Devil.
The standard preamble for multitudinous extra-planars.
Missed this the first time round, but -as with demons (and trolls)- devils are able to split their attacks between 2 or more opponents: multiple attacks are common; multiple opponents is a special ability.
There's a list of devils (including Buer) with some detail of their position within Hell's hierarchy. There are several female devils, all with the position of Consort - though whether Bensozia consorts with both Asmodeus and Baalzebul or is the agent of one in the bed(?) of the other is not specified. There are several marked with an asterisk, and based on the use of some of these names in Planescape, I think this indicates that they're Pit Fiends (MM).
Most of the dukes and arch-devils suffer for not being anything like how they're depicted in the Dictionnaire Infernal - if you're not familiar already, they are worth checking out for comparison - and I've provided a pic where I can. It might be hard to take some of them seriously, but there's plenty of creative room for them to be interestingly gruesome, compared to the array of horned, angry-faced blokes with wings.
There aren't any human/devil offspring -at least in this book, but Alu-demon and Cambion look suitably devilish to be used (with a slight modification of abilities and Alignment, if you want to play it that straight).
Abishai.
Scaly devils, 'most serve Tiamat' and coloured after the evil chromatic dragons - though without thematic special abilities.
An otherwise fairly unremarkable variable statblock monster, though it specifies they grapple - presumably using the rules from the DMG. Which is another kind of Hell.
Amon (Duke of Hell).
I like him because he's got a grinning wolf head and that pose projects personality, but he's otherwise just a hit point/ spell list sack. He has a winter wolf as a pet.
And this version was available and they didn't go with it.
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| Amon. |
Bael (Duke of Hell).
He wears 'bronze armour fashioned in the ancient style' and wields a telescopic morning star, but otherwise he's not much different to any other duke of Hell.
What might have been:
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| Bael. |
Bearded Devil.
I can work with these.
They have a signature weapon -saw-toothed glaive with a treble-hook- and their wiry beard gives you a Dexterity-sapping rash. Both of which make them more interesting than Belial.
Belial (Arch-devil).
Big guy, handsome, diabolic, basalt palace. Next.
Glasya (Princess of Hell).
She has 69 hit points. I never noticed before. FFS.
She is also 9' tall.
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| "Okay. So she's a dog" Dr. Peter Venkman. Glasya-Bolyas. |
Hutijin (Duke of Hell).
Uses his tone of voice to cause fear. He's a Pit Fiend, but with smaller head and wings.
Mammon (Arch-devil).
There's a bit of the Wild Hunt about this guy - riding a Nightmare and leading a pack of Hell Hounds. Otherwise, he's a big fat red devil who is worth fewer XP than his vassal, Bael. But he's got fool's gold as a spell-like power, because he's about love of money or something.
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| Mammon. |
Another big snore.
Moloch (Arch-devil).
Has an electric whip and fear-causing breath.
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| Moloch. |
Nupperibo.
'Nupperibo' and 'noppera-bo/ nopperabou' were dissimilar enough in the contexts they were being used that it took a while to realise that the AD&D name was from the Japanese.
The Nupperibo - the least of all devils - are not faceless ghosts, but 'blind, deaf and unable to speak', with no other clues as to what they look like, other than they march (so must have legs) and have hands.
Milling, silent hordes; instinctively gathering together (they can sense the presence of their own kind); waiting to respond to the thought commands of more powerful devils; regenerating the damage done to them as part of their eternal torment; the tiny prospect of being raised to devilhood.
To add a creepy cherry to top this cake, they may be semi- to exceptionally intelligent, but no one can tell because of their 'limited sensory capabilities' - leaving you to imagine what their interior lives are like and what they'd say if they could but speak.
Titivilus (Duke of Hell).
I was keen for this one, because the Tuttivillus Room (not that far off) was one of the locations in the horror-focused Fighting Fantasy gamebook, House of Hell.
And he doesn't disappoint (by my measure).
He has a silver sword of wounding, which could be reasonably reinterpreted as a silver sword of wounding with the additional effects of a Githyanki blade on astral travellers.
His spell-like abilities selection is dissimilar to those of the other dukes and arch-devils, with more non-combat application options. He can cast feeblemind, which I've always felt was more narratively frightening than (say) finger of death. His charm is the druidic version, rather than the MU.
And he has ruddy cheeks.
Spined Devil.
Not much more than an Imp, really - they're only 3' tall. With their 3+3 HD, I'd be happy to make them adult human-sized and treat them as the basic/standard devil - they're armed with forks.
They can also use their spines as flaming darts, bombarding opponents while airborne and setting them on fire. Much cooler than Hutijin.
Diakka.
With some foreknowledge, I was expecting the Diakka to be something like a possessing poltergeist rather than weird humanoid/stork monsters from the Glooms of Hades.
Their special abilities (jump, audible glamer, weakness, enfeeblement) are integrated into their behaviour and tactics. The description gives some details of how they use their abilities and how they approach encounters with potential opponents of varying strength, which is miles away from the statblock-and-spell-list monsters that Daemons, Demons, Devas and Devils lavished on me.
The Diakka here and the Diakka I had in mind are very different beasts, but it turns out I do rather like a weird humanoid/stork monster (another one turns up later on).
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