D&D 5E The Lords of the Nine Hells of Baator

[Casimir Liber]

Okay - for research purposes, here are the hellfire specs, mephisto and baalzebul statblocs for comparison

(I left out the lair actions and individual hellfire atrocities but you get the idea. M&B also has statblocs for cryonax and pazuzu.)

 

[dave2008]

Okay - for research purposes, here are the hellfire specs, mephisto and baalzebul statblocs for comparison

I wouldn't call those hellfire specs, but a template to give hellfire to fiend. I am not a big fan of templates for epic level threats myself.

I am more familiar with how the Meph. stat block you posted treats it as fire/cold damage. Though a prefer the 4e designation that it is fire and cold damage. IIRC, I took that out of my version, but I might put it back.

EDIT: Yep, I gave him a Lord of Hellfire trait, but made it ignore resistance to fire and treat immunity like resistance. I think I will modify that to be fire and cold.

EDIT 2: revised "Lord of Hellfire" to be fire and cold damage.

(I left out the lair actions and individual hellfire atrocities but you get the idea. M&B also has statblocs for cryonax and pazuzu.)

 

[Cleon]

There are versions of Baalzebul (CR 26) and Mephistopheles (CR 27) in Minsc & Boos journal of villainy...but not sure what the status of this product is. @Cleon and I nutted out Adonides here a few months ago (duplicated on dndbeyond here ). Given my campaign is gonna end in Cania I'll be doing Mephisto's chums soon. Also, hellfire is detailed in 2C Gamings' Total Party Kill Bestiary.

Fame at last.

Was planning of doing a "dual energy type" attack for another conversion over on the Creature Catalog conversion and was thinking of using something like the following.

[Name] damage is both [TypeA] damage and [TypeB] damage. A target with immunity or resistance to both damage types has immunity or resistance to [Name] damage. A target that is immune to one damage type but has no immunity to the other damage type (i.e. one that's immune to TypeB but takes normal damage or is resistant to TypeA) has resistance to [Name] damage. A target that has resistance to one damage type but has no protection from the other damage type takes normal damage from [Name].​

That seems a bit wordy, but it's difficult making it shorter without it becoming a little unclear.

Alternatively, it could simply do half and half damage (so effectively a 6d6 "iceflame" attack is effectively 3d6 cold and 3d6 fire) in which case the target's resistances & immunities will interact with the damage according to the standard rules.

That'd have a slightly different result though.

The "treat it as both" approach above works out to.

Immune to both => 0% damage
Immune to one, Resistant to other => 50% damage
Immune to one, full from other => 50% damage
Resistant to both => 50% damage
Resistant to one, full from other => 100% damage
Full from both => 100% damage​

Splitting the damage into two damage rolls is:

Immune to both => 0% damage
Immune to one, Resistant to other => 25% damage
Immune to one, full from other => 50% damage
Resistant to both => 50% damage
Resistant to one, full from other => 75% damage
Full from both => 100% damage​

Both work fine but the second requires a bit more maths.

 

[dave2008]

Fame at last.

Was planning of doing a "dual energy type" attack for another conversion over on the Creature Catalog conversion and was thinking of using something like the following.

[Name] damage is both [TypeA] damage and [TypeB] damage. A target with immunity or resistance to both damage types has immunity or resistance to [Name] damage. A target that is immune to one damage type but has no immunity to the other damage type (i.e. one that's immune to TypeB but takes normal damage or is resistant to TypeA) has resistance to [Name] damage. A target that has resistance to one damage type but has no protection from the other damage type takes normal damage from [Name].​

That seems a bit wordy, but it's difficult making it shorter without it becoming a little unclear.

Alternatively, it could simply do half and half damage (so effectively a 6d6 "iceflame" attack is effectively 3d6 cold and 3d6 fire) in which case the target's resistances & immunities will interact with the damage according to the standard rules.

That'd have a slightly different result though.

The "treat it as both" approach above works out to.

Immune to both => 0% damage​

Immune to one, Resistant to other => 50% damage​

Immune to one, full from other => 50% damage​

Resistant to both => 50% damage​

Resistant to one, full from other => 100% damage​

Full from both => 100% damage​

Splitting the damage into two damage rolls is:

Immune to both => 0% damage​

Immune to one, Resistant to other => 25% damage​

Immune to one, full from other => 50% damage​

Resistant to both => 50% damage​

Resistant to one, full from other => 75% damage​

Full from both => 100% damage​

Both work fine but the second requires a bit more maths.

Here is what I did. It is not as wordy and may a bit ambiguous, but I am ok with that.

Lord of Hellfire. When Mephistopheles' attacks have the hellfire damage type, the damage is treated as both fire and cold damage. A target must be resistant or immune to both damage types to get the benefit of their resistance or immunity.

 

[Cleon]

Here is what I did. It is not as wordy and may a bit ambiguous, but I am ok with that.

Lord of Hellfire. When Mephistopheles' attacks have the hellfire damage type, the damage is treated as both fire and cold damage. A target must be resistant or immune to both damage types to get the benefit of their resistance or immunity.

That works, I just fancied adding a resistance-style "half damage" for creatures that are immune to one damage type but not the other rather than having it do full damage.

If it were me, I'd have phrased it a bit differently, probably like so:

Lord of Hellfire. Some of Mephistopheles' attacks have the hellfire damage type. Hellfire damage is treated as both fire and cold damage. A target must be resistant or immune to both damage types to get the benefit of resistance or immunity.​

There were two 3E versions of Hellfire. One was basically typeless damage that ignored fire immunity & resistance (or any other sort of resistance for that matter, although Damage Reduction worked against it as written. The other was "half-infernal" so fire protection effect only protected against half of it.

Although the former approach begs the question why it didn't just make it half unholy damage.

 

[cbwjm]

Here is what I did. It is not as wordy and may a bit ambiguous, but I am ok with that.

Lord of Hellfire. When Mephistopheles' attacks have the hellfire damage type, the damage is treated as both fire and cold damage. A target must be resistant or immune to both damage types to get the benefit of their resistance or immunity.

I think this is the same as what I did for dual damage types, copying from 4e, which I think also adds that vulnerability to one still doubles damage (in 5e terms, I can't remember if you double damage or if creatures were "vulnerable to cold 5" in 4e).

 

[FirbolgFactory]

i like it...although i personally would give a god a stat block.
edit: "wouldn't"

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

i like it...although i personally would give a god a stat block.

Dave has done that already.

 

[dave2008]

i like it...although i personally would give a god a stat block.

I have done that a few times actually!

1. I have my old 5e Epic Updates which provided stats for many gods. However, they used a custom stats by CR table which I no longer use.
2. I have "avatars" of gods in my 5e Monstrous Compendium. This use a version of the mythic rules.
3. I have started a new set of "Immortal Rules" that will provide true godly stats (not just avatars). However, this deviates quite a bit from standard 5e.

 

[Casimir Liber]

By the way, I would have thought a big boofy Baalzebul would have a higher STR than Mephistopheles, who I imagined as smaller....?