Devils Part 10: Lemure (Best of the Bestiary)

And now, we reach the bottom of the food chain.

A Lemure is born when a mortal soul, twisted by evil, is banished to the Nine Hells for eternity. They are the lowest form of life in the Nine Hells, a shapeless, repugnant monster doomed to suffer an eternity of torment if they can’t earn a promotion. But given their hideous forms and lack of power, that is a herculean task.

Once again, you can’t do anything big with that. You could do some smaller things, like have a villain the party slew a while back show up in the Nine Hells as a Lemure. But if you want to tell a compelling story, you’d best look higher up on the food chain than this guy. He is literally the most disposable fodder enemy in this entire section.

And you can tell just by looking at it.

Design: Kill… Me…

This thing is designed to be the most miserable creature in existence. Everything, from the lore to the stats, goes into selling this idea. And none do so more than the design. I mean… just fucking look at this monstrosity!

This thing just screams pain and misery! Just look at its face! If that eye doesn’t scream “Please murder me”, then I don’t know what does! That disproportionate, goopy, twisted body, the uneven, toothless mouth, and bulging chest just look painful! It’s like if Nemesis from RE3 was created just to scream instead of being an unstoppable murder machine!

Although it is significantly less badass than Nemesis. But that should go without saying.

It looks well and truly pathetic. Which is a good design choice; it perfectly reflects both the flavor text and the combat stats. So, in that regard, this design is an A+!

Speaking of combat!

Stats: The Least Threatening Unkillable Foe of All Time

*Fierce, uncontrollable laughter* Are you kidding me? Challenge level zero?! How is that even possible?! I thought the lowest was one-fourth?!

This thing is easily the weakest monster we’ve ever talked about. It’s AC is in the single digits and its HP is just above the ten range. It’s immune to fire and poison, as well as resistant to cold damage, but let’s be real: a party at the level to fight one of these things won’t be using any of those things. Its only attack, a basic punch, can only deal 2(1d4) bludgeoning damage. It’s about as threatening as a wet paper towel!

The only really tricky thing about this monster is the Hellish Rejuvenation ability. Should a Lemure die within the Nine Hells, it will come back to life with full HP. Sounds threatening, right? Well, it isn’t when you realize that it takes 1d10 days. Not minutes, no hours. Days. So by the time it comes back, it won’t be any threat to the party. Not that it ever was.

But if you’re a perfectionist, you could use Bless or sprinkle the corpse with Holy Water to permanently kill it. That’s an option.

The only real thing you can do with a combat encounter starring a Lemure is to make the party feel bad. But considering what kind of characters people often play during D&D (those being heartless sociopaths), you probably won’t succeed at that. This thing is fodder, pure and simple. It’s designed to be worthless in every way. And in that effort, they’ve succeeded completely.

Conclusion

Yo, this monster fucking sucks. It doesn’t have interesting lore and it can’t make for a good fight. The best thing about it is the design. It’s a useless piece in the armies of the Nine Hells and it’s equally useless for a dungeon master. It’s complete trash through and through.

With all that in mind, let’s put the Lemure on the Best of the Bestiary!

1. Beholder
2. Death Tyrant
3. Couatl
4. Behir
5. Aboleth
6. Chuul
7. Chimera
8. Death Knight
9. Bone Devil
10. Ankheg
11. Shadow Demon
12. Marilith
13. Aarackockra
14. Azer
15. Demilich
16. Spectator
17. Cambion
18. Animated Armor
19. Banshee
20. Basilisk
21. Yochlol
22. Bulette
23. Cloaker
24. Darkmantle
25. Erinyes
26. Chain Devil
27. Bearded Devil
28. Barbed Devil
29. Ice Devil
30. Nalfeshnee
31. Glabrezu
32. Chasme
33. Barlgura
34. Horned Devil
35. Balor
36. Vrock
37. Dretch
38. Goristro
39. Hezrou
40. Manes
41. Quasit
42. Planetar
43. Imp
44. Carrion Crawler
45. Rug of Smothering
46. Bugbear Chief
47. Bugbear
48. Vine Blight
49. Twig Blight
50. Needle Blight
51. Bullywug
52. Cockatrice
53. Lemure <———–
54. Solar
55. Deva
56. Cyclops
57. Centaur
58. Flying Sword
59. Crawling Claw