Am I all alone in my love of the tanar'ri? :(
Fear not, Saern! My love for all things demonic is not only for the tanar'ri, but for the obyrith and loumara as well. Does the paltry nine layers of Baator think that it can compare to the infite chaos and glory that is the Abyss? Nay - those weaklings are limited in their scope, and are no match for the ever-changing demons that dwell within the Infinite Layers.
:D
Huzzah! Can I get an Amen? Probably not in the Abyss!
Blasphemy!!!!! The Lords of Hell will always keep the horde of chaos at bay!!!!! Long live Asmodeus!!!!!!
Fizz
Pah,
All this talk of Damage Reduction and Regeneration are just screed. Balor vs. Pit Fiend. IMO both of them should be doing lethal damage to one another. IF the balor is using his weapons, as long as they were forged on/in the abyss, they should overcome the DR of a pit fiend. Mind you this is the mechanic I personally use, not the one in the SRD that makes it so that a Pit Fiend will always win versus a Balor.
Another thought for those of us following the Blood War:
Something VERY, VERY bad must have happened for a pit fiend to be fighting a balor on that battleground
I've always thought that the blood war was a wonderful thing, especially to show the worst of the worst to the PC's, and let them know I can do just that to them. Ahhh, to be the DM.
/d
A couple of things Pit Fiend gets another advantage with proper choice of feats namely Improved Disarm. Vorpal sword isn't so great when Pit Fiend rips it from the Balors grip then turns around and cuts off the demons head with it. Also on the weight thing: the Pit Fiends weight seems more realistic than the Balors; remember both of these creatures can FLY without magic; to do that you NEED to be very light for your size; to use a real life example; even the largest pterosaur that ever lived (Quetzalcoatlus at the moment; wingspan 12-15 m-40-50 ft) weighted only a few hundred pounds and it was quite a strong flyer similarly the largest ever bird Argentavis had a 6-8 m or 19-28 ft wingspan and weighted only a couple hundred pounds at most and was about 3.5 m (11 ft) beak to tail and 1.8 to 2 m (6 to 6 and a half ft) tall and it was apparently hawk or eagle like-not weak. This has bugged me about all sorts of flying creatures in D&D and indeed many land living creatures in D&D as well: the weight descriptions are WAAAAAYYYYYYYY too high. Dire Lion 1800 pounds I don't think so! 650-700 tops for the length presented in the MM.
I agree with you about the weight issue to a point. Some of the monsters do weigh a bit too much (and some of them have been errated), but magic does play an important part with flying monsters. It is assumed in D&D that magic alters physics in such a way that creatures like dragons can actually fly around. Otherwise they would be too fragile for the game.
As for the whole thing about regeneration. I think it has been explained well enough in this thread to not talk about it any longer.
Knowing demons and devils as I do I think that the balor or pit fiend would teleport away before things got really nasty! Indeed, battles between them would be a rare occurrence. Both are far too intelligent to expose themselves in open combat. That's what lesser demons and devils are for!
A couple of things Pit Fiend gets another advantage with proper choice of feats namely Improved Disarm. Vorpal sword isn't so great when Pit Fiend rips it from the Balors grip then turns around and cuts off the demons head with it. Also on the weight thing: the Pit Fiends weight seems more realistic than the Balors; remember both of these creatures can FLY without magic; to do that you NEED to be very light for your size; to use a real life example; even the largest pterosaur that ever lived (Quetzalcoatlus at the moment; wingspan 12-15 m-40-50 ft) weighted only a few hundred pounds and it was quite a strong flyer similarly the largest ever bird Argentavis had a 6-8 m or 19-28 ft wingspan and weighted only a couple hundred pounds at most and was about 3.5 m (11 ft) beak to tail and 1.8 to 2 m (6 to 6 and a half ft) tall and it was apparently hawk or eagle like-not weak. This has bugged me about all sorts of flying creatures in D&D and indeed many land living creatures in D&D as well: the weight descriptions are WAAAAAYYYYYYYY too high. Dire Lion 1800 pounds I don't think so! 650-700 tops for the length presented in the MM.I agree with you about the weight issue to a point. Some of the monsters do weigh a bit too much (and some of them have been errated), but magic does play an important part with flying monsters. It is assumed in D&D that magic alters physics in such a way that creatures like dragons can actually fly around. Otherwise they would be too fragile for the game.
As for the whole thing about regeneration. I think it has been explained well enough in this thread to not talk about it any longer.
Knowing demons and devils as I do I think that the balor or pit fiend would teleport away before things got really nasty! Indeed, battles between them would be a rare occurrence. Both are far too intelligent to expose themselves in open combat. That's what lesser demons and devils are for!
The Marvel Universe - not D&D I know - has an interesting take on this they give a lot of their "divine" superheroes a much higher wieght, saying something along the lines of muscle and bone 3 times denser that that of mere mortals is a contriuting factor to these beings extraordinary strength and durability - I like that as an example in D&D especially when married to the "there is an element of magic" argument.
My two coppers.
A couple of things Pit Fiend gets another advantage with proper choice of feats namely Improved Disarm. Vorpal sword isn't so great when Pit Fiend rips it from the Balors grip then turns around and cuts off the demons head with it. Also on the weight thing: the Pit Fiends weight seems more realistic than the Balors; remember both of these creatures can FLY without magic; to do that you NEED to be very light for your size; to use a real life example; even the largest pterosaur that ever lived (Quetzalcoatlus at the moment; wingspan 12-15 m-40-50 ft) weighted only a few hundred pounds and it was quite a strong flyer similarly the largest ever bird Argentavis had a 6-8 m or 19-28 ft wingspan and weighted only a couple hundred pounds at most and was about 3.5 m (11 ft) beak to tail and 1.8 to 2 m (6 to 6 and a half ft) tall and it was apparently hawk or eagle like-not weak. This has bugged me about all sorts of flying creatures in D&D and indeed many land living creatures in D&D as well: the weight descriptions are WAAAAAYYYYYYYY too high. Dire Lion 1800 pounds I don't think so! 650-700 tops for the length presented in the MM.I agree with you about the weight issue to a point. Some of the monsters do weigh a bit too much (and some of them have been errated), but magic does play an important part with flying monsters. It is assumed in D&D that magic alters physics in such a way that creatures like dragons can actually fly around. Otherwise they would be too fragile for the game.
As for the whole thing about regeneration. I think it has been explained well enough in this thread to not talk about it any longer.
Knowing demons and devils as I do I think that the balor or pit fiend would teleport away before things got really nasty! Indeed, battles between them would be a rare occurrence. Both are far too intelligent to expose themselves in open combat. That's what lesser demons and devils are for!
Uhh... If the Pit Fiends, Balors, Solars, Dragons, etc. were using a spell like or supernatural to fly that explanation would, ahem, fly, but they aren't; they're still able to fly EVEN in an antimagic field so the flight and the air around them cannot be magical by the logic of the game. Also light DOES NOT equal weak; many bird species are actually quite strong and are capable of flight even when fairly heavily laden in the real world. An increase in the described wingspans for various flying creatures would be nice though.
Couple of things occur to me over the whole "unkillable" regenerative property of more powerful devils. While no demon that I noticed has the power naturally, Death Knell is a fairly low level "death effect," though it does allow a save. Still, if a demon horde has enough clerics in it, one or two of them is likely to be able to use this sucker.
Succubi have an energy drain. Again, this would make a succubus a perfect "clean up" demon to call in on devils that are into their negatives with no good silver weapons in sight.