tsadkiel
Legend
demiurge1138 said:Balor: The balor is one of several creatures that Dungeons and Dragons has blatantly ripped off of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series (see also goblin, halfling, orc, treant, wight, worg). The concept of a massive, powerful demonic creature with shadowy wings and a sword and whip of flame is straight from the balrog. But Gygax and Arneson managed to avoid the wrath of Tolkien’s estate because of the name, claiming they had taken the concept from Irish legend.
I shall quibble with this one. Back in original, original D&D, these were indeed called Balrogs. In 1st edition, they are referred to merely as "Type VI Demons"; however, the 1E DMG included a table of various monsters in the back, and said table also listed the names of several individual examples of the typed demons. The first individual Type VI listed is Balor, while the first Type V listed is Maralith, and so on for all the rest.
Upon the publication of 2E, TSR ignored all the various demons and devils up until the publication of the Outer Planes Monstrous Compendium appendix, when they all put on funny hats and called themselves tanar'ri and Baatezu. (Like that fooled anyone!) Obviously, they couldn't be called Type X demons anymore, so TPTB took some of the personal names from the DMG appendix and used them as names for the assorted demonic types.