Demons, Devils and Celestials! Oh My!

[Jürgen Hubert]

I like the way they distinguished the origins of demons and devils. While this loses some of the symmetry of the older cosmologies, it also helps avoid confusion between their actions and plans - the differences between them could be rather subtle in some cases, which is not as it should be.

 

[bolen]

Am I wrong here: Demons/Devils had their name changed in 2nd edition because of all the controversy over them in 1st edition but by 3rd, pop culture had changed so that it did not matter anymore. Other games had far worse things and video games made slaying demons a main stay. Is this correct?

 

[Delta]

Bolen: Yes, pretty much. It may be less that popular culture grew accepting, and more that D&D's waning popularity made it less of a media target.

 

[Voadam]

I started playing BECMI, which has no demons. or Devils. Then I switched to 2E. Again, no demons or devils. They had the Tanari and Bazaatu (I'm probably mangling those names), but they weren't really played up outside of a few Planescape supplements. One hardly ever saw them, and I never once used any of them in my games.

Then I switched to 3.5, and there were a lot of demons. Especially in th OGL stuff. I mean goodness, I have endless legions of unique demons at my fingertips.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I was wondering if anyone else is like me a Nick, and came up through BECMI and 2E and is a little "WTF?" about all the demons.

Immortals set has the demons in it. Vrock, Glabrezou, and the others. Even Orcus as an Entropy power.

2 has a whole monstrous compendium for outer planes creatures that is filled with all the 1e fiends and provides much more information than there was in the 1e MM entries (minus the demon princes and archdevils). And that was before the three planescape monstrous compendiums.

1e didn't have that many fiends in modules. [sblock]Temple of Elemental evil has I think an Alu-fiend NPC running around. There are occassionally succubi as helpless shackled prisoners who will betray those who free them. Tomb of the Lizard King has a summoned vrock as a wandering monster in the tomb. The drow modules have some NE daemons. The joke module compilation Castle Greyhawk has Asmodeus and pit fiends in the 1st level module and Grazzt in a later one. There are the Orcus centered Bloodstone Path modules. Probably a few more but that's what I got off the top of my head.[/sblock]

 

[amethal]

I like using demons in my adventures.

However, I'm now running the War of the Burning Sky, which hasn't any demons in it, but does have a lot of devils. The party have talked to several of them, and so far they've been fun encounters.

 

[Voadam]

Check out where various demons actually appeared. There are similar ones for devils and celestials, etc.

http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/D&D_Named_Demon_Project

 

[doctorhook]

4E seems to be off to a fairly "demonic" start:[sblock=H1 and H2 spoilers]- H1 is about preventing a demon invasion from the Shadowfell, instigated by a death cult to demon lord Orcus. There are no actual demons in the module, IIRC.
- H2 is involves an underground city formerly dedicated to the demon lord Baphomet, as well as a cult to the demon lord Yeenoghu. Several encounters include Bar-lgura and Evistro demons, and a Quasit demon makes an appearance. Furthermore, there is at least one encounter with Spined Devils, as well as a dungeon filled with Duergar, who are now considered to be kind of mortal devil. Lastly, one optional encounter includes an evil Angel in the service of a Troglodyte priest.
- Future module P2 is titled "Demon Queen's Enclave", and promises to pit PCs against both Drow and Demon servants of Lolth.[/sblock]

 

[JeffB]

I don't know if demons will be everywhere in 4e, but I certainly felt they were everywhere in Paizo's Dungeon magazine

Yup. I noticed this as well. Alot of "half this, half that" too Got old real quick.

Demons are like Drow- a few sprinkled here and there are great, anything more than that= lame- really goes for any monster I guess, but especially those two.

Seems to me (so far) that for 4E, Kobolds have taken over for 3E's "demons" or 2E's "drow"

 

[Scribble]

It's predictable that it's gone that way. Angels and demons sell. Big time.

Divinci Code sold better... oh wait...

Am I wrong here: Demons/Devils had their name changed in 2nd edition because of all the controversy over them in 1st edition but by 3rd, pop culture had changed so that it did not matter anymore. Other games had far worse things and video games made slaying demons a main stay. Is this correct?

The change back happened when WoTC bought D&D. I remember there was an issue of Dragon where they started using the terms Demon and Devil again and, as an aside, made a comment something like: "we'll test our new owners and see if they make us change this..."

 

[El Mahdi]

. . . I switched to 2E. Again, no demons or devils. They had the Tanari and Bazaatu (I'm probably mangling those names), but they weren't really played up outside of a few Planescape supplements. One hardly ever saw them, and I never once used any of them in my games. . .

Man, I saw lots of demons in 2E. Just because TSR gave them funny names to throw off conservative elements, they were still demons. The MM's and the camapaign setting supplements (those cool MM portfolios for individual campaign settings) always had a plethora of Tannari, Batazu, and Yugoloths. So many in fact that only a percentage of them were ever translated to 3E.

I played in, and ran 2E adventures with demons. Now, I don't know if the demons our DM threw at us were actually written into the adventures or not (maybe our DM was just particularly devious), but we sure seemed to encounter our fair share. I remember one game where our whole group was almost taken out by our Rogue after secretly being forced to make a deal with a Pit Fiend (Ahh, good times).

We almost exclusively played Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, and never played Planescape. My favorite to throw at players was always the Molydeus. There were a lot of my favorites that I never saw translated into 3E.