The Devil's in the Details: Slavicsek reveals the Pit Fiend in all its glory

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

On Fire Resistance: Wasn't there an article or blog post (or was it R&C) that resistance works a little different: If something beats your resistance at all, you take the full damage?

For "teaming up the Pit Fiend": I'd assume aside from the summoned monter (that are part of his level/XP value), you will pair him with some level 26 Minions to get the 100 % of the expected level 26 challenge...

 

[JosephK]

Well, that isn't actually the complaint. At least, it isn't mine. He has no non-combat *abilities*. Teleport, create undead, invisibility, magic circle, all that stuff. Poof. Gone. He's an immortal being with nothing to do when he isn't killing people.

On the skill side. Maybe a 3e bard. But a 15th level bard with an 18 Charisma would come in at a grand total of 7+4+5 (+16) on his trained skills.

Except for trained skills, he has the exact same skill bonuses that anyone else of that level would have with those stats. Maybe they'd train a different set of 4 skills. But really, he's using any skill with more or less the same proficiency as anyone else who could be viably compared to him. Unless they have some large bonuses he doesn't, its just a random die roll.

Well, if the skills work like thet do in SAGA, they're kinda different now (which I believe was hinted at somewhere).. That he has the skills on his write-up means alot in itself. For example, you can do a jump check for distance with acrobatics untrained (whether it's on your sheet or not), but if you actually have the skill chosen, you get special options. Like jump up from prone as a free action, tumble to avoid AOOs and so forth.. Having a skill on the list means more than just rolling to succeed.. That's what you do with untrained skills.

I'm guessing it could be similar with diplomacy and bluff and intimidate.. Probably some combat oriented stuff in there too though.

Tbh, I'm kinda liking they're not putting "stuff he does in his leisure time" on the write-ups.. I assume it means we can just fill in the blanks if we want. He might be ritualisticly sacrificing all day long, or building his armies. As to how he controls other devils? I assume much in the same way a king would control men accumulation of power in all its forms

 

[Gort]

Seems like it can add up overall. If you are in melee with it
15 flame per round
1d12+11 and 1d6+11 with its attacks, potential for ongoing 15 poison damage and 5 fire damage

an opponent may just be eating 60-70 damage a round.

Also, keep in mind that +constitution items are gone, and that healing is mostly an unknown quantity. This isn't high-level 3rd ed, where a monster had to do 150+ points of damage to outpace the heal spell the cleric was casting every round. If you only have 250 hitpoints to start with, and can only reasonably get 100 more in the entire fight taking 35-70 points a round sounds pretty reasonable to me.

 

[Lizard]

Just a side comment on how 4e is better for free form, low planning, DMs.

That's me. My 'adventures' are usually a bare handful of scrawled notes along the lines of "The PCs go to town. There's some kind of problem, like orcs. They do something about it. I think I want a gelatinous cube in there somewhere. The end." The one thing I *do* prep is characters, so I have a toolbox of things to pull out. I'm never sure how the PCs and the characters will interact or who will be popping up in a given adventure, so I make sure to have a lot of 'em. If I have an overarching plot for a campaign, I will have some BBEGs written up, and have all sorts of things happen which, unknown to the PCs at the time, are manifestations of said bad guy's powers, minions, influence, etc. Seemingly minor NPCs become major ones when the PCs take a liking to them, so I need to know what they can do beyond "hit people". Etc. (And having everyone be good at everything because every skill goes up with level is dull, dull, dull, dull. And did I mention that it's dull?)

4e seems very hostile to this playstyle. For one thing, everything is 'encounter' driven, and encounters need to be heavily set up in advance. I can't just grab 2 CR-appropriate monsters and toss them at the PCs, I need to decide how much XP an encounter "should" be worth, then be sure to add in Interesting Terrain (TM), I must determine when the encounter "begins" and "ends" (difficult when combat and talk intersperse regularly -- if you fight a monster, then stop and parely, then start fighting again, is that one encounter or three? What happens when another NPC walks into the action?), etc. It's not easy for me to distinguish Orc A from Orc B when they don't have skills or feats to swap out. Adding class levels is alleged to be possible, but we've seen nothing on how it will actually work.

In short, I run a world -- not a chain of 'encounters', and building everything from player abilities to monster stats around the idea that the game is constructed out of encounters is very unfriendly to my way of doing things. Maybe if I tried running a game, it would become more intuitive over time, but right now, it's just Not The Way I Do Things.

 

[Lizard]

Also, keep in mind that +constitution items are gone, and that healing is mostly an unknown quantity. This isn't high-level 3rd ed, where a monster had to do 150+ points of damage to outpace the heal spell the cleric was casting every round. If you only have 250 hitpoints to start with, and can only reasonably get 100 more in the entire fight taking 35-70 points a round sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Actually, from what we've seen, there's a lot MORE healing in 4e. Heal spells are at-will or per-encounter, so they never run out, and you don't need to stop hitting the monster to heal an ally. Warlords heal. Paladins can heal by smiting. Everyone has Second Wind to auto-heal themselves. Etc.

 

[nightspaladin]

Just a side comment on how 4e is better for free form, low planning, DMs.

That's me. My 'adventures' are usually a bare handful of scrawled notes along the lines of "The PCs go to town. There's some kind of problem, like orcs. They do something about it. I think I want a gelatinous cube in there somewhere. The end." The one thing I *do* prep is characters, so I have a toolbox of things to pull out. I'm never sure how the PCs and the characters will interact or who will be popping up in a given adventure, so I make sure to have a lot of 'em. If I have an overarching plot for a campaign, I will have some BBEGs written up, and have all sorts of things happen which, unknown to the PCs at the time, are manifestations of said bad guy's powers, minions, influence, etc. Seemingly minor NPCs become major ones when the PCs take a liking to them, so I need to know what they can do beyond "hit people". Etc. (And having everyone be good at everything because every skill goes up with level is dull, dull, dull, dull. And did I mention that it's dull?)

4e seems very hostile to this playstyle. For one thing, everything is 'encounter' driven, and encounters need to be heavily set up in advance. I can't just grab 2 CR-appropriate monsters and toss them at the PCs, I need to decide how much XP an encounter "should" be worth, then be sure to add in Interesting Terrain (TM), I must determine when the encounter "begins" and "ends" (difficult when combat and talk intersperse regularly -- if you fight a monster, then stop and parely, then start fighting again, is that one encounter or three? What happens when another NPC walks into the action?), etc. It's not easy for me to distinguish Orc A from Orc B when they don't have skills or feats to swap out. Adding class levels is alleged to be possible, but we've seen nothing on how it will actually work.

In short, I run a world -- not a chain of 'encounters', and building everything from player abilities to monster stats around the idea that the game is constructed out of encounters is very unfriendly to my way of doing things. Maybe if I tried running a game, it would become more intuitive over time, but right now, it's just Not The Way I Do Things.

I think the trick with 4e for this style of playing is going to be just learning to decide what is an encounter and call it that on the fly. You don't need to plan out all the events, just when something new happens, call it an encounter in your head. Think of them as scenes of a play or movie, when a new ones happens just say in your DM thoughts, "ok this is a new scene". It may take a little getting used to and I am sure that there will be times where it seems the scene is changing so fast that the per encounter powers seem more like at will, but with a little practice it will become second nature

 

[Lizard]

I think the trick with 4e for this style of playing is going to be just learning to decide what is an encounter and call it that on the fly. You don't need to plan out all the events, just when something new happens, call it an encounter in your head. Think of them as scenes of a play or movie, when a new ones happens just say in your DM thoughts, "ok this is a new scene". It may take a little getting used to and I am sure that there will be times where it seems the scene is changing so fast that the per encounter powers seem more like at will, but with a little practice it will become second nature

You may be correct. We'll have to see. I know White Wolf works like this, with 'per scene' powers, but I've never run a game of it. In the WW games I've played, it is often the case where we have to ask "Is the scene over yet?" to determine if a power works.

As another example, in a recent game, I had my character turned invisible for a period of 8 minutes. That gave him a ticking clock to do some tasks and not be discovered, and it added a great deal of tension. If, as I presume, invisibility in 4e is "per encounter", it's hard to see how to model that.

 

[Anthtriel]

Well, that isn't actually the complaint. At least, it isn't mine. He has no non-combat *abilities*. Teleport, create undead, invisibility, magic circle, all that stuff. Poof. Gone. He's an immortal being with nothing to do when he isn't killing people.

We already know 4E's philosophy: Present anything combat-related in the stat box.

Then let the DM make up whatever he likes the monster to do out of combat, maybe give him some ideas in the description text. The idea behind that is that combat is usually the most difficult part to judge as a DM, especially in D&D. You can easily see that by the fact that most rules are somehow related to combat. Ruling non-combat by pure fiat works well for me, ruling combat by pure fiat needs a very good group and a very good DM. And even then it can go wrong.

On the positive side, monsters in 4E will (most likely) be easier to run and take up less space in the books, so you have more monsters and of higher quality in combat.
On the negative side, you don't have much guidelines for monsters outside of combat. This is easy for DMs like me who tend to make up stuff wherever they go. It can be problematic if you are not used to that style of DMing, because the burden of making sure that everything is halfway consistent is placed on you, whereas 3E placed it on the system itself.

So if you belong to the group that rules by fiat, the 4E approach to monsters is great. I genuienly love it, as it suits me perfectly. Same for the group which hacks and slashes its way through everything and only needs monsters x at place y to slay them. The more you rely on rules to guide you outside of combat however, the more problematic it is. From what I have seen, if you are adverse to making stuff up as you go, 4E might well be inferior to 3E for you.

edit: Thinking about it, the social challenges proposed would actually help you in that case. I know that I strongly dislike them, and that they are pretty high on my list to rule away, second only to Half-Elves, I think.

Actually, from what we've seen, there's a lot MORE healing in 4e. Heal spells are at-will or per-encounter, so they never run out, and you don't need to stop hitting the monster to heal an ally. Warlords heal. Paladins can heal by smiting. Everyone has Second Wind to auto-heal themselves. Etc.

There will be more sources of healing, but we don't know how much damage they will heal. The per will heals cannot be higher than the damage dealt in the usual attack, otherwise combats could take forever.

 

[DaveMage]

I'm not seeing anything from this preview to port to my 3.5 game.

Anyone staying with 3.5 see anything interesting that I may have missed?

 

[Lenaianel]

Unfortunately, the 4e design premise is centered around the idea that only combat with the PCs matter. Which is why he has no non-combat abilities (yeah, token skills) whatsoever. He can't even go home if he get conjured up by some pesky wizard. Heck. If you put him inside a box with 50' thick walls, he can't get out.

His Arch devil patron would probably know he's in that box and may summon his follower to give him proper punishment for his failure