The Book of Vile Darkness - it is mine, review within

[Upper_Krust]

Hi jasamcarl mate!

All i have to say is that whenever Upper Krust begins questioning Wotcs business strategy its time to give up on the discussion as beyond reational.

Feel free to quote me and argue any point - I'm here all week!

 

[Psion]

Yeah, I think a lot of people miss this. In CE societies, and the Abyss is the epitome of CE, personal power is everything. If Kostchtchie could crush Graz'zt like a pretzel, it wouldn't be long before he did it, no matter how more charismatic Graz'zt is. LE is different - power in LE societies can depend on position/status rather than personal ability.

I really beg to differ. Chaotic Evil =/= Chaotic Stupid.

Yes, CE is predecated on the fact that power goes to those who can keep it...

However, that power can be gained and held by treachery and guile as well as personal power.
Chaotic Evil is evil marked by disregard for social conventions. This may describe a ravening barbarian. It also describes characters like Valmont of Dangerous Liaisons.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Demon Princes have to be physically capable of backing their intentions up.

True, true.

Even in old 2nd edition module for "For Duty and Deity" (where some mishandeling of Graz'zt dates),

there was this saying:

“In the Abyss, kindness is unnatural, mercy impossible, and power all that matters.”
—Rule-of-Three, a cryptic tanar’ri

No matter how cunning or charismatic lordling is, it's going to be matter of personal power contest sooner or later, probably sooner.

 

[Psion]

there was this saying:

?In the Abyss, kindness is unnatural, mercy impossible, and power all that matters.?
?Rule-of-Three, a cryptic tanar?ri

No matter how cunning or charismatic lordling is, it's going to be matter of personal power contest sooner or later, probably sooner.

No, that is not necessarily true. Even if you took rule of three's cant as law, you are saying that personal power is the only "power". Not so.

However chumpy you think Grazzt is, he his still more powerful than his minions. Now due to treachery and guile he has parleyed that into a position equivalent to those of Orcus and Demogorgon, who probably got to their position by bumping heads (perhaps literally in the case of Demogorgon ). Grazzt, by being sneaky and wathing his back, gains his power in a different way, obviously.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi kenjib!

Hi Upper_Krust. What you are talking about is not CR then. It's something else that you invented.

True to an extent. Its not wholly different; just modified.

Monsters are first equated to levels. Then those above 20 are modified to represent a consistent challenge (using the 'x'+4 = 4'x' formula; where 'x' is Challenge Rating)

eg. CR24 = 4x CR20

Until you get the Book of Vile Darkness and run the archfiends through your grinder you really can't compare now, since you are talking about two entirely different things, right? It's quite possible the arch-fiends are also under-CR'd just like the dragons intentionally were.

Irrelevant though; given that I haven't a problem with the measure of the Demon Princes/Arch-devils. My only problem was that Graz'zt is no longer relative to Orcus and Demogorgon in terms of personal power.

Lemme know what you think once you've seen the actual stats. I'd be interested to hear.

I have seen the stats for Asmodeus. They were handed out at Gencon as a preview. Someone was kind enough to post them on the WotC boards.

As far as I can tell he is indeed CR32...though as you mentioned above; under my auspices that means something other than a party of four 32nd-level characters will roll over him using (approx.) 25% of their resources.

Until then all we have to go on is that the Solar is 19-23 and the demon lords are 20-32. That's all.

I would very much doubt a party of four 30th-level PCs would defeat a 66HD Solar more than 5% of the time.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I really beg to differ. Chaotic Evil =/= Chaotic Stupid.

Yes, CE is predecated on the fact that power goes to those who can keep it...

However, that power can be gained and held by treachery and guile as well as personal power.
Chaotic Evil is evil marked by disregard for social conventions. This may describe a ravening barbarian. It also describes characters like Valmont of Dangerous Liaisons.

True, true.

But if you want to say, that's enough to keep one's rank in inhuman domain of evil for aons, centuries, whatever, feels a bit absurb to me to compare it some movie character, with much more easy life.

((Or maybe not absurb, considering, that they made planes 'more kind' for lower level characters in 3rd edition.))

Naturally there might be those exceptions, but Graz'zt was not priorly described weaker, than some of those fellow lords. This is issue, and the fact that gods (or tiamat&bahamut) are so far removed in 3rd edition from demon/devil lords (or animal/elemental-lords for that matter), compared to how they apperead in 1st edition.

And some of us have games dating from those times, and seemingly random (or 2nd edition based, perhaps) changes make me wonder. Oh, then again, after seeing clerics without gods getting high level spells, I don't really wonder anything.

Plus I have a lot of free time currenly to write crap like this here in net, instead of doing something useful.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hi S'mon!

66hp - 132 on her home plane.

Don't you mean 122 on her home plane!

 

[Knight Otu]

I believe 132 is correct.

 

[Psion]

Don't you mean 122 on her home plane!

If the rule is x2, that's 132, Krusty.

60 x 2 = 120
6 x 2 = 12

120+12 = 132.

 

[drnuncheon]

Actually CR is the most consistent measure of power within the D20 system.

Nevertheless CR is our only marker for power.

That doesn't mean it's a good one.

For example, the following two characters have the exact same CR:
Ftr5, Str 18, Dex 18, Con 18, 60 hp.
Ftr5, Str 10, Dex 10, Con 10, 25 hp. (Everything else identical)

Obviously in a fight, the first one will whup the tar out of the second one so badly that his entire family will need a cure light wounds. The first one is unequivocably more powerful. And yet they're the same CR!

It's also trivial to imagine a scenario where a creature would be far more challenging for a demon lord than it would be for a party of adventurers - perhaps it's got a special quality that gives it SR50 vs. outsiders. That would not raise its CR much, because it really wouldn't be that big of a deal for a party of adventurers - but for a demon lord it would definitely make things more difficult. That's not to say that Graz'zt couldn't find a way around it - but it would be more difficult for him to defeat the creature than it would be for your typical party of adventurers.

So my point is that any comparison of two monsters based on CR alone is going to be flawed, because CR is just a number, and it cannot take into account the specifics of the situation.

A dire lion and a 'stock' weretiger are the same CR, but the lion is unable to penetrate the weretiger's DR on anything but a critical - who do you think is going to win? Heck, I'd bet on the 'stock' weretiger vs. a dire tiger - a creature that's 3 CR higher! Does that mean the stock weretiger should be CR 8? Hardly - the average 5th level PC party will have access to silver or magical weapons - heck, they've got fireball - and without its DR the weretiger isn't nearly as tough. An 8th level party would barely notice it as a speedbump - but they'd definitely notice the dire tiger.

So as you can see, trying to play "who'd-win" using just CRs is a nonsensical game, because CRs don't measure what you need to play "who'd-win" - at least, where one of the parties concerned is not a party of adventurers.

J