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

[Lackhand]

Sunder

You can use a melee attack with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon to strike a weapon or shield that your opponent is holding. If you’re attempting to sunder a weapon or shield, follow the steps outlined here. (Attacking held objects other than weapons or shields is covered below.)
Step 1

Attack of Opportunity. You provoke an attack of opportunity from the target whose weapon or shield you are trying to sunder. (If you have the Improved Sunder feat, you don’t incur an attack of opportunity for making the attempt.)
Step 2

Opposed Rolls. You and the defender make opposed attack rolls with your respective weapons. The wielder of a two-handed weapon on a sunder attempt gets a +4 bonus on this roll, and the wielder of a light weapon takes a -4 penalty. If the combatants are of different sizes, the larger combatant gets a bonus on the attack roll of +4 per difference in size category.
Step 3

Consequences. If you beat the defender, roll damage and deal it to the weapon or shield. See Table: Common Armor, Weapon, and Shield Hardness and Hit Points to determine how much damage you must deal to destroy the weapon or shield.

If you fail the sunder attempt, you don’t deal any damage.
Sundering a Carried or Worn Object

You don’t use an opposed attack roll to damage a carried or worn object. Instead, just make an attack roll against the object’s AC. A carried or worn object’s AC is equal to 10 + its size modifier + the Dexterity modifier of the carrying or wearing character. Attacking a carried or worn object provokes an attack of opportunity just as attacking a held object does. To attempt to snatch away an item worn by a defender rather than damage it, see Disarm. You can’t sunder armor worn by another character.

Man, I'm gonna miss the ability to do that (spit out the relevant text) in 4e.

 

[Quantarum]

Fear is more than a psychological effect, it also causes a variety of physiological effects. When your heart is beating faster blood born toxins spread faster. Intense fear can cause nausea, shaking and even death due to stress on the cardiovascular system. -2 seems reasonable to me.
I hope this example is a baseline pitfiend, with no bells or whistles and that the actual MM entry encourages and lists powers to make particular fiends unique. Maybe one can flamestrike once per encounter while another can cloak his minions in various illusions. The example is fairly vanilla, but I believe the MM will be full of sprinkles and syrups to make every encounter non-standard. (May have carried the ice cream metaphor too far.)
Don't much care for the drawing, I'm pretty fond of the old pitfiend design. Glad I got two of the minis.

-Q.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

So if someone disarms the pit fiend, how much damage does he do with his claws?

Since has a fire aura, do his claw attacks also do fire damage, on top of the aura?

Or can he not make any claw attacks, since they're not listed. Slam? Generic Unarmed?

How much of his armor bonus is the breastplate he's supposed to be wearing, and how much is his thick demonic hide? Someone can Sunder that armor, after all.

Or are these questions, somehow, not relevant to combat, and thus don't need to be in the stat block?

The massive wall-o-numbers which is the 3x stat block does more than tell you their ranks in Profession (Juggling). It gives you data to deal with what happens when what the beasties walks in with isn't there anymore and the combat is still going on. I know that touch AC is now Reflex Defense, and that Armor Class is Reflex+Armor Bonus, but there's no breakdown of where that armor bonus comes from. And, YES, it matters, in real-world play in the "preferred" style of monster-whompin'.

(Or is there now no disarm, no sunder, no armor-destroying spells or effects, etc? Is the mace not "real", but some kind of construct the Pit Fiend can reform at will? The latter is possible, and saves the problem of collecting the mace after he's dead, but it ought to be explicit if so.)

Although some of your concerns are not supported by the rules of 3.x, you have some really good points. An improvement from 3.0 to 3.5 was that touch AC, and BAB was listed, to cover those situations where it could be relevant. But maybe we have all informations needed in this block, but we just don´t know yet. This is what i hope.

A listing for a claw attack would be nice however.

Two things worth to mention:

1."Rituals":
since a pit fiend can make a ritual to grant a wish, it could be safe to assume that somewhere in the GENERAL DEVIL description or on the GENERAL MONSTER description there are some parts about monsters beeing able to perform rituals.

2."Bad writing":
The setup of the article is like an article in a newspaper. The first two lines are a very short version of what is coming in the rest. So if you are browsing through the monster entries, you only need to read those two lines to know if it is worthwile to read further. SO this is actually "good writing".

 

[Lizard]

Man, I'm gonna miss the ability to do that (spit out the relevant text) in 4e.

Huh.

So...sunder is basically useless? No wonder I've never seen anyone use it...

Not sure why I can split someone's sword, shield, or other "worn object" in half, but not their armor...makes precious little sense. Oh well, you're right -- it would require house rules.

 

[Just Another User]

But since most every devil in the hells probably knows about the Irresistible Command ability, why would any devil ever agree to allow a Pit Fiend to designate him as an ally, knowing he'll just get blown up and instantly killed?

Because they are devils and devils, even without alignemnts, are still lawful.

 

[Thaumaturge]

I, for one, welcome our new Pit Fiend overlords.


You know, because it's page 10 and it hadn't been said yet.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Lizard]

1."Rituals":
since a pit fiend can make a ritual to grant a wish, it could be safe to assume that somewhere in the GENERAL DEVIL description or on the GENERAL MONSTER description there are some parts about monsters beeing able to perform rituals.

This would nicely resolve my concern about no balanced, defined, way to add non-combat powers. If we have something like "Devils know one ritual per point of int bonus over 10" (or whatever) as a rule, that makes things Much Better Indeed.

 

[Tharen the Damned]

All he needs is a wand of charm (or somesuch) to make a PC an ally, then blow him up!

You are still thinking in 3rd edition terms! We do not know if 1) Wnads as they were still are and b) Charm is Charm as it was.

Me, thinking in 3rd edition Terms: A Pit Fiend Vampire! 1) Dominate 2) Slide 3) Boom there goes the Fighter...

EDIT: Won't be possible in 4th: because PC death is not fun!

 

[frankthedm]

Huh.

So...sunder is basically useless?

No, it is not. It can break weapopns, shields and just about any item other than armor. It does not have the use you thought it had, but in no way does that make sunder useless.

Now the fact the system encourages players to scrounge for every GP possible does make sunder undesirable for PCs. But NPCs with DR will find the feat very usefull if they do not have the Int for improved disarm.

 

[Professor Phobos]

Where is ANY mechanical implication that the Pit Fiend cn be a social encounter instead of being another speed bump for the PCs?

(emphasis mine)

Do you really need one? The design attitude seems to be that the only thing they have to do for DMs is balance the combat stats of a monster. Everything else can be safely left to the DM's imagination.

As someone who is entirely comfortable figuring out all sorts of non-combat abilities and uses for a Pit Fiend, but not very good at balancing the math of combat, this is fine.

I agree they could use more fluff to get the ol' imagination going, give some suggestions, but just because something isn't in a stat block doesn't mean it isn't in your campaign.

EDIT: I should mention that "how much damage do his claws do?" is the kind of question I actually want in a stat block, as well...