If the devils are how monsters will be....I am so happy

[Celtavian]

re

What coordinated use? There is nothing coordinated about using mass hold monster or blasphemy. The other spells are just a waste of time and could be fatal for a 3.5 pit fiend against level appropriate PCs.

If you send in your minions (which a Pit Fiend has to begin with), then the coordinated use a Blasphemy or Mass Hold Person is a very good tactical option. You more than likely freeze the fighter and the rogue giving your minions time to damage them if not outright kill them.

If it so happens the cleric in the party is a moron that didn't memorize Freedom of Movement or Remove Paralysis, then your party is going to be in alot of pain. If the party is prepared in advance for the Pit Fiend, they might already have [i}Freedom of Movement[/i] up, which means the Pit Fiend is going to have use a few Greater Dispels while invisible to strip the party of buffs.

If the party does not have see invisibility or counter invisibility magic available, then they won't see the Pit Fiend for quite some time as Greater Dispel doesn't drop invisiblity because it isn't an attack.

This is just a small breakdown of how I plan encounters. I think about what the PCs are capable of and I build encounters appropriate. That means my monsters need options to make their plans work.

The 3.5 Pit Fiend would be supported by minions capable of giving the PCs a good fight like a melee heavy fighter that could stand toe to toe with the warrior while the Pit Fiend dispelled, held people, and dropped a few fiery spells on the targets now and then.

I wasn't having a lick of difficulty giving my parties a challenge. I may with this new Pit Fiend depending on how classes work now.

But if classes are as limited as the above Pit Fiend, that won't make for a very interesting battle. For someone like myself who enjoys the move and countermove of tactics, then that only lessens the fun of the game. Less options equals less tactical combat.

An Old Pit Fiend could even counter spells as they are being cast making the wizard think a little more before he just launches any old spell.

"Movement and swinging" is a pretty good, if very simple, description of warfare through history. If you mean "move up to enemy - attack until dead" then the new pit fiend is very capable of dealing with that. Three melee combatants run up to it and it teleports 20 feet into the air. The wizard hanging back, intent on using spells from a distance while the fighters run up to the pit fiend could mean that the pit fiend teleports into the air while teleporting to beefy minions to maul the wizard.

If you want to know why movement is tactical I will give you the very short version: Being able to apply the force of your choice to the most crucial opponent on the battle field is very important. As is the ability to avoid being the target of an opponent.

How could a Pit Fiend not do this before?

The force of your choice? He has but a few force options. Mass Hold Person or Blasphemy were ranged attacks that allowed it to use the force of his choice against vulnerable targets such as warriors and rogues limiting a major threat on the battlefield while his minions took care of the more mobile wizard and the healing cleric. The old blasphemy also reduced strength, which reduced the damage output of melee characters.

A Pit Fiends flight ability already allowed it to circumvent melee. How is this a change from the old way?

By sticking together the party will multiply the damage dealt by fire aura and exploding underlings by four. Also a lot of times it is detrimental for a party to stick together; a melee fighter is wasting his turns if he hangs back with archers and wizards while the archers and wizards expose themselves to unnecessary danger and AoO:s if they follow the melee fighters into the fray. Those are two solid reasons why a party would split up. Area attacks and different ways of applying their damage to the opposition.

Are there no spells to counteract fire damage in 4E? 3.5 Wizards targeted by a Pit Fiend would die quickly, is that the not the case in 4E? Does the healer no longer have to stand close to the target they are healing?

What you're saying makes no sense. The party doesn't spread out because a 3.5 Pit Fiend requires their focused attention to defeat. Does the 4E Pit Fiend only require the fighter to kill it? Can it be soloed by a single PC?

Does the party no longer have to work in a coordinated fashion to defeat a Pit Fiend as it did in 3.5 E? They can just spread out and fight alone and survive?

A party member like the wizard drawing the attention of said Pit Fiend would die quicker than a match in a windstorm if they spread out from the healer alone. Has this changed in 4E?

My lvl 18 Sorceror/Air Elemental Savant had to run like a little girl when a Balor was coming after him alone. I can't imagine not being able to flee with a Balor porting right on top of me and having to go toe to toe with it alone. That is dead meat time for my character. Has that changed?

Because they are outnumbered or outgunned? Because they want to attack a soft target instead of the target specialized for taking severe beatings?

Alreday did this.

It's more tactical as a magic action because they can bypass many limitations that physical movement comes with. If the defenders position themselves properly it will hurt to bypass them or the movements of the fiends may be to low to get them into flanking positions around the wizard. By teleporting the fiends the pit fiend hereby opens up for far more flanking positions than the battlefield would allow otherwise.

How does the wizard survive this? They couldn't survive this attack in 3.5 E? The can survive getting targetted and surrounded by devils in 3.5 E? It was the other party members providing the interference you claim the devil will have that allowed casters to surive in 3.5 E.

Again this is a matter of taste. For what it's worth, though, the old pit fiend had no powers for mental manipulation other than Hold monster and the closest to mind control it came was Diplomacy +10. The new pit fiend hasn't lost anything when it comes to mental manipulation.

The Persistent Image power was nice. I used illusions quite a bit in my campaign.

What books are you reading? The stories I have read involving the lord of all devils (=Satan) are folk stories where farmers fool the devil.

I've watched The Devil's Advocate and The Prophecy as far as movies go. There isn't an enormous amount of literature involving devils and demons as the are used in DnD. I was more thinking in terms of monsters period. You don't see too many creatures that pop up out of nowhere. Even vampires have to move to where you are, even though they may do so very quickly.

In what way is this different from before? How was a 3.5 pit fiend a more interesting non vombat encounter? Aside from illusions it didn't have anything to bring outside of combat aside from skills. The 4e pit fiend has better social skills than the 3.5 pit fiend btw.

As I said, I used illusion spells to great effect. I also used hold spells to make an opponent stand still while it talked or to allow it to kidnap opponent without knocking it out. A pit fiend with a hold spell could kidnap a fighter or rogue very easily. I might use its Blasphemy power to freeze opponents for a round or two to allow its minions to escape. It depends on the encounter and who the Pit Fiend is working with.

Greater Dispel magic is an extremely powerful tactical spell. I don't see how you could forget it. It can be used to strip buffs and counter spells. Very powerful spell that I used to great effect in support of its minions.

I think spell memorization is more of a strategical or logistical issue but I get your point. What spells do you need to memorize? Freedom of action seems logical. Fire resistance. I haven't seen a defense against blasphemy except maybe spell immunity. You would need dimensional anchor. Those are the spells I can see the need of. That's a shopping list, not a strategic challenge.

Spell preparation is strategy, knowing when to use spells is tactics.

What made recon necessary when approaching the 3.5 pit fiend that isn't necessary when approaching the 4e pit fiend?

Nothing. Recon is good in any game.

Compared to which pit fiend? If you are making a general statement about D&D pit fiend over the editions you may have a point. As a critique of just the 4e pit fiend I think you have to read up on the older versions again.

Just a general critique. I would have liked to see a little more fluff with my crunch. But I'll see how customizable the new Pit Fiend is or what other options I have. From a pure combat perspective, this one is a little lacking.

To put it in WoW terms, it's a pure damage encounter that requires good healing and enough DPS to keep up with the DPS of the monsters. If we have some means to counteract fire, that will help.


At the moment I do not know the powers of each class. But just from looking at this Pit Fiend, it seems more limited than the 3.5 Pit fiend.

I like some of the movement options. I've always felt that a person should be able to teleport and attack in the same round. I like that option. The Pit Fiend being able to call in minions and move them to a particular target is cool. I like that ability. I think it should be limited to a few times per encounter, but it is cool.

I do miss the Pit Fiend having abilities that could be applied for non-combat encounters such as illusions, greater dispel magic, invisibility, and hold spells. These were nice spells for fooling players or having a Pit Fiend do something like kidnap a player to force the party to do a particular task. I also felt Pit Fiends should have disguise powers.

I ran an encounter not too long ago with a wizard that scouted the party and caught the fighter alone. He imprisoned the fighter and then negotiated the fighters return if the party agreed to do something for him. I like those kinds of options. It makes for more interesting encounter scenarios.

I'm going to give 4E a read. I like some of the stuff I'm reading. There's quite a bit I don't like. I'll just have to see if the ratio of like versus dislike falls enough on the side of like to change from 3.5 to 4 E.

Andy Collins is by no means my favorite game designer. He's the designer that changed Darkness to shadow, a change I deemed as the epitome of lame. He should have changed the spell name if he was going to change the effect to a useless one. What kind of game designer makes a spell change that makes a spell complete useless and doesn't have the foresight to see what he did? The polymorph changes he introduced were sloppy and ill-conceived.

So not real confident in Andy Collins ability to design a version of 4E that I will like alot. 3.5 E made some improvements I liked, but also incorporated some things I didn't like to the point where I wrote up a ton of house rules. I'll just have to see what happens with 4E.

 

[Peter LaCara]

No, I don't know them yet.


This would imply that there are no means to protect yourself from fire. Are you saying there are no longer spells that protect from energy? Dealing with fire was pretty easy for my high lvl PCs.

The 3.5 Pit Fiend dealt with spells from PCs by dispelling them, this Pit Fiend cannot do that near as I can tell. So if the PCs come with heavy fire protection, then the aura and the exploding devils are useless.

Man, I will dance a friggin' jig if the dominance of Dispel Magic is purged from the game. I'd rather there be actual, y'know, counters to different spells and moves, rather than just one catchall spell to dumbly brute force your way past.

Ok, so how exactly are we going to handle constant movement on limited battle maps?

Draw bigger maps?

Do you think the wizard won't have the means to resist fire? I'll be sticking with 3.5 if wizards are reduced to glass cannons.

How does the warrior protect the wizard? In 3.5 the wizard couldn't exactly survive a harsh attack from a powerful melee creature. Can a wizard survive a powerful melee attack now?

Probably not. But then again, the Pit Fiend's melee attack doesn't qualify as powerful. d12+11 at level 26? C'mon. We know that low to mid level brutes average 25-30 damage per hit. The Pit Fiend's real weapons are his allies, from the beefsticks that he's 'porting into tactically advantageous positions to the literal sense of blowing up the ones who've outlived their usefulness.

It's like we've play a completely different game. I didn't have any of the problems you seem to indicate occurred in my 3.5 games or earlier. Movement was always important. The wizard always had to stay out of combat and was threatened by creatures that could get to him to the point where he had to wait for opportune moments to unleash his damage barrage.

Well, that sounds right actually, though I'd prefer it if the "movement" were more than "take a 5' step to keep flanking this guy." Though now I wonder how you reconcile this comment with "If wizards are nothing more than glass cannons I'll be avoiding 4e."

Tastes differ.

Clearly.

Is that low melee damage? Are there no longer spells to resist fire? Will this Pit Fiends aura be difficult to circumvent?

Are spells that limited that we will not longer have the move and countermove options for our spellcasters? That sounds real boring to me.

Put shortly, yes, I imagine that spells are going to be more limited in general, as well as there being fewer of them. Then again, everyone else is picking up other stuff. The dominance of wizards and clerics is ending, and it's about damn time.

Time will tell.

Indeed.

 

[med stud]

If you send in your minions (which a Pit Fiend has to begin with), then the coordinated use a Blasphemy or Mass Hold Person is a very good tactical option. You more than likely freeze the fighter and the rogue giving your minions time to damage them if not outright kill them.

That is not coordinated use, it's use of one spell at a time. You can't coordinate a single casting of blasphemy.

If it so happens the cleric in the party is a moron that didn't memorize Freedom of Movement or Remove Paralysis, then your party is going to be in alot of pain. If the party is prepared in advance for the Pit Fiend, they might already have [i}Freedom of Movement[/i] up, which means the Pit Fiend is going to have use a few Greater Dispels while invisible to strip the party of buffs.

If the party does not have see invisibility or counter invisibility magic available, then they won't see the Pit Fiend for quite some time as Greater Dispel doesn't drop invisiblity because it isn't an attack.

If you want to maximize the power of the 3.5 pit fiend, stop using mass hold and start to only use blasphemy instead. There is no counter measure against blasphemy.

This is just a small breakdown of how I plan encounters. I think about what the PCs are capable of and I build encounters appropriate. That means my monsters need options to make their plans work.

I agree with that. It's just that the 3.5 pit fiend is essentially limited to blasphemy or mass hold monster. None of the other spells are worth using a round on. On that note, there is no reason for the pit fiend not to use blasphemy, thereby narrowing the amount of choice down to one.

The 3.5 Pit Fiend would be supported by minions capable of giving the PCs a good fight like a melee heavy fighter that could stand toe to toe with the warrior while the Pit Fiend dispelled, held people, and dropped a few fiery spells on the targets now and then.

I wasn't having a lick of difficulty giving my parties a challenge. I may with this new Pit Fiend depending on how classes work now.

But if classes are as limited as the above Pit Fiend, that won't make for a very interesting battle. For someone like myself who enjoys the move and countermove of tactics, then that only lessens the fun of the game. Less options equals less tactical combat.

You haven't described any moves and countermoves except a straightforward use of spells. There isn't much tactical thinking necessary to use silence, freedom of movement or fire resistance.

An Old Pit Fiend could even counter spells as they are being cast making the wizard think a little more before he just launches any old spell.

Why would the wizard think a little? If the pit fiend uses a counterspell it means that it exchanged one of it's rounds for one of the wizard's rounds. So the pit fiend thereby denied the wizard but did nothing against the fighter, cleric and rogue that can use their rounds to damage the pit fiend. Effectively this means that the wizard dazed the pit fiend.

The force of your choice? He has but a few force options. Mass Hold Person or Blasphemy were ranged attacks that allowed it to use the force of his choice against vulnerable targets such as warriors and rogues limiting a major threat on the battlefield while his minions took care of the more mobile wizard and the healing cleric. The old blasphemy also reduced strength, which reduced the damage output of melee characters.

A Pit Fiends flight ability already allowed it to circumvent melee. How is this a change from the old way?

I didn't mean the pit fiend in particular, I described why movement is generally seen as a very important part of tactics in general. It was in response to why "movement and swinging" can lead to great needs of tactical thinking.

 

[med stud]

Are there no spells to counteract fire damage in 4E? 3.5 Wizards targeted by a Pit Fiend would die quickly, is that the not the case in 4E? Does the healer no longer have to stand close to the target they are healing?

What you're saying makes no sense. The party doesn't spread out because a 3.5 Pit Fiend requires their focused attention to defeat. Does the 4E Pit Fiend only require the fighter to kill it? Can it be soloed by a single PC?

Ranged characters, like archers and wizards, can engage enemies without being close to them. Melee characters, like fighters and most clerics, need to get up close. That means that all the PCs can bring their attacks to bear on an opponent even if they don't stand next to each others. Does that make more sense?

Does the party no longer have to work in a coordinated fashion to defeat a Pit Fiend as it did in 3.5 E? They can just spread out and fight alone and survive?

See my answer above.

A party member like the wizard drawing the attention of said Pit Fiend would die quicker than a match in a windstorm if they spread out from the healer alone. Has this changed in 4E?

I suspect we think of different things when we say "spread out". I mean that the party members aren't standing next to each other on the battlefield while I suspect you mean that they are not in the same room.

My lvl 18 Sorceror/Air Elemental Savant had to run like a little girl when a Balor was coming after him alone. I can't imagine not being able to flee with a Balor porting right on top of me and having to go toe to toe with it alone. That is dead meat time for my character. Has that changed?

How would I know? I haven't seen the rules. I suspect, though, that a sorcerer still has serious problems if they encounter a pit fiend alone.


Alreday did this.

How does the wizard survive this? They couldn't survive this attack in 3.5 E? The can survive getting targetted and surrounded by devils in 3.5 E? It was the other party members providing the interference you claim the devil will have that allowed casters to surive in 3.5 E.

You have said yourself that the 3.5 pit fiend could fly. It wouldn't be hard for it to go for the wizard even in 3.5. That ability is really dangerous, yes. It is also versatile and provides for making meaningful choices like where to teleport, when to teleport, who to teleport. Compared to the old casting of mass effect spells it requires more thinking on the DM's side. As for counters to this ability: I have no chance of knowing since I don't know what a 4e wizard is capable of.


The Persistent Image power was nice. I used illusions quite a bit in my campaign.

I've watched The Devil's Advocate and The Prophecy as far as movies go. There isn't an enormous amount of literature involving devils and demons as the are used in DnD. I was more thinking in terms of monsters period. You don't see too many creatures that pop up out of nowhere. Even vampires have to move to where you are, even though they may do so very quickly.

As I said, I used illusion spells to great effect. I also used hold spells to make an opponent stand still while it talked or to allow it to kidnap opponent without knocking it out. A pit fiend with a hold spell could kidnap a fighter or rogue very easily. I might use its Blasphemy power to freeze opponents for a round or two to allow its minions to escape. It depends on the encounter and who the Pit Fiend is working with.

Greater Dispel magic is an extremely powerful tactical spell. I don't see how you could forget it. It can be used to strip buffs and counter spells. Very powerful spell that I used to great effect in support of its minions.

The part about Greater Dispel sounds like it's use in combat situations. Illusions can be nice in non-combat. Hold spells for kidnapping sounds OK but could be substituted with grappling. The use of blasphemy is, again, a combat use of the spell, not a non-combat use. Besides, don't use blasphemy that way if you want to go for maximum effect. Spam it and let the minions tear the PCs apart instead of running away.

Spell preparation is strategy, knowing when to use spells is tactics.

Nothing. Recon is good in any game.

Spell use is very simple tactics though. The new abilities aren't as point and click as the spells and they look much more interesting to use.

Just a general critique. I would have liked to see a little more fluff with my crunch. But I'll see how customizable the new Pit Fiend is or what other options I have. From a pure combat perspective, this one is a little lacking.

To put it in WoW terms, it's a pure damage encounter that requires good healing and enough DPS to keep up with the DPS of the monsters. If we have some means to counteract fire, that will help.


At the moment I do not know the powers of each class. But just from looking at this Pit Fiend, it seems more limited than the 3.5 Pit fiend.

I like some of the movement options. I've always felt that a person should be able to teleport and attack in the same round. I like that option. The Pit Fiend being able to call in minions and move them to a particular target is cool. I like that ability. I think it should be limited to a few times per encounter, but it is cool.

I do miss the Pit Fiend having abilities that could be applied for non-combat encounters such as illusions, greater dispel magic, invisibility, and hold spells. These were nice spells for fooling players or having a Pit Fiend do something like kidnap a player to force the party to do a particular task. I also felt Pit Fiends should have disguise powers.

I ran an encounter not too long ago with a wizard that scouted the party and caught the fighter alone. He imprisoned the fighter and then negotiated the fighters return if the party agreed to do something for him. I like those kinds of options. It makes for more interesting encounter scenarios.

I'm going to give 4E a read. I like some of the stuff I'm reading. There's quite a bit I don't like. I'll just have to see if the ratio of like versus dislike falls enough on the side of like to change from 3.5 to 4 E.

Andy Collins is by no means my favorite game designer. He's the designer that changed Darkness to shadow, a change I deemed as the epitome of lame. He should have changed the spell name if he was going to change the effect to a useless one. What kind of game designer makes a spell change that makes a spell complete useless and doesn't have the foresight to see what he did? The polymorph changes he introduced were sloppy and ill-conceived.

So not real confident in Andy Collins ability to design a version of 4E that I will like alot. 3.5 E made some improvements I liked, but also incorporated some things I didn't like to the point where I wrote up a ton of house rules. I'll just have to see what happens with 4E.

 

[Celtavian]

Pfft. Whatever. Check the ego at the door, 'kay?

Did you not question my tactical abilities? I believe you did. As I said, I would challenge any DM for tactics, logistics, and strategy. I'm quite good at it, which is why the changes worry me.

Also, you've clearly demonstrated a lack of tactical thought if you're completely disregarding fundamentals like movement and positioning.

Never have disregarded it. I just don't see it as the end all, be all of tactics.

Then what's the point of all these SLAs if all the party does is just memorize silence all the time? If your PCs are consistently getting silence off, in what conceivable way is the 3e Pit Fiend anywhere nearly as interesting a fight as the 4e one? A silenced 3e Pit Fiend really is just a boring melee encounter.

If the party has to use a contingency for silence, that means they can't use a contingency for something else. That means they must come prepared for the enemy they face. If they are unprepared, that will cause them problems.

They don't cast the Silence on the Pit Fiend. They cast the silence on the party so they aren't rendered helpless against a blasphemy since a silence spell counters all sonic effects. It's a defense spell against blasphemy, the only defense spell I can think of besides higher level spell immunity which came out in another book.

Oh. I think I get it. You're not actually talking about tactics. You're talking about strategy and logistics, which are completely different things. D&D does seem to be trying to get away from the logistical game and focusing much more strongly on the tactical game. I'm almost certain that pretty much anything resembling spell preparation is going to be gone from the game. Mourning its loss is a viable position to take, but it's not one I share.

Yes, strategy, tactics, and logistics. It may be strategy to plan to use a silence spell, but the actual use is tactical.

Once again, your mind is stuck in the 3e model of having one monster being a threat all by itself. The Pit Fiend getting a clear shot at the wizard or rogue, while not exactly pretty, should be survivable. The Pit Fiend is not the big bad because it can smear squishy dudes in one hit. It's the big bad because it can teleport the brutes who can smear the squishy dudes in one hit past the meatshield and into smacking range. He's a *Leader*, the tactician and mastermind. He's Zhuge Liang, not Lu Bu.

I've never run a Pit Fiend by itself. What I'm saying is that if the Pit Fiend can put other minions on the fighter to distract him, while he unleashes its full force on the wizard, that seems like an impossible encounter. Why wouldn't an intelligent creature that was not limited from reaching an enemy take out a dangerous, easy to kill enemy like a wizard while leaving his minions to occupy the fighter. Once the melee character loses its support, he can just summon minions and destroy that fighter.


So you are saying the Pit Fiend can't smear a squishy dude by itself? I wasn't sure.

Maybe, maybe not. In 4e he might have some sort of reactive teleport or shield or something. Who knows what kind of crazy abilities a wizard might have once he gets to the mid-20s?

I guess we'll have to see what the characters can do. In a 3E campaign players could counter the fire aura and destroy this Pit Fiend easily. no ability to strip magical buffs would make the Pit Fiend a non-factor.

So? I'm not sure what the problem is here. Aren't we looking for reasons why the Pit Fiend is in charge?

No. It was already in charge. I'm wondering why it would be considered such a danger to a high lvl party. I don't know what the characters can do, but this Pit Fiend would be a cake walk for a high lvl 3E party even with this minions. Maybe things have changed that dramatically.

Then he burns through them, or he orders the guys who don't rely on fire damage to take out the guy maintaining the spell. Remember, we don't know exactly how resistances work and how available they'll be, but we do know that they've been significantly nerfed.

Well, I guess it depends on how energy resistance works. A 3.5 E party can render themselves immune to fire for an entire encounter. Thus while they mow through the Pit Fiend's minions, his weak melee power (as someone in here said) wouldn't be able to help much. Considering he has no means to strip buffs, he doesn't have much else he can do if he doesn't engage in melee himself or he has his powers defeated by resistance spells.

*rolleyes*

Did you not question my knowledge of the game? Yes, I believe you did. I'm just letting you know that I know this game very well. So the comments you have been making concerning the weakness of SLAs and combat movement in 3.5E seem to not jive with how I use such abilities. I've always found SLAs to be very effective.

Once again, if we look at the *spirit* of the effects rather than their raw power, you'll see that the Pit Fiend is making the exact same choices, or in many cases, more interesting ones. "Do I teleport to where I catch both the fighter and the rogue in my fire aura, where I'm doing more damage but am more vulnerable, or do I pop way over there to try to deal with the mage who's raining ice down on my minions? Who do I debuff, the fighter who has a pair of my strongest demons on him, or the cleric surrounded by 6 weaker ones? Do I blow up that demon now while he can still make attacks, or do I wait and have him possibly get taken out?"

All of the tactics you just mentioned involve damage or movement. What about spells that render targets helpless or eliminate them from the fight for a short amount of time? Crowd Control as it is called in MMORPGs. I like crowd control and this Pit Fiend has none.

Well, I refute the claim that it has less options, but even if it *did*, the Pit Fiend is not supposed to be fought alone anymore. If the Pit Fiend plus the three other high level demons he's got hanging around him have abilities that add up to equal or greater than the old Pit Fiend's abilities, there are just as many tactical choices to be made over the fight as a whole, if not more because more enemies means more chances to act. Plus, this means that it could make things like scouting and preparation more important, because even if you know that the main boss is a Pit Fiend, you don't know what his cronies are, and they could have wildly different abilities that require different choices to be made before the battle.

How can you refute this claim? Did you so little use SLAs or were they so ineffective that they did nothing in your campaigns?

As I told med stud, Greater Dispel Magic alone is an extremely useful support spell. Any ability that can give your guys a chance to attack for a round or two without returning attack such as Blasphemy or Mass Hold Person is better than automatically moving your guys around in combat.

It's like we've been playing a different game. I know SLAs are powerful. The Pit Fiend had quite a few I used. The 3.5 Version of the Pit Fiend was one of the best versions DnD has yet produced. The 3.0 version was too weak. The 3.5 version was a nice challenge that could support its minions better than any previous edition.

I'll have to wait until I see how the characters compare to this Pit Fiend. But on paper he looks pretty weak and limited.

 

[Celtavian]

re

That is not coordinated use, it's use of one spell at a time. You can't coordinate a single casting of blasphemy.

If you use the ready action or delay action, you can coordinate the use of blasphemy.

If you want to maximize the power of the 3.5 pit fiend, stop using mass hold and start to only use blasphemy instead. There is no counter measure against blasphemy.

Silence counters blasphemy. So does Greater Spell Immunity and the sonic shield spell provides resistance as does Spell resistance. Blasphemy has a sonic spell descriptor and Silencecounters any spell with a sonic spell descriptor.

I agree with that. It's just that the 3.5 pit fiend is essentially limited to blasphemy or mass hold monster. None of the other spells are worth using a round on. On that note, there is no reason for the pit fiend not to use blasphemy, thereby narrowing the amount of choice down to one.

Mass Hold Person can be more effective if the party is prepared with a silence spell.

You haven't described any moves and countermoves except a straightforward use of spells. There isn't much tactical thinking necessary to use silence, freedom of movement or fire resistance.

If SLAs are not tactical moves, then there are no tactics. Spell use is tactical or nothing is. There is a tactical use to silence, freedom of movement and fire resistance. For example, let's say your party is blindsided by a Pit Fiend and his crew. Your party gets held and the Pit Fiends minion are moving in for the kill. They beat you on intiative, your party gets ripped. You have a choice, cast a heal on the rogue to keep him alive or cast a Freedom of movement on the warrior to get him moving in combat. You the cleric has to think about what is the more effective use of your spells power.

Spell use is very tactical. I very much make my spellcasters thinkg about what they're doing. Sometimes they have time to prepare, but sometimes they are dealing with situations they have trouble with. There are times when they expend too much spell power because of paranoia, and other times when they have to think of the most useful way to use a limited number of spells to maximum effect.

Spell casters have to be thinkers. If they are constantly blowing their spell power in every encounter, they may very well pay for it. Enemy assessment is a very important. Where to apply magic and when is useful.

For example, division of the battlefield with spells such as wall of force and blade barrier is a good use of spell power depending on your opponent. For Devils and demons, it might give a round to prepare as they teleport in melee range or divide your enemies so you can take them piecemeal. These are the kinds of decisions my players are forced to make.

Why would the wizard think a little? If the pit fiend uses a counterspell it means that it exchanged one of it's rounds for one of the wizard's rounds. So the pit fiend thereby denied the wizard but did nothing against the fighter, cleric and rogue that can use their rounds to damage the pit fiend. Effectively this means that the wizard dazed the pit fiend.

No. It means that the Pit fiend countered the wizard from doing a massive spread of AOE damage. A high lvl wizard/archmage can damage a large number of minions without touching his own party members. That helps him set up the powerattacking fighter for a giant cleave or whirlwind attack. My parties coordinate as well. Sometimes my wizard players might wear down a group of lower level minions with AoE spells to set them up for a powerful two-handed cleaving or whirlwind fighter. if the Pit Fiend gives his minion another round of attacks on the fighter by preventing the powerful AoE attack, that gives him a better chance of winning.

I didn't mean the pit fiend in particular, I described why movement is generally seen as a very important part of tactics in general. It was in response to why "movement and swinging" can lead to great needs of tactical thinking.

Most melees do uuse "move and swing" to great effect. But that is usually to their advantage, which is why I'm a bit worried about this Pit Fiend. I'll have to see how his powers work in conjunction with his minions and how the players can deal with this.

 

[Peter LaCara]

They don't cast the Silence on the Pit Fiend. They cast the silence on the party so they aren't rendered helpless against a blasphemy since a silence spell counters all sonic effects. It's a defense spell against blasphemy, the only defense spell I can think of besides higher level spell immunity which came out in another book.

Maybe it's just me, but this seems.... suicidal at best. Your spellcasters either have to come with silent versions of all their spells, or stand outside the silence radius, in which case they get pasted anyway.

Yes, strategy, tactics, and logistics. It may be strategy to plan to use a silence spell, but the actual use is tactical.

I guess it would be. I guess if the choice is between taking your casters out of the fight or the whole party getting aced by Blasphemy, that would be a tactical choice.

I've never run a Pit Fiend by itself. What I'm saying is that if the Pit Fiend can put other minions on the fighter to distract him, while he unleashes its full force on the wizard, that seems like an impossible encounter. Why wouldn't an intelligent creature that was not limited from reaching an enemy take out a dangerous, easy to kill enemy like a wizard while leaving his minions to occupy the fighter. Once the melee character loses its support, he can just summon minions and destroy that fighter.

Maybe, maybe not. We don't know what the defensive and evasion abilities of a 26th level character look like, so it's hard to tell. It certainly seems like it's going to be a rough encounter, but I don't know about unwinnable.

So you are saying the Pit Fiend can't smear a squishy dude by itself? I wasn't sure.

This is what I'm saying. Let's compare it to the Ice Archon, the only other high-ish level monster we've seen stats for. The Pit Fiend does d12+11 fire damage (which I bet the PCs are going to be able to defend against at least a little, though not as effectively as in 3.5). The Archon does d10+9+5 cold, at eight levels lower than the Pit Fiend. The devil is clearly not supposed to be a heavy melee lifter.

I guess we'll have to see what the characters can do. In a 3E campaign players could counter the fire aura and destroy this Pit Fiend easily. no ability to strip magical buffs would make the Pit Fiend a non-factor.

I've mentioned my hate-on for Dispel Magic already, and it's been stated ad nauseum that we don't know how readily available resistances will be and what ways there are to counter them.

No. It was already in charge. I'm wondering why it would be considered such a danger to a high lvl party. I don't know what the characters can do, but this Pit Fiend would be a cake walk for a high lvl 3E party even with this minions. Maybe things have changed that dramatically.

I suspect they have. High level 4e combat is going to look nothing like high level 3.5 combat. I consider this a good thing.

Well, I guess it depends on how energy resistance works. A 3.5 E party can render themselves immune to fire for an entire encounter. Thus while they mow through the Pit Fiend's minions, his weak melee power (as someone in here said) wouldn't be able to help much. Considering he has no means to strip buffs, he doesn't have much else he can do if he doesn't engage in melee himself or he has his powers defeated by resistance spells.

He can still debuff and tactically teleport his buddies around. This is nothing to sneeze at.

Did you not question my knowledge of the game? Yes, I believe you did. I'm just letting you know that I know this game very well. So the comments you have been making concerning the weakness of SLAs and combat movement in 3.5E seem to not jive with how I use such abilities. I've always found SLAs to be very effective.

I probably shouldn't have been so hostile before, so sorry about that. I will note that I never said that SLAs weren't effective, and I don't think anyone here is arguing that. I do, however, argue that they are lame, and if you can achieve similar and more balanced and interesting results by custom-tailoring powers to monsters, so much the better.

All of the tactics you just mentioned involve damage or movement. What about spells that render targets helpless or eliminate them from the fight for a short amount of time? Crowd Control as it is called in MMORPGs. I like crowd control and this Pit Fiend has none.

Fair enough. I think this is a result of the new design philosophy with combat roles. Leaders don't get crowd contol abilities, as that isn't their job. Their job is to coordinate movement and make their allies more effective. The Pit Fiend is likely to have a Controller devil or dark wizard at his right hand to provide the crowd control you're looking for.

How can you refute this claim? Did you so little use SLAs or were they so ineffective that they did nothing in your campaigns?

They did plenty. But this Pit Fiend has plenty to do with his abilities and auras too. You are arguing that the Pit Fiend will be less tactical because it has fewer options. I argue that the Pit Fiend has the same number of options, though a few of them are different, so it will be differently tactical. Perhaps the power level is different. Again, we have no way of judging until we see an equivalent level PC, so worrying about that is sort of pointless.

As I told med stud, Greater Dispel Magic alone is an extremely useful support spell.

See comments above re: hating Dispel Magic

Any ability that can give your guys a chance to attack for a round or two without returning attack such as Blasphemy or Mass Hold Person is better than automatically moving your guys around in combat.

It's like we've been playing a different game. I know SLAs are powerful. The Pit Fiend had quite a few I used. The 3.5 Version of the Pit Fiend was one of the best versions DnD has yet produced. The 3.0 version was too weak. The 3.5 version was a nice challenge that could support its minions better than any previous edition.

We probably have been playing a different game, honestly. I don't play high level D&D because I don't like it. I tend to stick to low and mid levels where SLAs are rare and unique abilities are more common, because I think they're more interesting and easier to run.

[quoteI'll have to wait until I see how the characters compare to this Pit Fiend. But on paper he looks pretty weak and limited.[/QUOTE]

Well, if you felt like the 3.5 Pit Fiend was the perfect expression of such a monster, and you have such mastery of the 3.5 rules and you seem so happy with them... it makes me wonder why you'd bother switching at all. I mean, no one here is gonna stop you from continuing to play 3.5, obviously. 3.5 seems like a good game for you. Everything I've seen about 4e makes it out to be "a laundry list of things Peter LaCara thinks would make a great game," so I'ma go for the new shiny.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think one important difference in comparing the 3.5 and the 4E pit fiend is that 4th edition monsters do not just have their level, they have their "weight category" - ranging from Minion to Solo.

In a typical D&D 3.x encounter, you would want to use the Pit Fiend alone, when his CR is 2-5 points higher than the party. You might add some lower CR cannon fodder/meat shield, but the Pit Fiends abilities (with Blasphemy against everyone and Silence agaisnt spellcasters) certainly make it possible for him to occupy a party. (Unless they have some buffs or spells active that protect them, in which case the whole thing might be a cakewalk.
Unfortunetely, the nature of 3.5 combat for monsters means that the "Boss" Pit Fiend in this scenario will really need to rely on abilities that effect all characters very strongly (like Blasphemy) to be able to cope with the mass of actions his opponents will bring to bear.
This 1 vs 4 actions per rounds makes "real" tactical play different. Making only 2-4 choices in an encounter leaves little room for varied tactics, it becomes a thing of using the most powerful abilities as soon as possible and hope it works out. There is little space for adjusting this tactic.

The Pit Fiend in 4E is "only" an Elite monster. This means you need at least two of them to have an encounter of the suggested difficulty. This alone means you don't have to worry that much about his lack of actions - he has at least one powerful ally. On top of that, he can quickly summon more of them. The Action ratio between PCs and monsters becomes more beneficial for the monster. This also means each monster needs less powerful abilities, and alot of their options are emergent in combat - how you use the tactical teleportation power, where to summon minions, where to teleport, all this stuff has a lot of considerations attached that are become apparent in the flow of combat.

3.5 basically needed you to figure out the best spells to actually use from the host of the Pit Fiends abilities.
4E will need you to figure out the best use of the Pit Fiends abiliies and allies during an individual combat.

I guess it depends a lot on a DMs preferences which variant is easier for him to handle, or if they really just shift the complexities from one area to another. (I infact suspect the latter, but I find figuring out a clever tactic during a combat a little more rewarding. THough I am afraid I might suck at it against my smart and experienced players. )

 

[Celtavian]

re

Maybe it's just me, but this seems.... suicidal at best. Your spellcasters either have to come with silent versions of all their spells, or stand outside the silence radius, in which case they get pasted anyway.

Most of the time the silence spell gives the party time to spread out or flee, so they don't all end up in the radius of the blasphemy, helpless, and sure to die.

 

[Gort]

Sorry to make such a short post in the middle of this sea of text, but everyone keeps saying, "The pit fiend this" and, "The pit fiend that". He's not a solo encounter. A standard encounter might be two pit fiends, and all their summoned allies. That's a heck of a fight by anyone's standards.

Another point - I hated "absolute" spells in 3rd ed, like Silence or Wall of Force. It really annoyed me that unless you have the one right tool to get rid of them, you're just screwed. Fighters have no recourse against a Wall of Force, it can be positioned so they can't get around it, and it's completely invulnerable to physical damage. Likewise a wizard backed into a corner who hasn't memorised silent spells is screwed against a few guys carrying a twig with Silence cast on it.

I dunno, you clearly like to scout out your target, research every power it has using every source of knowledge in the multiverse, and go in with a tailored set of spells in some sort of fantasy SWAT team. I'd just like to be able to work around certain spells if I don't happen to have the one true countermeasure to them.