D&D 4E The 4e Pit Fiend Revisited

[mmu1]

A 3.5 pit fiend is a CR 20 monster. By definition, it is supposed to be a reasonable encounter for a 20th level party.

It's not supposed to be a "reasonable" encounter (What's a "reasonable" encounter against one of the rulers of hell, anyway?) - it's supposed to use up 25% of the party's resources.

Which might highlight what a miserable failure the CR system is, but really has no bearing on which monster is more interesting / can do more stuff in combat - the 4E or the 3.5 Pit Fiend.

 

[hong]

It's not supposed to be a "reasonable" encounter (What's a "reasonable" encounter against one of the rulers of hell, anyway?) - it's supposed to use up 25% of the party's resources.

So, what do you call that? Easy? I agree.

 

[Jack99]

A 3.5 pit fiend is a CR 20 monster. By definition, it is supposed to be a reasonable encounter for a 20th level party.

This.

In one of them, he describes all the wonderful things a 4E Pit Fiend will do when used in a group of monsters.

in 4e, combats are balanced/built around group vs group action. Failure to understand this and use a 3.5 mindset on the 4e monsters will cause epic failure on your part.

Unholy Aura works on the Pit Fiend and all of his allies. Suddenly, whoever else is in that encounter (because we're not assuming that the 4E version gets allies and the 3.5 one doesn't, right?) fighting the PCs gets +4 AC, +4 to saves and high SR.

A pit fiend with allies in 3.5 is not a CR20 encounter, but a CR21+ encounter, and thus possibly less "fitting" for a level 20 party. Also see my very first comment. Well second.

While in 3.5 Pit Fiends did not have "boss monster, leads other demons" stamped on their stat block, I think it's pretty obvious that's their role - a single Pit Fiend vs. a 20th level party is not a well-designed encounter. (and more than a 4E pit fiend would work well without allies to teleport around)

So a single Pit Fiend is a bad encounter in 3.5? (please do note that it is supposed to be a decent encounter for a level 20 party) But a 4e Pit Fiend, which is not supposed to be an encounter on it's own, is worse?

 

[DandD]

Using up 25% of the party's ressources is a "reasonable" encounter by 3.X-terms. Doesn't matter if its the first or the fourth one. Although if it's the fourth one, it gets considerably hard, and almost impossible to win, if the mages and clerics already wasted their most powerful spells on the previous encounters.

Also, by 3.X-terms, the 3.X-Pit Fiend is a reasonable solo monster. The 4th edition one is an Elite. And as we saw what the people did with the templates, he can become a very nasty undead solo encounter.
In the end, don't forget that Devils in 4th edition now have the team-tactic schtick assigned to them, whereas Demons will brutalize you single-handedly in most cases.

I sure hope they're going to show an excerpt about the Balor Demon soon, so we might compare the Pit Fiend Devil and the Balor (Fire?)Demon.

 

[Lacyon]

It's not supposed to be a "reasonable" encounter (What's a "reasonable" encounter against one of the rulers of hell, anyway?) - it's supposed to use up 25% of the party's resources.

It's supposed to be a "challenging" encounter, which the 3.x book describe as one that takes up 20% (not 25%) of the party's resources. A party is expected to rest after facing four such encounters, because a fifth would leave them with an expected 0% of their resources, including hit points.

Which might highlight what a miserable failure the CR system is, but really has no bearing on which monster is more interesting / can do more stuff in combat - the 4E or the 3.5 Pit Fiend.

It means that the 3.5 pit fiend is unlikely to seriously threaten a healthy at-level party unless it's the fifth encounter they've fought that day. Exactly as the CR system predicts, which means it wasn't such a failure after all.

Likewise, the 4E pit fiend is unlikely to challenge a level 26 party by itself. Of course, we know this was a design decision because it hasn't got a "Solo" designation in front of it. Meanwhile, we also know that in 4E, combats can be threatening even if they take away far less than 20% of your resources overall, due primarily to the innovation of the healing surge.

 

[mmu1]

in 4e, combats are balanced/built around group vs group action. Failure to understand this and use a 3.5 mindset on the 4e monsters will cause epic failure on your part.

Please, not this again.

3E and 3.5 were never designed around the idea of the party vs. one monster.

The system for calculating the challenge of an encounter used that simplest possible scenario as the default starting point for figuring out difficulty and calculating XP. That's it.

But now, we have 4E here to show us the one true way, and suddenly, it turns out the "right" way to play 3E or 3.5 all along was to have the party fight one monster at a time, and all those people who thought they were playing all kinds of varied, interesting encounters were either doing it wrong, or just hallucinating. Thank God for 4E, and for you for helping me with my failure to understand.

 

[Jack99]

Please, not this again.

3E and 3.5 were never designed around the idea of the party vs. one monster.

The system for calculating the challenge of an encounter used that simplest possible scenario as the default starting point for figuring out difficulty and calculating XP. That's it.

But now, we have 4E here to show us the one true way, and suddenly, it turns out the "right" way to play 3E or 3.5 all along was to have the party fight one monster at a time, and all those people who thought they were playing all kinds of varied, interesting encounters were either doing it wrong, or just hallucinating. Thank God for 4E, and for you for helping me with my failure to understand.

I absolute love when you guys use sarcasm to make a point. It so cute. Look, I never said that it was the right way to play 3.5, hell, I never played it like that. But that doesn't change the fact (nor does your "sarcasm") that the whole encounter system in 3.5 was built after it being supposedly possible. That, along with a lot of other things made it (the encounter system) fairly crappy.

In other words:
A 3.5 Pit Fiend is a reasonable opponent for a level 20 party - by the books. If you wish to make an encounter that is both logical and challenging, you need to add more monsters and then calculate the new difficulty.

In 4e, because the game is not designed to be party vs 1 monster (except in the case of solo monsters), you simply won't (at least presumably) have that issue.

Which is better? heh.

 

[pawsplay]

I like the new Pit Fiend with one exception - his weapon attack is treated as fire damage. That's just ludicrous. Adding fire damage to it is one thing, but why is the base weapon damage treated as fire? I really, really hope this isn't how they're doing flaming, shocking, etc. weapons...

[Edit] Oh, and I would have preferred if he was a Solo monster.

Upgrading to Solo would be great for a certain Pit Fiend lord. For a regular Pit Fiend? I would expect him to have significant minions.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

A 3.5 Pit Fiend is a reasonable opponent for a level 20 party - by the books. If you wish to make an encounter that is both logical and challenging, you need to add more monsters and then calculate the new difficulty.

Yeah, and because of the way that ELs were calculated. If you were going by the book(especially writing published adventures like I was) then creating an encounter with 4 enemies all the same CR meant that in order to build a APL(average party level)+2 encounter(a somewhat difficult encounter), you needed to use monsters with a CR equal to the APL-2.

So, if you have a 10th level party of 5 people then 4 CR 8 monsters were supposed to be decently hard. Unfortunately, there is a diminishing return on monsters in 3rd Ed. A CR 12 monster might, for instance, have an AC of 25 and +20 to hit. A CR 8 monster might have an AC of 18 and +12 to hit. 7 points of AC and +8 to hit makes a HUGE difference in terms of how difficult an encounter is. Especially when the PCs have an AC around 29 which lets the 4 monsters hit only on a 17+ while the one creature hits on a 9+.

So, because of this, 4 CR 8 monsters are a LOT easier(in most cases) than 1 CR 12 monster. Therefore, any DM who wanted to seriously challenge his players tended to use only one monster per encounter.

Whereas, in 4e, 5 level 12 monsters is a level 12 encounter. Plus, even if you replace one of the 5 monsters with 4 minions, their AC and bonus to hit doesn't go down.

 

[Kraydak]

...
In other words:
A 3.5 Pit Fiend is a reasonable opponent for a level 20 party - by the books. If you wish to make an encounter that is both logical and challenging, you need to add more monsters and then calculate the new difficulty.

In 4e, because the game is not designed to be party vs 1 monster (except in the case of solo monsters), you simply won't (at least presumably) have that issue.

Which is better? heh.

A 3.5 Pit Fiend is a reasonable opponent for a lvl 20 party. It is not a reasonable *encounter* for a lvl 20 party. The 3E/4E CR/EL/XP systems are the same, up to a log transform, for the simple reason that mechanics driving them are almost identical. I find 3E's write up to be intuitive, but the difference is in the presentation, and I will most freely concede that *many* people found 3e's presentation confusing.