Help with a Pit Fiend

[AlanBruce]

Greetings! In order to flesh out my campaign setting a little more, I worked around a Pit Fiend in one of the PC's backstory.

This foe is meant for much later (certainly not at 13th level).

The Pit Fiend in question has been advanced to 38 HD (Huge size) and with all that comes along with it (upgrades to saves, stats, and certain DCs).

Currently, the creature is CR 31, not something the party is likely to face. However, in the far future, when they do reach epic levels, they might want to face him. As such I was wondering what changes I could give this guy.

For starters, he gets 13 feats at 38HD, unless my math is wrong. His skill points are through the roof and have already been allocated in pretty much every possible skill.

However, there is the issue of feats. The standard PF has some subpar feats that at that level of play will make little difference. Power Attack, Multiattack, and Quicken SLA are solid choices, but I would like some ideas for the remaining 10 feats.

Then there are his SLA. The DCs won't change (His stat upgrades went to Str and Con before reaching Huge size). Some are solid SLA. In fact, was thinking of tweaking meteor swarm to be at will, invisibility to its greater version and wish 1/day, rather than written on its stat block, but any other more interesting SLA to change like Fireball, for instance, which by that level of play, PCs should be outright immune to 80% if not more of all energy types.

I'm not asking to add more SLA, but perhaps replace some that at that level of play will be redundant.

Thank you in advance.

[Glimbur]

It kind of depends how powerful your PC's end up being by level 31ish. Epic magic can make them approximately as strong as gods, or be ignored entirely. They might auto-quicken manyof their spells and be able to cast several quickened spells a round, or they might be taking Epic Prowess.

At will meteor swarm is an ok idea, but as you said they should be resistant/immune to fire so that's just some bludgeoning damage. Wish can be helpful. Maybe Unholy Word, but that is hard to have fun with because it is either pretty garbage or too strong, depending on caster level. Looking at Spell Compendium, Avasculate (or the mass version) feels pretty evil and is reasonably scary. Blackfire also feels evil, as does Flensing. Effulgent Epuration is a pretty handy defense; Hellish Horde is thematic. Since the Pit Fiend is from someone's backstory, it should have some specific counters to their common tactics too. They aren't dumb, after all.

Minions or other ways to cheat the action economy are typical necessities for bosses; if you include some Quicken SLA and make his full attack also scary you might be able to get by with just the normal set of actions. He would also need to be very difficult to lock down though; a stun or daze for a few turns could let the PCs make mincemeat out of him.

Feats are annoying to spend. They are super valuable, but I don't know where they should go. Incarnum offers some unusual abilities, and with that many feats at that level you could get a Soul bind going. Some of those are nice. Leadership would be mean but unnecessary because he's an NPC from a hierarchy anyway. Maybe some martial maneuvers.

[AlanBruce]

It kind of depends how powerful your PC's end up being by level 31ish. Epic magic can make them approximately as strong as gods, or be ignored entirely. They might auto-quicken manyof their spells and be able to cast several quickened spells a round, or they might be taking Epic Prowess.

At will meteor swarm is an ok idea, but as you said they should be resistant/immune to fire so that's just some bludgeoning damage. Wish can be helpful. Maybe Unholy Word, but that is hard to have fun with because it is either pretty garbage or too strong, depending on caster level. Looking at Spell Compendium, Avasculate (or the mass version) feels pretty evil and is reasonably scary. Blackfire also feels evil, as does Flensing. Effulgent Epuration is a pretty handy defense; Hellish Horde is thematic. Since the Pit Fiend is from someone's backstory, it should have some specific counters to their common tactics too. They aren't dumb, after all.

Minions or other ways to cheat the action economy are typical necessities for bosses; if you include some Quicken SLA and make his full attack also scary you might be able to get by with just the normal set of actions. He would also need to be very difficult to lock down though; a stun or daze for a few turns could let the PCs make mincemeat out of him.

Feats are annoying to spend. They are super valuable, but I don't know where they should go. Incarnum offers some unusual abilities, and with that many feats at that level you could get a Soul bind going. Some of those are nice. Leadership would be mean but unnecessary because he's an NPC from a hierarchy anyway. Maybe some martial maneuvers.

Thank you very much for the ideas. Effulgent Epuration should give this guy a sporting chance.

It took me awhile to figure out Unholy Word was Blasphemy, which the Pit Fiend, as stated, already has a SLA. A nasty spell, since more than half in the party are good aligned.

The martial maneuvers is a good idea, as well as leadership. Minions should be with him to help with action economy, of course.

[Phelix-Mu]

Be very careful with scaling up blasphemy. If you are increasing CL with HD (which, imo, you should, cause otherwise the SLA really start to seem lackluster), then blasphemy can one-shot anyone that it hit if the disparity in HD is too great (at least if the target is nonevil). Also, even if it doesn't outright kill, a couple of the status effects will be tantamount to an outright kill. The party should know that this is a typical power of powerful pit fiends (the ability to slay with a word would be a Knowledge check, higher check tells the exact spell mimicked...probably a Spellcraft to describe the precise mechanic underlying blasphemy). If the players don't at least take this level of precaution in researching and planning to take down their epic adversary, then they likely will die (and probably deserve it).

Also, a major feature of devils is their use of strategy and "teamwork" to limit the advantages of their enemies. I advise legion devils and orthon mooks and malebranche toughs to round out a nice epic battle (if you are going for the massive fight setup...a more subtle approach should likely feature assassin devils and paeliryons). All of those devils can be found in Fiendish Codex 2, a nice source for diabolical creatures (even if I'm not a huge fan of the fluff).

[Envyus]

Actually why not just use a normal Pit fiend and have him as a boss around level 17 or so instead of a massively powerful creature. Or rather then just advancing him you could just give him some class levels.

[AlanBruce]

I had scaled CL with HD, reason why I am concerned (rather early) about Blasphemy, since it-s a party of 6 with everyone good but 2 of them being neutral.

I do have a few Orthons with a few crusader levels to lock down the AJ conjurer in the party.

Malebranches are tough. Had not considered those.

I had a few erinyes with a few archer PrC to fly around and harass from above, since it will most likely be an open space fight.

Thank you for the great ideas and suggestions.

[AlanBruce]

Actually why not just use a normal Pit fiend and have him as a boss around level 17 or so instead of a massively powerful creature. Or rather then just advancing him you could just give him some class levels.

Thought about the class levels, but his faction is made up of lesser devils from the MM and FC2 with a few class levels on them already.

I wanted to make this a big guy. Intimidating, since the party usually walks around large, anyway. And by that level, they should be able to take him down in a few rounds tops.

[Crake]

Thought about the class levels, but his faction is made up of lesser devils from the MM and FC2 with a few class levels on them already.

I wanted to make this a big guy. Intimidating, since the party usually walks around large, anyway. And by that level, they should be able to take him down in a few rounds tops.

Class levels are much more intimidating, at least reputation-wise, than HD. Sure racial HD get him an increased size category, but spellcasting levels get him epic spells. He should be able to qualify for Ur-Priest from the get-go, which fits quite well for fiends and their hatred of gods, and gets him 9th level spells quick, qualifying him for epic spellcasting. Hell, he could be the ORIGINAL Ur-Priest, why not right?

Edit: For extra fun you could use the dark chaos shuffle to swap all his feats for epic feats while showing that, while he hates demons like any other devil, he does recognise the abyss has it's uses, and exploits them to his advantage. That, in a sense, makes him feel extra dangerous, because he is willing to work even with his most hated foes in order to further his own causes. Of course, he then likely backstabs them using some loophole in their arrangement :smalltongue:

[Envyus]

Thought about the class levels, but his faction is made up of lesser devils from the MM and FC2 with a few class levels on them already.

I wanted to make this a big guy. Intimidating, since the party usually walks around large, anyway. And by that level, they should be able to take him down in a few rounds tops.

Out of curiosity what is his role in the nine hells. Is a duke or a rogue who split off or somthing

[AlanBruce]

Out of curiosity what is his role in the nine hells. Is a duke or a rogue who split off or somthing

In the player's backstory, this Pit Fiend was "powerful", but he never stated if he was a duke or someone with clout within Baator. His mentor, a powerful mage, managed to subdue him...for awhile, before the pit fiend annihilated him and took over his tower in the middle of an elven forest.

The player's wizard escaped and knows that the pit fiend has vowed to eliminate everyone related to his master- that includes him.

Currently, the pitfiend has not seen any screen action, except for a very early skirmish with a bone devil and a bunch of lemures and imps.

If he was able to take care of a high level mage and take over his tower, I assumed he ought to be powerful enough, so I gave him a small faction of devils with class levels.