Pit Fiends on Patrol
- Thread starter Bullgrit
- Start date
With no apologies to Rage Against the Machine:
Last edited:
steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
I think this pretty much sums it up...
(from the srd)
"A pit fiend is 12 feet tall and weighs 800 pounds.
Pit fiends are wily and resourceful fighters, using invisibility to gain the upper hand and biting at foes seemingly unable to see them. They don’t hesitate to blanket an area with fireballs, and can call down the wrath of an inferno with meteor swarm."
So...yeah. A flying patrol of unavoidable firey doom that you can hope to detect before you are fragged where you stand.
You don't see them coming (what self-respecting devil goes around visible?!). You are marching along the first minute and the next you're barbeque....Save for less crispy.
--SD
(from the srd)
"A pit fiend is 12 feet tall and weighs 800 pounds.
Pit fiends are wily and resourceful fighters, using invisibility to gain the upper hand and biting at foes seemingly unable to see them. They don’t hesitate to blanket an area with fireballs, and can call down the wrath of an inferno with meteor swarm."
So...yeah. A flying patrol of unavoidable firey doom that you can hope to detect before you are fragged where you stand.
You don't see them coming (what self-respecting devil goes around visible?!). You are marching along the first minute and the next you're barbeque....Save for less crispy.
--SD
Could be a drinking game. 
I see a "pit" being patrolled by pit fiends, what is in it, is it their pit or some thing elses pit?
I see tench warfare where pit fits roam a blasted wasteland, fighting other creatures of thier realm.
I see a "pit" being patrolled by pit fiends, what is in it, is it their pit or some thing elses pit?
I see tench warfare where pit fits roam a blasted wasteland, fighting other creatures of thier realm.
MortalPlague
Adventurer
I like how the predominant response is suspicion or derision. 
Lancelot
Adventurer
Well, let's at least include the Ed Greenwood quote that (I assume) started this. The source is Part 2 of his classic Nine Hells articles, in Dragon #76. The quote is taken from his description of Nessus, the lowest layer of Hell:
"It is said that the nycadaemon Daerith once appeared unannounced over the lake of Cocytus and flew toward the palace of Asmodeus, and before it reached the crags about the lake was destroyed utterly, torn apart bodily by pit fiends on patrol. With such guardians, it is small wonder why the mysteries of the plane are so many, and the visitors who return whence they came so few."
More has been written on Nessus in later sources by other writers, all building on this article. 2e and 3e confirmed that Nessus is a scary place indeed - maybe the scariest of all places. Until 4e arrived, Asmodeus's fortress of Malsheem was described as the most massive citadel in the entire multiverse: 40 miles to a side, and holding millions of devils (primarily pit fiends and cornugons/horned devils). At least one source described this army as being held back for something truly apocalyptic, and that the diabolic forces committed to the infamous Blood War against the demons of the Abyss were only a "drop in the bucket" - a decoy force to distract the enemies of Hell from the real power at Asmodeus's command.
Given the power of a pit fiend in all versions of the game, that's a heck of a concept. Millions of pit fiends... in a fortress 40 miles to side... held back for a mighty conflict that makes the Blood War look like a side-show. That's always appealed to me, frankly. At a time when some players/DMs view the archfiends as beatable monsters, and their homes as mappable dungeons, it implies a level of scope that is beyond the wildest imaginings of even the most Epic level character.
You see some of that same scope applied in a few other areas. 9,999 ice devils guard the only approach to Nessus from the 8th layer of Hell. Khin-Oin, the fortress of the daemons/yugloths, is a massive spinal column, miles long, half above-ground and half below-ground. Githyanki build their cities on the floating bodies of dead gods. There are these... things... floating in the astral sea called draedens. If you're not familiar with BECMI D&D, you don't even want to know what they're about...
That's the kind of thing I'd really like to see more in Epic-level D&D adventures. Settings and situations that are just impossibly huge and over-powered, and require more from the PCs than just rolling for initiative and dropping a couple of 29th level attack powers. Your high-level PC can have a vorpal blade and a hammer of thunderbolts and a meteor swarm, and it's not going to matter one little bit when you're trying to take on the pit fiends on patrol. Or when you try to get through their million-or-so-buddies guarding that castle over there which is large enough to drop the entire city of New York into it... 80 times over.
"It is said that the nycadaemon Daerith once appeared unannounced over the lake of Cocytus and flew toward the palace of Asmodeus, and before it reached the crags about the lake was destroyed utterly, torn apart bodily by pit fiends on patrol. With such guardians, it is small wonder why the mysteries of the plane are so many, and the visitors who return whence they came so few."
More has been written on Nessus in later sources by other writers, all building on this article. 2e and 3e confirmed that Nessus is a scary place indeed - maybe the scariest of all places. Until 4e arrived, Asmodeus's fortress of Malsheem was described as the most massive citadel in the entire multiverse: 40 miles to a side, and holding millions of devils (primarily pit fiends and cornugons/horned devils). At least one source described this army as being held back for something truly apocalyptic, and that the diabolic forces committed to the infamous Blood War against the demons of the Abyss were only a "drop in the bucket" - a decoy force to distract the enemies of Hell from the real power at Asmodeus's command.
Given the power of a pit fiend in all versions of the game, that's a heck of a concept. Millions of pit fiends... in a fortress 40 miles to side... held back for a mighty conflict that makes the Blood War look like a side-show. That's always appealed to me, frankly. At a time when some players/DMs view the archfiends as beatable monsters, and their homes as mappable dungeons, it implies a level of scope that is beyond the wildest imaginings of even the most Epic level character.
You see some of that same scope applied in a few other areas. 9,999 ice devils guard the only approach to Nessus from the 8th layer of Hell. Khin-Oin, the fortress of the daemons/yugloths, is a massive spinal column, miles long, half above-ground and half below-ground. Githyanki build their cities on the floating bodies of dead gods. There are these... things... floating in the astral sea called draedens. If you're not familiar with BECMI D&D, you don't even want to know what they're about...
That's the kind of thing I'd really like to see more in Epic-level D&D adventures. Settings and situations that are just impossibly huge and over-powered, and require more from the PCs than just rolling for initiative and dropping a couple of 29th level attack powers. Your high-level PC can have a vorpal blade and a hammer of thunderbolts and a meteor swarm, and it's not going to matter one little bit when you're trying to take on the pit fiends on patrol. Or when you try to get through their million-or-so-buddies guarding that castle over there which is large enough to drop the entire city of New York into it... 80 times over.
To which the demons' response is: "Bring it, horn heads- our domain isn't even finite!"
The Blood War is an interesting dynamic. It's not clear that either side is putting much of its power into waging it; if Asmodeus is deliberately holding back the bulk of his strength, the demons of the Abyss may be spending so much effort killing each other that only a handful of them ever wander out to threaten the Nine Hells. If Asmodeus did commit more of his forces and pushed into the Abyss, he would only encounter more and more resistance.
For the demons, victory in the Blood War might be as simple as opening more "outlets." Asmodeus can keep them bottled up using a fraction of his power because they have only a limited number of exits from their corner of the Wheel. All he has to do is bring superior force to bear on those exits and he can choke them off. But if gateways started opening to every layer, all at once, the strength of Asmodeus and the Heavens combined might not be enough to stop the flood.
Similar Threads
