D&D question: How powerful should Demon Lords and Archdevils be?

[supergoji18]

I've taken an interest in Demon Lords and Archdevils lately, and I wonder how powerful the forums think they should be.

According to Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, page 141 under the section "Making Epic Archdevils," an Archdevil is "as close to a god as a creature can be without actually being one." That would put them at a significantly higher power level than almost any other creature in the game, baring the Demon Lords which are supposed to be roughly equal in terms of individual power, though far from being equal when it comes to influence and control of their realm (at least as far as I know).

As far as the game statistics go, they are certainly powerful, but it seems like they would be easy to beat compared to what the lore makes them out to be. I imagine the undisputed ruler of an entire layer of hell or the abyss being an obscenely powerful being that could wade through armies worth of their own kind before beginning to feel any form of exhaustion. But they seem to be just beefed up versions of other demons with more spells. This is especially true with the 5e version of the Demon Lords in my opinion. Most of them could, even at their full power, be taken down by a party of level 15 to 20 adventurers. They have relatively low hit points for their supposed CR, and a lot of people by that point have ways of bypassing their resistances and immunities. I feel that at full power, a Demon Lord and Archdevil should be so overwhelmingly powerful that even a party of epic level characters should be hard pressed to defeat them.

What do you think? How powerful should these mighty beings be as far as game mechanics go? About what level should a typical adventuring party be before they should even think of fighting them?

[TheFamilarRaven]

I think as a general rule... Things become much less scary once you can see the stats. Therefore, (since in my setting they do act like deities) I leave my arch-fiends statless

But if you wanna stat them up, as a start, I would at least make them more powerful than a great wyrm dragon (barring prismatic, force, etc). Also, give them a damn theme for crying out load! They should be unique among their kind, not just Devils/Demons with class levels.

Also, don't discount the fact that these are very smart beings. It's easy to imagine a group of level 15-20 adventurers beating Mephistopheles into the dirt if you just put them in an arena. But in a game in which you plan on the PC's encountering arch-fiends, you have to consider the fact that the arch-fiends know of the PC's, and will take steps to thwart them. An Arch-fiend would have access to hordes of minions and wealth, and given enough time could make it nigh impossible for the PC's to even get to them, let alone beat him. Imagine the paranoia of a 20th level wizard. Now scale that by 100 and you have an arch-devil. They have contingencies for their contingencies' contingencies. They're not so prideful that they wouldn't retreat if their life depended on it. They're ruthless, spiteful, and, most probably, immortal.

[martixy]

Well, first of all, the way I see it, they have plenty of built-in plot armor.
Not to mention resources the PCs can only dream of without cheese.

And second, depends on the expected campaign power level. For demon lords I tend to use the versions from the Demonomicon of Iggwilv, which are usually 10 or so CR higher than the ones from the Fiendish Codex.

[BWR]

How powerful do you want them?
That's how powerful they should be.
Pre 2e they were powerful but still perfectly killable by high-level parties. Gods too were stat'ed and not too impressively so by today's standards. In 2e they were for the most part left unstat'ed, like gods, because the general game philosophy was that PCs weren't going to get in direct physical confrontation with such powerful beings and if they did they would lose. That's generally how I prefer it, but different settings and different campaigns have different goals.

[Icewraith]

Considering the rules for multi-stage solo encounters and legendary abilities, if you think a demon lord is a pushover and your players are familiar with the usual stats, they get to where they think the demon lord should be about dead and instead they get a "THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM!"

[Belac93]

Powerful. Of course it all depends on the demon, but your players want to pick a fight with Glasya or (gods forbid), Asmodeus? They should be prepared to all be dominated and made to fight, or to be wading through a literal army of pit fiends. They are fighting the closest they can to gods. They should feel like that is what happening.

[Thrudd]

I'd say, they should be a difficult challenge for the highest level of characters. Stats alone don't necessarily convey this completely, it is their access to the vast resources of their abyssal realms, summoning very powerful minions as well as many powerful spells and spell-like abilities that make them such dangerous adversaries.

[Kane0]

Well if you have greater and lesser deities, demon lords and archdevils should be equivalent to demi/quasi/pseudo deities, and powers in their own right.
If you want to translate that they would be as personally powerful as say an aspect of a greater god, or the avatar of a lesser.

But that's just raw stats. One of these are more than a bundle of HP to whittle away, each one wields incredible magics and possess artifact level items on top of the immense political power they hold and the armies of minions they command. Each one should be easily capable of taking out balors/pit fiends (otherwise called 'rivals') on a regular basis, even if put at a disadvantage. Solars should give pause and carefully consider attacking them even if they have the perfect opportunity to strike. Other powers should treat them as equals or at very least give grudging respect. A greater god or collection of lesser deities could probably expend some considerable resources to defeat them, but doing so would obviously require enough attention and power (either personal or in their forces) to consider themselves vulnerable while they do so. Remember the D&D gods are nowhere near perfect, just incredibly powerful.

Also the average party of 4-5 level 20s is already legendary, they are literally at the peak of what a mortal can achieve before they move on to becoming powers themselves. You're talking herculean individuals, not just any master of their chosen field.

[Lhyonnaes]

Well, as some people have said, it depends ultimately on the genre of your game.

Some people think that they're something that max or near-max level PCs should be able to roll in and beat up. Some people think that they're good final boss material. Some people think that PCs have no business ever coming face-to-face with one and surviving.

Published statblocks here are kind of irrelevant. The question you need to ask is how powerful feels right in the setting and the story that you're running. Some of this might also depend on edition, but it doesn't necessarily have to. There isn't really one right answer here.

[goto124]

One of these are more than a bundle of HP to whittle away, each one wields incredible magics and possess artifact level items on top of the immense political power they hold and the armies of minions they command.

I've always figured that's how leaders protect themselves - they should be deep down in the deepest levels of their own personal Hell, filled with the most dangerous monsters and terrain an entire plane could contain.

Like how RL leaders protect themselves.

[Traab]

I read a fanfiction that I think applies here. The basic gist of it was, the adventure party had to invade the hell lords realm, a place that he basically created, where everything down to and including each blade of grass, is his to command, and its all attacking you. First they have to FIND the demon lord, by wading shoulder deep through vast armies of his minions, all the while he is taking pot shots at the group with long range magic. Everything from direct attacks to illusions, to fear spells, to turning the environment against them. For example, they were flying and he was constantly trying to create storms that would force them to land. Luckily a party member was able to combat the weather control. So you havent even reached the demon lord and its already draining them of spells and protections.

There is no stopping, there is no rest, its a never ending battle until they can reach the demon lords castle. So a massive war of attrition is taking place. Then they finally manage to fight the demon lord and they realize he is able to constantly regenerate any damage he takes nearly instantly because he can use his connection to the realm to drain power back into himself. So they get tired, he doesnt. In the end it took overwhelming power, after finding a way to sever his connection to the plane so he couldnt use its magic to heal himself. And even then they werent able to kill him, just cripple him to the point where they could force him into a bargain and leave without getting killed.

So really thats how I think it would go. A sprint for the big bad while fighting a massive army of demons that will never stop coming, not let you rest, and even if you COULD the demon lord has such total control over the environment, that the ground you sit on gets turned into a mountain sized golem ready to swallow you whole. The only path to victory is a blitzkrieg straight to the boss and hope you have enough power to take him out before you get overwhelmed.

[The Insanity]

Gods. bnxnjsghjs

[Mr Beer]

I rate them as gods. In their own realm, they cannot reasonably be defeated by mortals via brute force.

[hamlet]

Depends on the game, campaign, system, etc.

But, for the most part, I'm on board with one of two methods.

1) The AD&D 2ed method. These beings are, along with the gods a status to which they aspire, are so far above PC's as to be utterly pointless to stat out for a direct confrontation. They are as far above the PC's as the PC's are above a nuisance flea. Confronting them in combat is meaningless in terms of campaign and story since the statline would simply read "you lose."

2) The AD&D 1ed/D&D3.x method. They are extremely personally powerful and, if you can get them utterly alone, completely defeatable. However, the bulk of their power rests not in their own innate power, but in the vast array of power they wield politically/socially. A party that dreams of taking on Asmodeus isn't just taking on a particularly powerful devil. They are taking him on. His immediate retainers (who happen to be the other Lords of Nine). The Thirteen (13 Pit Fiend generals who essentially run the nitty gritty of the Blood War). The Horde of devils occupying his palace. The other hordes of devils occupying his layer. Any magical artifacts that he might posses (conceivably anything and everything shy of a holy avenger). The assembled forces of all of the Lords of Nine and all their resources as well (for, surely, they would all unite to repel a direct attempt on Asmoedus' life barring a backstabbing betrayal at some point, but who would permit some upstart mortal to get away with that?). Essentially, the sum total of all that Hell has to offer. The PC's quite literally do not stand a chance without some fantastic form of Plot.

Preference? Neither, really, but if I had to pick one, it'd be the later. I like the option of giving the players a shot at success, even if what they're doing is fantastically, epically stupid.

[ExLibrisMortis]

[...] if I had to pick one, it'd be the later. I like the option of giving the players a shot at success, even if what they're doing is fantastically, epically stupid.

This.

In 3.5 terms, I think the lords of the Abyss and the dukes of Hell should be built like level 20 high-OP PCs, with n hit dice of outsider on top, which also count as ½ class level for relevant calculations (caster level, initiator level, effective rogue level to flank people with Uncanny Dodge, you name it). This is just a mechanical way of showing that they are very, very powerful beings, both as species (unique, with n RHD), and as character (20 class levels), and they have eons of in-character optimization and practice behind them, but they live and die by the same rules as the PCs.

Deities, on the other hand, have a portfolio and worshipers. I wouldn't allow a deity to be destroyed without also destroying the portfolio or the worshipers, for example, by creating a more successful god with the same portfolio, or by getting a deity to fight them directly. Divine power is qualitatively of a different kind than any mortal power (that's why Asmodeus is not a god, in my view). The best a non-deity can hope for is the imprisonment of a deity, and even that only with full-blown epic magic and a whole bucket of 'distracting the deity so they don't stop us before the ritual ends'.

[Darth Ultron]

What do you think? How powerful should these mighty beings be as far as game mechanics go? About what level should a typical adventuring party be before they should even think of fighting them?

I like them to be all powerful beyond anything known or unknown. The Pc's have no chance unless they are all greater gods/deities themselves.

Now this is not to say they can't stop plans or plots, just that they can't kill the Arch Lords. And there are some plots were a ''band of hardy adventurers'' can kill one, but it won't be in a ''crazy dice roll of combat''.

A Demon Lord/Arch Devil should have great power far beyond what can be easily described in game mechanics. Just the simple fact that they have existed for 10,000 years or more can give them a huge amount of power. Think like they could take 100 years off to make some custom magic items. Or even just 20 years to study something. Or even just a whole year to do something.

[Âmesang]

As some sort of comparison…

I recall Bel, the weakest of the Nine, as being a slightly-more advanced pit fiend, which tops out at CR 39.
Orcus is somewhat balor-like, and an advanced balor tops out at CR 41.
Advanced infernals top out at CR 44.
Advanced solar angels top out at CR 46.

Iuz, son of Graz'zt and Iggwilv, is an outsider 20/cleric 20/assassin 10 rank 3 demigod (DRAGON #294). No Challenge Rating, but… should he really be stronger than his father? Granted, he's a demigod, and I'm not sure if archdevils and demon princes would surpass greater deities (except when within their home planes).

So I suppose if it were me… CR 46-50 minimum, gradually approaching 60+ for the most powerful fiends? Book of Vile Darkness suggests the application of single-digit divine ranks, but considering Graz'zt operates three layers of the Abyss I can imagine he, and certainly Asmodeous, being more powerful at home.

"THIS ISN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM!"

"ARRGH! I HATE FILING TAXES!"

[Incanur]

If you extrapolate based on how powerful deities can be under 3.5 epic rules, accepting the principle that demon lords and archdevils are as powerful as deities or nearly so, then they should be much more powerful than any existing states that I've seen. The salient divine ability Alter Reality alone makes 3.x deities absurdly powerful if properly (ab)used. It gets even sillier with epic spells. For example, give a deity full caster levels and have them use Alter Reality to mimic simulacrum repeatedly, then have the simulacra donate 9th-level (or higher) slots to epic spells.

So 3.x deities approach rule-zero levels of power according to the RAW, despite how their stats look on first glance. You just have to optimize, as with anything else.

Personally, in my version of Forgotten Realms, deities and the mightiest archfiends resemble averagish-showing top-tier comics characters like Thor or Superman. A greater deities basic attack is equivalent to a small nuclear bomb, capable of mostly destroying a city.

Lord Ao, by contrast, is akin to a full-potential (CBR) comics top-tier character, able to destroy planets at a whim.

[MrStabby]

Pretty powerful, but circumstantially of immense power.

I see them as malevolent - scheming and never ever passive. You dont stroll into the hells and kill one of these things. They know you are coming, they don't just wait, they attack when you are exhausted, in your sleep, out of spells... Their power in their own domain is even more powerful, able to turn their environment against you - if you want to defeat them you have to wrest their domain from them whilst they are out to specifically ruin your day.

[Segev]

Asmodeus - especially in the heart of his power - should be like facing Darkseid when he finally gained the Anti-Life Equation. Every soul is his. Everything there is built from a soul he owns. There is no will save his, for his will is Law and and Evil is his will.

To even enter his domain without giving your soul to him is a violation of the Law, and Law does not permit violation, not in his realm.

All freedom is an illusion, all hope delusion: Asmodeus is the ultimate expression of the Tyrant, and none can out-think him, for every thought they have is his thought to examine, to have, to alter, to insert. He has already thought of all of your plans, and his plans account for them. You only succeed if it furthers his aims, and you defeat him only by furthering his plans even more.

[Black Window]

In my personal opinion, and speaking purely in terms of 3.x D&D, on the one hand a demon lord or archdevil needs, at the very least, to be noticeably more powerful than a Balor or Pit Fiend to merit such status -but not necessarily by a lot, because a great deal of their power is metaphysical and political. And on the other hand, the Epic Level Handbook is utter rubbish, and anything that isn't at least remotely defeatable in a straight fight by a party of characters who have reached the highest level they can get to is a waste of space in the game. So if the setting has 20th level characters in it, the demon lords and archdevils (and gods, if they can be fought which I think should be possible) should range from CR 21 at the low end to CR 27 at the absolute high end -but as noted, no-one ever said you'd be able to get into a straight fight with them, any more than you can just walk up to Obama or Putin and tell them to put up their dukes. (Except far more so since Putin, Obama and their respective elite security personel aren't CR 20+ immortal supergeniuses with reality-altering magic powers.)

Having said that, Challenge Ratings above 20 get very tricky to calibrate, even ignoring all the difficulties with estimating CR which crop up well before that. Is a Solar really the same EL as two Titans? A Great Gold Wyrm as dangerous as four Solars? I doubt it. Personally I prefer to stop my campaigns around level 15-16, where things are a bit more coherent, and make gods and archfiends CR 18-20 since that gives me a lot more benchmarks to work with, and really more than enough power compared to a setting mostly populated by beings of CR 1-5. (Heck, Miracle straight-up is a 9th level spell.)

Wide-ranging godlike abilities like granting spells to clerics, creating planar realms, responding to prayers and perceiving things related to their portfolio don't really affect CR after all, and those are the things that set gods and planar lords apart from other creatures in my view, far more so than their combat capabilites.

[wumpus]

Back in 1e, TSR published a module called Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits. It was listed for levels 10-14 (expect lots of deaths of those less than level 15, I'm sure), and was the seventh of a series of modules (by the time I bought them, they were consolidated into G1-3, D1-2, D3, Q1. I think there was a hardbound book published once that included published modules form level 1 to the start of G1, and then continued to Q1).

The upshot was that you confronted Lolth (a demon lady) on her own plane in a quest to destroy her. She had all of 66 hit points (which was considered low at the time, probably the only way to kill her), but still had plenty of firepower and defenses. I don't think gods/godesses had any real particular power (except that they often were given plot armor, and that "greater gods (or at least pantheon leaders)" all had 400hp flat. She was still considered the goddess of the drow (and the drow were introduced with the three previous modules and a cameo in the giant adventures).

[Beleriphon]

Demogorgon in 4E has a 40th level challenge, and the game topped out at 30th level. He had something like five or six out of turn actions, plus his own five actions per turn. So he was more than a match for the typical adventuring party.

[Vinyadan]

Back in 1e, TSR published a module called Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits. It was listed for levels 10-14 (expect lots of deaths of those less than level 15, I'm sure), and was the seventh of a series of modules (by the time I bought them, they were consolidated into G1-3, D1-2, D3, Q1. I think there was a hardbound book published once that included published modules form level 1 to the start of G1, and then continued to Q1).

The upshot was that you confronted Lolth (a demon lady) on her own plane in a quest to destroy her. She had all of 66 hit points (which was considered low at the time, probably the only way to kill her), but still had plenty of firepower and defenses. I don't think gods/godesses had any real particular power (except that they often were given plot armor, and that "greater gods (or at least pantheon leaders)" all had 400hp flat. She was still considered the goddess of the drow (and the drow were introduced with the three previous modules and a cameo in the giant adventures).

Is that the famous "Lolth got booty" image?

Anyway, the notice that the demons own their place is right. Who let the adventurers in there? And why? Is that one of those places, where getting in is so stupid, you only need guards for people who want to get out? Or do they need a powerful helper to get them inside?

Anyway, I like the idea of demon lords and similar creatures as being untouchable because you can't attack them. What you meet on earth are their avatars, while their planes are actually their mind. What you meet in their mind is their self representation. But they simply do not exist in a three-dimensional fashion. They are something else, and can occasionally influence reality outside their mind in nasty ways.

However, this can be boring for players. So you can choose a number of special abilities and create a really killable monster. You then choose the appropriate level encounter and the percentage of losses in life and possessions needed to win. Then you need a way out.

What I wonder is: what are these guys exactly? Where do they come from? You could give them powers based on their origins. A power I like and should be problematic for the players to work with is creating exact copies of the players to throw against them while they are fighting the demon.

[Rheios]

How powerful do you want them?
That's how powerful they should be.
Pre 2e they were powerful but still perfectly killable by high-level parties. Gods too were stat'ed and not too impressively so by today's standards. In 2e they were for the most part left unstat'ed, like gods, because the general game philosophy was that PCs weren't going to get in direct physical confrontation with such powerful beings and if they did they would lose. That's generally how I prefer it, but different settings and different campaigns have different goals.

Yeah I like the "just trust me don't do this" with extra powerful beings. If they throw down an avatar I might use stats for that and its usually how I treat already stated gods and devils. Anything with stats is an avatar of the greater being.
Now that being said I'm game for my players killing such powerful beings. They just have to be smart about. *cough*LadyofPain*cough*

[Segev]

I confess that I've often wanted to see an "archfiend" who has all the trappings, all the reputed power, and all the influence and reach of any of the big names...but is personally no stronger than a 5th level spellcaster. He is, however, just that BRILLIANT. Either as a manipulator of Law (if a Devil), or a trickster and manipulator of people (if a Demon), or as a schemer, planner, and power-broker (if something in between), if not in some way all three. So he manages to be the guy everybody heeds because it's in their best interests, or they're afraid of what his minions will do to them, or because ignoring or defying him likely plays into his hands as much as obedience, and obedience is less likely to get you hurt in the process.

It would be really, really hard to write convincingly, though.

[TheCountAlucard]

"Powerful" is a nebulous term, one which means different things to different people.

To me, there's no meaningful difference between a demon lord/archdevil and a particular evil "god," especially since both literally fit the definition of the real-world word and there's no concrete in-setting thing to set them apart.

("What about divine ranks?" you might be asking. I said concrete. Divine ranks aren't a solid concept either, and, not being something characters perceive, the idea really only exists as a system construct.)

That, and I think saying that they arbitrarily aren't gods (in spite of being superhuman beings or spirits worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes) was part of a decision to avoid moral panics and such. But that's as much as I'm willing to say on the subject because going further would brush up against forum rules.

[Darth Ultron]

I don't think of powerful as ''doing 100d100 damage'', but it's more like ''they create a tome of souls and allow a mortal to find it every couple years and send them a handful of souls''. And the average immortal has about 1,000 such things going on at any one time. So that with even just a dozen such items, they can expect a soul about everyday.

They slowly have lots of spellcasters over lots of years make lots of weapons to eventually equip an army in like a century.

A lot of this ''power'' does not translate well into rules, specifically rules about ''power levels''. An immortal might spend ten years casting divination's to find an artifact, though ''technically'' by the rules they can't possess it. The same way that if an immortal even only gained a ''level of power'' once a year they would be something like ''10,000 th'' level at the start of a typical game. But that does not typically fit in the rules.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Others have said this but I'll repeat it; it depends on what you're aiming to do with them narratively.

If you want them to be powers completely beyond mortal ken, just say so and don't stat them out at all. If it has stats it can be killed, no matter how slim the odds may be.

If, on the other hand, you want them to be a final challeng to cap off a campaign then you should stat them out as just a bit more powerful than any other creature of their type and just a bit stronger than you expect the players to be when they face them.

In either case they should be just a bit lesser in power than true gods because that's where the lore puts them in the outer-realms pecking order.

Personally, I play 3.5 and use the stat blocks from the BoVD as my basis before a bit of optimization rejiggering. That puts them closer to the former category than the latter for my games since I generally try to aim a bit below the epic threshold but I'm willing to let the players take a stab at it if they want.

[Gastronomie]

IMO it'd be a stupid idea to make them actually "slayable by mortal adventurers", because that simply doesn't make sense given what they're classified as in the world. If the players wanna fight a Demon Lord or Archdevil, the DM should do something like:

-Have it not be the actual Archfiend, but rather an embodiment (avatar) that still has massive power (Given Balors and Pit Fiends at full power are CR 20-ish, an avatar of an Archfiend should be CR 30-ish, at least in 5e standards. Even if it's an avatar, it's an Archdevil, so.)
-Use some plot device to severely weaken the Archfiend and make it possible for mortals to defeat it
-Use some plot device to uber-buff the characters, who are already epic-level (not buff up the stats, but explain that they've become so powerful the Archfiend relatively seems like it's become severely weakened)
-Have the characters actually become "gods" after some epic campaign

Anyhow I don't think it's logical for normal mortals to be able to defeat them.