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

[bogmad]

Law and chaos as opposed metaphysical forces is a Planescape invention. It does not occur in pre Planescape D&D.

I don't know enough about the Yugoloths and demons/devils to make any comments on anything else y'all are discussing, but I might disagree with this statement since the whole idea of law and chaos being opposed forces I thought was cribbed from Michael Moorcock in the construction of the alignment system to begin with. Sure, the whole multiverse and eternal champion stuff isn't part of D&D lore proper, but I'd say there's a precedent for Law and Chaos being opposed metaphysical forces and not something planescape injected into D&D.

 

[Hussar]

But, in AD&D, Law and Chaos had no actual effect outside of alignment. It wasn't until 3e that you had Law and Chaos as actual effects in the game. There was no Hammer of Chaos spell in AD&D. Everything was based on the good/evil axis.

 

[Balesir]

Law and chaos as opposed metaphysical forces is a Planescape invention. It does not occur in pre Planescape D&D.

Say what??? Sorry, I gotta stop you there - look in OD&D. Law and chaos were the only 'opposed metaphysical forces', there. It's 'good' and 'evil' that are the Johnny-come-latelys of D&D alignments, I think you'll find.

Besides which, if they're not opposed metaphysical 'sides' there's no real point in having them...

 

[Weather Report]

Say what??? Sorry, I gotta stop you there - look in OD&D. Law and chaos were the only 'opposed metaphysical forces', there. It's 'good' and 'evil' that are the Johnny-come-latelys of D&D alignments, I think you'll find.

Besides which, if they're not opposed metaphysical 'sides' there's no real point in having them...

Amazing, isn't it...but, yeah, OD&D is more the Moorcock thing.

 

[pemerton]

Lets alter the compromise a bit: in official D&D, some yugoloths have become demons, throwing in their lot with the CE fiends for (insert potential reason here). In your games, or other games that want the 4e lore, some is all.

On the one hand I don't want to get too pedantic over a fairly low-stakes debate. On the other hand, it's still the case that this altered compromise requires me to retcon my game, in which currently there is no such thing as yugoloths having become demons.

For clarity's sake, I'm not saying that that's a reason not to adopt that lore in D&Dnext. My point is that all lore requires someone, somewhere, to either change their game or ignore the lore.

Though it's worth noting that this distinction may be largely academic in 5e. If all evil extra-planar critters are "fiends," what falls into Demon and what falls into Devil and what falls into Other is likely open to reinterpretation.

For my money that would be a better way to go, though it may fit unhappily with alignment rules.

Before the Blood War, there was no reason that a Vrock and an Eriyes couldn't work together.

<snip>

There's certainly nothing in the Monster Manual or Monster Manual 2 which would preclude a Balor and a Pit Fiend from having a drink together.

There was. It was called "alignment."

LE and CE don't get along.

Orcs, which in AD&D are lawful evil, are well-known for working with ogres and trolls (both CE). I'm less certain of my memory on this next one, but I think goblins (LE) sometimes work with bugbears (CE). When Last Alliances need to be formed, elves (CG) will work with dwarves (LG). And I think I can look at classic module rosters, as well as tradition, to see CG rangers working with LG paladins (who have a bar on associating with evil, but not with chaotic, individuals).

As an AD&D GM I designed and ran scenarios in which LE devils worked with CE demons, with no sense that I was breaking or even stretching the game's alignment rules.

But, in AD&D, Law and Chaos had no actual effect outside of alignment. It wasn't until 3e that you had Law and Chaos as actual effects in the game. There was no Hammer of Chaos spell in AD&D. Everything was based on the good/evil axis.

Exactly. AD&D makes it pretty clear that the L/C divide is less fundamental than the G/E divide. (As [MENTION=27160]Balesir[/MENTION] et al have pointed out OD&D and B/X are different, but in those systems devils would have to be chaotic - or, to put it another way, those systems have no real room for devils as distinct from demons.)

Yugoloths/Daemons have never just been a variant demon, until 4th Ed's lazy hand-wave.

Never, since their inception.

In Vault of the Drow, mezzodaemons and nycadaemons hang out with the drow, who are known to be demon worshippers. Like demons, they are extraplanar and tough, with some odd and somewhat arbitrary resistances, and a wacky new version of magic resistance.

In actual play, they play very much like demons. My view is that someone who had played Vault of the Drow, or who had used the Fiend Folio daemons, or the entry in the original DMG, and who then picked up 4e and saw that daemons had been rolled into demons, would not get any great shock.

I will assert the same thing for MM2 hordelings, also. I mean, what's the real difference between the system for random generation of hordelings in MM2 and random generation of creatures from the lower planes in Appendix F? At least at that time, AD&D simply didn't draw any major distinction between the play of these different creatures.

If I personally was carving up the MM2 daemons, I would make the dergodaemons (sp?), yagnodaemons and hydradaemons into demons, the arcanadaemons into devils (perhaps serving Amon, given they have similar jackal heads), charonadaemons and Charon into devils (who ply the Styx and make pacts with travellers upon it), and ultradaemons I might link up with slaads somehow.

Same with that botched alignment system, I mean, what was with the arbitrary truncation, they might as well have scrapped it completely (along with classes).

Given how heavily class-based 4e is as a game, I don't really follow the paranthetical comment.

On the alignment system - it's not arbitrary just because you don't like it. I don't particularly care for Planescape, but that doesn't mean it's arbitrary. I assume that its authors had reasons for what they did - they're just not reasons that speak to me.

4e replaces grid alignment, which I personally find hopeless both from the abstract perspective of moral and social philosophy and from the practical perspective of running a game, with spectrum alignment on the same plan as OD&D and B/X - only as well as of L-N-C we get "Good" to signal the friendlier, more Robin Hood-ish side of unaligned and we get "Evil" to signal the more ugly, selfish side of unaligned. Chaotic Evil is reserved for "Emirikol the Chaotic" types, plus their extraplanar analogues.

Like classic alignment, the whole system is predicated on a cosmological struggle built into the foundations of the game (which means, in my view, that it probably doesn't make much sense in a Dark Sun campaign except as a personality shorthand for NPCs). It doesn't pretend to be a catch-all system of moral/ethical classication.

 

[Shemeska]

O
Orcs, which in AD&D are lawful evil, are well-known for working with ogres and trolls (both CE). I'm less certain of my memory on this next one, but I think goblins (LE) sometimes work with bugbears (CE). When Last Alliances need to be formed, elves (CG) will work with dwarves (LG). And I think I can look at classic module rosters, as well as tradition, to see CG rangers working with LG paladins (who have a bar on associating with evil, but not with chaotic, individuals).

Mortals aren't physical personifications of their alignment though. Demons and devils working together is like living magma being best friends with a living glacier.

Plus, mortals aren't hard coded to those alignment stats like demons/devils/'loths/archons/slaadi/etc. Mortals of a given species might tend towards a given alignment, but they range a wide spread of them. Various outsiders though, they don't. It's a billion in one chance that one of them is going to be of a different alignment, and while it's situational what that means, for an archon we generally call that alignment difference to be a fall from grace, and if a fiend alters their alignment (and there are examples across the editions) they typically end up dead by their own kind or exiled. Alignment is such an intrinsic component of what they are that it's not easy to compare their relations in a similar way to mortals of different alignments.

 

[pemerton]

Mortals aren't physical personifications of their alignment though.

In 1st ed AD&D a paladin is - s/he can be turned by an evil cleric just as a good cleric can turn lower planar creatures. But a paladin can still be friends with a CG ranger.

In DDG Odin is Neutral Good, Tyr Lawful Good and Thor Chaotic Good. Yet they all work together to chain the Fenris wolf, and fight together at the Ragnarok. Zeus is CG and Athena is LG, yet she is one of his favourites.

This idea that lawful and chaotic can't work together, even when we're talking about non-mortal metaphysically more complex beings has, in my view, little cogency in 1st ed AD&D, and I feel it has little cogency in 2nd ed AD&D either outside of the Planescape context.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Save it, stop gunning for me.

<some words>

Extremely baaaad timing...

 

[Shemeska]

In 1st ed AD&D a paladin is - s/he can be turned by an evil cleric just as a good cleric can turn lower planar creatures. But a paladin can still be friends with a CG ranger.

I don't see how that even remotely puts a mortal on the same level as a demon, archon, etc. A side effect of their faith or deific empowerment yes, but it doesn't make them a physical manifestation of their alignment like those outsiders. If you want to consider it as such, that's your call, but I can't see it as being close.

In DDG Odin is Neutral Good, Tyr Lawful Good and Thor Chaotic Good. Yet they all work together to chain the Fenris wolf, and fight together at the Ragnarok. Zeus is CG and Athena is LG, yet she is one of his favourites.

This idea that lawful and chaotic can't work together, even when we're talking about non-mortal metaphysically more complex beings has, in my view, little cogency in 1st ed AD&D, and I feel it has little cogency in 2nd ed AD&D either outside of the Planescape context.

Gods aren't personifications of their alignment however. It varies to an extent on source, but they tend to be personifications of their portfolios and at times a reflection of their worshippers, but not physical manifestations of an alignment.

Plus there has always been a bit of a caveat regarding cross-alignment cooperation when it comes to good outsiders. Plus gods have relationships beyond alignment to take into consideration, especially when it's harkening back to real world mythology that didn't have D&D alignment. DDG was taking flavor and relationships from myth, while the ancient Greeks didn't write down that Zeus was CG and Athena LG, that was something added in for reasons that made sense to the DDG authors/designers/editors.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Law and chaos as opposed metaphysical forces is a Planescape invention. It does not occur in pre Planescape D&D.

Any alignment is an alignment with a metaphysical force. So, Law and Chaos are the original metaphyiscal forces in D&D.

Nothing I said should even imply that they "have" to work together. Just that the option is there.

And, it's a good thing I never said that they always work together isn't it?

I don't disagree the option is there.

But you implied that LE and CE fighting is specifically an invention of the Blood War and that they were essentially assumed to be allies before that. Which isn't right.

But, post Blood War, you're flat out stating that they can't.

No one is stating that except you, though. The Blood War doesn't mean they can't any more than Dragonlance means that they can't be enemies.

Sure, they don't get along. They're evil. But, that doesn't preclude them working together. Post Blood War, they can't. You've stated that multiple times in this thread.

They can, and I haven't said much about the Blood War.

Yugoloths are described as allying with both demons and devils as if it's something significant in their first appearance. This leads to the conclusion that while it's certainly not impossible for them to be allies, it isn't a common thing.

The difference for Yugoloths, according to you, is that they can work for either "side". Pre-Bloodwar, there isn't a "side" to work for. All the demons and devils are not locked into this monolithic struggle.

I'm not saying much about any kind of monolithic struggle. Just that they are different monster groups with different agendas. It's like saying orcs can work with goblins or trolls.

So, if demons and devils can work together, then why can't I have a vrock and an erinyes working together? Why do I need mercenary Yugoloths?

Probably because if we are going with the typical demon and devil distinctions talked about upthread, the vrock wants to kill the king and reduce the countryside to rubble an the erinyes wants to turn the king into a draconian ruler with an unstoppable army who can unite the countryside under a banner of tyranny.

Those goals are ultimately incompatible, though they can certainly be complimentary for a time.

Yet, yugoloths will work toward either end. For both sides. At once. They are found in both threats. Explicitly. Before the Blood War. Because you don't need a blood war to have rival factions of evil. And LE and CE are rival factions of evil. Because they have different goals. Since their inception.

I think your dislike of the Blood War is getting in the way of your point, here. It is possible for Demons and Devils to work together? Sure. It happens all the time and so there's no point in having a creature that works with either? Um. Even in Dragonlance, CE and LE aren't bosom buddies. Having a glue that holds them together, a common thread to connect them, a being that has interested in ALL kinds of evil? Yugoloth. Original MM2 style.