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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Jacobs" data-source="post: 3359732" data-attributes="member: 23937">Elminster and Drizzt have the advantage of only being in one campaign world. As a result, it's easy to set their power level. The demon lords are, in theory, in all D&D campaign worlds (Demogorgon's even appeared in Dragonlance!). And not all campaign worlds have the same power level. A CR 20 monster is a world ender in a lower level campaign (such as Eberron), but a drop in the bucket in a higher level one (such as Forgotten Realms). I suppose the best case scenario would be to stat up multiple versions of all the demon lords for the different campaign settings. A CR 23 Demogorgon for Eberron, a CR 32 one for Greyhawk, and a CR 66 one for Forgotten Realms. But then, what about Mystara? Or Planescape? Or Dragonlance? Or Ptolus? Or the infinite number of equally-valid homebrew campaigns?No; better to stat them up as baselines (as seen in Fiendish Codex 1); call them aspects or avatars or whatever. It's much easier to power a monster up than lower it down in D&D, and the Demonomicon articles are my way of giving examples how I would power them up to CR 24–30.I didn't idly pick these numbers. They assume that the tougest standard demon in the Abyss is the CR 20 balor. Are there tougher non-demon lord demons? Sure, but they're unique creatures, advanced demons, or demons with class levels. The argument that since the Monster Manual says balors can advance up to 60 HD and therefore all demon lords need to be tough enough to beat up a legion of 60 HD balors is ridiculous on two counts. First, if there ARE any 60 HD balors, there's probably only one of them. And he's probably a demon lord himself. Second, scaling in D&D is infinite. If there's a 60 HD balor, then why can't there be a 20th level fighter 60 HD balor? You have to pick a ceiling, and the CR 20 balor is mine. A CR 32 Demogorgon won't have a problem handling all those pesky CR 20 balors, and the relatively small number of tougher balors in the Abyss aren't going to work together anyway.And Shroomy's absolutely right. CR is, by and large, an arbitrary number that isn't the result of a mathmatecal formula. It can't be. A better way to judge a monster's power is to look at several actual touchstones that actually affect gameplay, such as AC, HD, saving throws, special ability DCs, and average damage. A CR 32 monster with an AC of 50 is pretty much just as tough to a 20th level party as a CR 100 monster with an AC of 500. You're only going to hit 5% of the time in either case.</blockquote>

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