Hi! I’m Paul Hughes, the lead designer on Monstrous Menagerie 2: Hordes and Heroes (go and back it on Kickstarter now!)
In my last post, I talked about some of the epic Monstrous Menagerie 2 monsters you can fight at level 1. But you don’t stay level 1 forever! I personally love high-level adventures, and I wanted to make sure that we offered lots of campaign-capstone challenges—if for nobody else, then for me (I want awesome monsters to use in my level 20 home game)!
Monstrous Menagerie 2 has so many high-level monsters—more than a dozen great wyrm dragons! Behemoths! The khalkos apex! The reborn gods!—but today let’s talk about our new archdevils.
Monstrous Menagerie 2 was a great opportunity to build out some of Level Up’s infernal cosmology, continuing the work done in Planestrider’s Journal. We’ve got a slightly different take on the lower planes (the Pit of Nulda), and the relationships between demons and devils. One thing remains the same: great adversaries need great leaders.
Monstrous Menagerie 2 introduces a triumvirate of archdevils: Vindica (CR 23), the leader of the Legion; Dominus (CR 24), the First Tyrant; and Axia (CR 26), the queen of the Infernal City and the original architect of the Laws of Creation. I worked with Morrus and prolific Level Up designer Peter N Martin to come up with hellish lore and story that we’re all proud of. Today I‘ll talk about one of our new fiends: Dominus.
Many of the denizens of the Pit of Nulda didn’t start out as fiends. Dominus was once a fey lord: a cruel emperor over countless mortal realms. He’s got traces of the fey glamour still—if you squint, he might not look out of place in a summer court—but behind his urbanity is an unsettling cruelty. As a former fey, he doesn’t particularly care about collecting souls. Make a pact with him, and he’ll grant your wishes—but you’ll incur a debt you’ll have to pay off for quite a long time. How many of his faceless undead servants were once emperors, conquerors, and other such powerful folks?
My favorite part of Dominus’s story is this: If he ever dies, all of his works disappear. How many of the wonders of your campaign world—flying palaces, great libraries, impossible bridges—were originally wishes granted by Dominus? If the party ever slays him, what will the world lose? This is an argument Dominus is sure to bring up, right around the time the heroes have him on the ropes.
Not that Dominus intends for the heroes to get him on the ropes. Each of Monstrous Menagerie 2’s archdevils has a unique combat style. Unlike Vindica, Dominus doesn’t revel in martial strength, and unlike Axia, Dominus can’t bend the laws of reality to his will. In combat, Dominus is lazy. He’s a legendary monster, but he has no legendary actions—just reactions. He redirects the party against itself. I imagine him with his feet up on a banquet table, swishing his wine made of distilled souls, inviting the party to attack him—and in response, he lifts a finger, turning a herald’s smite against their companion or diverting a whizzing bolt of fire to strike a new target. Only when he is bloodied does he stand up, drawing his enchanted weapons Bane and Boon. Dominus may be charming, but he didn’t get to be where he is by showing mercy to upstart mortal fools.
Read more at this site