Illustration Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast.

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The War Devil, previously known as the Horned Devil and also known as the Malebranche, has been a staple of D&D since at least AD&D First Edition. You know those traditional images of winged, horned devils poking the damned with tridents? They depict these guys. In 4e, they’re only on the Monster Manual.

The Lore

A War Devil is about the most powerful devil that’s likely to be found in the service of a summoner. In the overall diabolic hierarchy they only take orders from pit fiends or archidevils. It some mortal tyrant is summoning up a literal army from Hell, a malebranche is going to be at the head of that army, and will have ice devil senior officers. At Int 15, that malebranche is also likely cooking up a scheme to bring his pit fiend boss into the world for a hostile takeover of the tyrant’s operation.

The Numbers

The War Devil is a Level 22 Brute (Leader) with 255 HP. It has a speed of 8, and a clumsy flight speed of 8. Like all devils it has darkvision and is highly resistant to fire (resistance 30, in this case).

Its attacks are a little weird. The basic melee attack is a Reach 1 claw which, as usual for devils, is weak and useless. The infamous trident is Reach 2 and, weirdly enough, recharges on a 4-6 instead of being at-will. It does more damage than the claw, but way less than it should for a level 22 brute. On a hit the target also takes a bit of ongoing damage, slides to a square adjacent to the malebranche, and is knocked prone.

Despite being a brute, the war devil has a very soldierly minor action at-will ability called Besieged Foe. This automatically marks a target within line of sight of the malebranche, and gives the monster’s allies +2 to attacks made against it. This lasts until the malebranche uses the ability against someone else, or until the end of the encounter.

As an at-will move action it can use Devilish Transposition, a teleport power which makes it swap places with an allied devil within 20 squares.

And as a minor action that recharges on 5-6, it can employ Fiendish Tactics to direct up to two equal-or-lower-level devil allies to make a move action or a basic attack out of turn.

As a brute the War Devil wants to be right on the front lines tying up your defenders. Then when one of its more mobile buddies manages to make it to your squishies, it’s going to swap places with them and direct its other buddies to run closer for a proper stomping.

War devils pair exceedingly well with… other war devils! They can each use Besieged Foe on a different target and engage someone else they’re not marking, and can use Fiendish Tactics on each other. They also go well with other highly mobile devils to set up transposition combos, and can be pretty dangerous when combined with a ridiculous number of legion devils.

The sample encounter is level 21: 1 war devil, 1 ice devil, 2 bone devils and 12 legion devil legionnaires (the level 21 variant). Remember that both the bone devils and the legionnaires can teleport at will!

Final Impression

The tactical aspect of the war devil’s powers is quite interesting, but they suffer heavily from the math bug. Personally, I’d make their trident an at will attack with level-appropriate damage and get rid of the claw while keeping everything else. I’d also make them soldiers instead of brutes, since the flavor of their powers is a lot more “soldierly” than “brutish”.

Flavor-wise… I guess I can kinda see why they were left out of the Monster Vault. Even back in previous editions I imagine it would be hard to distinguish a horned devil from, say, a bearded devil if you were not already familiar with the monster entries. Changing their name to War Devil was probably an attempt at making them more distinctive, but the success was mixed. Mechanically they’re a bit like junior pit fiends, so if you’re strapped for space and are already including pit fiends in your lineup, I can see leaving these guys out.