What holds the world in balance? (or, why aren't demons over-running the world?)

[Mercurius]

Think about it: in the D&D universe--whether the old Great Wheel set-up or the new cosmology--you have countless deities of every possible alignment and ideology; you have planes of purist evil, including the near endless Abyss that is teeming with demons, not to mention the many epic level adventurers that seek their own immortality.

How does the world stay in balance? A specific question might be, why hasn't the maw of the Abyss opened up and flooded the world (whether your homebrew, Eberron, Greyhawk, etc)?

Is there a canonical reason? What about yours, if you've thought of it?

[El Mahdi]

In later 2E and all of 3E, the controlling mechanic was the Blood War between Demons (Tannari) and Devils (Baatezu), with the Neutral Evil Arcanoloths in the middle pulling the strings.

I don't know if there is a controlling mechanic in the 4E cosmology. The 4E experts on the board would have to answer to that.

In my games I prefer the idea that Good and Evil balance eachother out (not just Evil vs. Evil keeping it in check and good hoping the status-quo never changes). Good can be powerful in it's own right, and in my campaigns it is. I like the idea of a constant war between Good and Evil going on beyond where mortals can observe it (like in Heaven and Hell). Whether a cold war or a hot war, that's my preference.

[Voadam]

The abyss does not connect to the world.

Demons are mostly here from being individually summoned. Two hundred demons running around this world serving their own ends is a lot different than a trillion running around the abyss and rampaging into neighboring connected planes.

There are a couple modules where the plot is stop the construction of a gate to the fiends before an army can pour out and cause an apocalypse.

[Andor]

In a lot of worlds there are reasons that are not really visible from a PC standpoint. Afterall a wizard can just open a gate and walk into hell, but it doesn't necessarily follow that a demon can just open a gate and walk into the prime.

For example, there might be a Good/Evil zero sum rule. So every demon that enters the world allows an angel to enter to balance him. Which btw explains why the forces of good are so reluctant to intervene directly, they don't want to allow a corosponding number of demons to intervene elsewhere. Or more interestingly it might be sort of the opposite of the planescape assumption. That is to say the prescence of supernatural evil in the mortal world might balance out by moving the whole mortal plane that much closer to goodness.

Or it can be something subtler. For example turn the normal assumption on it's head, what if demons are immortal in Hell, but can be killed for good in the mortal worlds? That's a pretty good incentive to stay away.

[Shemeska]

The fiends had several reasons for not swamping the prime material plane:

1 - they had bigger things to worry about. Namely, each other. They couldn't divert resources, or feared what might happen if they diverted resources from the Blood War.

2 - they created new fiends either entirely (baatezu) or primarily (tanar'ri) from mortal souls. It was in their own best interests to largely leave the worlds of the material plane alone to function as sources of new souls, with the exception of small-scale attempts to sway a given world towards their side of the alignment spectrum, so as to enrich their ranks and starve their enemies.

3 - the 'loths aren't as much players here. They're utterly disinterested in mortals for the most part, and more focused on the planes, and in any event, the first two reasons are vastly larger players here.

[Lord Zack]

Well in my campaign many worlds have been destroyed by demons or the like. The world where the PCs live is just one of many. Maybe it just hasn't been noticed, or the demons haven't gotten around to it. Or maybe it's scheduled for invasion by the devils but it has to go through the infernal bureaucracy, which will probably take many years to actually get around to approving the invasion. Then there's the Blood War, and of course the Rilmani won't let any side get too strong. If some world were to be invaded there would likely be a response from other extraplanar forces as well. Then of course there are meddling adventurers...

[pawsplay]

Mostly, a standoff. The deities would blast the demons to smithereens. To protect them, the demon lords and their allies would have to take the field, and they know they would lose. Apart from, immortals in general, including demon lords, have a very long-term perspective and value humans more in the general than individually. Also, multple Material Planes... in the past, many worlds probably have been consumed by demon legions or converted wholesale into demiplanges, etc.

[DarwinofMind]

The 4e reasoning is Primal Spirits, Things such as, Great Bear, North Wind, etc. they pushed the gods and primadols out of the world at the end of the Dawn War.

[ScorpiusRisk]

Currently, I'm using layered planes in my homebrew campaign.

For most people, the very top layer is the Astral Sea, with its Dominions. Below that, the skies of the material plane. Below that the land and seas. Below that the Underdark. Below the Underdark is the Elemental Chaos. Below that the Abyss.

Technically it's possible, to travel, without the use of portals, from an Astral Dominion all the way to the Abyss.

The reason why Demons don't swell up is three fold.

1. The demons are not organized, and are constantly fighting each other.
2. The world was not always shaped like this, and the Abyss is still linked to the Astral Domain of Baator by powerful portals. The Blood War is still going on.
3. It takes a long time, to travel between areas. Due to reason number 1, any sizeable force of demons doing so would inevitably wittle itself down due to infighting.

That being said, there is actually an area of my world, on the Material Plane, where the blood war rages, again due to portals.

[billd91]

Much the same reason that the infinite forces of good don't dominate - there's a certain balance of power. Direct intervention will tend to be met by direct opposing intervention. It's why the various external forces engage in proxy wars - using their servants on the prime material to promote their interests.

[malraux]

In the PoL 4e setting, kinda the point is that evil has overbalanced good. There are just a few points of light that have held out so far.

[Theo R Cwithin]

In my homebrew, the multiverse is dominated by vast currents and rotations which make it difficult to travel in certain directions, kind of like swimming upstream. The Abyss is at the "bottom", and getting up out of it takes a LOT of effort - though slipping down into it is fairly simple

The Abyss is the last stop for any given bit of material existence. In a way, it's llke a series of cosmological sieves, serving to filter out any latent nastiness clinging to a particular "atom", before it "evaporates" into it's base elements to be slowly swirled back into the Elemental planes where it will be "recycled".

[Asmor]

Originally Posted by Andor

For example, there might be a Good/Evil zero sum rule. So every demon that enters the world allows an angel to enter to balance him. Which btw explains why the forces of good are so reluctant to intervene directly, they don't want to allow a corosponding number of demons to intervene elsewhere.

Oh my god. That idea is freaking amazing. I'm totally posting that in my blog (with credit to you, of course)!

EDIT: link

[Crothian]

That is neat. Each time the party kills a demon eith an angel gets kicked out of the world or it would allow another demon to enter theirs.

[Dannyalcatraz]

Andor's idea is excellent.

One that shows up in RW occult lore is that our plane of existence is kind of like a room with a bunch of 1-way doors with handles only on our side. IOW, while a person on our plane can open a door, a being on the outside cannot- at least, not easily- and yet, while here, some of those beings are quite capable of summoning allies.

Another idea is that, regardless of type, other planar beings are bound by supernatural rules that govern and limit what they can and cannot do. And we don't know all the rules. Those rules aren't just laws, but rather part of the innate structure that makes up the fiber of those beings. They can't break those rules any more than you or I could bend our elbows 360deg.