Hordes of the Abyss.
- Thread starter JoeGKushner
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JoeGKushner
Adventurer
RichGreen said:
The wait's not over with yet!
James Jacobs
Adventurer
As the author of the Demon Lord chapter in the book, let me explain the reasoning behind the CR 20–23 versions of these demon lords.
Presenting the demon lords at this CR level was to make them good end-of-the-campaign bad guys for a standard D&D game that goes up to 20th level. A CR 30 demon is certainly exciting to look at, but it's not as useful to the average campaign as one that's closer to CR 21. If we made them truly Epic... where do we set them? The stats in the Book of Vile Darkness pegged them over a range of CR 19 to CR 30, but what if you're playing a 40th level campaign? What if you're playing at a 100th level? It's too arbitrary to pick some CR between 20 and 100+ as a place to set these guys, since no matter where you peg them, some DMs will find them to be too powerful and others will find them to be not powerful enough. My personal preference is for demon lords in the CR 25–32 range, but I'd still use the CR 20–23 versions in my game, either as manifestations of the demon lords off lair (my preference) or as the real thing, depending on the needs and theme of the campaign in question.
By setting their CRs at the bottom edge of the Epic CR scale (around 21–23), we establish a baseline. For DMs who want the demon lords to be more powerful, check out the start of the demon lord chapter in Hordes of The Abyss. This explains the reasoning for lowering their CR, how to utilize a demon lord in your campaign, and (perhaps most importantly) details how to advance a demon lord and to make it more powerful. For those who are curious, I more or less designed these advancement rules so that if you advance a demon to about CR 30, he'll end up being about on par with what I've been doing in the Demonomicon articles in Dragon. Sure, it takes a bit more work on the DM's part to advance Demogorgon up to 40 Hit Dice, but it's the best solution we could come up with in order to present a nice range of demon lords. And, all that said, the Hordes incarnations of the demon lords are anything but pushovers for their CRs.
As for the worries that non-demon lords are too powerful... remember again that CR is just a number. In the Monster Manual II and the Fiend Folio, some of the demon CRs are way out of wack. Compare the Klurichir from the Fiend Folio to the most recent version of the Balor in the 3.5 Monster Manual. The Balor, at CR 20, has more hit points, a better armor class, higher stats, and all around better spell-like abilities and powers than the Klurichir, despite the fact that the Fiend Folio pegs the Klurichir at CR 25. (Both have vorpal attacks, but the Klurichir's other big special attacks: Fear aura and poison, probably won't do much to high-level characters who likely have heroes' feast or similar spells in effect to protect against these attacks.) This basically boils down to the differences in 3.0 and 3.5 design theory; essentially, by the time WotC was working on 3.5, they'd realized that high-level characters are a LOT tougher than they realized. Which is why the demons in the 3.5 Monster Manual are so much tougher than their 3.0 versions (and why the updated demons like the armanite and the gorristro in Hordes of the Abyss were included... they needed to be updated). In any event, Appendix III in Hordes of the Abyss addresses this issue by revising the CRs for the Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio demons. This list puts the balor at the top at CR 20, the molydeus next at CR 19 (although he's a TOUGH CR 19), and the other demons down from there.
We intend to continue publishing Demonomicons in Dragon, and will continue to provide CR 26–32 level stat blocks for demon lords (along with expanded information about them), but we can only do these at a rate of 3 or so a year. If there's a particular demon lord you can't wait to use in your campaign, grab a copy of Hordes of the Abyss and advance your favorite demon lord on up to whatever CR you need and you're good to go.
Presenting the demon lords at this CR level was to make them good end-of-the-campaign bad guys for a standard D&D game that goes up to 20th level. A CR 30 demon is certainly exciting to look at, but it's not as useful to the average campaign as one that's closer to CR 21. If we made them truly Epic... where do we set them? The stats in the Book of Vile Darkness pegged them over a range of CR 19 to CR 30, but what if you're playing a 40th level campaign? What if you're playing at a 100th level? It's too arbitrary to pick some CR between 20 and 100+ as a place to set these guys, since no matter where you peg them, some DMs will find them to be too powerful and others will find them to be not powerful enough. My personal preference is for demon lords in the CR 25–32 range, but I'd still use the CR 20–23 versions in my game, either as manifestations of the demon lords off lair (my preference) or as the real thing, depending on the needs and theme of the campaign in question.
By setting their CRs at the bottom edge of the Epic CR scale (around 21–23), we establish a baseline. For DMs who want the demon lords to be more powerful, check out the start of the demon lord chapter in Hordes of The Abyss. This explains the reasoning for lowering their CR, how to utilize a demon lord in your campaign, and (perhaps most importantly) details how to advance a demon lord and to make it more powerful. For those who are curious, I more or less designed these advancement rules so that if you advance a demon to about CR 30, he'll end up being about on par with what I've been doing in the Demonomicon articles in Dragon. Sure, it takes a bit more work on the DM's part to advance Demogorgon up to 40 Hit Dice, but it's the best solution we could come up with in order to present a nice range of demon lords. And, all that said, the Hordes incarnations of the demon lords are anything but pushovers for their CRs.
As for the worries that non-demon lords are too powerful... remember again that CR is just a number. In the Monster Manual II and the Fiend Folio, some of the demon CRs are way out of wack. Compare the Klurichir from the Fiend Folio to the most recent version of the Balor in the 3.5 Monster Manual. The Balor, at CR 20, has more hit points, a better armor class, higher stats, and all around better spell-like abilities and powers than the Klurichir, despite the fact that the Fiend Folio pegs the Klurichir at CR 25. (Both have vorpal attacks, but the Klurichir's other big special attacks: Fear aura and poison, probably won't do much to high-level characters who likely have heroes' feast or similar spells in effect to protect against these attacks.) This basically boils down to the differences in 3.0 and 3.5 design theory; essentially, by the time WotC was working on 3.5, they'd realized that high-level characters are a LOT tougher than they realized. Which is why the demons in the 3.5 Monster Manual are so much tougher than their 3.0 versions (and why the updated demons like the armanite and the gorristro in Hordes of the Abyss were included... they needed to be updated). In any event, Appendix III in Hordes of the Abyss addresses this issue by revising the CRs for the Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio demons. This list puts the balor at the top at CR 20, the molydeus next at CR 19 (although he's a TOUGH CR 19), and the other demons down from there.
We intend to continue publishing Demonomicons in Dragon, and will continue to provide CR 26–32 level stat blocks for demon lords (along with expanded information about them), but we can only do these at a rate of 3 or so a year. If there's a particular demon lord you can't wait to use in your campaign, grab a copy of Hordes of the Abyss and advance your favorite demon lord on up to whatever CR you need and you're good to go.
Sammael said:
That's not exactly what I said. I didn't write the section in question, so I have no idea what was turned over to the editors. I seem to remember from discussions that these stats were meant to represent them "off lair," but that's my memory, not my turnover.
--Erik
James Jacobs
Adventurer
takasi said:
My advice here is to wait a year to see how we handle the climax of Savage Tide. We've already more or less worked out how to make the climactic battle with Demogorgon in this adventure exciting, challenging, and properly deadly, but it's nowhere near ready for the curtain to be lifted yet.
James Jacobs said:
If these advancement rules are what they sound like, then I'm a happy camper. It makes a lot of sense to show the baseline and give rules for making them more powerful. In fact, I like this better than just giving an uber demon. Gives me flexibility. The only thing I was afraid of was that the 'advancement' section would just be a quick paragraph that said "you can up the HD if you want. Good luck!".
At any rate, thanks for the clarification, James.
Cheers,
AD
Shade
Monster Junkie
James Jacobs said:
So both the klurichir and myrmixicus are CR 19 or lower now?
I love the inclusion of the revised CR table, BTW.
James Jacobs said:
Just to clarify, are you saying that future Demonomicons might include demon lords statted up in Fiendish Codex I? If so, does this include those that originally appeared in BovD?
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
James Jacobs said:
And I'm still trying to figure out why it's okay to say X and do X in one spot but then do the opposite in another OFFICIAL venue.
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