BOZ said:
Can we reasonably assume that a CR19 Juiblex will always lose to a CR20 balor in a fight?
Of course not. Can we assume he'll always reliably win, against multiple challengers, over a period of centuries? Sooner or later, he's going down. Probably sooner.
And it's not even that his rule over Shedelakh is destined to be nasty, brutish, and short. It's the idea that they've taken a
demon prince, one of the crowning adversaries in D&D since the '70s, and made it weaker than a Type VI Demon.
Don't get me wrong - I understand the temptation to stick up for someone who looks like they're being picked on. Poor Erik and James! They worked so hard on this weighty tome, the book they were born to write, and look at all the sniping over this petty little meaningless issue!
And it
is, as many have said, a comparatively small thing. It's a tiny, tiny part of the book. But this is the Internet, and until we have something more meaty to chew on, we
will chew on it. And I think the designers understand that.
But you know what? The apologists are causing more trouble than the complainers. Because you know full well how disingenuous your arguments are. You know as well as anyone how silly the idea of a CR 19 Juiblex or a CR 20 Yeenoghu is. You know there's no cogent defense that can be made for it. Yet you proceed to add more fuel to the fire, which would have otherwise died down long ago.
Why are people getting so damned upset about what one book says about one little aspect of one little thing? Good god, Mona and Jacobs are out to destroy your lives, and all the whining about it isn't going to save you, so just calm down and take it.
Why are
you people getting so damned upset over a little whining on the Internet? Good god, we're going to destroy Mona's and Jacobs' lives because we'd rather that, if the issue of power level is so contentious, they'd decided to err a little closer to common sense.
This little tirade of yours is completely unreasonable. The Internet
will spawn complaints, and the ones so far have been perfectly civil. So calm down and take it; the designers in question seem to be taking it fine. I'm sure
they're aware that when we say we think it's a small issue, we mean what we say, even if you're not.
If you don't like the book, don't buy it.
If you don't want to read nerds complaining about things, don't log on to the Internet. That's what it was designed for; it was hoped that if nuclear war arrived, nerds would still have a way to critique popular culture.
Another argument would be, why would a wise demon lord even allow a balor to get that tough?
Oh, good grief. You'll defend to the death anything
Fiendish Codex I says, but you won't defend the
Monster Manual?
The Abyss is full of out-of-the-way places, places even CR 23 Abyssal lords fear, for balors to wait and grow. An infinite number of them, in fact.
The MM says advanced balors
do exist. FF1 says advanced Abyssal lords
might exist. That's dissonance.
Dissonance. That's the whole complaint, and it's not a harsh one. Erik Mona and James Jacobs are grownups and don't need you to protect them. Our opinions aren't hurting anybody.
