How to Play a Yugoloth like the Ultimate Mercenary

Tags Running Monsters Dungeon Master Tips Descent into Avernus How to Play Monsters

“Looters become looted, while time and tide make us mercenaries all.”

—Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

The Blood War consumes the Lower Planes. It exists in the back of every fiend’s mind—save for those so tormented that rational thought is beyond them, such as manes and lemures. So far, this series has given advice on how to play the creatures serving on either side of the Blood War: devils fighting for tyrannical order and the stability of the Nine Hells, and demons fighting for utter chaos and the endless hunger of the Abyss. There are fiends that exist outside of this dichotomy of law versus chaos. Some of these neutral fiends defy classification, such as succubi and incubi, hell hounds , and nightmares. These fiends often have some sort of loose allegiance (such as incubi to the Demon Lord Graz’zt and nightmares to their devilish narzugon riders, but there are fiends that exist outside of the hierarchies of demons and devils entirely.

These fiends, called yugoloths, are denizens of the Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, a lower plane aligned to the cosmic forces of neutrality and evil. Souls that act selfishly, greedily, cruelly, or that commit purposelessly evil acts are often consigned to an afterlife in Gehenna. These souls become yugoloths. Like demons and devils, yugoloths take many forms, which reflect the powers their evil spirits have developed in their new lives. Legend says that the yugoloths were first created by a sisterhood of night hags, and that these hags were commissioned by Asmodeus to create an army of fiends that could fight eternally within the Nine Hells. The story of the yugoloths and their creation is told in greater detail in their entry in the Monster Manual.

As the yugoloth civilization grew and spread across Gehenna, it eventually began to spread across other planes, and now the planes of Gehenna, Carceri, Hades, and Acheron exist under at least partial yugoloth hegemony. As they spread across the multiverse, conquering as they went, yugoloths began to be approached by mortals and extraplanar beings alike who sought their martial talents. Over the eons, since the first contract was forged with a yugoloth warlord, these neutral evil fiends have earned a reputation as the finest mercenaries in the multiverse.

Yugoloth mercenaries are expensive beyond most mortals’ imagining, and they are self-serving to a fault. They lack both the extreme unpredictability of demonic hordes and the strict orderliness of diabolical legions. In a phrase, yugoloths are selfishness embodied.

Summoned yugoloths demand much for their time and loyalty. Whatever promises a yugoloth makes are quickly broken when a better opportunity presents itself. Unlike demons, yugoloths can be reasoned with, but unlike devils, they are rarely true to their word.

—Monster Manual

 Yugoloths are employed most frequently by Asmodeus and the other Lords of the Nine, whose ill-gotten wealth vastly exceeds that of any mortal nation. Also, though demons often seem like mindless beasts, many of them possess an alien cunning—and some yugoloths are brave enough to approach them in search of lucrative employment. Since yugoloths can’t be permanent killed outside of their home plane of Gehenna (they simply dissolve into ichor and reform on Gehenna when killed elsewhere), they can fight without fear of consequences in any battlefield across the multiverse. This fearlessness, combined with their unmatched martial skill, allow yugoloths to raise their mercenary rates to unimaginable heights—and for warlords across the cosmos to pay them, nonetheless.

Yugoloths in the Nine Hells

If you’re playing Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, or creating an adventure of your own that takes place in Avernus or another hot spot of the Blood War, yugoloths will help you add dimension to the battles between devils and demons.

While exploring Avernus, any demons you meet are most likely hostile invaders, willing to kill anything that moves—except other demons. Devils could be either soldiers in Zariel’s legions, or members of her army in other ways, serving as war machine mechanics, bureaucrats, sentries, or any number of other roles. Yugoloths have only a single role in Avernus—mercenary—and a single goal: acquiring wealth. They may serve devils, demons, or even mortals, but their true loyalty is always to themselves above all others.

When a character meets a yugoloth in Avernus, the yugoloth likely thinks three things before taking action.

  1. Who are they? Does my contract require me to destroy them or protect them, or neither?
  2. Will my employer reward me if I destroy them or protect them?
  3. Will it benefit me to destroy them or protect them—or to create a new contract with them?

If the yugoloth’s outlook is neutral towards the characters, it likely attacks—it is a cosmic embodiment of evil, after all! However, unlike a demon which fights to the death, a yugoloth knows when it’s beaten, and flees or surrenders. A yugoloth that surrenders might even try to make a deal with the characters, offering a reduced rate in exchange for sparing it the embarrassment of being bested by mortals. If a yugoloth is hostile towards the characters, it fights to the death, unless it thinks it can get a better deal out of the characters. Yugoloths have no sense of loyalty to their employers, and if its enemies can offer a higher rate, it will jump ship in a heartbeat.

Dealing with Yugoloths

Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus has a full appendix dedicated to describing how to make deals with devils. Infernal contracts are often tricky, written exclusively in Infernal, and filled with predatory clauses designed to fool you into giving up your soul. Yugoloths are much more straightforward. Some yugoloths desire souls—as a fell ritual powered by mortal souls can resurrect a yugoloth destroyed on Gehenna—but most are content to deal in gold and other material valuables.

A rule of thumb you can use when a character wants to purchase a yugoloth’s mercenary services is to multiply the yugoloth’s challenge rating by 100. The result is the amount of gold pieces a yugoloth charges per day of service. Most yugoloths only enter into contracts if their services are needed for a tenday or more—but if a contractor needs only a single task completed, the yugoloth will bill them for a full day. When entering into a mercenary contract with a stranger, many yugoloths demand half payment up front, with the other half due upon completion of the task.

If the being that purchases the yugoloth’s services can’t pay its fee in full upon completion, the yugoloth has several means of recourse. Most times, yugoloths simply kill employers that can’t pay up. Other times, wizardly yugoloths such as an arcanaloth will use magic to turn the debtor into its thrall until it pays off its debt—at a rate of 1 gold piece per day of servitude. Though dominate person isn’t in the arcanaloth’s stat block, it’s possible that such a creature has the spell written in its spellbook, and will return to claim its revenge the next day, after preparing the spell.

Neutrality and Evil Incarnate

Depicting neutrality in a compelling way can be difficult in D&D. It’s easy to represent devils as lawful by showing their rigid, authoritarian, and bureaucratic society. It’s likewise simple to depict demons as slavering hordes of chaotic monsters. In a way, yugoloths’ society of self-interest and lax rules are much more relatable to real-world humans than either of the cosmic extremes of law or chaos. This humanizes yugoloths in a way that can make them less innately terrifying than devils or demons. When running encounters with yugoloths, you can lean into this familiarity, or try and disguise it behind smoke and mirrors.

The most terrifying thing about a yugoloth is the innate evilness of their being. Countless stories like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are predicated upon an idea that redemption is possible and that pity for a single wicked being can save the world. Such optimism has no place in an adventurer dealing with yugoloths. The only possible flicker of hope for a yugoloth aiding another is when it has something worthwhile to gain. In any other circumstance, even if the yugoloth stands to profit slightly, utter malice is the fiend’s modus operandi. If it came at the cost of causing good in the multiverse, such slight profit would be of no worth to a yugoloth.

So, to adventurers that would hire a clever arcanaloth in order to defeat a cult of Tenebrous and save their homeland—or some other such virtuous act—must beware. Even if the money were good, the yugoloth would attempt to fulfil its contract to the letter of the law, then attempt to foil the act of goodness. The quickest way would be to immediately offer its services to the remnants of the evil faction it helped disband, spilling secrets it learned about the adventurers while in their employ. Even if a yugoloth doesn’t outright betray a virtuous employer, it’s certain to find a way to secretly twist its employer’s meaning to its own malicious ends. Of course, it would do this in such a way that it would seem unknown to its employer until after it was paid in full.

Unlike creatures like drow, orcs, and the other traditionally “evil” species in the D&D multiverse, whose evilness comes from cultures that prize selfish and cruel values rather than any internal evilness, yugoloths are avatars of the concepts of evil and neutrality. If a yugoloth were to become innately good—or even simply not evil, but true neutral—it would no longer be a yugoloth. It would cease to be a fiend and become some other sort of creature of neutrality and balance. To make a yugoloth’s cosmic nature as an evil spirit expressly clear to your players, consider incorporating these traits while in combat:

Highest Bidder. When a yugoloth recognizes that it’s fighting a losing battle (such as when half its allies are defeated, or its escape routes are blocked off, at the DM’s discretion), it offers the characters a chance to hire it instead of risking further injury in combat. Its price is equal to its challenge rating × 75 gp per day of employment, up to 10 days. This is a 25% discount over its usual rate, since it’s in dire straits. A character that makes a successful Charisma (Intimidation) check contested by its Wisdom (Insight) check reduces the price to its challenge rating × 50 gp per day.

Pragmatic Combatant. A yugoloth assesses combat situations evenly, choosing tactics that ensure its personal survival, even at the expense of its allies. Consider a yugoloth’s Intelligence score when deciding its tactics. For example, a mezzoloth with an Intelligence of 7 (–2) is pragmatic insofar as it tries to kill a single enemy as quickly as possible, without much mind for complex maneuvers. On the other hand, an ultroloth with an Intelligence of 18 (+4) stays out of the line of fire by using its Teleport or Hypnotic Gaze actions whenever enemies get too close, and using spells like wall of fire to keep its foes at bay.

How have you played yugoloths in your game? Do you have any stories of truly terrifying encounter with these fiends?

You can pit your characters against the forces of the Abyss and the Nine Hells in Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, now on the D&D Beyond Marketplace! 

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of  Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.

Comments

  • To post a comment, please or register a new account.
Posts Quoted:
Reply
Clear All Quotes