Hordes of the Abyss.

[GVDammerung]

What good does the mythology of tough demon princes when only ever the epic playing minority encounters them in combat? . . .

I'm a great fan of the D&D mythos. I use planescape and spelljammer in my homebrew games. But I want to play with the mythos.

The real greatness of the D&D mythos is not the nice pictures and stories, but the stories people tell each other how they appeared in each others game.

I cannot and will not defend D&D "epic level" rules. IMO, they suck. And I agree that PCs should, by some means or measure, be able to fight and win against a demon prince.

But whether I like it or not, the 3.5 rules are what they are in terms of levels and the rules for those levels. Under those rules, demon princes, if they are to maintain their traditional roles in D&D are "epic." I suppose some alternate system might have been presented just for demon princes, applying the paragon template has been suggested earlier, but absent such, the demon princes needed to be "epically" defined to maintain a consistent and fully meaningful mythology. The result, as I understand it, now underrcuts the mythology and in those terms raises a number of questions to which no answer in the mythology is even attempted - the most pressing being "Why the demotion?" This is like saying "superman can't fly" but offering no explaination.

Does this mean epic presentation would be unplayable to vast numbers of players? No. Epic characters/rules mesh with non-epic characters/rules. Imperfectly? No argument. But they are not mutually exclusive. There is then no rationale for not presenting the epic versions. No players would be disenfranchised. The demon prines would just be harder kills and that is appropriate, IMO.

If the argument is, however, that demon princes should be killable by 20th level PCs, that is a different argument and I think that argument falls apart merely stating it. Demon princes are not just another monster, a bigger badder umberhulk, they are the pinnacle of evil given physical form. 20th level characters are just 20th level characters.

 

[Psion]

Oh no... is this true? Can someone confirm this (or deny it... please deny it)?
I was hoping for some cool, unique advancements like advancing a dragon's age category... I seriously hope it isn't some half-assed job of 'don't forget to increase the BAB when you add an outsider hit die'. I knew that already.

Upthread, James Jacobs said that the reason that there wasn't a whole lot was precisely was because most of this was already covered in the monster manual. What's there is above and beyond that.

I'll see if I can find it... if someone else finds it first, they can post it.

Edit: Here it is:

The "Advancng a Demon Lord" section is about 1/3 of a page, and consists of 8 or so bullet points that add on to the more general monster advancing rules detailed at the end of the Monster Manual. It's not a HUGE section, but then again it doesn't have to be since most of the heavy lifting for advancing monsters is already done in the Monster Manual.

 

[Coriat]

I must have missed the 20+ CR core demons. And where is it stated that there are advanced balors or what not.

Balor. CR 20 unadvanced. Check your monster manual under 'demon'

In case you are wondering, there are an infinite number of them hanging out in the Abyss.

 

[GVDammerung]

And I don't even know why i'm arguing over arbitrary interpreations of fluff, which is mostly irrelevant to most people's games.

Can't say.

But you are in gross error in imagining that what is being considered is "arbitrary interpretations of fluff," the fluff in the case of demon princes goes to very core of the concept of a demon prince. Or do you have your PC encounter "Ten hit dice, that does 1d10 damage per round" etc. I doubt it. You have them encounter a described monster. Why? Because the description, the details of the monster beyond the stats, matter. So too, even more so, with demon princes.

And you again are grossly in error when you assume such is "mostly irrelevant." Again, you have your PCs encounter "15 Hit Dice?" No. You do not, I'll wager. The details are far from irrelevant. Indeed, they help form the basis of much of the appeal of D&D, its mythology. Again, this is particularly true of demon princes, which are not just jumped up monsters, but the pinnacle of evil given form.

The attempt at an antiseptic, clinical "just the rules" approach flounders when considering D&D archetypes like the demon princes. Feats? Okay. PrCs? Maybe. Demon princes?
No way.

 

[JustaPlayer]

1. "dumbing" down is a bad term. It implies that the only reason one would not use the ELH is because one was not smart enough.
2. Limiting your level advancement at 20 is completely reasonable as the ELH really kind of sucks..

1. If you know no slight was intended, then why even bring something up like that but to create contaversy.
2. Indeed your opinion as you sugest in your 3. I have problems with it and spent my time tooling it to some extent, but it's there, it should be supported.

4. DaDg along with PoF are the other two books in my "will never use it" trilogy.

Again,this is fine for your campaing but you aren't the only person buying the products and playing the game. There are already tuns of creatures, NPCs, and other chalenges if you only want to play to 20th level. But when it comes to the one area in which epic support would be most welcome, they dumb them down the baddies instead.

 

[Erik Mona]

Little Erik Mona did not grow up loving the planes by accident or because the RAW of the time thrilled his little heart.

To be clear, Little Erik Mona didn't write the section in question.

--Erik

 

[arntof]

I agree with you, but most people here won't,

Rip, I have to say I have agreed with every single word you have written in this thread.

 

[James Jacobs]

For what it's worth; my personal preference for demon lord stat blocks is in the 24–32 range (as they're presented in the Demonomicon articles in Dragon). In hindsight, it would have probably have been better to omit stat blocks for demon lords entirely from the book, but that would have done a great disservice to those DMs who want to use them as monsters to fight. Demon lords can serve as BBEGs of any CR or as undefeatable forces. The fact that they rule entire realms and layers on the Abyss tells me that they're tougher than the rank & file demons that otherwise dwell there (on up to and including balors), which is why I prefer to see their stats at a higher level.

Nonetheless... the book's first purpose was to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and that meant that we had to start the demon lord stat blocks at a baseline of about 20, since the vast majority of D&D players don't utilize the Epic level rules. Since space in the book was a concern, I wasn't able to do an exhaustive treatment of how to advance the demon lord statblocks from their baselines up to whatever level suits the needs of your campaign; the section that IS in the book makes it as clear as possible that you SHOULD use the statblocks given as something to build upon.

I don't think that stat blocks for CR 20–23 demon lords is going to ruin them as viable villains in the D&D game, especially when the rest of the book makes it clear that they are the baddest of the bad on the Abyss (flavor-wise, at least). After all, the demon lords survived the whole "de-demoning" that D&D went through in the dark days of pre-Planescape 2nd Edition. And as GVDammerung put it so well several posts back: "Story is first. Rules are secondary." There's more flavor and story in Hordes of the Abyss than there is rules crunch—sure, the rules provide stats for relatively weak demon lords (although their actual stats are in fact rather tough; they're certainly no pushovers for a party of 20th level characters), but if you (like me) need stats for tougher demon lords, the tools are all there for you to build them to your exact needs. Barring that, keep an eye on Dragon for those Demonomicon articles (if you like your demon lords at CR 24–32, that is)—I'll keep writing them as long as the good editors at Dragon let me. Tome of Horrors is also an excelent resource if you want demon stat blocks that are even more powerful than that.

My advice to those who are disapointed with the demon lord stat blocks in the book: use them as avatars for the demon lords when they wish to work their evils off-plane, and either use the tougher stat blocks from Book of Vile Darkness or the Demonomicon articles for them when they're encountered on the Abyss. That's what I'll be doing in my own campaigns, and it's how we'll likely be handling things in any demon lord-associated adventrues that will be appearing in Dungeon.

 

[IanB]

There's an awful lot of "should" being thrown around in this thread. "Should" is an entirely subjective notion when it comes to this sort of thing.

Let's take our CR 19 friend Juiblex as an example. People are saying that he "should" be able to beat up a balor.

But... why?

Does anyone actually want his nasty ooze plane? Does he necessarily have any balors in his service?

It seems entirely possible that his plane, to put it bluntly, sucks so bad that noone else wants it, and he might just not be powerful enough to have balors working for him.

That's not a problem to me.

The basic thing is to remember that whatever you think the balance of power of creatures "should" be, it has nothing to do with what the next guy in line thinks it "should" be.

In my game, there aren't infinite numbers of balors running around any more than there are infinite layers of the abyss, or infinite numbers of solars. A solar may well be as powerful as a demon lord, but that doesn't mean they'll be able to just waltz into the abyss and start knocking them off. There are a lot of extenuating circumstances - alliances, planar effects, magical artifacts, deities and their interests, etc. - that stop the planes from devolving into one giant slugfest.

So, I've described just one possible game world in which lower CR demon lords can exist and function normally. It is not stretching the imagination to realize that there are thousands of other perfectly valid campaign ideas and settings where the same thing might be true.

So let's get away from "should," shall we? The only person who really cares what your idea of "should" is, is you. (Using the generic "you" of course, this isn't directed at anyone in particular.)

Incidentally, I think if you go back and look at your dusty old 1E monster manuals, you'll notice that Juiblex wasn't all that, even then - and our old friend the type VI demon was practically a pushover. Times change!

 

[Nightfall]

*thinks he should keep running SL games no matter what* And what the hell, more Demon Princes.