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

[Dragonblade]

How so? Seriously, I'm asking without sarcasm or rancor.

In 3e, it's based on Armor bonus*5. We don't know what the AB is, but it's somewhere between his Reflex Defense and his Armor Defense. Given the damage output of a level 26 character, and the fact there's almost certainly some kind of Sundering Talent Tree (as it's the kind of fun, dramatic, thing you see in a lot of high fantasy and the 3e *doesn't* do well, making it a perfect 'target' for improvement in 4e), I do not see why the breastplate can't be sundered. Certainly, there's nothing in the writeup which says "The Pit Fiend wears an unsunderable breastplate and has his mace crazy-glued to his hand".

You can't sunder armor under current rules. Besides sunder is a broken mechanic anyway and should be gone. PCs never want to use it because it ruins their chance to get items from their opponents. But monsters can use it willy-nilly to destroy PC items.

Its like 1e days where Drow weapons disintegrated so that the PCs could never get them. Its an unfun mechanic that exists to screw players over and should be removed from the game.

 

[Dragonblade]

This write up is fantastic. As far as the Pit Fiend not having "social" abilities, who cares?

It was always just junk cluttering up the stat block before. As a DM I only need a stat block to serve one purpose: run the monster in a fight against PCs. Everything else the monster does I can just make up. In fact, as a DM who likes to run games on the fly with little prep, this is preferred.

Running improv games under 3.5 rules is a nightmare. Its the reason I no longer DM homebrew and only run canned adventures. 4e looks like it will be HUGE improvement over 3e in ease of DMing. And that is a very good thing.

 

[Voss]

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.

Thats if his assumption that monsters will just have access to rituals is indeed true. Nothing has actually indicated this, since pretty much everything on monsters has been focus solely on combat.

 

[Professor Phobos]

If anywhere in the 4th edition rules there is a statement like: "Monsters cannot use rituals." I will not buy the game either. And if I had already bought the game, I'd ignore that rule so aggressively it would retroactively vanish from the printing through the sheer force of my will.

But I suspect somewhere in the DMG there'll be something like, "Be sure to give your monsters any rituals you deem appropriate!"

 

[Grog]

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

Where was such an implication in 1E? There weren't any, and yet I had no problem using all sorts of monsters as social encounters for my players.

 

[Grog]

Remember, HPs are going UP in 4th Ed.

If you have concrete information to this effect, please post it.

Otherwise, I think you're off in your assumption. There won't be +Con items in 4E, so high level hit points could very well be lower than they were in 3E.

 

[Bishmon]

As a DM I only need a stat block to serve one purpose: run the monster in a fight against PCs. Everything else the monster does I can just make up.

Couldn't you do that anyway? I mean, if that out-of-combat stuff was there, couldn't you just ignore it and make it up yourself?

What I'm saying is, if you're a DM who likes to make that stuff up, I don't really see how examples of that stuff being in the stat block will hinder you. But if you're a DM who doesn't like to make that stuff up, or isn't familiar enough with the monster to do so, I can absolutely see how that stuff not being in the stat block would hurt you.

 

[Lord Zack]

This write up is fantastic. As far as the Pit Fiend not having "social" abilities, who cares?

It was always just junk cluttering up the stat block before. As a DM I only need a stat block to serve one purpose: run the monster in a fight against PCs. Everything else the monster does I can just make up. In fact, as a DM who likes to run games on the fly with little prep, this is preferred.

Running improv games under 3.5 rules is a nightmare. Its the reason I no longer DM homebrew and only run canned adventures. 4e looks like it will be HUGE improvement over 3e in ease of DMing. And that is a very good thing.

So you're PCs never ever talk to anything?

 

[Professor Phobos]

So you're PCs never ever talk to anything?

That wouldn't be what he said at all, and clearly a deliberate misreading on your part.

 

[Rechan]

*blink*

Really? What happened to the whole thing in the . . . October? . . . podcast about the monsters and classes basically having been constructed under two entirely different systems? How can you just blop a couple of class levels onto a monster if they're entirely different?

If it was so easy to do that, why were they (at that time) struggling with multi-classing?

Yes, REALLY.

Mearls has said that monsters Can Take Class Levels because, and I quote, "That's just too fun not to do."