D&D 5E Which of the Demon Lords put up a good fight?

[Legatus Legionis]

.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I ran Out of the Abyss with the battle royale option, letting each player control a demon lord and giving an RP script for which demon lords would seek one another out (e.g. Baphomet and Yeenoghu) and never cut deals with.

I buffed all the demon lords because, as written, they're pitifully weak for eons old near-demigods with worshippers and having fought and survived endless wars. A party of 14th level characters could easily wipe the floor with any of them as written in the books. One of the demon lords should be a match for 20th level characters, not a joke. As it stands, they avoided premature combat with any of them during the campaign.

• Max hit points
• Immunity to nonmagical weapons, resistance to anything but +3 weapons or another demon lord's weapon/natural attacks
• Added some spells from their AD&D counterparts (back when they were a bit more scary)
• Should've added (see below) Rakshasa's limited magic immunity (maybe not 6th, but something)

The battle royale was a bit crazy. Players had 15 minutes to review their demon lord, ask questions. In the forums, people posted that Orcus could be amazingly powerful if using his wand to summon undead. However, I reasoned that Orcus would've already expended his wand's powers to summon undead because he's building an army and would need special bodyguards/generals. He'd have no reason to "save" it on the off-chance he might be ripped away by an uber-powerful ritual.

The toughest part of the battle royale was handling legendary actions. This meant players were all taking actions during one another's turns, and that required me, as the DM, to navigate and help players keep track. Still, was a blast. One of my gamers created some unique drow city terrain for the occasion, and we used a combination of existing minis and printed + painted some 3-D demon lords.

In the end, Orcus was obliterated by Demogorgon (I drew him as the DM)(no one would cut a deal with Orcus because he was universally despised). Yeenoghu and Baphomet fought to the death (Yeenoghu is a beast). Graz'zt was nastier than expected with his sword and was the wild card, holding back and popping a handful of spells, not risking himself until he had too. Demogorgon went for him next as Yeenoghu finished his battle and came for them both. The damage Graz'zt did to Demogorgon was too much for him to stand up to Yeenoghu.

From there, the 14th level party took on a weakened, but still nasty, Yeenoghu with around 150hp left. Doesn't seem like much, but with the above boosts, he'd last awhile and was capable in 2, maybe 3 rounds, of dropping a PC if he focused his attacks. I considered fully restoring him, and maybe I should have, but the grand finale was really a prolonged demon lord fight on the drow streets. The party went through a lot to make their job a "mop up" of a heavily weakened demon lord, so it didn't make sense to restore him. The players promised to "try to win" when playing their lords, and they did. Even weakened, he managed to drop one PC and had a solid AC, but out of all things to bring down this demon lord, it was a measly Wand of Magic Missiles. He had no defense against it. In the old days, when magic resistance was a percent to ignore a spell completely, he might have laughed, but in 5E, he has no resistances to force magic. In retrospect, I might have given all demon lords the Rakshasa limited magic immunity.