Dissecting the 5E D&D Fiend Creature Type

December 16, 2021

Salutations, nerds! I’m back with the next fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons creature type by unassailable right of alphabetical order. Fiends! Do you want to make some fiends? I want to make some fiends. Well, at the very least analyze these 5E D&D creatures. I’m focusing on devils, demons and the lesser known but no less cool yugoloths.

Fiend creatures in 5E D&D

Fiends are to the Hells what the celestials are to the Heavens. Extraplanar, generally evil but typically funneled into three types as mentioned above and with some pretty specific lore to go with those. I’ll go down the list here. (In the unassailable alphabetical order — haha! You thought you had escaped it!)

Demons are chaotic evil fiends. They want to cause pain and suffering unimaginable and are native to the Abyss. Suffice it to say the demonic language is typically Abyssal. Devils are lawful evil, want to make deals with you and then torture you with them and their language is Infernal. You can expect a devil to keep its word to the letter but exploit every inch of slack you give. A devil negotiates. A demon is probably just going to try to crispy fry you. Demons and devils are pretty much in an eternal conflict with each other called the Blood War.

Meanwhile a yugoloth is neutral evil, doesn’t give a crap about the demon-devil conflict and will merc itself out to whoever is offering it the thing it most wants at that moment. This means as long as you have something of interest to the yugoloth more than whatever the other guy is paying it at the moment and you don’t mind the uncertainty of whether or not this little shit is going to try to betray you later, the yugoloth is probably the one you most want to run into. Because at the very least it can be bought.

“Fiends are creatures of wickedness that are native to the Lower Planes. A few are the servants of deities, but many more labor under the leadership of archdevils and demon princes. Evil priests and mages sometimes summon fiends to the material world to do their bidding. If an evil celestial is a rarity, a good fiend is almost inconceivable. Fiends include demons, devils, hell hounds, rakshasas, and yugoloths.” — from the 5E D&D Monster Manual

Things Fiends Do

The first thing you need to note is every one of these wangrods is listed as some kind of evil. Occasionally you’ll find an evil or neutral celestial but do not hold your breath about finding a good fiend because it’s not gonna happen unless your Dungeon Master has a super weird sense of humor.

Fiends are very likely to be immune to both fire and poison. If not immune they’re at least resistant to them along with a whole plethora of other things as well. They’re bloody hard to injure. A good number of them are telepathic and if their basic “punch or stab you” attacks don’t count as magical then odds are good they have magical resistance.

If you know you’re going in to fight a fiend expect fire damage but don’t expect immunity from fire damage to save you, and make sure you bring holy water, even if this is only going to be so useful. Fiends are varied and a massive pain in the butt.

Five Fiends of Note

Arcanoloth. Listen, I love these foxy bastards. They like knowledge, they know a lot of magic, they look like fox people (!!) and can just teleport out when start getting hairy. They’re very likely to turn up in places with a lot of arcane knowledge so basically places adventurers have incentive to explore.
Balor. The big bad demon daddy. It has a longsword and a whip. If you’re standing in melee range of it you are just passively taking fire damage. If you manage to kill a balor it freaking explodes and does legitimately like 70 damage to you. If you can just soak this damage after having fought the thing I salute you. It has immunity or resistance to most kinds of damage. This thing is challenge rating 19 for a good reason. Try to fight it from at least 40 feet away if you can and good luck.
Imp. The standard pointy boy. An imp does most of the things little devils do, can Shapechange into a bunch of different things and is 75% more likely to make snarky comments at you than any other kind of familiar. Oh, and they can just be invisible because they said so.
Lemure. If you’re going for a low tier fiend then a lemure is the creature you want at CR 0. A lemure heals super fast, can see in magical darkness and is a devil. But it has an intelligence of 1 so don’t bank on being able to negotiate with this thing. It kind of looks like someone took a person and melted it into a puddle.
Vrock. This massive bird demon is CR 6. It can scream and make you blorp out for a round if you’re not healthy enough to withstand it’s assault. It also manifests a cloud of toxic gas.

I have a strong feeling like I’m about to have to see myself out but these creatures are…fiendish. You want to throw a challenge at your 5E D&D party? Reach into your hell bag and see what comes out. It’ll be a good time. Especially if you’ve got someone in the party playing a tiefling who can then express angst about the situation. Played around with demons, devils and the like? Got a good story about fighting one? Please, tell me all about it in the comments below, tweet me about it @Nerdarchy or me @Pyrosythesis or connect with us on Facebook and of course, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — A selection of fiend creatures of note from 5E D&D. Over in Nerdarchy the Store you’ll find our fiendishly FREE book Empusia, Curator of Souls featuring a collection of magic items, monsters, NPCs allies or enemies and a dynamic encounter with the fiendish art collector Empusia herself!. [Composite images courtesy Wizards of the Coast]