The Slayer, A Pitfiend?
GandalfPortraitGuy
Member Posts: 206
So Bhaal can turn into a Pitfiend? That's one of his aspects?
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The game obviously decided to go another way with how the Slayer is supposed to look, and I think it works out well in the end. We already have a legendary corpse-like male humanoid protagonist in another game.
As the link says, some focused Bhaal children had the ability to turn into Slayer, an avatar form which looks demonic and monstrous, and I think the in-game appearance reflects this well.
Or it was the artistic choice of game designers and that wiki page ret-conned that.
They are not the exact same but are really really close, so close that I had never made the difference before writing this message.
I believe that vanilla SoA without ToB would use the Nabassu animation even for Glabrezus (most notably the battle with Irenicus in Hell would summon 2 Nabassus and 2 Glabrezus but all for would use the Nabassu animation, that of Aecletec), and ToB added this one which is used for Glabrezus:
That's a Pit Fiend in 1E:
2E:
Planescape:
3E (for anyone that's curious):
The Slayer and Ravager are depicted as "human-sized one called the Slayer, and a giant called the Ravager. The Slayer appeared as a corpse-like male humanoid, whereas the Ravager was large and bestial."
There's some information that his third avatar was Kazgoroth (Claw of Kazgoroth) but not sure how accurate that is.
Lore wise, Pit fiends should use winged Nabassu animation, but then again Balors should also use it. To differentiate, Pit fiend may have a different color scheme, and Balor may have body flames, a flaming weapon animation or fire shield animation. This is what atweaks does IIRC.
I kinda dig the Slayer look, though. It reminds me of the Violator from Spawn comics. Not a fan of the comics, but the guy Todd McFarlane could really draw! Boy he could! His style stirs my imagination. And I like the similiarity, their names are even alike in meaning. Violater is a horrible, terrible, sickening monster and so is Slayer.
What can change the nature of a bhaalspawn indeed. That would be great.
I did not read in any book about Bhaalspawns, describing what their Slayer looked like. Well I read Abdel's adventures ofcourse, but can not remember what his Slayer looked like...it is a defense mechanism that most everybody who reads them wants to forget the whole ordeal.
What happened is that Lord Ao basically reshaped reality in 5E and in doing so drew elements from multiples sources (campaign books, the IE games, the novels, etc). It is implied that the events from the games/novels/campaign books actually DID happen, but in different parallel universes.
Ah well, I supposed lore continuity and consistency was never a big concern of mine. But I imagine people who care for that sort of thing are not happy.
It did not by any means. BG's depiction of the Baldur's Gate area is basically lifted word for word from Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast. Almost every location (from inns and taverns to High Hedge, name, and even organisations like the Iron Throne is from there (the Iron Throne is even described as the obvious "this is your obvious bad guy, DMs" in it).
It's somewhat like this... all demons are demons, but not all demons are the old avatars of dead gods. That being said, there are certain differences as other people seemed to have already posted.