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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 4149601" data-attributes="member: 3146">More fully understanding how the mechanics work, the pit fiend looks a lot more effective... however, I still don't like it. The essential problem that I have is that it exemplifies the so-called streamlined monster design that the designers have bragged about:The pit fiend has very few options. You might expect the fight to go something like:Round 1: move or teleport, infernal summons, point of terror, spend that action point for an extra action: pit fiend frenzy.After that, the only questions for the pit fiend is whether it is going to use point of terror or irresistable command as its minor action and whether it would rather pit fiend frenzy or charge as its attack action. So, once you've got past the first round, the pit fiend doesn't actually have many interesting options. In short, not only is every fight against a pit fiend going to be the same, but almost every round of every fight against the pit fiend is going to see the pit fiend doing the same thing. Compared to the flexibility of previous edition pit fiends, that's very weak sauce.Secondly, I shudder to think of the number of ongoing effects to keep track of. At a minimum, we're looking at two location based effects (the auras) to be kept track of each turn, and two ongoing damage based effects (fire damage and the weakening and poison) to be saved against each turn. Add in the various marks for all of the pit fiend's summons and the other monsters in the combat, and I'm guessing that you're going to end up with at least two ongoing damage/save effects per character per round and probably at least one aura and mark per character per round. That's going to be a lot to keep track of--even more so because it will change every round and as characters and monsters move. Now, maybe it won't be as bad as it looks as I work my way up to epic tier 4th edition (assuming I play the game at all which is likely but not guaranteed at the moment), but it looks to me like anyone who couldn't handle DMing high level 3.5 edition, shouldn't bother playing epic tier 4th edition.</blockquote>

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