Changes to Devils and Demons

[Seeten]

I like this quite a bit.

 

[mhensley]

And it's not like D&D hasn't been chopping up real religions for many years?

Zeus, Poseidon, Apollon, et al, belonged to a very real religion.

Odin, Thor, Freya, et al, still do. I've even heard rumors that Thor will make it into 4e...

D&D has always been stealing ideas from human myths. What is new? I'm sure the religions will survive.

I just find it lazy is all. How about stop stealing from known religious and make up your own bs.

 

[delericho]

To clarify, I would almost be surprised if there were no fundamentalist group that latched onto the whole, " We killed God " aspect of the devils background.

It's going to be a fairly small piece of text tucked away in the Monster Manual. Do you really think the D&D haters are going to be that familiar with the books? The mere presence of demons and devils in the game is enough for them.

In any case, WotC are quite rightly not designing to try to appease the anti-D&D crowd - it's a lost cause quite frankly. The people who hate the game will hate the game even if it becomes "My Little Pony: the RPG".

IMO, there is one section of 'religious folk' whom WotC should be concerned about, and that's the segment who are also gamers. As long as they don't drive them (okay, us) away, then they're okay.

 

[Benben]

Oh yeah! This is excellent! It removes the order/chaos division from the heralds of evil!

Now if they can make an interesting conflict between the heralds of chaos and order then I'll be even happier.

 

[RichGreen]

As a long-time Planescape fan and recent fan of FCI and FCII, I'm not keen. However, my wife always gets demons and devils muddled up so maybe Rich has a point.....

I'm not sure how much I like this "points of light" concept if it means playing fast and loose with 30 years of extraplanar continuity!

Cheers


Richard

 

[Wormwood]

I just find it lazy is all. How about stop stealing from known religious and make up your own bs.

Agreed.

Similarly, rather than simply continue with decades of bloated and thoroughly explored canon, I would like the 4e team to make up their own from scratch.

Ditch the Abyss and the Nine Hells and all that jazz. Just give us Hell and go from there.

 

[delericho]

About Interchangeable Demon/Devil encounters

...hopefully encountering one won't be interchangeable with an encounter with the other kind...

There is another (IMO better) way to ensure that those encounters are not interchangeable - put a usage note in the MM about the two monsters, and lay out different roles for the two. What's more, place Demons and Devils into different niches.

To use the monster categories I saw once in a Design and Development column, Devil should basically be assigned as Masterminds. Therefore, they should be individually more powerful than the corresponding Demon, but should also be much more likely to be encountered alone. By contrast, the Demons basically fit in the Brute category.

Amongst the changes, remove the ability to summon help from Devil write-ups. However, you conversely give them a number of powers/feats that allow them to work better with minions - perhaps an Improved Flank feat, or Aura powers similar to those of the Dragon Shaman. And definately give them a number of non-combat abilities to attract and control minions in the mortal sphere.

Demons, by contrast, are an undisciplined mob, and so have no such ability to coordinate their actions.

As a result of this, and in 3e terms, perhaps an appropriate encounter for a 20th level party would be either a CR 22 Pit Fiend or a CR 18 Balor and his retinue of half a dozen Glabrezu demons.

In addition, you note that the two categories of creatures have different campaign roles - 90% of the time, an encounter with demons is just an encounter with demons; they've probably been summoned by an infernalist to do his evil bidding. By contrast, if you encounter a Devil, it's either because you've just fought your way through several waves of his cultists/minions, or because he's working for some higher devil in a deeper infernal plot... or most likely both.

Now, tell me that those two are not completely different in flavour and usage. And I didn't negate hundreds of pages of published lore to do it, either.

 

[Nikosandros]

Mythologically yes. In practice in D&D they seem to me to have been used mostly as less sneaky analogues to the succubus.

Well, then given the sweeping changes that are being enacted, instead of eliminating the Erinyes they could have restored it to its proper role...

 

[Shemeska]

Ditch the Abyss and the Nine Hells and all that jazz. Just give us Hell and go from there.

In that case are you sure it's D&D that you really want to be playing?

 

[Voadam]

What demons and devils besides succubi and erinyes do you consider humanoid looking?

Tieflings? half of a marilith? Arch devils from 1e (except geryon)? Lolth, Grazz't, etc.? Chain devils. Imps? What about quasits?

Do they just mean they have hands and a head so pit fiends count?

Many devils are pretty monstrous, horned, lemures, pit fiends, barbed devils, bone devils, hellcats, even bearded devils.