Pit Fiend and Pit Lord

Inferno creatures
Level 1
Imp
Familiar
Level 2
Gog
Magog
Level 3
Hell Hound
Cerberus
Level 4
Demon
Horned Demon
Level 5
Pit Fiend
Pit Lord
Level 6
Efreeti
Efreet Sultan
Level 7
Devil
Arch Devil
Towns

Statistics
Pit Fiend
Cost per troop  500
	Attack 13 Defense 13 Damage 13–17 Health 45 Speed 6 Movement Ground Size 1 Growth 3 AI Value 765
Pit Lord
Cost per troop  700
	Attack 13 Defense 13 Damage 13–17 Health 45 Speed 7 Movement Ground Size 1 Growth 3 AI Value 1224
Special abilities:
• Summon demons
Portraits

Pit Fiends and Pit Lords are the level 5 creatures of Inferno. They are recruited from the Hell Hole.

"Pit fiends and pit lords attack with tormenting whip blows. Once per combat, pit lords are able to resurrect dead allied troops as demons in place of another action. The number raised cannot be higher than the number of pit lords performing the resurrection" ^{RoE manual}

Special Ability: Demon Summoning

While Pit Fiends do not have any special abilities, Pit Lords are able to summon Demons by resurrecting allied dead creature stacks. Each Pit Lord can summon up to 50 health points worth of Demons. Because Demons have 35 hit points, this means that 7 Pit Lords can summon exactly 10 Demons. However, the total health of demons summoned this way cannot exceed the total health of the dead stack nor can the number of demons exceed the number of creatures in the dead stack. In other words, the dead stack must have had at least 35 hit points in order for summoning to work. A stack of one Pikeman cannot be resurrected while a stack of four will summon one demon. The full table can be seen here.

It should be noted that non-living cannot be converted to Demons. Additionally, health increasing artifacts (Ring of Life, Ring of Vitality, Vial of Lifeblood and Elixir of Life) are counted in the calculations dead creature stack's total health. Opposite, if a stack dies under effect of poison or aging its total HP value is reduced. Summoning takes up the pit lord's turn.

Demon herding

Demon herding (also called demon farming) is a strategy that can be used for Inferno. The basic idea is, that the player deliberately sacrifices Imps and Gogs in combat in order to summon them back as demons. This is based on the fact that imps and gogs have lower attack to defense ratings than demons, and therefore the demon's hit points are theoretically more valuable (do note that Magogs have a powerful ranged ability, however). You can also herd demons from cheap low-level troops from other towns. Additionally, cloning hero's pit lords will grant an extra number of demon summonings. By using the Clone spell or having multiple Pit Lord stacks, it is possible to resurrect the same Demon stack several times during a single battle.

Note that Cursed Ground prevents Pit Lords from raising Demons.

Calculation

The count of resurrected is determined by:

min(floor(min([dead_count]*[dead_single_health], [pit_lord_count]*50)/35), [dead_count])

In order to use the full potential of resurrection, [dead_single_health] shouldn't exceed the health of demon (35). If the stack consisted from imps, optimal count of units is 12.5 times count of pit lords; if the stack contained gogs, optimal count of creatures is ~3.8 times count of pit lords (provided no health increasing artifact is in place).

Heroes with a specialty

• Nymus the Demoniac has pit fiends as a specialty, which increases the attack and defense skills of any pit fiends or lords for each level attained after 5th level and gives them a speed bonus of 1.

Appearance

Pit Lords appear at the beginning of the Oblivion's Edge scenario from the Armageddon's Blade campaign.

User commentary

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Pit Fiends and Pit Lords are decent level 5 creatures, boasting good stats, but pretty low health. However, the Lords' main role is to summon demons from allied dead stacks when fighting wandering monsters, in a tactic called "Demon farming/herding". In big battles, they are used as offensive support units. Summon Demons can also be used to win fights without (meaningful) losses: as long as you were going to convert Imps into Demons anyway, might as well let them soak enemy blows and retaliations -- AI loves attacking low-level creatures when given the chance. If no sacrificial recruits are available, Demons themselves can be resurrected, although this requires some skill, as only a fully dead stack can be targeted, so just the right amount of Demons must be separated into a second stack, and AI must be incited to attack it instead of the main stack. Of note is that the total Demon HP a weekly growth of Pit Lords can revive is 50% higher than what a weekly growth of Archangels could manage, and the former can also be Cloned without any Water Magic skill, which compensates somewhat for the ability's much more narrow utility.

See also:

• List of creatures

• Comparison of Level 5 Creatures