D&D General Why Aren’t the strongest Outsiders Closer in CR?

[Stalker0]

That may be a philosophy, buy it is not the traditional D&D one. Celestials and good aligned creatures were almost always more powerful than their evil counterparts during the TSR era (look at metallic vs chromatic or angels vs devils in the 1e MM1 & MM2). The idea was the more powerful good creatures fend off the much more numerous evil creatures.

good triumphs over evil because.....well, good is just stronger than evil!

Its like back in 3e you looked at the book of vile darkness versus the book of exalted deeds. ED was WAY more cracked! Good is just broken

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

You ever play Starcraft?

Starcraft followed Warcraft 2. Warcraft 2 was an RTS game with two factions, alliance (comprised of your standard fantasy demihuman races, the "good guys") and horde (comprised of monstrous races; the "bad guys), but aside from a handful of special abilities the units available to each army were statistically identical. The elf ranger and troll axe-thrower are the same, the human knight and the ogre are the same even though you'd expect the ogre to do more damage and a knight to move faster.

In Starcraft, there were three factions; humans, "protoss" (magical high tech space aliens) and "zerg" (a bestial, insectoid alien race). Each of these three factions had their own unique units and unique gameplay mechanics; the humans specialized in ranged attacks and their buildings were all space-ships so they can be picked up and moved. The protoss specialize in psionic magic and expensive, but powerful units. The zerg are the opposite; they prioritize shitting out a massive amount of individually weak bugs to overwhelm the enemy; the so-called "zerg rush". Playing each of these races felt unique and there was a much more developed metagame, that resulted in Starcraft practically becoming the national sport of South Korea for a few years.

The same applies to the demons, devils and celestials. It's far more interesting from a gameplay perspective to have these different enemies fill different niches in combat, which gives the armies they represent more of an identity. Rather than saying "Well, devils, demons and archons all need a high CR guy with a lot of hit points who does high damage", maybe the devils do, but the demons prefer to field a squad of squisher enemies for the same XP budget; and this indicates that the demons don't have a self-preservation drive, fitting with their chaotic nature.

 

[Demetrios1453]

The same applies to the demons, devils and celestials. It's far more interesting from a gameplay perspective to have these different enemies fill different niches in combat, which gives the armies they represent more of an identity. Rather than saying "Well, devils, demons and archons all need a high CR guy with a lot of hit points who does high damage", maybe the devils do, but the demons prefer to field a squad of squisher enemies for the same XP budget; and this indicates that the demons don't have a self-preservation drive, fitting with their chaotic nature.

For devils and demons, that's been the standard lore since at least 2e when the Blood War was first formulated, and remains so in 5e, where it's been mentioned in several places. The Nine Hells has only nine layers and the Abyss has a much greater number of levels (666 to infinity, depending on the source). Even with infinite inhabitants on each layer, the devils are still outnumbered (there are different levels of infinity mathematically, which is a rabbit hole of advanced mathematical concepts that is wild to go down), but the devils are rigidly organized while the demons attack zerg-like (to further reference your post), which keeps them basically balanced. The yugoloths and the celestials can and do interfere to ensure that this balance is maintained (the yugoloths want the lucrative war contracts to keep coming, and the celestials just want to keep the fiends focused on each other and not anywhere else).

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Good point, and CR is "challenge against 4 PC's", so in outsider vs. outsider, they might have different effective CR's. Solars do a lot of radiant damage, which deprives archdevils of their healing, so even though a Solar is "only" a 21, it might give a hard fight to a Lord of the 9, even though they are in the mid-to-high 20's.

At one point, I was playing with updating the Heddomad, and I gave a Zaphkiel a cool power that did nothing to his CR; any water created or manipulated by his spells counts as holy water. Then I gave him fog cloud (9th level) and control weather. He could nuke an army of zombie

It kind of makes sense. On’t they come in and rebalance planar energies?


Didn’t think about it until i saw this, but are the animal lords supposed to replace Talsid and his companions?


That’s a fair point. I would simply prefer for each major side to have rough equivalents to one another.

I figure Talsid and Co. are closer to demon lords or Lords of the 9, probably in the mid-to upper 20's.

 

[GreatestHonor]

Good point, and CR is "challenge against 4 PC's", so in outsider vs. outsider, they might have different effective CR's. Solars do a lot of radiant damage, which deprives archdevils of their healing, so even though a Solar is "only" a 21, it might give a hard fight to a Lord of the 9, even though they are in the mid-to-high 20's.

Good point

At one point, I was playing with updating the Heddomad, and I gave a Zaphkiel a cool power that did nothing to his CR; any water created or manipulated by his spells counts as holy water. Then I gave him fog cloud (9th level) and control weather. He could nuke an army of zombie

I’ve seen that once before. Fun and flavorful abilities like that are nice to see in a creature.

I figure Talsid and Co. are closer to demon lords or Lords of the 9, probably in the mid-to upper 20's.

Would make sense if all the paragons are in that range (officially at least).

 

[Stalker0]

Good point, and CR is "challenge against 4 PC's", so in outsider vs. outsider, they might have different effective CR's. Solars do a lot of radiant damage, which deprives archdevils of their healing, so even though a Solar is "only" a 21, it might give a hard fight to a Lord of the 9, even though they are in the mid-to-high 20's.

Considering how flaky we find CRs when you use the things you are supposed to use them for (aka PCs vs monsters), expecting them to in any way tell you how monster vs monster is going to go is a more hopium than optimism