Demon Lords. You use 'em?

[Stone Angel]

Not too much I always plan to. But for some reason I feel that they detract something. They are part of the plot but not really an encounter.

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

 

[Gez]

Yep, I use them.

The fiends are cleft in two groups, those that obey evil gods (and who live, like all gods and all servants of the gods, on the moon), and those that rebelled and are carving the "Abyssal Hells" by rotting away the core of the prime, destroying the material plane from the inside to build their lower planes. (Celestials didn't rebelled, so I don't use the paragons from the BoED. Slaadi, formians, and modrons aren't races of divine servitors; although there are a few LN, N, and CN servitors -- I've enough bestiaries to find them.)

 

[Aeolius]

Dagon figures heavily, in the background of my undersea campaign.

 

[Allanon]

Well, since my planescape campaign went through dead gods Orcus was inevitable, specialy since after resolving the adventure Orcus himself has a rather large grudge against the party .
Haven't used any of the others although they do stumble upon a snippet of information concerning the Demon and devil lords.

I'm currently thinking of having them square of against Bel because of some trickery by Orcus but I'm having 'trouble' keeping the paranoia levels playable, ever since they've encountered visages everything has become rather suspect in their eyes. :\

 

[Richards]

My players have encountered Orcus, but only because I ran them through a Dungeon adventure

Spoiler

("Headless")

that featured a relic that grabbed up the souls of the recent dead and hijacked them to the Abyss. When the PCs went to go put it out of action, they failed - miserably. As in TPK. So, rather than start a new campaign from scratch, I had them "wake up" in the Abyss with no memories of their former lives, having been told that Orcus wiped their memories after a failed attempt to usurp him. (I even renamed the PCS: Justaine became "Germtongue," Veridian became "Vilechild," etc.) He kindly offered them a chance to redeem themselves in his eyes by performing a series of missions for him, after which time he would "restore" them to their former "demonic glory." Fortunately, after about three successful missions they regained their normal memories, managed to get themselves resurrected on the Prime Material Plane, and have spent most of their time trying to undo the things they did when they were "dead" and thinking themselves demons.

The players had a lot of fun being evil for awhile, and right now they're under constant attack by their NPC druid's former awakened dire wolf animal companion. Neither he nor the NPC druid escaped from Orcus' sway, and they're still working for him. The dire wolf, now renamed Karkass, has been remade into a mohrg dire wolf and has been tracking the PCs for weeks now. He shows up (usually leading a pack of winter wolves or similar creatures), attacks the PCs, they kill him, and he reforms on the Abyss, where Orcus just makes him slightly more powerful and sends him out again the following day....

Other than Orcus, though, I haven't used any of the Demon Lords. I hadn't planned on using Orcus, either - it just turned out that way.

Johnathan

 

[dead]

Ya, I use 'em.

I think they're a cool uber-Enemy for the PCs to wanna smack down one day.

For example, my PCs wanna smack down Graz'zt one day.

The question is: Are your demon lords gods or not?

They're not in my game, but it can get confusing sometimes when some products quote Orcus and Demogorgon as gods while other sources don't. Also, when Lolth is called a god when she used to be called a Demon Queen.

Similarly, I'm running a GH campaign and I have to somehow rationalize why Iuz is a god but his father, Graz'zt is just a demonlord and his mother, Iggwilv, is just a powerful mortal.

 

[Darth Krzysztof]

The question is: Are your demon lords gods or not?

They aren't gods in my campaign, because it dates back to 1st Edition, when PCs actually -could- kill them. Orcus and Tiamat (who was an archdevil back then) both bit the dust in the Bloodstone campaign, and Lolth mostly got killed when I ran GDQ1-7.

Mind you, I still like the idea of archfiend cults, so now they're quasi-deities whom offer 1 domain each (choose law, evil, or chaos as your 2nd). And some archfiends of my own have taken the places of the fallen. The "seven deadly sin" domains in the last Dragon magazine were perfect for filling in the gaps.

 

[Gez]

IMC, they aren't gods because, to be god, there's a requirement to have your palace on the moon.

Of course, the Nether Gods worshipped by underdark monsters aren't considered gods, either. And the archfiends have cultists who consider them gods.

But they don't have clerics. Fiends of blasphemy play this role instead.

 

[dead]

They aren't gods in my campaign, because it dates back to 1st Edition, when PCs actually -could- kill them. Orcus and Tiamat (who was an archdevil back then) both bit the dust in the Bloodstone campaign, and Lolth mostly got killed when I ran GDQ1-7.

In first edition the demonlords were just as powerful as the gods in combat, I think?

 

[Desdichado]

I use 'em for one shots, really. I like the idea of them, but I agree that actually using them feels a bit cliched. Which is why using them for one-shots, where the cliche is a shortcut to get to the action, is a great idea.