Illustration Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast.

This is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.

The Monster Manual lists demons in alphabetic order, and the Vault lists them by level. Since we’re using the Monster Manual as our guide here, let’s examine them alphabetically. Doing this means our first demon is the one right at the top of their “monster ladder”: the Balor.

Let’s be real here: Balors are Balrogs. They were even named Balrogs back in the oldest days of D&D, before the Tolkien estate complained. They look like towering red-skinned humanoids with horrible fanged and horned horse heads, shaggy black manes, and bat wings. They wield huge flaming swords and whips. So yeah, Balrogs.

Here Balors command large hordes of lesser demons, who all fear being torn apart by them. Balors often answer directly to the demon lords in turn, though some of them stake out some territory of their own to rule as princelings, answering to no one. You can sometimes find balors bound against their will to ancient places in the deepest reaches of the natural world, just waiting for some fool of a Tûk to wake them up.

Since we have a whole post just for them, let’s discuss the MM and MV versions separately!

Balor (Monster Manual)

The Balor is a Huge Elemental Humanoid (demon). Anything with the “demon” keyword is officially a demon, and also doesn’t need to sleep. It’s also a Level 27 Elite Brute with 624 HP and higher defenses than its role and level would indicate. In combat they like to focus on a single opponent to the exclusion of all else - yes, they’ll trip your defender’s mark punishment like no one else, but they can take it. These demons very rarely retreat. So if you were wondering why the PCs would ever need access to their own colossus ally, here’s your answer.

Balors have truesight 6, are immune to fear, have Resist 40 fire and Resist 20 variable (3/encounter). That last bit means the balor can change what element that resistence 20 applies to as a free action up to 3 times per encounter. Variable resistance is a demon signature trait in 4e, and I prefer it over having to memorize that long list of resistances and immunities from previous editions. It also prevents PCs from just loading up with sonic damage and ignoring all of that as well.

It also has a Flaming Body: an aura 2 that does 10 fire damage to any enemy that starts its turn inside it. When the balor is bloodied, the aura’s size increases to 3 and the damage increases to 20.

The balor walks with Speed 8 and flies with Speed 12 (clumsy). It would have some trouble taking off midair if Gandalf threw it off a bridge.

Balors fight with a sword made of lightning (range 3) and a whip made of fire (range 5). The sword is its basic attack and does lightning damage with the High Crit property. The whip targets Reflex and does both instant and ongoing fire damage. The monster can attack with both in a single standard action, and the “tactics” section says it will use its action point to attack again as soon as it hits the same target with both weapons. Both of them suffer from the usual math bugs.

As a free action the balor can call upon its Demonic Accuracy, which allows it to reroll a missed attack with a +5 bonus to hit. When it dies, it explodes, subjecting everyone in a close burst 10 to an attack against Reflex that does a somewhat underwhelming 7d10 fire damage, half on a miss.

As you’d expect, Balors are Chaotic Evil. They speak Abyssal and Common and are trained in Perception, Bluff, Insight and Intimidate. Their Int is 12, which is pretty good but not “mastermind” level. Just goes to show you brawn is more valuable than brains when it comes to rising through the ranks of the Abyss, such as they are.

Balor (Monster Vault)

The Monster Vault balor is also a Huge Elemental Humanoid (demon) and a Level 27 Elite Brute. Its defenses are in line with its role and level, and it has 622 HP.

While the MV Balor maintains the Flaming Body aura, all of its other passive traits are pretty different. It replaces truesight 6 with blindsight 6 and darkvision, which are more useful when you think about it. Its fire resistance is down to 20, but it keeps the variable resistance to other elements. This is now listed among its Triggered Actions, at the end of the stat block, which tripped me up for a second.

The damage of its Death Burst actually went down, from 7d10 to 6d10, but it more than makes up for this with the damage of its other attacks. The sword went from 2d10+10 to 6d10+11 while still being High Critical. That’s 7d10+71 lightning damage on a critical! The whip underwent a more modest increase (3d8+5 to 2d10+10), but its ongoing damage also went up from 5 to 15. The MV Balor can still attack with both weapons using a single standard action.

It also gains a new attack named Beheading Blade, an encounter power that recharges when it’s bloodied. It’s an attack with the sword that does around 30% more lightning damage than the basic version, crits on 15-20, and is also High Critical. Yikes!

Final Impressions

The Balor definitely looks like something that was on the level of a demigod before it was corrupted by evil. I remember that balors in previous editions had tons of spell-like abilities that ended up being its main way of fighting, but it feels like 4e did a good job of making them impressive physical threats like they’re supposed to be.

The Monster Vault update is hands-down the best of the two, so you should definitely use that if you have both books. It’s actually punching a bit above its (already impressive) weight class in terms of damage.

Both versions even have somewhat decent ability to counter ranged attackers, since their own attacks have a very long reach. Plus nothing prevents it from bringing in some artillery support.

I notice these 4e stat blocks lack the infamous ability to summon other demons, which is understandable because accounting for it when building encounters was a big hassle. If you want the flavor of it, though, you can simply build an encounter with a balor and several other demons and describe the others as being summoned when the fight starts.

Speaking of encounters, the sample one in the MM is level 26: one balor, 1 thunderblast cyclone elemental, and 2 efreet pyresingers. It’s likely these two efreet wizards have managed to bind a balor, because I can’t really see the relationship going the other way.