in the book.

Did the complaints post BoVD even come up in design discussions?

Does the statement regarding higher stats for demon lords on their home planes actually exist in the book? Could you offer a page number? Because if the word that it isn't really there is correct, then this is a bad thing. I don't care about canon myself. But I do really care about where the bar is being set for D&D products.

Demon lords do not have infinite advancement. One pit fiend may have double the HD of a standard pit fiend, but Orcus is Orcus. Sure, I can ignore your product and make Orcus be whatever I want (and if I'm doing that why is it I'm buying the book again? And don't tell me about the fluff. I don't pay people to play the game for me) I can also ignore the MM and make goblins be whatever I want. But it is going to run against the grain when I try to use other D&D stuff involving goblins.

Saying we should replace what you wrote with our own stuff isn't a real strong sales pitch.