Hordes of the Abyss.

[Ripzerai]

Or if you're like me, wait and see what the art is like and if it sucks, I'll say so.

You will accept the tutu Wayne Reynolds drew on Orcus and you will like it. That shade of pink totally suits his winter complexion.

 

[Kain Darkwind]

Well, this thread has been quite informative. Perhaps I should have started with Shemmy's recent summary and saved myself an hour.

Since I'm arguing where demons and their lords should be on the other thread, I'll not bother the folks here with common sense.

From what I've seen, I'm going to appriciate the new stat blocks for the standard demons. I will sneer at the hobbled demon lords, and promptly consider them aspects at best. As I do the BoVD versions. I'll definitely be hyped about the Abyssal layers, and hopefully everything else will be interesting and useful as well. Slightly nervous about possession mechanics...seems to me that there are too many floating around. I'd like an update and perhaps expansion on Dark Speech, although I realize that wouldn't be a demon specific thing.

All in all, I'm hoping for this to be better than Lords of Madness and expecting it to be slightly worse than Libre Mortis. I do wish they would have made it longer though.

 

[Sammael]

All in all, I'm hoping for this to be better than Lords of Madness and expecting it to be slightly worse than Libre Mortis. I do wish they would have made it longer though.

Surely, you got the two mixed up?

 

[Shemeska]

I do wish they would have made it longer though.

Regardless of anything else, I think that we can -all- agree on this particular point.

 

[Piratecat]

You will accept the tutu Wayne Reynolds drew on Orcus and you will like it. That shade of pink totally suits his winter complexion.

Bull. Orcus is so an autumn.

All I know is that like some other people, whether or not I use the low stats for the actual demon lords (and I probably won't, having an epic lvl game), I'll yoink them and just change the name and appearance to provide new, unique demons. This is a fantastic resource for me.

 

[Sledge]

Perhaps the demon lords section just needs a little editing to say "substitute demon lords". Then just change the names so we get the following event:
Fighter 20 Bob: Through this door is the dread demon lord of the undead, Orcus!!!!!!
Wizard 20 Bill: Indeed let us destroy him!
Cleric 20 Ben: Let us purify this land!
Rogue 20 Barry: This isn't a land so much as a layer of the abyss you know.
Bob, Bill, and Ben: Just get that door opened safely!
Barry: All right.
Doors open and beyond lies a truly foul creature beyond all description.
Ben: At last Orcus you meet your death!
Creature beyond all description: Sorry chaps, but Orcus had to step out for a real challenge. I'm his cousin Dorcus. He left me in charge in case some mortals decided to stop by for lunch.

Seriously though while I find the given CR's to just be ludicrous (they aren't even at the high end for encounters at 20th level.) I'm hoping that I can get some use out of them. I just wish they had simply presented them as a bunch of new advanced demons.

Edit: and while I wrote up this fascinating little post PC just jumped in and made my final statement for me.

 

[Kain Darkwind]

Surely, you got the two mixed up?

Because I use so much necromancy in my design and games as a player and DM, I found Libre Mortis of better use to me than LoM. However, both books could have used about 30-100 more pages. LoM had some great flavor, but it was a little weak on the stats/mechanics. To keep this on topic, an Elder Brain is now tougher/tough as Demogorgon. LM was lacking on flavor, but I've got plenty of that already for undead. The PrCs, new monsters, feats, etc....all serve me better than stuff in LoM.

 

[catsclaw227]

... When I have the book and I'm having multiple fiendgasms over the fluff...

There's an image for ya. Go Shemmy!

On topic: I'll wait to see it before I make any judgements. It's funny how we (me included) get all up in arms without reading a single word or seeing a single page.

My goodness -- all these opposed opinons about CRs and canon and default monsters and such just fortifies what I already believe. In my game, the demons have CRs of what ever I want them to have and if I decide that Demogorgon has CR32 then great for me! I could care less what he has in relation to the other demons because in one game if I am playing low-level, low-magic adventuring similar to Midnight, having CR20 demons are good. I want to play epic then they'd be CR 50. And in each case they would be correct, canon, and default for my game.

I read reviews and even make online purchase decisions based upon the review and the reviewer, but this much anticipated book needs me to make personal judgement. I prefer my Demon Lords in the CR 2x-3x range and I'll be using the write-ups in Dragon for that, but the stats for other demons, and the fluff are what I want from this book.

Oh and the flunch too. That's the crunch that is really just fluff for me. Mechanics that generate great ideas even if I never actually use the mechanic. (mostly like Su, Ex, and Sp abilities, or feat ideas that sound awesome, but the crunch doesn't work right for me).

 

[Mirtek]

There are rules for advancing balors to 60 HD, for campaigns that need that kind of advancement. However there's nothing to say that there are 60 HD balors.

What about the Gate spell and the "call up to twice as many HD as the caster" part?

If I can call 40 HD outsiders, that means that they are assumed to exist in D&D.

If you have 60-HD balors running around, and the most powerful of demon lords is a mere CR 23, then your campaign has some serious issues. As others have stated, if you would allow a balor to get that powerful, then as the DM you owe it to the internal consistency of your own campaign to make sure the Abyssal lords are much, much tougher, if not simply beyond stat blocks.

And that's what FC is misserably failing to do, it's not even setting a internal consistency just with the core rules.

Another argument would be, why would a wise demon lord even allow a balor to get that tough? A non-lord demon that tough represents a serious threat to any and all demon lords. Let's say you use the BoVD stats. A CR 32 Demogorgon would get worried about any balor that got tougher than, say, 30-HD. He would watch that balor, and destroy him at any sign of him getting too tough, I'd think. The complacency of allowing a balor to get to 60-HD, regardless of the power level of the demon lords respectively, is grossly incompetent, and the lords deserve whatever fate this uber-balor metes out to them.

And how will the demonlord, with his written stats, ever be able to notice such a balor until the day he comes to destroy him?

We're talking about an infinite number of balors, spread among an infinite number of infinite layers. Which ability from their statblock gives them to power to watch all of them? Do they even have any ability in their stat blocks to merely watch their own layers?

 

[jasamcarl]

The sowjet union wasn't the abyss, it's citizen weren't demons.

This isn't a retort. A lot of things aren't the soviet union. That doesn't mean they can't share a some of the same thematic features, especially when they are wholly the product of my imagination.