D&D 5E WOTC Possibly Removing "Druids" for Religious/Cultural Sensitivity Reasons

[Mind of tempest]

Hardly any of them are proficient in fiddle.

that is the devil and the satan lucifer is not here to grace the game with his mad fiddle skills

 

[Vaalingrade]

All of them could be better, though. D&D devils, by any name, only periodically act like devils and there's no significant mechanical support for the most famous tropes around them in the west.

Not a pitchfork among them and narry a one is small enough to sit on your shoulder.

 

[Gradine]

And none of them seem to carry any paprika in their inventories

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

the deals yeah?

Yes.

Deals with devils exist, they get mentioned, but there's not much mechanical heft to them, certainly not enough for most DMs to be comfortable using them or -- crucially -- players to ask about seeking out a devil to sell their soul to them.

To get there, we'd need to quantify, once and for all, what having a soul or not having a soul means in D&D. (At various points, non-humans didn't always have them, for instance.) Does it just mean a character is unable to be resurrected, or are there other penalties? (And in sidebar: Why, precisely, do devils want souls? Again, the reasoning has gone back and forth over the editions, since the developers, perhaps nervous from the Satanic Panic, never wanted to specify.)

What are the general guidelines for what can get for a soul? Can I instantly jump to level 20? Can I get a bunch of bonus feats? Can I get an artifact weapon? Can I cause the BBEG of the campaign to never have been born? Can I replace the BBEG myself?

How does one summon a devil? Surely any old crossroads isn't sufficient, or every traffic jam in the imperial capital would be full of people trading their souls in return for harm done to the idiots holding up traffic on Market Day.

What are the terms of these deals? Why do some people get X years before the Devil claims their soul and takes them to Hell while others apparently give it away immediately but don't get dragged to Hell? Do I get turned into a lemure or something cooler?

It's been more than 30 years since the Satanic Panic. The people who were sure that Unearthed Arcana was full of actual magic have moved on to other pursuits.

D&D devils are mostly distinguished from other fiends by their alignment. Other publishers have found ways to make them more "devilish." It would be great if WotC could make a little more progress toward this goal, or just drop the names "devil" and "Hell" entirely and let them be their own thing instead.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yes.

Deals with devils exist, they get mentioned, but there's not much mechanical heft to them, certainly not enough for most DMs to be comfortable using them or -- crucially -- players to ask about seeking out a devil to sell their soul to them.

I don't see that any special mechanics are needed for a character to sell their soul. It's something the DM can easily handle. Baldur's Gate 3 features deals with devils - two of them - and it doesn't have any special rules. It just deals with consequences.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I don't see that any special mechanics are needed for a character to sell their soul. It's something the DM can easily handle. Baldur's Gate 3 features deals with devils - two of them - and it doesn't have any special rules. It just deals with consequences.

A binding legal contract is really all you need

 

[Mannahnin]

The simple solution is to change the name of all classes to new made-up words that are used just for the game, and have no relation to any real world culture or religion.

• Foomp
• Gluub
• ...

Anyone want to guess which is which?

Maybe, overlying a valid (if probably unworkable) suggestion to rename all the classes using made-up words. Kind of along the same lines as when 2e renamed devils and demons, only for different reasons.

Advantage (to the IP holders anyway): those made-up class names could then be copyrighted.
Disadvantage (to the users): loss of familiarity.
Disadvantage (to the IP holders): most people would likely go on using the already-familiar names anyway. Odds are high I'd be one of them.

This is the Games Workshop approach. I don't call them the Astra Militarum, they're still the Imperial Guard to me. A lot of companies that produce paint for the miniatures market also does this. Instead of just calling it Green they'll name a color Cultist Robe or a yellow Zealot Yellow. Hats off to Monument Hobbies who gives us normal names like Transparent Yellow, Pale Pink, and Bright Pale Green.

I was going to note the same. While Rhaez' list is obviously silly and facetious, the points are real. 1) Made-up names avoid real-world cultural reference, and 2) they have the advantage from a corporate perspective of being copyrightable, 3) Made up names have the downside of not being immediately evocative or grounding.

When I started playing Warhammer in the 90s they had paint colors like Blood Red, Bleached Bone, Tentacle Pink, etc. And these were reasonably descriptive but also easy for third party paint companies to do similar names for their matching paint colors. Bloody Red, Bone Tan, Tentacular Pink, or what have you. And GW did eventually rename their colors after their factions, with stuff like Iyanden Yellow, Biel-Tan Green, Space Wolf Grey, etc. And yeah, they did similar with their factions which had more generic names. Imperial Guard getting renamed Astra Militarum. Sisters of Battle to Adepta Sororitas, etc. This makes it a little trickier for TPP to encroach on their IP.

I don't think this approach is a perfect fit for D&D, though, because D&D doesn't have one big all-encompassing setting. By design, D&D is meant to support both its published settings and homebrew settings. And evoking archetypes from real world history, mythology, and folklore is very helpful for players to be able to imagine stuff. If I use a made up name like "Jedi", or "Sith Lord" I've got to introduce people to the fiction defining what the heck that is, so the word means something to them.

I guess there can be some friction when some people see problems with a name and other do not. I can at least see why some people aren't happy with Shaman in that I can follow their argument even if I don't necessarily agree. But if people are genuinely offended by the use of Barbarian or Druid, I just don't care in the slightest to make any concessions there. But if D&D ever decides to change the names, I'm not going to get overly upset. It's just a game.

Yeah, tastes and standards change over time, but I'm in a similar spot on those names. Druid and Barbarian don't bother me at all. My understanding is that the term "Shaman" was used generically/universalized a lot for decades, but that there's been some pushback on that practice in academia, because it is a term borrowed from a specific culture and the way the English term was defined has gotten kind of inappropriately applied to unrelated cultures like, e.g., Native American ones.

 

[Staffan]

This is the Games Workshop approach. I don't call them the Astra Militarum, they're still the Imperial Guard to me. A lot of companies that produce paint for the miniatures market also does this. Instead of just calling it Green they'll name a color Cultist Robe or a yellow Zealot Yellow. Hats off to Monument Hobbies who gives us normal names like Transparent Yellow, Pale Pink, and Bright Pale Green.

As a side note, Army Painter has recently begun using descriptive color names on their labels – so they'd have a color named "Sand Golem", but the label will also list "Strong Yellowish Brown" in smaller type. They started with their Speed Paints 2.0, and are going to continue that with their new "Fanatic" paint line coming next year.

Yes.

Deals with devils exist, they get mentioned, but there's not much mechanical heft to them, certainly not enough for most DMs to be comfortable using them or -- crucially -- players to ask about seeking out a devil to sell their soul to them.

I have recently come around to seeing "selling your soul" in a more metaphoric fashion. It's not about making a specific contract in exchange for specific benefits – anyone making such a contract was probably heading for the lower planes anyway. Rather, it's a metaphor for performing evil deeds for your own benefit. Your soul was sold when you turned in that refugee in order to curry favor with the evil government, or when you stabbed your buddy in the back because you didn't want to share the treasure. That doesn't mean you can't have other contracts with devils, but they won't be dealing with souls directly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I have recently come around to seeing "selling your soul" in a more metaphoric fashion. It's not about making a specific contract in exchange for specific benefits – anyone making such a contract was probably heading for the lower planes anyway. Rather, it's a metaphor for performing evil deeds for your own benefit. Your soul was sold when you turned in that refugee in order to curry favor with the evil government, or when you stabbed your buddy in the back because you didn't want to share the treasure. That doesn't mean you can't have other contracts with devils, but they won't be dealing with souls directly.

Most devils use "click-through" licensing agreements nowadays.

 

[Umbran]

Yes.

Deals with devils exist, they get mentioned, but there's not much mechanical heft to them, certainly not enough for most DMs to be comfortable using them or -- crucially -- players to ask about seeking out a devil to sell their soul to them.

Points at warlocks.