D&D General What Would Happen if Fiends Came to Fill the "Low CR Monsters" Niche?

[Charlaquin]

If 4E is any guide then I submit my 4E PC for LFR as a sample:

View attachment 150721

Hey, if that’s the tone your group is going for, more power to you.

 

[Oofta]

Hey, if that’s the tone your group is going for, more power to you.

I've said it before, I have a hard time taking FR seriously. That and PCs for public games tend to be comparatively simplistic.

Home games tend to be more serious, although the LPH (laughs per hour) tends to be pretty high there as well. It's a game. One I play to have fun.

 

[Voadam]

I'll just point out it worked for Diablo.

AD&D 2e D&D Diablo was absolutely fantastic. 3e D&D Diablo was decent but unfortunately lost a lot of the descriptive and narrative elements for just straight stat blocks.

If you want D&D demons across a wide range of power levels it is a great model.

 

[JEB]

They look like the kawaii puppy PCs artwork you find on your typical CR fansite.

Hi gnolls, welcome back to being hyena-headed orcs.

The new lore specifically allows for both Yeenoghu's single-minded killing machines and complex non-Yeenoghu gnolls to coexist in the vast D&D multiverse. Now, it fails in not actually putting much effort into detailing how that works - a failing the lore in Monsters of the Multiverse seems to have generally - but it's probably the best way to accommodate fans who want one or the other approach.

Personally, I hope to see more of this - take the options we had in 2014 and add to them, don't just slim everything down.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I've noticed that in sci-fi settings there is often some 'insect swarm' type enemy which the heroes can kill without remorse. Tyranids being an example.

I'm not sure if DnD has anything equivalent to that. The good thing about some tyranid-like hive mind species (obviously toned way down to fantasy levels) is that it can be intelligent enough to give players a more complex fight like they're looking for. While also being pretty safe from people wanting to play 'good adventurer' versions of those same creatures.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I've noticed that in sci-fi settings there is often some 'insect swarm' type enemy which the heroes can kill without remorse. Tyranids being an example.

I'm not sure if DnD has anything equivalent to that. The good thing about some tyranid-like hive mind species (obviously toned way down to fantasy levels) is that it can be intelligent enough to give players a more complex fight like they're looking for. While also being pretty safe from people wanting to play 'good adventurer' versions of those same creatures.

Zergs gotta zerg. I've seen a few attempts to do this kind of thing in D&D (e.g. formians, core spawn) but it never seems to have caught on. Starfinder has this trope.

 

[Mirtek]

The only thing is I have the suspicion that putting demons in the goblins' niche might somehow end up making people want to start portraying literal demons and devils more sympathetically,

What you describe here is certainly one thing that would be bound to happen. I don't think that it would lead to the negative view though.

My main concern is about "suspension of disbelieve" and getting "too fantastic".

Fighting the extraplanar as run off the mill mooks from 1st level just makes them totally mundane.

There's a reason adventurers fight giant rats in cellars and don't start with a "CR1 least lesser aspect of Orcus"

Fighting least fiends all the time just means there's nothing special anymore when the higher fiends show up

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Zergs gotta zerg. I've seen a few attempts to do this kind of thing in D&D (e.g. formians, core spawn) but it never seems to have caught on. Starfinder has this trope.

Are there even formian rules in 5e?

 

[Remathilis]

I've noticed that in sci-fi settings there is often some 'insect swarm' type enemy which the heroes can kill without remorse. Tyranids being an example.

I'm not sure if DnD has anything equivalent to that. The good thing about some tyranid-like hive mind species (obviously toned way down to fantasy levels) is that it can be intelligent enough to give players a more complex fight like they're looking for. While also being pretty safe from people wanting to play 'good adventurer' versions of those same creatures.

Drone enemies (hivemind aliens, battle droids, zombies) all work but the suffer from a lack of creative spark that makes them drones. Hence, they get boring after a while and any attempt to inject creativity or personality leads to the same kind of problems as inherently evil races in that if one can go against it's programming (Such as Seven-of-Nine) then they aren't inherently evil and KOS.

Mainly though, it's a sense of repetitiveness. Which is why D&D has 700 low CR critters all filling the same general role.

 

[Weiley31]

Well, that would be a significant bump in power in the low enemy tier category since now they have Force Damage.