Death Throes. When the balor dies, it explodes, and each creature within 30 feet of it must make a DC 20 Dexterity saving throw, taking 70 (20d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The explosion ignites flammable objects in that area that aren’t being worn or carried, and it destroys the balor’s weapons.
Fire Aura. At the start of each of the balor’s turns, each creature within 5 feet of it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage, and flammable objects in the aura that aren’t being worn or carried ignite. A creature that touches the balor or hits it with a melee attack while within 5 feet of it takes 10 (3d6) fire damage.
Magic Resistance. The balor has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
Magic Weapons. The balor’s weapon attacks are magical.
Multiattack. The balor makes two attacks: one with its longsword and one with its whip.
Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 21 (3d8 + 8) slashing damage plus 13 (3d8) lightning damage. If the balor scores a critical hit, it rolls damage dice three times, instead of twice.
Whip. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 30 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d6 + 8) slashing damage plus 10 (3d6) fire damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 20 Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 25 feet toward the balor.
Teleport. The balor magically teleports, along with any equipment it is wearing or carrying, up to 120 feet to an unoccupied space it can see.
I know I'm late but a very niche use could be a twinned enlarge/reduce for a friendly and target one of the weapons. You get your big damage weapons and get the benefits of enlarge. Niche but badass.
Strongest MM demon
Why can’t Balogs fly? They have wings.
They can.
Speed: 40 ft., fly 80 ft.
Oh didn’t see that my bad
real kool
You could also make the longsword weapon a great sword. This would mean a character would need to two-hand the weapon and it would be considered heavy. You could even make the sword have a strength requirement that maybe only a barabarian can reach at level 20. When you bring in belts of giant strength a player can match the Balors strength in order to wield the sword.
Obviously it would depend on the campaign as legendary items and homebrewed items and rules can change a lot and based on the CR a party of 4 playing as written should be facing this thing around levels 18, 19 or 20.
KILL IT WITH FIR-
okay don't do that...
Reminder to all the people saying that medium or smaller creatures can't wield these, magical items that require attunement do change their size.
A great example of this is a trident of fish comand wielded by a gaint in SKT, that mentions this
I'd argue that a weapon like that, that is also a +2 would be ridiculously overpowered for a player. Also that the balor's teleporting is definitely its own power. But more importantly, it's not a given that magic items resize in 5e. Some do, sure, but they specify that they do in the details on that specific item, which implies that it isn't the case.
I've never understood why this is always the assumption, it's a lazy game mechanic, that makes little in-universe sense, imo. If a legendary smith makes a mighty sword, they're probably making it with someone in mind, not making something that fits perfectly into any hand in existence.
Also granting an item the ability to resize on it's own is probably pretty tricky, and I don't see why every last magic item would have such a power.
"Wearing and Wielding Items" (DMG, p. 140) says:
DM question: player uses true polymorph to become a balor. Balor form dies.
Death Throes explosion yes/no?
I would think so
I wouldn't think so. The player doesn't "die" as a Balor. They just get reduced to 0 HP, which is explicitly different. Of course, DM has final say on the ruling for that.
But with true polymorph, you become the creature for real.
I see it going one of two ways:
1) The creature who was polymorphed isn't dead, it's just changing back to its original form because it dropped to zero hit points (this is probably the RAW way to do it as dropping to zero hit points doesn't always mean death).
2) The explosion still happens but it affects the creature who was polymorphed. If you are saying that the balor is dying and the original creature is taking its place, then that creature becomes a creature within 30 feet of the dead balor. The only reason the balor wouldn't take damage originally is because it is something that is triggered when it dies, but if you are saying that the balor is dying and there is another creature where it used to be, it would take the damage.
Necroposting a little here. Sorry.
The stat blocks states that the weapons are magical. Magical weapons and armour automatically adjust to the wielders size (this is in DMG IIRC). With that in mind we can see that weapons would be:
Magic Longsword: 5ft range. (1d8 + 8) slashing damage plus 13 (3d8) lightning damage. If the player scores a critical hit, it rolls damage dice three times, instead of twice.
Magic Whip: 10ft range. 15 (1d6 + 8) slashing damage plus 10 (3d6) fire damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 20 Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 25 feet toward the balor.
Couple of common sense adjustment made to the range and damage inflicted both being scaled down from huge to medium weapons. The only other point of contention would be the d6 of the whip, which should be a d4, but hell its a boss weapons.
No worries. It’s a general rule of thumb in the DMG that “many garments adjust to the size of the wearer” but it doesn’t always apply.
Honestly though a lot of time has passed since that comment. Checking the discussion again, scaling it down like you did is an engaging reward and I would probably run it as such if it came up in my games now.
A special whip dealing a d6 is fine I think. We have the oversized longbow from Dragon Heist so there’s precedence to customize for exotic/special gear.
That's pretty good, though isn't the +8 because of the Balor's Strength modifier?That's still really awesome and didn't know that about magic weapon resizing! Here's my version of it:
Balor's Blade: Magic weapon (requires attunement). Weapon type: Longsword. Properties: Whenever you land a successful attack with this weapon, you deal an additional 2d8 lightning damage. When you score a critical hit with this weapon, you roll the damage dice three times instead of twice.
Balor's Whip: Magic weapon (requires attunement). Weapon type: Whip. Properties: Whenever you roll for damage with this weapon, you use d6s instead of d4s. Whenever you land a successful attack with this weapon, you deal an additional 2d6 fire damage and you can force it to make a Strength saving throw. If it fails, it is pulled toward you by 5 ft. The DC is 8 + your profiency bonus + your Strength modifier.
Since the word Balrog is property of someone else, they decided the name Balor and a lighting sword would be different enough, thanks dnd, always good to see a nice Tolkien reference in the forgotten realms.