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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 4034091" data-attributes="member: 5834">reExplain how? If combat is reduced to movement and swinging, explain how that is more tactical than coordinated use of SLAs? Explain it to me.Moving a few combatants around isn't extraordinary tactics. The average party size is still four. There is no reason to believe the average small party is going to spread out and allow itself to be killed piecemeal.So this whole minion movement is going to be about as useful as a fifth wheel on a car. Players don't move very much. The only thing that forces them to move is the enemy moving. If a Pit Fiend is a pure melee creatures, than why would they move anywhere other than within melee range of the enemy? I've run a ton of combats and nothing you guys are stating as tactics is very tactical. Moving into flanks for a hit bonus? My players and creatures already did this when applicable. Because they can do it as a magic action that is more tactical?Do you really think that moving your minions around magically looks very cool on the movie screen of your mind? It's such a  painfully obvious use of game mechanics that it takes you out of the verisimilitude of the story. Tell me a story where a creature or powerful villain every moved his minions around magically to flank a creature? I don't even see that in comic books or anime. So what about this ability makes this interesting from a tactical or story standpoint?I don't disagree that SLAs needed some work. But removing options from the Pit Fiend turning them into a pure melee creature is not a good way to enhance the Pit Fiend. We are talking about a Lord of Devils here and all the game designers could come up with was to make them melee monsters with a few nifty tactical movement and flashy explosion abilities?I don't know about you, but I like to use my devils for more than just straight up combat encounters. They should be able to do a variety of actions that include hold or mind control type spells, manipulation of fire for more than just fireball or blast attacks, generate illusions to enhance their beguiling, and other such abilities one might associate with a Lord of Devils.Sure, you can argue that the old Pit Fiend wasn't all that interesting. But this new one is even less so. I was hoping that the devils and demons, especially higher end devils and demons, would be more like figures you would see in books with powerful attack powers as well as powerful abilities for manipulation, deception, and tyranny such as enthral, dominate, and illusion type powers. I didn't get that.Instead I get a Pit Fiend that is little more than a tough melee encounter. Real cool. This is not an upgrade from the 3.5 Pit Fiend save to DMs and Players who like to run pure combat campaigns. As I'm not one of those types of DMs or players, I see devils that are seriously lacking. This version of the Pit Fiend is just a big, bad combat encounter that will require a great deal of modification to use for anything other than "a do as much damage as you can before he outdamages you encounter". No tactical spell memorization required of the players. No reconaissance required. No thinking on the part of the players. Just go into combat and swing until dead. How any of you can argue that this Pit Fiend is anything other than a high end combat encounter is mind boggling.</blockquote>

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