Illustration Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast.

The Lore

Anyone who is familiar with the cosmology on 3e and earlier knows it tried really hard to have an Official Outsider for every box in the alignment grid. Devils were Lawful Evil, Demons (our current subject) were Chaotic Evil. And then someone created the Daemons, which served the double purpose of filling that Neutral Evil box on the chart and having every possible spelling of a word be a different monster.

Mezzodaemons were a type of daemon. Since 4e doesn’t try to follow either of those directives above, these monsters have dropped their extraneous vowels and are now Mezzodemons, belonging to the “demon” category. They look like upright, human sized, trident-wielding bugs.

These fellows are rather “quirky” as far as demons go, because their main thing is greed, not unbriddled bloodlust. Rather than gathering in huge hordes and going on omnicidal rampages, they establish hidden lairs in the world or in some other plane and loot the surrounding region. Binding a mezzodemon to your service is as easy as paying it. Of course, they still like killing. They just think it’s even more fun when they get paid to do it and loot the bodies afterwards. So basically, mezzodemons are demonic murderhobos. They are only on the Monster Manual.

The Numbers

Mezzodemons are Medium Elemental Humanoids (demons), and Level 11 Soldiers with 113 HP. They have Resist Poison 20, and variable resistance 10 switchable 2 times per encounter. They see with darkvision and run at speed 6.

Their basic attack is a Reach 2 trident, and they also have an ability called Skewering Tines. This is a trident attack that also does ongoing damage and restrains (save ends). While the demon is restraining someone in this way, it can’t make any trident attacks.

They can also breathe poison on enemies in a Close Blast 3, targeting Fortitude and doing both immediate and ongoing poison damage to any enemy they it. This recharges on a 5-6, and the fact that it’s a selective attack suggests interesting things. Maybe it’s a series of targetted squirts instead of a cloud? Or maybe it is a cloud, but the poison is made of pure evil and anyone who hangs out with mezzodemons is likely to be immune to it.

Mezzodemons are clearly meant to be team players. Maybe they engage your defenders and restrain them while their buddies attack your back line. Or maybe they do that to the mobile strikers instead, allowing those buddies to more effectively gang up on them.

The sample encounter is Level 11: 2 mezzodemons working as a mercenary for a party of 2 drow warriors and 1 drow arachnomancer. This is a nasty combination indeed, because those warriors just love to have restrained PCs to gang up on.

Final Impressions

Mezzodemons are not too exotic number-wise, but they have quite a bit of personality and a reason to hang out with any evil group who can afford to pay them. They work both as early opposition in a demon focused paragon arc, or as “spice” to other evil factions. I like them more than goristros, that’s for sure.