Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Axiomatic_vampire 11-21-07, 10:17 AM	In a campaign I'm running, it's likely the players are going to try to go to Dis and destroy Dispater. This is not plot centric, will likely be done after they've "won", and the encounter need not be CR appropriate (they'll likely be 18-22 range). First thing I asked myself was "alright, how many pit fiends in Dis?" Realized I just don't know, haven't seen much information on it anywhere. I suppose it's one of those things that comes from DM discretion, but I want a little more insight if possible before I just start making up numbers. So what I'm trying to figure out is the likely population of Dis that would be available to mob the party on any given day. Thoughts?
Thanael 11-21-07, 10:55 AM	*casts summon Witch*
Witch 11-21-07, 01:47 PM	A number of issues: If your players are going around zapping around Dis, you will need a reason why an entire army of pit fiends doesn't appear. I'd imagine a couple million of them floating around Dis, with the entire populace of devils going in the trillions. As such, there won't really be a lack. You will need some way of allying with them or of disabling their ability to reach you - which, given their greater teleports, will be a difficult thing to do. The likely populace of Dis will include almost no fallen angels, and a relatively minor amount (compared to Avernus) of lemures. You might also have extraplanar merchants in the city. If you are looking for support to keep the pit fiends away, you may ally with one of the minor gods residing there. If your campaign doesn't dislike epic (what power level do you put Dispater at?), I recommend Iron Colossi. Dispater should use multiples of them. If not, Iron Golems, possibly greater versions of them. You should ensure that Dispater has contingency plans upon contingency plans upon contingency plans. He's a paranoid plotter. If your PCs come up with something, you can be sure he's come up with something to counter that (even if you, as a DM, have not). After all, he spends thousands years attempting to block anything from ever threathening him.
setekh 11-22-07, 06:15 AM	Just a thought, what is it people have against Dis? There are eight other levels of Archdevils, whys everyone got it in for Dis.
Andorxor 11-22-07, 07:15 AM	In Dis you find,lots of mad cultists,who where the caster in the "Fires of Dis" Incantation.
Lobsopdoy 11-22-07, 04:18 PM	Because there's a lot of stuff about how Dispater plans for everything and is incredibly difficult to defeat. That makes him the Baatezuu to beat.
Witch 11-22-07, 04:21 PM	Because there's a lot of stuff about how Dispater plans for everything and is incredibly difficult to defeat. That makes him the Baatezuu to beat. The amusing thing is, ofcourse, that Asmodeus plans for a lot more, and Dispater's reputation just hides that fact for him.
Lobsopdoy 11-22-07, 08:48 PM	The amusing thing is, ofcourse, that Asmodeus plans for a lot more, and Dispater's reputation just hides that fact for him. Oh yes indeed. But I guess it could also be because he's the Lord of the Second Layer, and people expect the power of each lord to scale up correctly. So they expect that Dispater will be the second-easiest to beat...WRONG
MagusBlack 11-22-07, 08:54 PM	You DO know that Dis is the Second Level of Hell right. And that you cant just teleport there on a whim...so you'll have to go through Bel and the almighty Frontliners of the Bood War to get there. ..and how in all sanity do you think that ol` Dis, or Az for that matter, wont know that your comming...and of course by causing a big enough distration you'll probably have drawn the Demonic Hordes attention and they wil take advantage of that... In short... are you bonkers?!
Lobsopdoy 11-22-07, 09:05 PM	You DO know that Dis is the Second Level of Hell right. And that you cant just teleport there on a whim...so you'll have to go through Bel and the almighty Frontliners of the Bood War to get there. ..and how in all sanity do you think that ol` Dis, or Az for that matter, wont know that your comming...and of course by causing a big enough distration you'll probably have drawn the Demonic Hordes attention and they wil take advantage of that... In short... are you bonkers?! There are portals into Dis in Sigil, maybe and I'm quite certain there are some directly there in the City of Brass. Dispater is serious about encouraging trade to his layer ;) Actually, that's probably another reason so many gun for Dispater. He's right inside a city, which makes a (perceived) good base and start-off point for an attack. Whereas to attack...say, Glasya, you'd have to go all the way down to the Sixth Layer, and there's nothing much there to rest or buy stuff from.
MagusBlack 11-22-07, 09:19 PM	If your trying to kill the Lord of Dis, anyone that's stupid enough to sell you anything is going to die an unfavaroable death...and there are 0# of stupid merchants in Hell...they usually die five mintes upon arrival.:D
Thanael 11-23-07, 04:16 AM	See also The Iron Siege (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=829669)... I don't get all this My-PCs-are-this-and-that-level-and-now-they-want-to-kill-gaaaaaaawd stuff.
Witch 11-23-07, 08:53 AM	Mostly because they generally fail, unless Deus Ex Machina is used.
sciborg3 11-23-07, 01:54 PM	It's similar to any other game where you confront the big-boss. The problem is that D&D and the Lords of Nine, as written, makes it hard to conceive of why any being of such power could possibly be threatened by mortals. I suppose something like in Savage Tide, where there are multiple forces of incredible power facing the same foe, could give PCs the opportunity to strike the final blow.
Kain_Darkwind 11-23-07, 09:35 PM	In a campaign I'm running, it's likely the players are going to try to go to Dis and destroy Dispater. This is not plot centric, will likely be done after they've "won", and the encounter need not be CR appropriate (they'll likely be 18-22 range). First thing I asked myself was "alright, how many pit fiends in Dis?" Realized I just don't know, haven't seen much information on it anywhere. I suppose it's one of those things that comes from DM discretion, but I want a little more insight if possible before I just start making up numbers. So what I'm trying to figure out is the likely population of Dis that would be available to mob the party on any given day. Thoughts? This sort of campaign seems very similar to the endgame of the Savage Tide Adventure Path in Dungeon magazine, where the PCs had to fight Demogorgon. The adventure prior, they recruited a bunch of big name enemies of Demogorgon's to help them out. The adventure prior to that, they rescued a prisoner of Demogorgon's who had information they could use against him. Bottom line, this sort of thing is best worked out well in advance. You need to decide what sort of Dispater you are working with. Is it the FC2 'Aspect of Dispater'? The only slightly more powerful BoVD 'Dispater'? Something around CR 30? CR 40? The god-like version Dicefreaks uses? Because you said your PCs weren't epic (or weren't very epic), I'll assume Dispater is around CR 30 in your campaign, which means you advance the Aspect of Dispater to 46HD. The online Dragon article has stats for Titilivus, one of the Dukes of the Second Hell. From between those two sets of stats, you can drum up those of Lilis, Arioch and Biffant. The advanced pit fiends Alocer, Bitru and Merodach are also said to reside in Dis. Neither the Planar Handbook nor the FC2 bothers to list the population of Dis. However, given that it holds the most divine realms in Hell, along with being the most famous city, I would say it is safe to assume a population at least three times as large as the City of Brass. So, 5 million souls, give or take. With these numbers, it should be no large thing to have thirty some pit fiends, or even a few hundred, capable of answering a large attack. Dis is the City of Iron, so iron golems or colossi (if using the ELH) can be expected. BoVD listed Talos the Triple Iron Golem (A 54HD iron golem) as one of the defenders. Plus, plenty of cornugons, erinyes, falxugons, barbazu, etc. There are tons of spectres said to pupulate the city as well...these probably wouldn't count as part of the population. If you are looking to impress your PCs with the horrific futility of attacking Dis, send them against fully 200 armed and armored pit fiends. If you are looking to have your PCs take down the Lord of the Second in a fulfilling fight, I would buy and study the last three issues of the Savage Tide adventure path and the last issue of the Age of Worms. Both of these dealt with a way in which uber-powerful foes could be brought down to the PCs level for a harrowing conclusion. If you just want a shoot and loot, throw a few pit fiends at the PCs, a couple iron golems and maybe the online Titivilus, then just use the Aspect of Dispater as the big guy. Remember that he gets +20 to his AC, SR and saving throws in his tower. Possibly some other things as well. But to answer your question on population....it's a planar metropolis. Assume at least half a million, but probably many more. If New York has 9 million people and is on the very finite plane of Earth, I could see someone assume Dis had 50 million residents without blinking.
sciborg3 11-24-07, 02:04 AM	There might be some allies in Dis, but they'd be well hidden and might be so willing to risk everything on some PC's gambit against a Lord of Nine. In some ways, a Lord of Nine represents/iconifies a certain aspect of LE - in Dis's case I see this as a sense of constriction in the choices one makes. One becomes trapped by an inability or unwillingness to change one's self for the better, just as the souls lost in Dis are caught in the twisting fractal patterns of iron-walled avenues. As such, perhaps a god of freedom, or some kind of messianic figure of CG confronts that aspect of Dis while the PCs fight the more physical aspect. It would also be interesting to see the Lower Planes react to a savior that threatens their existence. "there are no mortal sins, just souls lost in a maze someone else has made..." -Mike Carey, Lucifer
Amon_V 11-24-07, 02:30 AM	Well, regardless of how powerful Dispater is in CR, Dis is a Planar Metropolis--A world City--which means tens of millions is the low quantity. A more reasonable figure would be 1-2 billion, as if the entire place is one giant city. I'd assume that 'Trade Center' might mean that Dis has a respectable number of non-devils in town, perhaps 2-3% of the population is extraplanar merchants and traders. As for Pit Fiends, they are societal elites--they would be at most .1% of the population. This is still a huge number for the PCs to deal with. Figure that Dis' Administration and Bureaucrats, as well as Dispater's Dukes are probably low-epic. Suffice it to say, if you aren't fielding a precision strike, you'd better have a plan to deal with thousands of angry pit Fiends.
Kain_Darkwind 11-24-07, 06:53 AM	Well, regardless of how powerful Dispater is in CR, Dis is a Planar Metropolis--A world City--which means tens of millions is the low quantity. A more reasonable figure would be 1-2 billion, as if the entire place is one giant city. While I don't disagree with your numbers in practice, keep in mind that planar metropolis is defined as over 100,000 people. So it doesn't mean tens of millions at a low quantity. It means that 100,001 is the low figure. With the sky as the limit.
Axiomatic_vampire 11-24-07, 06:37 PM	See also The Iron Siege (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=829669)... I don't get all this My-PCs-are-this-and-that-level-and-now-they-want-to-kill-gaaaaaaawd stuff. I don't love it either, but I am even less fond of telling players "no, that's incredibly stupid, you're not allowed." If they want to give it a try, I'm going to try my best to prepare it. Thanks all, good insights.
sciborg3 11-26-07, 02:15 AM	i'd give them a little wiggle room if i were you. let them see the massive array of fiends and souls in their path, and have them absconded to safety by a pitfiend noble who tells them that they aren't supposed to be here yet, that they foolishly leaped ahead of their destinies. Let them then wonder if the pitfiend is telling the truth, or is this a scheme by the Hellish noble or perhaps even Dispater himself?
Axiomatic_vampire 11-26-07, 11:11 AM	i'd give them a little wiggle room if i were you. let them see the massive array of fiends and souls in their path, and have them absconded to safety by a pitfiend noble who tells them that they aren't supposed to be here yet, that they foolishly leaped ahead of their destinies. Let them then wonder if the pitfiend is telling the truth, or is this a scheme by the Hellish noble or perhaps even Dispater himself? It's not that I disagree, I don't like no-win situations as a rule. In this case, however, the game is pretty much "over". I don't much like the idea of creating more sessions of content just to get the party high enough into epic to have a chance of doing this (I don't much like epic play anyway.) the party will likely succeed on their main objective (save the world, I know, trite), but they foolishly sold their souls to Dispater while doing it. Since he owns them, there's no way I can justify not having him cash in on that when they give him such a wonderful chance. these are some powerful souls after all. In other words, there is no way I can give them an altruistic pit fiend.
GoriceXII 11-26-07, 01:38 PM	Kain's given you some good ideas which I second; using the last 3-4 issues of "Savage Tide" may help a lot in giving you some help. You see one of the things (spoiler) Is that the adventures in that path have some ideas on gaining allies on the extra-planar level. Interesting stuff though not entirely my cup of tea. However I have a small gift for you--I have the ancient 1st Ed. Monster Manual II, which lists the legions of Hell. (I assumed these listed as Dispaters were Pit Fiends) Alocer - 36 companies of Erinyes Bel - 3 companies of Malebranche Bitru - 70 companies of Erinyes Furcas - 12 companies of Bearded Devils Merodach - 21 companies of Barbed Devils Courtiers Lilis (Consort) Baalzehon (Prime Minister) Arioch (Avenger) Biffant (Provost) Titivilus (Nuncio) Note that this does not preclude other units--hordes of lemures or nupperibos to bear the brunt of attacks, special attack or spy groups, special devices like Hellfire Engines, spined devils as couriers or the like. I also imagine an Honour Guard company of Pit Fiends for Dispater himself.
RabidPirateMan 11-26-07, 01:58 PM	I finished running my players through The Fires of Dis a few months ago. It gives some info on how Dis is run. First of all, the city of Dis is infinite. There is a vantage point in the tower of Dis where it can all be seen, but it is in an impossible height- in fact, mortals have to roll a will save or be stunned by the notion of seeing ALL of Dis. Second, the entire city is constantly being rebuilt by hordes of Lemures. Their flesh burns constantly when they touch to metal, but their wounds magically heal themselves by the will of Dispator alone. Since nearly all of the city is under construction and the city is infinite, there is at least some ungodly number of Lemures ripping up and rebuilding the city at any one time. Third, the tower of Dis is infinite, and you cant get in or move around without special knowledge of how the tower works. If you try to teleport or D. Door, you might get stuck in a wall or in a room of infinite void or something. Dispator recreates his tower's architecture by will alone, making it nearly impossible to see him if he doesn't want you to see him. If a group of mortals tried to assault his tower, I don't see how they could surprise him. Lastly, as you said, Dispator has plans B through X to fall back on if something goes wrong. He gets updates on Dis constantly, is aware of nearly all of its inhabitants, has two spies watching every one spy... etc. I'm just wondering how anyone would even see Dispator if Dispator didn't want to be seen.
Lobsopdoy 11-26-07, 02:09 PM	I finished running my players through The Fires of Dis a few months ago. It gives some info on how Dis is run. First of all, the city of Dis is infinite. There is a vantage point in the tower of Dis where it can all be seen, but it is in an impossible height- in fact, mortals have to roll a will save or be stunned by the notion of seeing ALL of Dis. Second, the entire city is constantly being rebuilt by hordes of Lemures. Their flesh burns constantly when they touch to metal, but their wounds magically heal themselves by the will of Dispator alone. Since nearly all of the city is under construction and the city is infinite, there is at least some ungodly number of Lemures ripping up and rebuilding the city at any one time. Third, the tower of Dis is infinite, and you cant get in or move around without special knowledge of how the tower works. If you try to teleport or D. Door, you might get stuck in a wall or in a room of infinite void or something. Dispator recreates his tower's architecture by will alone, making it nearly impossible to see him if he doesn't want you to see him. If a group of mortals tried to assault his tower, I don't see how they could surprise him. Lastly, as you said, Dispator has plans B through X to fall back on if something goes wrong. He gets updates on Dis constantly, is aware of nearly all of its inhabitants, has two spies watching every one spy... etc. I'm just wondering how anyone would even see Dispator if Dispator didn't want to be seen. I'm pretty sure that he can just reform the whole of Dis by will anyway. If there's a bunch of people ******* him off, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind just removing all the oxygen from the layer until they're dead anyway : )
Amon_V 11-27-07, 03:32 AM	I really don't like infinite values when it comes to these kinds of situations. Infinite Dis means Infinite CR guardians, or at least Infinite Creatures to swarm the PCs. Dispater never leaves his Iron Tower, except on a Call from Asmodeus. Fireproofing a Rust Monster and one-shotting the tower might be viable, depending on how you want to abuse D&D rules. In any Case, the PCs might well be better suited to 'Break the Deal' With Dispater, perhaps with help from another Planar Lord. They'd pay a high price, but its one that they might be willing to pay. As for Fighting Dispater, A band of PCs has no real chance of taking him down. His personality makes any attempt to catch him off guard impossible, and His Tower is a genuine Bunker of the highest calibur. Dispater's minions have no time to plot against him, and he's savvy enough at politics to hang on nearly forever. The PCs would have break the critical Asmodeus -Dispater Ties to coup him--which means dealing with an even greater evil than Dispater. (Arg) An all-out attack from another Planar Lord might crack Dispater's rule over the layer--If he can no longer exert control from within his Iron Tower, for whatever reason--Coup D' Tat. In this kind of coup, Iron Tower becomes Iron Tomb, for Dispater becomes powerless in a dungeon of irrelevance--this is how I'd want Dispater to lose control of his layer. So, you'd need a General Coup to take down Dispater. If he can not leave his tower, and the hierarchy no longer includes him, he's essentially Levistius.
sciborg3 11-27-07, 05:14 PM	An all-out attack from another Planar Lord might crack Dispater's rule over the layer--If he can no longer exert control from within his Iron Tower, for whatever reason--Coup D' Tat. In this kind of coup, Iron Tower becomes Iron Tomb, for Dispater becomes powerless in a dungeon of irrelevance--this is how I'd want Dispater to lose control of his layer. So, you'd need a General Coup to take down Dispater. If he can not leave his tower, and the hierarchy no longer includes him, he's essentially Levistius. I love this idea!:clap:
Kain_Darkwind 11-27-07, 09:57 PM	I love this idea!:clap: Seconded. Turning Dispater's greatest strength against him. Brilliant.
Surgo 11-27-07, 11:18 PM	I don't get all this My-PCs-are-this-and-that-level-and-now-they-want-to-kill-gaaaaaaawd stuff. Probably because D&D has a good and rich history of player characters stabbing gods in the face and taking their stuff, something that's really lacking nowadays.
sciborg3 11-27-07, 11:35 PM	Probably because D&D has a good and rich history of player characters stabbing gods Are you talking about Paladin in Hell? The victim, iirc, was not a god nor lord of nine but a pitfiend in the Dark Eight...it's founder right? Though I don't remember if you can kill Orcus in Bloodstone, though killing lolth wouldn't be a big loss.
Kain_Darkwind 11-27-07, 11:51 PM	Are you talking about Paladin in Hell? The victim, iirc, was not a god nor lord of nine but a pitfiend in the Dark Eight...it's founder right? Though I don't remember if you can kill Orcus in Bloodstone, though killing lolth wouldn't be a big loss. The last boss in Paladin in Hell is not Cantrum, founder of the Dark Eight. It is Geryon, former Lord of the Fifth.
Surgo 11-28-07, 12:09 AM	I was actually more referring to the 66 HP write-up of Lolth more than anything else, but it's good to see that there are more references to this, references that I've never even heard of. I might just have to take back my comment about there not being enough "stab a god in the face, take their stuff" in modern stat-ups and adventures. I'm currently DMing a group playing Savage Tide and we just started recently (still on the first adventure), so I haven't read all the way to the end yet, but apparently they get the chance to do some good old-fashioned face stabbing to Demigorgon in the end. Good times! Now, to actually respond to the OP. You can really run this as an appropriate end-game challenge at whatever level you feel appropriate and that would be totally cool. It's just that there's something of a logcal problem by the 'default' rules, which state that the following two things are true: * A pit fiend is roughly the equivalent of a 20th level character in a fight (source: its CR). * There are a lot of pit fiends in the layer of Dis (source: numerous articles/books/what-have-you about Baator). Both of these statements being true at the same time causes problems for the challenge making sense for people in the level 18-22 range. Dispater has to actually be able to control all of these pit fiends, which means that he has to be a good deal more powerful than them, which really puts him out of range of your level 18-22 party. Seriously, they're just going to get slaughtered. Hell, four pit fiends by themselves would make a 50/50 challenge for a level 20 party of four as it is. Now, if only one of these things were true, we'd be a good bit better off. If the pit fiends (and all devils, really) were weakened and had their CRs lowered by a good bit, then we could also have a Dispater able to control them that the players were still capable of stabbing in the face. Alternatively, we could say that the pit fiends are actually kind of rare, and they are basically just Dispater's various dukes. That works too, and it has this pretty cool feel of needing to get through appropriately-challenging dukes of Dispater to finally get to the end, or getting to the end and having Dispater summon his wonderfully level-appropriate dukes of hell to back him up. Anyway, that's what I see in this. Have a lot of pit fiends, but seriously weaken them so it makes sense that an appropriately challenging Dispater can retain control, or have each pit fiend be essentially a unique NPC, accomplishing mostly the same effect.
Melpomene 11-30-07, 02:06 PM	One of the earliest "goals" for munchkins in D&D was to kill Tiamat. It was "winning the game" as she was the monster with the highest statted CR.
Kain_Darkwind 11-30-07, 05:44 PM	One of the earliest "goals" for munchkins in D&D was to kill Tiamat. It was "winning the game" as she was the monster with the highest statted CR. That seems...wrong to me. Since CR was a 3rd edition concept.