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Madokar Valortouched wrote:

So the other night, I had a little idea. A potential springboard for a homebrew Pathfinder campaign. Thinking of the starting point of the campaign to be Absalom. The trick is, how do you get the PCs together to start everything?

While browsing the net (TVTropes, specifically), I came across some bare-bones information about Dr. Skule. He sounds interesting, and a potential springboard into the campaign proper. But I can't seem to find his stat block or where he was introduced into the lore of Pathfinder anywhere.

So before I really commit to this, I would like to know some things about him. His alignment is a big thing. As would be how he handles Skule's Army. He's a troll with levels in Alchemist, so he's probably a mid-level or above threat if the PCs try to fight him. Would be nice to know how I could control him in a fight with resulting a TPK of a new group. I don't WANT the PCs to fight him, but some people see a troll, they might attack him regardless of what I want to do with him.

There is no stat block for Skule in the books. You can find his story in "Classic Monsters Revisited", in the section under trolls though.


This looks great. I'll be thrilled to have more information on some of these races, especially the urdefans and neothelids. If there's anything that disappoints me, it's that the aboleths don't appear to be included. With their kraken (Mythical Monsters Revisited) and neothelid (this book) enemies, and skum (Ecology of the Skum) servants all having detailed write-ups that flesh them out as races and cultures, it's a pity that they themselves have yet to receive one. They're involved with so much of the backstory, and so many of the other races, that I'd love to know more about them, and given that they once ruled the Sightless Sea (and still live there in some cases) they'd have fit nicely into this book.

Still, looking forward to it, and will definitely buy it.


@Monkeygod

I assume that Lamashtu brought allies along because her section of "Lords of Chaos" specifies that most demons are allied with her in one way or another. There's nothing in the "Horsemen" book that indicates that Urgathoa and Zyphus do anything other than rent space from the Four.

Yes there are thirty harbingers listed. Harbingers are the equivalent of nascent demon lords, infernal dukes, and whatever the weaker variant of an empyreal lord is. In short, they're weaker than full demon lords, archdevils, or empyreal lords. Not to mention that there are thousands of nascent demon lords in the Abyss alone. If you read some of my earlier posts, you'll note that I mention, on several occasions, that if they'd made the harbingers the equivalent of full demon lords, we wouldn't be having this discussion. They didn't though.

Now lots of good points have been raised as to why Lamashtu's invasion might have failed. Maybe she really was an idiot and didn't bring any allies. Who knows? But my point about the daemons being outgunned by Hell, Heaven, and the Abyss still stands, as does my disbelief that somebody, at some point, hasn't just gone "screw it, let's get rid of these guys." When you're straight up evil, everybody distrusts or hates you, and you don't have as many guns as your opponents, you typically don't last long as a major player.


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^Oh for the love of...the Oinodaemon--going off what's in the sourcebook itself--doesn't give anybody permission for anything. The Four bound it and feed on it. If it has any power left--any whatsoever--to influence events in Abaddon the book doesn't reference it, and neither do any of the others. If anybody, including Mr. Stewart, meant for it to be able to do anything, it didn't make it into the book. So if we could please stop using him as a solution.

Going through the rest of these point by point.

1) Charon is the River Styx. Correction--Charon might be the River Styx. Or he might be something living in the River Styx. Or he might be exactly what he appears to be. Personally, I like the sentient Styx solution that's offered, but if being the Styx gives him powers beyond those of a typical demon lord they're not mentioned in any of the source material. So again, any advantage we think they give him is conjecture.

2) "Maybe the Horsemen want you to believe they are weak." First of all the books are not written from the perspective of the beings they are about, and I don't know where you got that idea. I've got all three. They aren't written from an in-universe perspective, and even the "excerpts" from the "real book of the damned" are written from the perspective of an author, specifically one of the former Empyreal Lords (Tabris I believe the name is). Secondly, I'll buy that they might want to trick Lamashtu et al, but what you're proposing is that, in order to do that, the book that's supposed to tell me how to use the Horsemen and Abaddon in my campaign, is lying to me. If that was true it would be a very poor writing decision, and I doubt that's what Paizo was going for. Going off of that logic we might as well assume all the sourcebooks are lying to us, and that no information we are given is reliable, or should be treated as useful to the running of a campaign.

3) The "stronger on your home plane" is about the only point raised so far that actually explains anything. Though that of course begs the opposite question, namely why in the hell any of various divinities or semidivinities ever invades another plane. Sort of a losing proposition that.

4) If all the Horsemen are on paar with Nocticula they could indeed take on one deity. Provided that deity brought no allies whatsoever to aid it. I somehow doubt that Lamashtu didn't bring some of her allies along for the ride. Given that excepting Pazuzu (and more recently Nocticula) most of the Abyss is allied to her/avoids challenging her, I'm thinking she's got friends, and unless she's an idiot, some of them will have come along. Also--Lamashtu killed two of the Horsemen. So if they can take on a deity together, they haven't done a great job of it.

5) Actually the fact that the book doesn't say it has been my complaint from the start. If you take what the book says at face value, you are left with decidedly unbalanced scales. Every possible solution to that problem that I've seen proposed here has been based on bending what's presented in one way or another. And that's great. It's all neat ideas, and I plan to use some of them in my game. But it doesn't change the fact that the setting book didn't spell things out and that we're having to try to read between the lines.

As to the specific bit about the other deities helping...Urgathoa and Zyphus, according to all the information on them, go out of their way to avoid conflict with other deities. Urgathoa in particular just wants to be left alone. So if at some point she went to war with Lamashtu on behalf of the daemons, I would think it would be somewhere in the source material. But it's not anywhere--not in the Books of the Damned, not in the various write-ups on Urgathoa, not even in the various write-ups of Lamashtu. So if Paizo intended for her to have allied with the daemons against Lamashtu they never even hint at it.

And "we let you live here so you can defend us" is not in point of fact, unfathomable.

6) "Makes ya wonder just how truly powerful the Horsemen are, if gods need their leave to live on their plane."

It does indeed. And that is again, the problem. The book says two different things. It says that the Horsemen are as powerful as the average demon lord and that the harbingers are equivalent to "only" nascent demon lords or infernal dukes. It also says that the daemons can threaten the very universe itself, fend off attacks from full deities, and force deities to ask their permission before moving into Abaddon. Do you not see how contradictory that is? The whole reason I started this thread was to try and reconcile those two facts. The discussion has been great. There's lots of interesting ideas for how to work around the problem. But what no one has been able to show--including you--is that there wasn't a problem in the first place.

Based off the Books of the Damned themselves, the daemons come off as badly undergunned. Maybe they aren't supposed to. Maybe all the theories proposed here are right on the money. But they still come off that way in the source material.


^I think lots of interesting ideas have been kicked about, though I don't know that any of them necessarily solve the basic problem (I see lots of ways to fix the issue, but little proof that there wasn't an issue in the first place).


"There are at least seven other daemons of massive power. So much for the daemons being outgunned!"

That's not in any of the books, just Tome of Horrors. The Oinodaemon in current Pathfinder continuity doesn't have to worry about anyone gunning for his title, because he's already lost it--he's a prisoner of the Four.

Deacons are not the equivalent of a normal demon lord or infernal duke. That's harbingers (who equal nascent demon lords and infernal dukes, no archdevils or demon lords). Deacons are the unique races of daemon that serve the Horsemen. They are Apollyon's leukodaemons (CR 9), Trelmarixian's meladaemons (CR 11), Szuriel's purrodaemons (CR 18), and Charon's thanadaemons (CR 13). They serve as the core about which each of the Four builds their army, but they're certainly no match for a divine or semidevine being.


You know, I've like most of this discussion, and a lot of the reasons kicked around have been pretty neat ideas. This conversely:

"One goddess and her little layerfull of demons vs. an entire plane's worth of daemons + whatever pals they have lying around + any of Lamashtu's enemies that decide to annoy her back home? On their home plane? The fact that Lamashtu was even able to accomplish what she did is testament to what a freakin' badass she is, but there was no way she could win that war."

Yeah, kindly don't imply that I'm too dumb to do the math myself, thanks. The section of the Book of the Damned that discusses the war never mentions the daemons involving their allies (or even if they have allies), or any of Lamashtu's enemies turning on her, or anything to that effect. It talks about Lamashtu leading a massive invasion at the head of "the hordes of the Abyss" (which sounds to me like a little more than one tiny section of the Abyss), and the daemons repelling it themselves.

In fact regarding the whole allies suggestion in general? What allies? A number of people have suggested Zyphus and Urgathoa, and I assume that's who everyone else who mentions allies means as well. The problem with that is that the third Book of the Damned explicitly states that the Horsemen's reasons for allowing those two deities to reside in Abaddon are unfathomable. They're there "because they helped us kick Lamasthu's ass" isn't unfathomable and would presumably be referenced in the sections that talk about the war. In point of fact, the book takes pains to remind us that for all that Zyphus and Urgathoa's minions sometimes cooperate with those of the Horsemen, both deities know that the Horsemen view the universe as a zero-sum game, and are therefore very choosy about helping them.

I'll reiterate that once again, I like the daemons. I think they're a cool faction, and I like using them in my games. I just think that for what the setting material says about their accomplishments to be true, the Horsemen have to be a heck of a lot more powerful than your average demon lord/archdevil/what have you. And I think that the writer's of their book made a mistake by saying that they weren't (and for that matter by saying that harbingers are only as strong as the average nascent demon lord).


Well, this thread's certainly come a ways since my last post. I'm glad to see so much discussion.

Couple of things--I was never at any point suggesting that Heaven, Hell, and the Abyss all ally together against the daemons. My argument was that, going off the information presented, any one of those groups could likely manhandle the daemons.

If Lamashtu can't personally invade another plane, someone forgot to tell her that in the last war. She personally killed two of the Horsemen from the time, or so say the Books of the Damned. I also completely concur with the poster who said that if Asmodeus himself led an invasion with the archdevils I'm not seeing much the Four could do about it.

The notion of the Four throwing the deadman switching and loosing the Oinodaemon is a cool one, but it still has a couple of issues. For one, the Four were able to defeat the Oinodaemon themselves. If he's as powerful as some are making him out to be, than the Four themselves would almost have to be stronger than demon lords or archdevils. If they only are that strong, then he can't be powerful enough to be a deterrent on his own.

Lots of what has been said here is great fuel for campaign ideas, but I do maintain that someone didn't do the math when they created the three books.


@Buri

I get that there has to be segregation of rules and setting, but even if you ignore the notions of CR scores, the setting material itself describes the Horsemen as being equivalent to demon lords or archdevils and the harbingers as being equivalent to nascent demon lords, and so forth. So ignoring all the rules, and just going off of the setting material, the problem still persists. Five empyreal lords/demon lords/archdevils and their followers should be able to devastate Abbadon with little difficulty. Lamashtu's invasion--provided she brought even one other demon lord along--should have ended in victory for her, not a retreat.

Now obviously this didn't happen. We're told the daemons defeated Lamashtu, and have fended off numerous angelic invasions, but we aren't told how, and there's nothing in the setting material to suggest they should be capable of it.

Personally, I think the easiest way to reconcile it is to assume that the Four are above CR 30 and that the harbingers average CR 23-28, rather than CR 21-26. But even that's just me throwing in a solution; it isn't one from the original source material.

@RJGrady

That might deter someone good aligned. A demon probably isn't going to care about the cost of victory (and we know for a fact that Lamashtu didn't care about the price).

I've seen the film. Owlman probably would fall into extreme neutral evil, given that his goal isn't so much destroying the universe for its own sake (which would trend more chaotic evil) but to put his own selfish desire (for his choices to matter) above everyone else's. He's a rarity though. Most omnicidal maniacs are chaotic rather than neutral. Though I wonder where Rau Le Creuset of Gundam SEED would fall in, given that his desire to kill everyone stems from both wanting to end his own miserable existence and the belief that he's performing a mercy kill on the rest of us. Probably still chaotic, though higher functioning than many.

@Rysky

I agree with you and run it that way. I just wish it was actually in the source material.


@Buri

Sure there will always be individual daemons, but that isn't what I'm talking about. I'm saying that the organized daemons presented in the books are badly outnumbered and outgunned, and going off the rules as presented, should probably have been reduced to a subsistence level by now. They shouldn't be a concern.

@Rysky

I don't know what I could have said that gave you the impression that I thought CR 30 was easy to defeat, I really don't. What I'm saying is that if in Abbadon there are only four beings (the Horsmen) who rate in that territory, then the daemons are screwed. Because in Hell there are eight, plus Asmodeus himself. There's even more in the Abyss, Heaven, Nirvana, etc, in addition to Lamashtu and Sarenrae. No matter how you slice it, the daemons are seriously underpowered when compared to the competition, and basically any decently organised invasion involving more than four beings in that CR 26-30 range should completely screw them.

That's unless, of course, you accept the argument you yourself proposed in your first post, namely that the Four are far more powerful than the vast majority of demon lords, archdevils, etc. That's certainly the take I myself would use in a campaign. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything in material to back that up, which makes me think that someone in the company simply didn't do the math.


@137ben

My apologies if this is in the wrong section. This is my first time starting a thread on the site (and only my third or fourth posting at all).


@Squeakman

Not denying that Lamashtu called off that war, only that there's no apparent reason why she should have to. Given that she's a fully fledged god, all she would need is one or two other demon lords on her side to tilt the conflict firmly in her favour (and given that a number of demon lords are explicitly referenced as being her allies I struggle to accept that she didn't bring a few of them along).

@Buri

I'm not claiming everyone would have to gang up on them. Any one of those factions--the demons, the devils, the empyreal lords--should be able to beat them, hands down. I honestly don't understand how they were able to fend off Lamashtu's invasion; that really should have been the end of them.

@Rysky

I certainly think the Four should be vastly more powerful than your average demon lord, but that's not actually said anywhere in the material (or at least not in the material I've got).

@Lord Gadigan

The only issue with that is that both Urgathoa and Zyphus trust the daemons about as far as they can throw them. There's no mention of them getting involved in the war with Lamashtu for instance; the daemons are apparently supposed to have solved that problem on their own.

@Xanxal

All those other factions you mentioned (save maybe the qlippoth who we don't know much about yet) have deities in their corners and/or vast numbers, which helps to explain how no one has wiped them out. The daemons don't have that going for them.

The thing with Pharasma is actually quite problematic too--we're supposed to buy that the Four were able to force her to open the floodgates, when they one of the weakest factions around?

@everybody

Before someone gets the wrong idea, don't think I dislike the daemons; quite the opposite--I think they're a fascinating faction and that the Four are great villains. I actually wish that the daemons got as much exposure as their Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil cousins.

I also get that the backstory presents the daemons as being able to stand up to Lamashtu and the demon lords or any other threat. My argument is that this information doesn't mesh well with what we're told about the daemons' power level, namely that the Four are on the level of demon lords/archdevils/what have you, and the harbingers with nascent demon lords/infernal dukes/etc. For the story presented in the fluff to make sense, I think that the daemons would have to be much stronger than the current rules suggest.


I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've realised that, going off of what's presented in the Books of the Damned, the daemons should have been wiped out a long time ago. Here's why:

First of all, everybody wants them dead. The demons, the devils, the empyreal lords, pretty much every body wants the daemons gone. Now, that in and of itself wouldn't necessarily damn the species to extinction (we could say similar things about the demons after all) but it will be important once we examine point two.

Secondly, and more importantly, the daemons are the weakest faction of the various archfiends. Think about it--according to their own faction book, each of the Horsemen is about en paar with a demon lord, archdevil, or empyreal lord. Each harbinger is of similar power to a nascent demon lord or infernal duke. This means there's a massive power disparity. There are eight archdevils, not counting Asmodeus (a god). There are countless demon lords, not counting Lamashtu (a god). There are many, many empyreal lords, not counting Sarenrae (again, a god). There are only four archdaemons, and they don't have a god in their corner (at least not since the Oinodaemon was bound).

With that in mind, how am I supposed to believe that Abbadon was able to resist Lamashtu's invasion, or any of the other incursions they've suffered. The daemons are so much weaker in terms of the power they have available to them, that there's no believable way they could have lasted this long. They are outnumbered and outgunned by Heaven, Hell, and the Abyss.

While we're on the subject, why was it decided that the daemons should be so much weaker? I get that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse theme is cool, but only four archdaemons? In all of Abbadon there's only four daemons who can stand up to a demon lord, archdevil, or empyreal lord? I find that hard to believe. It seems silly to make one faction so much lesser than the rest.

When I run a campaign, I'm going to have to alter the rules somewhat. I'll likely make the Four equal to or just slightly lesser than the actual gods in terms of power, and the harbingers the equivalents of demon lords/archdevils/et al. It seems to be the only way to bring some balance in, and present the daemons as an actual threatening faction.

Thoughts?


It's a pity you didn't get any responses to this. The antipaladin needs more archetypes, and some of the ideas here (especially the aberation one) sound interesting.

I confess that, as a fan of the game, but one who rarely plays, I started designing an alternate myself, but was never able to figure out what the tradeoffs should be. All I have is the concept.