Changes to Devils and Demons

mhensley · Aug 30, 2007

From Rich Baker's blog-

- Devils are angels who rebelled. They rose up against the deity they served and murdered him. The crime of deicide is unimaginably perverse for angels, and hence devils were cursed and imprisoned in the Nine Hells.
- The Nine Hells are what became of the murdered deity's divine realm after his death. The Hells are the devils' prison, and it is difficult for them to get out without mortal aid.
- We've re-sorted demons and devils a bit, since we want these two categories of monsters to make a little more sense. Devils tend to be more humanoid in form, usually fight with weapons, and often wear armor. Most have horns, wings, and tails. One consequence of this: the erinyes and the succubus were holding down pretty similar territory, so we've decided that they're the same monster, called the succubus, and it's a devil.
- Ice devils don't look like other devils. We've decided that they are actually a demonic/yugoloth race... one that was entrapped by Mephistopheles long ago in an infernal contract. So ice devils hate other devils, retain their insect-like appearance, and have a special loyalty to Mephistopheles. It's one of the reasons why Asmodeus has never chosen to move against Mephistopheles. Asmodeus would of course win if he did, but that would let the ice devils out of their contract.

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=906386

I don't think I like the sound of this. It's cutting a bit too close to real religions for me.

Miar · Aug 30, 2007

That was my reaction as well. I didn't like them as they were. The whole subset of beings who are after your soul just never worked for me. Anyone want to explain why they like demons and devils so much?

Someone · Aug 30, 2007

So, the phrase that better describes succubi is now "turncoat whore?"

delericho · Aug 30, 2007

I'm not keen on it either, but for a different reason. It feels like change for the sake of change.

Ace32 · Aug 30, 2007

Does this mean that demons and devils are no longer bound to a specific alignment? After all, to say that all lawful evil planars are humanoids while all the chaotic ones cannot be is rather rigid.

Likewise, the poor succubus shouldn't lose chaotic evil status just to fit into this new archetyping game.

grimslade · Aug 30, 2007

How many RW religions have a dead or murdered deity? Is it the angels rebelling thing? So did the greek gods against the titans. Lots of mythic parallels to draw on.
I like the changes of combining the succubus and the eryines and giving a greater difference between demons and devils. I don't like the ad hoc Ice Devils are really demons but we fudged it, so they're devils.

jimpaladin · Aug 30, 2007

I agree, we'll have to wait and see if they put that fluff in or not. WotC needs(and i think they are) to be very careful with how they handle the "gods" of the new setting. They mention using perhaps some real world mythos to bring about a different feel. Most real world mythos don't have "devils" tho' they do have evil or more accurately anti-human dieties that strive for their own goals.

Anyway, not going to get preachy

Kaodi · Aug 30, 2007

I'm cool with the whole " re-sort " thing, but I mean, come on! It's almost as if they WANT religious groups to lay the freakin' smackdown on them with an origin story like that.

Krellic · Aug 30, 2007

A few weeks ago I got myself a copy of Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells and I thought that the bit they did explaining where the devils originated and how they fitted into the Blood War quite well done. This new explanation just throws that out which is a real shame.

I think one of the dangers of redesign, reimagining or whatever you call it is that sometimes things get redesigned apparently purely for the sake of someone new getting to put their particular spin on things.

No problem with erinyes and succubi being rolled into a single critter, I suspect the erinyes name is too cool to remain in limbo for long and the ice devil wrinkle seems quite cool - no pun intended - as well.

Aloïsius · Aug 30, 2007

So we can guess tiefling have a devilish ancestry, rather than a demoniac one.

I always thought the two category (demons and devils) did not make sense at all, because it was mostly impossible to guess if a particular creature was one or the other. So, I think this is a move in the good direction.

However, I felt a disturbance in the force, as if millions of Planescape's fan suddenly cried in horror...

Btw, erinyes are somewhat more interesting than succubus, IMHO. I guess the sword wielding furry born of the blood of a god is more interesting than the average whore-demon. And the name is cooler, too.