D&D 5E (2014) Monsters of Many Names - Wandering Monsters (Yugoloth!)

[pemerton]

It's just not a major part of what makes yugoloths interesting as props in D&D, and is a more important part of the bag of other critters.

Out of interest, who are the "other critters" whose schtick it is to serve evil gods?

 

[RichGreen]

Out of interest, who are the "other critters" whose schtick it is to serve evil gods?

I asked that too up thread. Only the 4e angels.

Cheers


Rich

 

[I'm A Banana]

No offense, but I'm not about to read a long, semi-rambling post, either, especially if the previous posts to me were somewhat unfriendly or condescending (not that it's unwarranted, given the back and forth) and, at times, seemed disingenuous, or at least talking about completely other things ("kender as buckets for ideas"). Nor would I want to read it if I asked for a summary and was offered none. But, to your point, no, I don't think there's much point to your conversation.

But now I'm getting pie, because I explained my point better and illustrated how the article has bearing on the conversation!

I mean, if folks don't care enough about my point to bother reading something that could take 15 minutes and help them understand my point better, I can't say I'm particularly interested in reducing it to a sound bite. Some ideas are better communicated in longer essay form, with a complete thesis and supporting evidence, so that they can stand as a larger declaration. The idea of all design being local is one of those ideas. And if my point's unclear, well, that's why I'm here engaging in this conversation, to help someone who might want to understand, to understand.

And as for kender-buckets: the idea is that the things that make up a kender, things like energetic optimism and bold-or-stupid bravery, are things that reach beyond the containers of D&D and Dragonlance, which is why part of the kender circle falls outside of those circles in the diagram: there are many things about kender that are not the exclusive domain of either D&D or Dragonlance.

Ultimately, what that diagram was showing was that kender are a part of D&D, not apart from it. This serves to demonstrate that any particular game element is a part of D&D. Because of the phenomenon of local design, any particular part of D&D may be define what D&D is for a particular table. So an edition of D&D that wants to unify the base would do well to blatantly sign on to the idea that it will be something you can play your local version of the game in. Which means it must not invalidate old lore wherever possible. Which means leaving room for god-hating yugoloths in the core. Which means not re-defining them as servants of the evil gods. And if you'd like to add extra yugoloths who for some reason serve evil gods, I would still question as to what you actually gain from that.

Out of interest, who are the "other critters" whose schtick it is to serve evil gods?

Well, for Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil, it's pretty obviously devils and demons. And specific deities of course have specific servitors (ie: an evil god of fire, regardless of alignment, would probably call on fire elementals, and just make 'em evil). So the question seems to about either specifically Neutral Evil gods in general and/or about trans-evil gods, gods who would like to unite all evil.

And really the answer is the same in either case: undead.

Take a look at the NE gods of D&D, or the gods described as living on the Grey Waste/Hades. What are their areas of control? Death, death, disease, death, death, death, the underworld, death, and death. Creating undead is what these guys do for fun. The underworld is full of souls. Neutral evil gods in D&D have long been associated with and defined by death (and thus, the undead).

More than just specifically gods of death, though, evil clerics of any alignment since the invention of the evil alignment (CE, LE, NE, whatever) have always had special power to control the undead, while good clerics of any alignment have always had a special power to turn the undead aside. And even before the invention of "evil" as a distinct alignment, the undead were clearly aligned with Chaos, and a Chaos priest could not turn them. This is the fundamental good vs. evil conflict as described in the mechanics of D&D of any edition: the undead vs. the living, healing vs. killing, life vs. death.

If you're a D&D god, and you're evil, you and undead go together, even if you're some sort of god of evil life. Similarly, if you're a D&D god, and you're good, you hate undead, even if you're some sort of god of benevolent death. And if you're an NE evil god, undead are your go-to for "powerful supernatural beings at your command." Be ye a power of death or a power of hatred or a power of darkness, the undead are yours to create, and while your enemies have devas that announce the good news and sing their praises, you have the corrupted souls of their former creations, wailing in their pain, perverse examples of the failure of the forces of good to protect all of their charges from your desecration. If the forces of good will soothe your soul, the forces of evil will ensure it remains forever restless.

This association has waxed and waned, and there's clearly gods for whom this is not a major concern. But this isn't about any individual evil deity, but about evil deities in general. In the survey of divine evil in D&D, the undead are a constant unifying presence, and the life vs. death conflict is a constant reoccurring motif.

If you want to create a splinter group of yugoloths that seek to serve evil deities, you first need to un-seat zombies and skeletons and wraiths and specters and wights and ghouls and even vampires and mummies, and then you might need to un-seat turn undead and reversed cleric spells and necrotic/radiant dichotomies. And that's before all the other risks you run with any new IP, and the problem that this splinter group doesn't contribute anything to the existing awesome of the rest of the 'loths.

So a splinter group of 'loths wouldn't be unacceptable because of an invalidation of a previous lore, but they still would likely be not a great idea, in part because they'd be newly arrived in the place where undead have been consistently delivering, and they'd be far from the strengths of the existing yugoloth-as-mercenary-with-a-hidden-agenda account.

[sblock]
PS: As an aside, the undead have a fairly unique relationship with the PS setting, and because of that, they were never really major antagonists on the planes for the PC's, unless said PC's went up against Orcus or a death god or the like. The evil of the undead was downplayed in part of the effort to present a more grey-and-grey morality spectrum in D&D, and in part due to the sympathetic characters found in the Dustmen faction, and in part due to the distance of the negative energy plane in the 2e cosmology. So Planescape didn't worry too much about the undead, itself. Which gives us the circumstance of having the most powerful servitors of evil divinities being much more present in an "average" campaign than in a planar-centric one.
[/sblock]

 

[Shemeska]

Out of interest, who are the "other critters" whose schtick it is to serve evil gods?

Off the top my head:

Linqua - Servitors of Sung Chiang
Abishai - Tiamat (though not exclusively, but she did create them in collaboration with one of the Dark 8)
Yochlol - servitors of Lolth

and depending on how you define him/her/it (as a god or not) - demodands/gehreleths are all servitors of Apomps the Triple Aspected.

 

[JamesonCourage]

I mean, if folks don't care enough about my point to bother reading something that could take 15 minutes and help them understand my point better, I can't say I'm particularly interested in reducing it to a sound bite.

I think you're mischaracterizing a bit. But I'm not sure that's unusual as of late in this thread.

Some ideas are better communicated in longer essay form, with a complete thesis and supporting evidence, so that they can stand as a larger declaration.

True. But, all ideas can be summed up, especially so as to draw interest to the longer explanation. If you don't see the value in that, I'm not going to try to explain it.

The idea of all design being local is one of those ideas. And if my point's unclear, well, that's why I'm here engaging in this conversation, to help someone who might want to understand, to understand.

No offense, but I'm not going to constantly learn your terminology for stuff, especially since it seems like you're the only one who really uses it. As it stands, I rarely use GDS, I never use GNS, I dislike stances, etc. Getting into your personal terminology of things you like (design being local, tiers as treasure, etc.) is just not going to happen. If you want to communicate solely with people interested in your personal terminology, go for it, but you might find that somewhat problematic with the majority of posters on this message board.

And as for kender-buckets: the idea is that the things that make up a kender, things like energetic optimism and bold-or-stupid bravery, are things that reach beyond the containers of D&D and Dragonlance, which is why part of the kender circle falls outside of those circles in the diagram: there are many things about kender that are not the exclusive domain of either D&D or Dragonlance.

Which, as far as I can tell, nobody else is talking about, or trying to. They're talking about D&D-specific things and how they relate to D&D.

Ultimately, what that diagram was showing was that kender are a part of D&D, not apart from it. This serves to demonstrate that any particular game element is a part of D&D. Because of the phenomenon of local design,

I'll read the rest of this after a clear summary of what it is you're talking about. Not that I'm holding my breath. As always, play what you like

 

[Balesir]

I asked that too up thread. Only the 4e angels.

To be honest, these seem to me to be the ones that make the most sense. Who would a god have as a servitor if not a creature created to serve gods? But, then, I really don't think of gods thinking of themselves as "evil" - they think of themselves as "right". It's hard-coded into them, I think. The idea that they were any less a god, or any less right, for having a particular "alignment" I just don't see as forming any part of their psychological make-up. Ergo, when it comes to servitors, they will hire/sign-up/suborn/create angels, just like any other god.

The idea of all design being local is one of those ideas. And if my point's unclear, well, that's why I'm here engaging in this conversation, to help someone who might want to understand, to understand.

I haven't even read the article, but I get this point. It drove me crazy with the debates about "everything is core" for 4E. The idea that there is some sort of "core" that everyone is forced to use is just loopy. I think the venn diagram you gave can illustrate it nicely - where is the "core" in that diagram? If it's another oval, like the one for Dragonlance but entirely inside the D&D circle, what is it that makes it not "just another setting"?

The idea of "mandatory elements" is, in itself, barmy. The only such element is the base system - the mechanisms and keywords. Game "elements" - classes, spells, feats, monsters, planes of existence and so on - cannot possibly be mandatory. To see this, simply consider that no character can be of every class, with every spell and power and feat and magic item all at once. No adventure can possibly involve every monster, every trap, every disease and every conceivable terrain type all at once. Ergo all such "game elements" must be optional. Adopting wording or conventions to say that this is more or less so for any specific element is both unneccessary and potentially obnoxious. The only thing "core" can usefully mean is "designed and tested to work with the other elements also provided for the game" - and that is precisely what I took 4E's "everything is core" to mean.

If you don't want particular elements in games you run, fine - don't use them! Ban them, excoriate them, put them on hate lists for all I care but saying they "shouldn't be core" is just a pointless expression of bigotry. It's pointless because others will include or not include these elements in their own games as they see fit, and it's bigotry because that's what a blind refusal to accept others' points of view is.

If you have differences of opinion among your own gaming group about what game elements should and should not be included in any particular campaign, thet is a (social) problem for you to sort out by whatever method the group will accept (DM dictat, consensus decision, die roll or whatever) - it's not something the game designers can or should try to enforce. If your only or primary recourse when arguing that certain game elements should or should not be included in your game is to say "the designers said so", frankly you have problems no designer anywhere will solve.

 

[pemerton]

Off the top my head:

Linqua - Servitors of Sung Chiang
Abishai - Tiamat (though not exclusively, but she did create them in collaboration with one of the Dark 8)
Yochlol - servitors of Lolth

and depending on how you define him/her/it (as a god or not) - demodands/gehreleths are all servitors of Apomps the Triple Aspected.

I wouldn't say that's a very extensive list. Especially as abishai are devils (per Dragon magazine and MM2) and I've always treated yochlol as demons (and in 4e they are).

 

[Echohawk]

I've always treated yochlol as demons (and in 4e they are).

They were in 2nd edition Planescape and 3rd edition too:

Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II, p112: "Tanar'ri, Yochlol (Lesser)"
Monsters of Faerûn, p34: "Demon, Yochlol"

 

[Alzrius]

It's also worth noting that, in the "Demonomicon" articles in late 3.5 Dragon, most of the demon lords were presented with a new type of demon that was (for the most part) their servitor "race" - similar to how some gods have that.

I'm of the opinion that there really isn't a good one-size-fits-all servitor race for deities - even the angels are a poor fit at best, in my mind.

 

[Hussar]

Well, for Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil, it's pretty obviously devils and demons. And specific deities of course have specific servitors (ie: an evil god of fire, regardless of alignment, would probably call on fire elementals, and just make 'em evil). So the question seems to about either specifically Neutral Evil gods in general and/or about trans-evil gods, gods who would like to unite all evil.

I thought the demons and devils served demon lords and devil princes. Seems a bit odd that good gods get their own, special servitors, but, evil goods get Asmodeus' leftovers.

And, I stumbled across this in the wiki article on Yochlol;

The yochlol is next described for the Planescape campaign setting, in Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II (1995). In this book, they are described as lesser tanar'ri. Regarding Lolth, the book states that "The yochlol are her servants in her home layer and her agents on the Outer Planes. No other type of tanar'ri has such a close relationship with a power that inhabits the Abyss." This book notes that a yochlol's elven form is usually that of a drow. Yochlol do not usually get involved in the usual tanar'ri causes such as the Blood War, because they exist only to serve Lolth in whatever task she sets before them. According to this book, yochlol usually appear in their amorphous form in the Abyss, and in humanoid or spider shapes while on other planes. Yochlol again have psionic powers in this book. Other tanar'ri do not like Lolth's chosen servants, but they are guaranteed free passage in lands controlled by most Abyssal Lords out of fear of angering their mistress. The book reveals the method of the creature's creation: "The yochlol are recruited from the numberless ranks of least tanar'ri and subjected to unspeakable ceremonies and torture to win their elevated station."[4]

So, according to the canon you want to preserve, demons most certainly do not serve CE gods. Or is the wiki mistaken?