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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6078700" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 306: April 2003part 3/9By evil bound: Creators of new fiends these days have a fairly stiff challenge. The existing ones have had multiple books looking at their lifecycle, psychology, chains of command, and the ways they get promoted and demoted. With demons it's not too bad, as the abyss is infinite, and you can easily have whole layers where a different set of monstrosities to the usual tanar'ri wound up more common. However, the baatezu and yugoloths have a pretty well defined hierarchy, so any new creations have to somehow be slotted into that with an explanation why we haven't seen them around much before, or stand outside it altogether. So Mike Mearls puts quite a bit of effort into the backstory of this bumper pack of new monsters. The Devils are primarily internal enforcers. More lawful than evil, they're constructs built unable to break the laws of the nine hells, and as they can't be promoted or demoted, they can be relied upon to keep things functioning down there. The Yugoloths are more created beings like the old Guardians, build to literally serve as living weapons. This means they've been around for ages, but tend to get overlooked. Still, it's another reason to be paranoid about taking their stuff after killing them. You never know when it'll be a trap in itself. The Demons are formed by the merging of evil energy with the elements themselves, creating malevolent beings that have no tie to living souls, and thus even less incentive to trick and corrupt you rather than just torturing and killing. So far, so interesting. Let's look at the individual monsters. Air Demons can fly faster than Vrocks, but that's their only real advantage. They're not even bright or reliable enough to make decent messengers. But then, if you've made it to abyssal lord status, you're well aware of just how flaky everyone around you is, and plan accordingly. It's just a matter of sufficient force and trickery. Ash Demons cheese through combat by transforming into an insubstantial cloud of ash and trying to choke you. Zap them with cold spells to dampen their enthusiasm fast. Earth Demons are dim and thuggish, but at least they're patient (or lazy) enough to sit still in one place and wait for prey, so they can be used as guardians. Just don't expect them to let you by any easier than your enemies. Fire Demons burn you if they get too near, and set you on fire if they touch you. One trick ponies, really. Ice Demons are the closest ones here to being civilised, able to shape ice to build all sorts of things. They like their hit and run attacks, letting the cold gradually wear you down before the final kill. Water Demons superheat the water around them to make hunting easier. Once again, they have one trick, and that's it. Piscoloths'll make short work of them. Coal Devils don't burn as hot as fire demons, but their constant smoking obscures vision and chokes anyone which needs to breathe. (which doesn't impede them at all. ) You'd think the Hells would have stricter health and safety regulations in the workplace, considering how big they are on bureaucracy. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> Glass Devils are permanently invisible, and can move fast and burrow, making them pretty decent spies. Their skillset further supports this, with plenty of move silently, escape artist, and tumble to make it hard to pin them down even if you can see them. Lead Devils have the fairly unique quirk of being able to teleport, but only when grappling someone else. They're relatively smart for such a big heavy creature too, and really good jumpers for some reason. If one's chasing you, it'll be a pretty terminator like experience. Obsidian Devils are another one that loves to grapple, but they won't carry you back, just grind you against their sharp edges until you're just a mass of bloody ribbons. Shame being soaked in blood doesn't give you a bonus to escape artist rolls. Sand Devils are another sneaky one, dispersing themselves and hiding in plain sight. After all, who suspects the dirt? Even paranoid demon lords are usually too arrogant to think of that. Once again, affecting visibility and choking you is their modus operandi if forced into combat. Spiked Devils don't play well with others, since they need plenty of elbow room, and when they shoot spikes, they go in all directions.  So they're generally stuck outside important stuff, serving as guards. Sounds boring and lonely. Arrow Battleloths are cowards, and quite rightly, since they're 1HD creatures often used in battles full of terrifying extraplanar fiends. So they rarely fight in humanoid form, preferring to be fired once, and then find a way into the enemy's quivers for some spying action. Like any Yugoloth worth their salt, they'll betray their employers and play both sides for maximum personal profit if they think they can get away with it. Axe Battleloths hit things with their sharpened heads as their primary combat method, so they tend not to be the brightest. When used as a weapon, they bite as well as slice, so they still have incentive to work with others. Crossbow Battleloths can generate their own ammo and fly, so they're pretty lethal on their own tactically, but they can shoot even faster with someone to reload them. As ever, they don't particularly mind who, as long as they're paying well. Pick Battleloths like to latch onto the first thing they hit and suck their blood like a mosquito. This means subtlety and tactics are not their strong points if used in a larger melee. Maybe if you keep a whole brace of them in your backpack you can take advantage of gang tactics to lock down something more powerful. Better hope they'll shut up and keep still until then. Spiked Chain Battleloths demonstrate that Mike is fully aware of this bit of 3e cheese. They like to hunt other battleloths for fun, which only reinforces their assholishness. Nothing like a bit of mean spirited mucking around to reinforce that these guys are neutral evil, not lawful evil. Sword Battleloths are the straight guys of this lot, which seems appropriate. They just want to kick ass, although they still prefer paying gigs. To be honest, who doesn't. After reading through all this, I'm struck by how much it feels like a trial run for the changes they would make to monsters in general in 4e. All of these eschew the lengthy lists of spell-like powers existing fiends of the same HD have, just having one or two neat tricks each, and that's it. Plus the demons are formed from corrupted elements, which would also become the canon 4e origin for the Abyss in general. I guess we can definitely blame Mearls for all that then. It does mean they come off as considerably less mysterious and scary than the original set, both because they're all focussed on doing one or two things rather than being versatile big bads, and because they each just take a particular element and riff of that, which is always a formulaic way of generating large numbers of monsters. (so ironically, it's the literal living weapons that have the best developed personalities of this lot ) Compare that with say, a vrock. (it's a vulture man, which does magical dances and generates spores. Those elements do not flow logically from one-another) and it's obvious which still seems more wondrous and threatening. So this is a very displeasing bit of foreshadowing indeed for me. Introducing new creatures that don't work the same way as the old ones is cool in my book. Rewriting all the old ones so they no longer overshadow your new creations is most definitely NOT.</blockquote>

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