D&D 5E When Fiends Attack: Are Balors, Pit Fiends and Ultraloths too weak?

[UnknownDyson]

Conceptually, the up and coming adventuring party abruptly killing a 10,000 year old fiend who is supposed to be great and terrible is really underwhelming. It definitely messes with my suspension of disbelief.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Why is a balor just standing there in a straight up fight? That's stupid. Watch Critical Role to see on played right and nearly wipe the party of even higher PCs out.

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[Warmaster Horus]

I've considered a few mechanics for upping high level challenge on monsters...

1) Max HP keeps lots of threats in the fight longer.
2) Use the environment. Make it something that favors the monster and hinders the party.
3) Avoid straight up, white-room fights. Throw in a retinue, use mobility intelligently to avoid hackmasters, etc.
4) Provision with demon/devil/undead/exclusive-only Attunement magic items. This lets you kit out the monsters and not worry about the party rocking them afterwards.
5) Provide BBEGs with # of Legendary Actions = [(Party Size)-1, min=3] per round. So they get about as many action opportunities a round as the party does.
6) Legendary Actions that allow for AoO-free movement and attack make it hard to base and chop.

 

[wedgeski]

I don't have much time for straight theory-crafting in this or any game where so many externalities -- terrain, mobility, strategy, varying skill level -- can affect the gameplay. Having said that, the Balor straight-up does not look like a CR19 monster.

But, no previous edition of this game has ever had a good solution for hyper-dangerous solo monsters that doesn't come down to one or two rounds of nova and luck. The concept of "the party against one monster" does not work unless that monster behaves in effect, like it is actually multiple opponents. 5E has those features, so it's strange not to see them employed on this iconic adversary.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, the nerf to the ultralolth and the death slaad is tough. I guess they could hang out with the 3e leonel and lament how things were better in earlier editions. On the other hand, for balors and pit fiends.....

I always love people who complain "the monster's stats are sooo weak" and then ignore the monster's int score. Is intelligence a stat or not? Yeah, yeah, I know the white room fails utterly and completely if you don't use "NPC stupid", but seriously if the monster is smarter than your wizard, why are you playing it less intelligently than a black pudding?

On top of that, the balor and the pit fiend have their own optional rule, summoning, so use that. If you need to make it more exciting, make summoning a bonus action or double the number of summoned critters.

I will admit that I tend to throw on a couple of levels of warlock spell casting on the balor to give it some ranged attack in case the PC's try ye old artillery duel, although with its speed, that usually only gets used once before it gets in melee range.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Can't a DM control at what level a party faces a Balor or Pit Fiend?

If you want your party to be facing these kinds of threats at level 9, then that's when you introduce them into your game. Play them simply, in a straight up fight of one monster versus several PCs. Don't use underlings or tactics or terrain that favors the monster.

If you prefer for the Balors and Pit Fiends to only be threats to high level PCs, then wait until your PCs are high level to introduce them. When you do, acknowledge the fact that you may have to play them with the same degree of tactical thought that your players use with their PCs. A highly tactical group of PCs will require more tactics on the part of the monster. A PC group that is not so focused on tactics will require less. This is pretty simple to understand.

I think the major factor in this case is that if you have these creatures face your PCs solo, then you definitely should give them Legendary Actions and Legendary Resistance. This is the mechanism to allow for solo monsters. The entries in the Monster Manual for Balors and Pit Fiends does not state this, but the section about Legendary Creatures makes it pretty clear.

Now, the argument could be made that perhaps the design team shoudl have included Legendary Abilities with the default stat-blocks, and I would say that's a valid criticism. However, it is also one that is so easily resolved that I can understand their decision to not include them by default.

So really, the question of whether these creatures are too weak is rely a matter of how the DM deals with them. The creatures can be weak if the DM would like them to be weak, and then he is free to put them up against lower level PCs. Or they can be strong if he chooses, in which case they can be used against higher level characters.

The idea that any of this can happen "by accident" is odd.

 

[Jer]

I always love people who complain "the monster's stats are sooo weak" and then ignore the monster's int score. Is intelligence a stat or not? Yeah, yeah, I know the white room fails utterly and completely if you don't use "NPC stupid", but seriously if the monster is smarter than your wizard, why are you playing it less intelligently than a black pudding?

There is a strong argument to be made that the "default" difficulty of the creature should not depend on an individual DM figuring out clever ways to make use of the creature. And that that's what CR should measure. Or that if you are going to wrap up the DM coming up with clever strategy or clever tactics into the CR (i.e. the monster using its Intelligence) then you should provide advice to the DM on how to go about doing that. (One thing I really liked about 4e was that almost every creature included a block of sample encounters suggesting other creatures you would find with it. That's one way that advice on how the creature thinks strategically could be communicated).

Of course this then becomes a question of whether or not a single number like CR can really provide enough information to be useful to a DM crafting encounters outside of being a very rough guideline. I personally think that it can not - or at least not across all levels of play. That was my experience in 3e as well - the higher the level, the less useful CR was for figuring out a "balanced" encounter and the more I had to wing it. Less so with 4e's creature levels, but I suspect that was more because of per-encounter balancing of resources making it easier to judge how much of a threat each individual creature was going to be able to be than anything else.

 

[cmad1977]

Who runs a Balor standing face to face(more likely surrounded) by the heroes?
Creatures are weak or boring based upon the DM running them.


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[hawkeyefan]

There is a strong argument to be made that the "default" difficulty of the creature should not depend on an individual DM figuring out clever ways to make use of the creature. And that that's what CR should measure. Or that if you are going to wrap up the DM coming up with clever strategy or clever tactics into the CR (i.e. the monster using its Intelligence) then you should provide advice to the DM on how to go about doing that. (One thing I really liked about 4e was that almost every creature included a block of sample encounters suggesting other creatures you would find with it. That's one way that advice on how the creature thinks strategically could be communicated).

I think that when it comes to default expectations, the rules assume parity in player and DM experience. So there is no assumption that the DM must come up with clever tactics or ways to make monsters more effective; instead, that is determined by the experience and tactical acumen of the players.

The books assume everyone involved with have an average level of play ability.

Once you add in optional rules like feats and multi-classing, and players who've played over many editions and have all kinds of skill when it comes to RPGs, then the DM likely has to adjust things a bit no matter what.

As a side note, it's kind of becoming increasingly clear to me that the options that we tend to consider "advanced" seem to be almost the opposite; they make the game so much easier that it seems they should be for new players, and that players who want things to be tougher should forgo those options. Kind of an odd phenomenon.

Of course this then becomes a question of whether or not a single number like CR can really provide enough information to be useful to a DM crafting encounters outside of being a very rough guideline. I personally think that it can not - or at least not across all levels of play. That was my experience in 3e as well - the higher the level, the less useful CR was for figuring out a "balanced" encounter and the more I had to wing it. Less so with 4e's creature levels, but I suspect that was more because of per-encounter balancing of resources making it easier to judge how much of a threat each individual creature was going to be able to be than anything else.

I agree with you. To me, CR is a rough guide at best. I know many folks who frequent these boards use the CR effectively in encounter design and they seem to stand by the system as a whole...and that's great. It's never really worked for me....I tend to work by trial and error and instinct when it comes to designing encounters for my players. So for me, that little Challenge Rating bit in the Monster Manual is a realy rough approximation of a monster's general toughness, and that's about it.

 

[CapnZapp]

The high CR monsters are scary "out of the box" when used against characters "out of the box."

So you didn't even read what I wrote, then?

That will be out of the box for this particular box. And there is nothing impossible about it.

I specifically am talking about "advanced dungeons & dragons" for those of us using feats, multiclassing, magic items, and more. (I happen to believe that is most of us, by the way) Furthermore, I clearly specified players that are good at tactics and probabilities.

The high CR monsters are a joke for this type of customer. I am suggesting a product you don't have to buy if you're scared of the existing high CR monsters, Aaron.

But don't tell me it's impossible. That's just laughable.