Yeenoghu writeup

[Ripzerai]

Yea, to the degree that the gods fear Yeenoghu, and that the gods are CR 60, I have no case. I wasn't aware that they feared either Yeenoghu or Balors though.

At least one god fears Yeenoghu - Gorellik, who was patron of the gnolls until Yeenoghu convinced them to worship him instead. In the meantime, Gorellik's dwindled from lesser deity to demigod in status. You'd think that he'd do something about it, but apparently Yeenoghu's too terrifying.

And killing one CR 20 creature is somehow clearly more dramatic than another?

As you pointed out, CR isn't the only measure of status. A balor's superior political skills, combined with near-equal combat prowess, gives it far greater status in the Abyss. Ergo, killing the balor is more dramatic.

 

[gizmo33]

That's pretty vague.

I was paraphrasing a number of other posts I've made where I gave some examples. I'll try again below.

I think you have a different definition of "reasoning" than I do.

My point was that success requires ability AND opportunity.

No, I'm saying that political ability comes from personal ability.

But political success might not be determined by political ability. I think it's debateable to what degree a Balor's stats indicates that it is successful in the Abyss. A Solar probably has a great Diplomacy skill, but my sense is that it would fare poorly in the Abyss. I tend to apply circumstantial modifiers to Diplomacy rolls. This means that Balors probably don't do well when interacting with the greater demons (like the Type V in your example). I'm extrapolating this from the fact that the demon lords and princes don't like them. Something about their lawful natures rub the lords the wrong way, I would assume something similar with Type V demons. A Type V demon would expect to indulge it's appetites - something a Balor may fail to appreciate to the extent that it's hard for the two to work together.

If you're saying that Yeenoghu's success is due more to having smart campaign managers than any charisma or skill of his own

No, I'm saying that opportunity is also part of the equation, not just ability.

A balor says to a marilith, "Hey, what are we following this mook around for? He's little more than a beast, not a sophisticated sort like us."

Ok, here's a chance for particulars. The minute the Balor says something like this, Yeenoghu's quasit spies are going to tell him about it (and the whole court is going to get a big laugh about how offensively Lawful the statement was).

The Marilith knows this, and knows that a horde of Nalfeshnee would love to get their hands on the treasure of a demon the status of either the Balor or Marilith. Now the Balor has pretty much sealed his fate. Yeenoghu plus a few eager Nalfeshnee (8 of them equal EL 20, let's say) are probably going to kill both of them. Given that it's Y's home turf, he can probably choose the time and circumstances of the battle (and bring more of a horde than just some Nalfeshnee). In any case, the Marilith has only a moment to make up her mind. If she joins Y's side, the outcome is assured, the Balor dies, and she, as a demon of status, is assured some loot. Joining the Balor, there are no assurances at all, and given that the other demons in Ys court are going to make similar calculations, they'll go with the majority - just deciding to follow the Balor when you can't be sure that anyone else is going to is crazy IMO - any creature fearing an eternity of torture in the Abyss isn't going to just way "what the heck" because they can always roll up another character.

The Nalfeshnee have probably been given special status by Yeenoghu - the Balor probably has an axe to grind with some of them over past incidents - so even if the Balor were to find some way of killing Yeenoghu, he would find himself facing an aristocracy of resentful demons that stand to lose their priviledges in the new administration. A Marilith + Nalfeshnee elite could kill the Balor, thus advancing the status of the Marilith. The Balor would do this calculation, and perhaps not trust the Marilith. And it goes around and around. All the while the quasits would be feeding false information to the parties concerned, and Yeenoghu would be manipulating the loyalties and feelings of the parties involved. This goes on all of the time in dictatorships, and a dictator doesn't need to be able to beat 500 of his followers in single combat to keep his place.

What bearing does Diplomacy have in all of this? What are the chances of a Balor convincing someone to face almost certain destruction in an attempt to replace one overlord with another? And a Balor overlord at that? One who notoriously imposes an uncomfortable number of lawful restrictions on the appetites of the demoness. "Don't eat those fighter's" the Balor's going to say - I need them for my machinations, plus your gluttony is not "sophisticated". Life under a Balor demon lord is boring to a demon when you're a demon aristocrat like a Marilith.

The marilith says, "You're right. Let's stop molesting nuns and eating babies for a bit, go round up a bunch of allies, and confront him."

How very uncharacteristically Lawful Evil of her! Indulging the appetites of her demonic nature is something the Balor clearly has little appreication for. It's not that the Marilith doesn't hate Yeenoghu too, but at least with him he's not killing her nun-induced buzz with some dreary "evil crusade".

They go to Yeenoghu's throne, and they're all Hostile.

But they all hate each other too. The Balor probably cheated the Marilith at cards one time that the Marilith never forgave him for. Now they're showing up in Yeenoghu's throne room - the Marilith says to Yeenoghu "hey, this loser's trying to get me to fight you, let me kill him and some stuff back that he won from me in a card game." Yeenoghu, the Nalfeshnee, and Marilith all fall on the Balor. I don't know what kind of Diplomacy check the Balor has to make to convince the Marilith that she doesn't hate him but my guess is that it's pretty high. After the Nalfeshnee are done eating the Balor, Yeenoghu turns to the Marilith "is 'hey' anyway to address your lord?" The Nalfeshnee might dine well that day. For each of the individual Nalfeshnee, the fate of these greater demons is a lesson.

Yeenoghu rolls an intimidate check. He succeeds, and they're all reduced to Unfriendly. They decide not to attack him, but things are still tense.

At this point the Yeenoghu of your campaign is isolated and politically outmaneuvered by the Balor. Yes, absolutely, Yeenoghu will die in this case. You're missing the Nalfeshnee, Glabrezu, Quasits, and hordes of lesser creatures who would take intense pleasure in killing the Balor and the Marilith - a feat accomplished easily with the aid of Yeenoghu.

They leave, and their reactions automatically go back to Hostile.

Their hostility is cut short by a ravenous pack of demons descending on them due to a number of unholy promises whispered in their ears by quasit spies. Of course each of the demons believes that he might possibly gain some great favor and treasure promised by Yeenoghu for this action. After all, the rest of the demon horde is rabble but "I'm special" thinks a particular demon. Of course the quasit was lying as the member of the horde finds out after having lost half their number taking down the Balor and his Marilith ally. Oh well, any individual member of the horde who objects within range of a Detect Thoughts spell will have to take it up with the Nalfeshnee council.

That's why Intimidate isn't a very good skill for use in politics,

Seems to work just fine for much of the real world. And if that's debateable, in a fantasy world you certainly could manipulate situation so that intimidation from a demon lord IS a very powerful motivator.

They're aggressive, because the side-effect of the skill is it leaves them with a grudge.

Yet another thing that I imagine demon lords and dictators to have in common is that the Balor has reason to hate the Marilith as much as Yeenoghu. Part of Yeenoghu's success in ruling is to make sure that this is the case. Your Balor and Marilith in this example seem to have materialized out of no where. What if they had personal backgrounds? If all they are are stat-blocks then I can see that manipulating them would seem difficult.

Damn straight there is, but those with higher skills are going to be more successful consistently than those who don't.

I don't see this. Yeenoghu, plus Nalfeshnee, plus Glabrezu, plus Quasits beat the Balor. 1,000 gp and the chance to devour the heart of a demon of status trumps the "feel good" effect of a good Diplomacy roll IMC. The Balor might make the Marilith feel good about herself, but so would taking his stuff.

silly Kennedy analogies aren't going to change this (are you talking about politics in the Abyss or the United States?).

Is there a difference? Oh well, I tried. I'm trying not to be silly, but it's hard given the subject. Maybe I'm not as silly as you think.

The flavor text says that balors are charismatic, relatively disciplined, and prone to taking charge,

Hmmmm
Demon 1: "I'm prone to taking charge."
Demon 2: "I'm prone to letting you eat Demon 1 and take his stuff because I'm not lawful like this loser. Follow him and you'll be doing drills all of the time. Plus Orcus likes me and hates this guy."

The demon horde eats demon 1.

it just means that he's going to have to be able to prove his prowess to those around him. Continuously.

I think we clearly have a different sense of Abyssal demographics if you think that CR 20 contenders to Yeenoghu's power are common.

The argument that he can use alliances and fear to do the same thing fails with the current stats, where he lacks both the prowess or the skills to do so.

Well, it's a somewhat late development in this debate to make this a matter of Yeenoghu not having a high enough diplomacy rolls. I will recognize that if Diplomacy is of use to demon-psychology (and why would a Balor have it otherwise?) then Yeenoghu's Diplomacy score it too low.

BTW - what the heck does a comsically evil creature sound like when it's being diplomatic? And what creature of 18 int is going to believe that a chaotic evil creature likes them? I think the demons are intelligent enough to know that each other is chaotic evil. I'm a bit old-school in that it takes a phenomenal Diplomacy roll to make someone do something stupid.

Do I agree with your basic point, which is that a demon can control demons of equal power? Sure, theoretically. Could this possibly work with the current stat blocks, and the current group of contenders (Yeenoghu and balor)? Absolutely not, and it's pointless to pretend otherwise.

"Pointless"? "Pretend"? Man, what kind of Diplomacy check did you roll there?

 

[gizmo33]

At least one god fears Yeenoghu - Gorellik, who was patron of the gnolls until Yeenoghu convinced them to worship him instead.

Yea, I'm talking about Yeenoghu as demon lord. A lesser god has divine ranks and all kinds of powers beyond a Balor. If Yeenoghu's history involves contending with lesser gods, then a CR 20 makes no sense.

 

[JustaPlayer]

But political success might not be determined by political ability. I think it's debateable to what degree a Balor's stats indicates that it is successful in the Abyss. A Solar probably has a great Diplomacy skill, but my sense is that it would fare poorly in the Abyss. I tend to apply circumstantial modifiers to Diplomacy rolls. This means that Balors probably don't do well when interacting with the greater demons (like the Type V in your example). I'm extrapolating this from the fact that the demon lords and princes don't like them. Something about their lawful natures rub the lords the wrong way, I would assume something similar with Type V demons. A Type V demon would expect to indulge it's appetites - something a Balor may fail to appreciate to the extent that it's hard for the two to work together.

It's also worth it to note Balors are the generals of the armies. Many a coo in our own world have been done by generals. They have hordes of baddies following them. And yes, many of these Lords have conflicts with gods. Graz'zt's son is a demi-god and I don't see Mr. G fearing him.

Anyway, I'm gonna see my way out. Peace.

 

[Grog]

Ok, here's a chance for particulars. The minute the Balor says something like this, Yeenoghu's quasit spies are going to tell him about it (and the whole court is going to get a big laugh about how offensively Lawful the statement was).

The Marilith knows this, and knows that a horde of Nalfeshnee would love to get their hands on the treasure of a demon the status of either the Balor or Marilith. Now the Balor has pretty much sealed his fate. Yeenoghu plus a few eager Nalfeshnee (8 of them equal EL 20, let's say) are probably going to kill both of them.

Actually, when the Balor sees that Yeenoghu has 8 Nalfeshnee with him, his first action is probably going to be to parley with them (ignoring Yeenoghu) and use his high Diplomacy skill to convince them to join his side. Given that the Nalfeshnee probably already hate Yeenoghu since he's Intimidated them into following his orders (Intimidate would be the only way he'd be able to control the demons since his pathetic Diplomacy skill clearly isn't up to the task), they'd likely be well-disposed to any offer of the Balor's that involved tearing apart their former boss. Add in the fact that Yeenoghu has a lot more treasure than the Balor does and it's pretty much a no-brainer that they'll join up with the Balor, and with his stats, Yeenoghu will be a bloody, dismembered carcass in a matter of seconds.

Using minions to do your fighting for you only works if you can be assured of their loyalty. Chaotic Evil creatures aren't loyal by nature, and using Intimidate to control them is only going to make them hate the one doing the intimidating and look for the first possible opportunity to betray him.

 

[Ripzerai]

My point was that success requires ability AND opportunity.

So do you have any ideas of why Yeenoghu would have opportunities that balors - with their greater ability - don't have? You're speaking in vague generalities, and I don't see how the Kennedy comparison applies.

I tend to apply circumstantial modifiers to Diplomacy rolls. This means that Balors probably don't do well when interacting with the greater demons (like the Type V in your example). I'm extrapolating this from the fact that the demon lords and princes don't like them. Something about their lawful natures rub the lords the wrong way, I would assume something similar with Type V demons.

Your argument depends on flavor text, which makes it fundamentally unworkable, since there's abundant flavor text supporting the idea that balors have alliances with mariliths and nalfeshnee.

It also assumes that the only nonunique demons that rival Yeenoghu in strength and exceed his puny diplomacy ranks have alien, lawful natures, which is a stretch at best when you're talking specifically about balors and ridiculous when you consider the Abyss as a whole.

The notion that balors are so lawful that they drive the other demons away from them is viscerally unpleasant, reducing what is intended to be the ultimate demonic species to something foreign to their own plane. It's almost as bad as the notion of evil-tainted death slaadi, which is another setting-destroying idiocy.

And even if there are only a few balors, and - despite their massive diplomacy scores implying otherwise - for some reason everyone else hates them so much that all those ranks are cancelled out (then why did they bother buying all those skill ranks in the first place, if they're left even less appealing than Yeenoghu?) even then Yeenoghu's doomed, because mariliths and nalfeshnee - even glabrezu - are all better diplomats than the Prince of Gnolls, and will be expected, on average, to be able to take his allies away from him and move them to their side.

He simply can't keep allies in an Abyss filled with other true tanar'ri. If his number two isn't a balor - if balors, in your campaign, are so crippled by lawfulness that no demon could ever trust them - then a marilith could easily gain enough allies to overthrow him herself.

And maybe you could claim that mariliths and nalfeshnee are hated too. But really, what's the point of stretching and contorting things so much? Just to make a point? I can't imagine you'd actually enjoy playing with an Abyss that looked like that.

I don't understand why people are using so much energy defending the puny demon lord scores. Are you just playing demon's advocate? It seems perfectly acceptable to simply say, "They're too weak for my tastes, so I plan on spending an hour or so making them reasonable."

'Cause they're not reasonable, and no matter how many bootleggers and former Presidents of the United States Yeenoghu has in his family, he's not going to be able to control a universe full of thugs and sociopaths, which is what all layers of the Abyss are. Not until he learns to do more than intimidate.

A balor is still a better villain, regardless of how lawful you think it is. The balor could use its superior diplomacy skill to woo all the gnolls and flinds away from Yeenoghu, and then where he'd be? Just about anyone would rather worship a balor (disguised as a gnoll - Charisma 26) than Yeenoghu (Charisma 23). Even a marilith has a 24 charisma and a Diplomacy of +30 - a marilith could steal away his mortal cult, given enough patience and subtlety.

The Marilith knows this, and knows that a horde of Nalfeshnee would love to get their hands on the treasure of a demon the status of either the Balor or Marilith.

She knows the nalfeshnee would love to get their hands on Yeenoghu's treasure even more. So she slowly infiltrates the gnoll prince's court, winning all of his allies and bodyguards over to her side. Starting with the quasit spies, wooing them and giving them little treats until they like her more than they like their furry king.

The nalfeshnee gather their own horde and invade Yeenoghu's realm. Yeenoghu sends out his own horde to stop them, and finds to his horror that the marilith has compromised everyone. His own horde joins the nalfeshnee horde, and together they chop the gnoll prince into tiny pieces. Then they eat the pieces, and the nalfeshnee and marilith split the treasure.

The balor wasn't even involved. With anyone. Because everyone hates balors, so they have no role in Abyssal politics. Because that obviously makes for a better game.

BTW - what the heck does a comsically evil creature sound like when it's being diplomatic?

Seductive, whispering, cloying. Or loud, powerful, convincing, commanding and receiving respect. Witty, flattering, funny.

Or they sound like every other demon. When everyone is cosmically evil, all the evil cancels each other out, so it comes down to diplomacy. Who should they trust more, the cosmically evil Yeenoghu with his +8, or the cosmically evil marilith with her +30? Gotta side with someone, and Yeenoghu's not so powerful that he's going to get by on strength alone.

And what creature of 18 int is going to believe that a chaotic evil creature likes them?

It's not about like or dislike. It's about mutual advantage. Smart is short-term cooperation for mutual advantage. Stupid is letting an undiplomatic gnoll of no particular prowess rule you and bully you around when you can take all his stuff if you put aside your hatred for a moment.

 

[Ripzerai]

I don't think anyone wants balors to be lawful, anyway. They're the epitomes of chaos and evil, as mad and Epicurean as any demon. If they're lawful it all it's in the sense that they're good at organizing armies - Abyssal princes hate them because their organizational skills make them a threat to their power, not because they're devils in all but name and therefore no threat.

 

[Fishbone]

I don't know, how could a 4 person 18-20th level part punk this guy? AC 45, strong SR, good saves, 350+ hitpoints, a wicked attack sequence with some strong status effects from the triple flail(confusion, paralysis). I think it could take a balor or a similar challenge.

 

[Imruphel]

Dear Wizards of the Coast,

Your inability to produce a coherent and logical (now, don't give me that "but they're chaotic" straw man) design philosophy has brought a little bit of the hatred and rivalry of the Abyss to this messageboard as you can see from the above posts.

Please produce an amended manuscript ASAP before these messageboards erupt into their own version of the Blood War.

Yours sincerely,
Imruphel (which is the name of a pit fiend IMC so my poo-pooing of your tanar'ri makes sense in the cosmic scheme of things)

 

[Ripzerai]

He might take a balor one on one, but the balor can make alliances more effectively than he can. So can a marilith and even (slightly) a nalfeshnee. Given a choice between following the bullying gnoll who thinks he's entitled to his throne merely by circumstance and luck or following a charismatic natural leader, they're not choosing the gnoll. Yeenoghu's gone within a week because he can't keep his troops.

That's what would happen with the listed stats. This is what should happen:

From a throne of gnawed bones rose a tall, nearly skeletal horror with mangy fur, pallid corpselike skin, and the twisted face of a beast; a terrible laugh-howl reverberated across the landscape, and the massed and quarreling demons around the being began to transform, some becoming gaunt and corpselike, their eyes filled with an eternal hunger; others instantly leaping on one another and devouring their fellows alive. Still others became beastlike and feral, drooling and snarling as their intellects were subsumed by raw instinct.

As one voice, the massed crowd howled in answer: Yeenoghu! Lord of carrion! Devourer of the Dead! Cannibalism incarnate! Before their master they were malleable clay, mere playthings - he was the urge that dwelled within each of their hearts, the dark longing that filled their dreams.

The demon prince strode through his adoring, worshipping followers, his presence filling them to bursting, rendering them carnal, insensate, mad. Yeenoghu howled, his cry becoming hideous reverberating laughter. And his minions laughed too.

It's not about whether they have 20 HD or 50. Demon lords should be forces of nature. They're the dark horror that dwells within every sapient mortal - within the gods themselves - and until we conquer the beasts within ourselves their personifications in the Abyss will live on.

Or, at the very least, they should be better at gathering minions than balors and mariliths. Or else the balors and mariliths rule, not them.