Illustration Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast.

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

The Lore

The first devil we’re looking at is actually a bad example of infernal subtlety. Bearded devils, also known as Barbazus, are wrathful creatures who love to fight. They tend to be used both by their hellish superiors and by diabolist summoners as bodyguards and shock troops, jobs which suit them just fine.

Bearded devils are well-armored and fight with glaives enchanted to cause horrible bleeding wounds. Their beards are actually a mass of muscular clawed tendrils which they can use to harass enemies. Though they have claws, they will only use them if they somehow lose their weapons. Barbazus might be fiends but they still have standards.

Like all devils, they’re Evil and speak Supernal.

The Numbers

Barbazus are Medium Immortal Humanoids (devils), and Level 13 Soldiers with 129 HP. They have trained Perception and darkvision, as well as 20 fire resistance. They run at speed 6.

Their basic attack is a Reach 2 glaive, which marks the target for a turn and causes ongoing 5 damage (save ends) on a hit, in addition to what should be level-appropriate damage. They also have a claw attack as described above, which is just a normal physical attack that does less damage than the glaive and doesn’t mark.

When bloodied they enter a Battle Frenzy, which gives them +2 to attacks and +5 to damage. And their Devilish Teamwork gives adjacent allies a +2 bonus to AC.

Oh, and there’s the beard. Its tendrils act like an Aura 1 around the devil, dealing an automatic 5 damage to anyone who starts their turn inside.

The sample encounter is level 13, 3 barbazus and 2 yuan-ti malison sharp-eyes (i.e., yuan-ti artillery).

Final Impressions

There’s nothing extraordinary about bearded devil lore, though I find their looks interesting. Mechanically, they seem to be solid soldiers once you fix their damage. They use reach weapons, so they work well in two-row formations with more of their kind, or with brutes.