Why all the demon love?

[Kae'Yoss]

I'm not saying chaotic is random OR stupid. I'm saying that Chaos is less organized, less methodical, and less patient that law. You example reverses the relationship. Chaos is more than individualism.

That's right. It's one definiton of chaos. The part they also use in chaos theory (we all know the butterfly effect). It's all incredibly complex, to the point where a mere mortal has no hope of seeing the actual patterns. So he assumes that it's all random, when in fact it has been the very Law of the Universe all along. The universe thinks* big. A million years is nothing to it, and it doesn't think it has to explain itself to some upstart carbon-based critters who have hardly been around for 5000 generations. So those critters made up their own system: They saw that a lot of things in their immediate vicinity seemed to be subject to very simple cause-effect chains, so they decided that this was their thing, and they called it order. Proper things, they say, are simple and structured like that, and if you can't see the pattern, it's just disorder. They might consider themselves prophetic when they start a Grand Scheme that will be finished by their grandchildren, but they could never think about doing something small that has a large effect 20.000 years from now.


*well, not really, but you know what I mean

 

[Pants]

I've always pictured demons as being more ruled by intense emotions rather than by the cold, calculating logic of the devils. Some demons may display a veneer of self-control and logic, but beneath the surface, they're bubbling with intense feelings of rage, anger, and destructive impulses.

 

[schporto]

Personally I prefer devils. I like the more insidiousness of their nature. My comparison of them to demons is along the lines of this. A devil will take 50 years to corrupt one individual and consider it time well spent. The demon is more likely to kill that individual. I don't use them much though, because I can't plan that well. These are creatures of meticulous detail (devil's that is). A devil wouldn't have left a small ungaurded exhaust port on his base. Well he probably would've. But it would've been a trap.
In further terms of the death star...
A demon would've completed the death star first. Of course there would've been 10 exhaust ports (5 of which aren't connected though). He would've tortured and killed more of the crew. But when the plans fell into the rebel's hands, it would've been useless as the plans weren't followed exactly. Attention to detail is not a demon's strong point. Testing wouldn't have occured per se. It would've been a more direct approach of attacking whatever rebel was closest first.
A devil though! Hoo boy. That death star would've been impregnable. It would've had multiple power sources, and multiple death rays, along with multiple mini death rays to take out any little ships. The downside is that it would've taken longer (but exactly as long as predicted), and the testing of the ship would've been much more extensive. The plans may have been useful to the rebels, depending on the revision. But really the plans would've just shown the hopelessness of the situation.

I'm not saying a demon can't plan. I'm not saying a demon is dumb. I'm saying they're over eager. Not sticklers for details. Devils aren't smarter. And definitely not more creative. I consider demons to be the artists of evil painting in broad, strong. Devils are the architects of evil. Meticulous, exacting, planning everything in exquisite detail.

-cpd

 

[Victim]

You could just as easily argue that Law's stagnant and bureacratic nature makes executing effective plans impossible because the need to go through the structure means that windows of opportunity are invariably lost. Demons go destroy stuff randomly because it's fun, devil's do random stuff because they're executing a plan now long out of date - burning down some place in the wilderness because there was a town there 500 years ago. "My lord, I can happily report that our task was a complete success; the target was wiped from the map!"

But I kind of like having useful foes, so taking alignments to their screwed up extremes is kind of counterproductive.

 

[KL]

Why the Love for Demons

Personally I think the Devils, being Lawful in nature is exactly why demons are so popular. Being Lawful restrict their behavior. James Jacobs did bring up an important point: the vastness of the Abyss can basically accomodate any individual DM's own personal take without conflicting canonical material.

 

[Glyfair]

PJames Jacobs did bring up an important point: the vastness of the Abyss can basically accomodate any individual DM's own personal take without conflicting canonical material.

If that's an issue than why are we basically seeing retreads and complilations of existing material rather than new material? We are seeing existing demons being covered, not brand new demons.

 

[Pants]

If that's an issue than why are we basically seeing retreads and complilations of existing material rather than new material? We are seeing existing demons being covered, not brand new demons.

Malcanthet?

 

[Razz]

Devils and Demons...let's talk about Yugoloths and their comparisons to the other two! None are as vile as they!

 

[Shade]

One of the things that intrigues me the most about demons over devils in D&D, I suppose, is that there's more or less no cap to the development of demons, since there's 666 layers of the Abyss and no strict hierarchy of demon lords. For devils, you've got a very limited number of arch devils to work with; introducing new ones is really tricky and requires a lot more work; the same goes for the fact that all nine layers of Hell are pretty well detailed.

The Abyss is a deeper, larger pond, is all. It's nice to swim in a luxury swimming pool (devils), but I prefer floating around on the ocean and finding shores that are yet undiscovered (demons).

I prefer demons as well, for the reasons James mentioned. The Hells are well-detailed, while the Abyss is like the ocean...we've only scratched the surface of what lies beneath.

But I agree. More CERTAINLY needs to be done with yugoloths. And that's something that's hopefully going to be apparent in the next few issues of Dungeon, with more of the critters showing up in Savage Tide here and there. Including stats and an important role for a unique one...

Bless you, good sir. We'll keep doing our part flooding the Dragon inbox with 'loth queries.

 

[Gentlegamer]

In short: They're like ninjas*: Always surprising you, never showing you their cards (half the time, they don't have cards, but dice, anyway).


*but a lot weaker, of course. They aspire to become ninjas. When a balor further rises in power, he is turned into a ninja. That's why there's no books about devils: Whenever someone starts to write about them, a Balor Ninja appears and goes shinobi on their asses. The Fiendish Codex II was written by a ninja-demon, consisting solely of disparaging remarks about the Baatezu. It is very telling that many devil cultists took the book at face value and thought it properly depicted those "awesome devil dudes"

The only demon this like a ninja is a manes (weak, trying to be more than it ever can be).

Devils are like Pirates: wily, powerful, and superior to demons in every way. Including the maggot-spawned manes (ninja-demons).