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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThirdWizard" data-source="post: 2863284" data-attributes="member: 12037">I think either you misunderstand or we're in complete disagreement on a fundamental level. A party who isn't expecting to fight a demon lord has no business defeating it. This is so fundamental to my philosophy that I'm not sure how to explain it. Putting demogorgon on a random encounter table and rolling 00 on a d100 sending him after the PCs expecting them to take him down with whatever they've got randomly prepped should result in a TPK.Why? I guess because he's special and unique. An encounter with a demon lord should never be "Demogorgon jumps out from behind a pillar! Roll initiative." If for some reason a demon lord takes the party by surprise, he should be powerful enough to win. The same generally goes for dragons in D&D. If you run up against a great wyrm red dragon withour prep, you're most likely dead dead dead.Higher levels simply involve a lot of preparation, be it divination or something more mundane. There are so many options available to PCs at that level that a demon lord shouldn't be something that catches them by surprise. "I had no idea Demogorgon hated me!" just isn't something I would ever want to hear come out of a PC's mouth. Especially followed by "So then we killed him after he ambushed us."Now, I'm going to hope that my clarification shows that we're in agreement here. If not, what's your position on the matter?I'm wondering what that has to do with anything I wrote above. I'm in favor of Demogorgon being a freakin' CR 50 Epic level threat capable of devistating cities with a mere glance, and I'm trying to find a compromise with people who think that a group of level 20s should be able to kill hm. My contention is that a group of level 20s can kill a CR 20 without much fear of death. So where does a 30x30 foot room come into play here? What the heck does that have to do with anything? A non-epic CR 28 creature is killable by PCs. If upper tier demon lords were placed in that range, then they would still be able to be used by people who want to use them as end bosses, and it would satisfy the people who want them to be much stronger than the Type VI demon.By the way, by non-epic I mean not taking into consideration epic rules much as the great wyrm red dragon doesn't take into consideration epic rules in its CR. There's really a great difference between a great wyrm red dragon and equivalent CRed creatures in the ELH.The point is that for 20 levels the PCs have been doing the thing where they fight mooks, lieutentants, and other such minions as they make their way to the BBEG then fight the BBEG in his lair. The BBEG is usually 2-3 CR higher than them, and the PCs prevail and win fame and glory.Well, the demon lord is 0-3 CR higher than them, has minions, lieutenants, and minions that the PCs have to fight through to get to him and so and and so forth. If he were 8-10 CR higher, though, with proper prepriation the PCs could make it to him and kill him, but they would suffer heavy losses in the final battle, it would be and end all be all for the people who want to kill demon lords, a battle of epic proportions even if the game isn't Epic.High level PCs can do amazing things. Don't underestemate them.There's that 30x30 foot room again. Who cares if its 30x30 foot or an endless plain of screaming demons 100 miles deep? I'm talking about the fact that level 20 PCs won't find a CR 23 demon in and of itself as all that difficult. You can make anything with a setup that makes the encounter more difficult. A demon lord should be dangerous on its own and have a layer of horror between it and the PCs.EDIT: Summary - Placing the CR at 19-23 so that they would be beatable end bosses was unnessary. If that was the goal, I believe they could have been 24-30 and still attained the desired results.</blockquote>

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