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Lord Denyuar
2008-08-22, 11:13 AM
This is my first time posting and I have a question concerning the fiendish template and half-fiend template. I am in process of making a fiendish minotaur to be summoned by an orc tribe for my players to fight. As I was reading both templates in the MM1, it struck me that making the minotaur a half-fiend would be more powerful than just making it a fiend. Is this right?

CASTLEMIKE
2008-08-22, 11:21 AM
Yes that is generally correct particularly for BBEG NPCs who are much more effective normally with an additional CR or Two instead of a single or two class levels. (Exceptions can still be found)

Minotaur is a 6HD CR4 creature adding the half-fiend template will make it a CR6 creature in comparison to a CR5 Fiendish Minotaur.

RTGoodman
2008-08-22, 11:25 AM
Also, from a "fluff" perspective, Fiendish means the creature has been slightly twisted by Evil or is the Nine Hells version of that creature or whatever. Half-Fiend is literally that the creature had one parent that was a Devil or Demon. The fiendish bloodline is stronger in Half-Fiends than in just Fiendish creatures, which is why it's more powerful (and why the LA is higher for Half-Fiends).

hamishspence
2008-08-22, 11:46 AM
i'm not sure if summon,list includes Half-fiends, since they are native outsiders, not extraplanar.

another creature, very similar to the half-fiend, is the Unholy Scion, for those who want half-fiends indistinguishable from ordinary mortals (Heroes of Horror)

and recently, the cambion (Demonweb pits) the offspring of a fiend and a tiefling, like a wingless "3/4" fiend?

Recaiden
2008-08-22, 11:50 AM
I thought that that was wierd, but half-something is more powerful than fiendish/ celestial/ draconic. A half fiend creature is 50% fiend, while a fiendish creature is more like a normal creature infused with fiendishness.

hamishspence
2008-08-22, 12:03 PM
I think Fiendish was intended to represent descendants of mortal creatures born and raised on Lower Planes, who have become native. Similar for anarchic, axiomatic, entropic, vivacious.

Lord Denyuar
2008-08-22, 12:26 PM
OH ok, that clarifies up a lot of my questions.

hamishspence
2008-08-22, 12:30 PM
at the same time, more recent MMs have sugested that at least some Fiendish creatures are native (gnolls in MM4) and descended from fiends. I think they were treating Fiendish as the non-human substitute for Tiefling.

So, two versions. Mortals who moved to lower planes long ago, or mortal descendants of half fiends.

Devils_Advocate
2008-08-22, 08:34 PM
Fiendish creatures and celestial creatures are not themselves fiends and celestials, despite the adjectives "fiendish" and "celestial" also being used to refer to actual fiends and celestials. This is just one of those cases where the unnecessary overloading of terminology inevitably leads to confusion.

Blackdrop
2008-08-22, 08:40 PM
Or in the immortal words of the great halfling ranger:

:belkar: "How much crap do we go through on a daily basis because no one TSR looked at a thesaurus."