Changes to Devils and Demons

[Malhost Zormaeril]

But I'm going to miss my erinyes, because they've hit a sweet spot for me (much more than the succubi).

From what the info reads, though, they probably threw the succubi, and started calling the Erinyes Succubi. So you probably get your way...

Really, not wanting to sound insulting, but sounding anyway, this whole thread is such a tempest in a teacup... I like the Blood War, and if the designers say it's ended, then it's fine; when my players go to the Planes, the Blood War is still going on. After all, what do ignorant Primes know about the Multiverse?

 

[Aexalon]

From what the info reads, though, they probably threw the succubi, and started calling the Erinyes Succubi. So you probably get your way...

From what it reads to me (and they'd've done better to phrase it this way), is they scrapped the demonic Succubus, renamed the Brachina (the pleasure devil from FC:II) Succubus, and delayed the Erinyes for publishing in 4E MM2 as proper vengeance devil. Or, as I like to put it, in terms of mortal sins (for that nice judeo-christian angle): Succubus = lust, Erinyes = wrath.

& while I'm on my soap-box: I'm under the distinct impression that the nature of primorial Chaotic Evil has gotten seriously watered down over the editions. Imho, demons don't tempt mortals; demons eat mortals, no questions asked. Lolth (and drow), Grazzt & Malcateth should have been neutral evil at best; their current stature as demons is, again imho, irreconcileable with the societal structures they maintain. One cannot scheme without structure to scheme against. And structure is the very anathema of chaos.

In a LE court, you're guilty when you get caught; in a NE court, you're guilty if the other guy's more powerful than you are; in a CE court, the judge eats you!

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Just to add my voice/writing/text to the mix...

I like the concept of the changes and can see why they are doing it. I got the alignment aspect of the Demon/Devil devide, but never really got why some were on one side or the other. It just seemed arbitrary and I could never tell you what side any one monster was on; and that was a problem. If memorization is the only way to tell if a critter is a Demon or a Devil that smells of bad design (that said - I'm fully for one or two Demons and Devils that resemble the other side and can act as infiltrators but they shoudl be the exception and not the rule).

I also hope they bring the Erinyes back quickly. As they stood (in D&D) they were redundent alongside the Succubus. But taking them off the table for a bit gives WotC a chance to bring them back as a critter that more closely matches their mythological origins.

 

[kenmarable]

Chaos/Order is absolutely obscure unless you're one of an increasingly aging pool of Elric readers. Given the number of alignment threads here over the years, I'd say it's fair to say a lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around it, especially when, between devils and demons, they're both bad guys whose primary issue boils down to "you should be MY kind of bad."

Maybe it's because I avoid the alignment discussion threads, but I really fail to see how chaos/order is really that hard to grasp. Maybe I just give people too much credit.

And although Elric is one of the more popular explorations of the dichotomy it goes far beyond just those works, so it's not just an "aging pool of Elric readers" who see chaos/order as interesting of a conflict as good/evil. Heck, Babylon 5 got five years of television out of it, and that was inspired by ancient myths of the original Babylon. So Moorcock is certainly didn't invent that conflict and isn't the only one to explore it.

 

[Shade]

Just out of curiosity, why do many of you want demons and devils to be immediately recognizable for which type they are to your players?

To me, that it just begging for metagaming. Plus, with so much cry for "sense of wonder", where's the wonder in that?

 

[hong]

Just out of curiosity, why do many of you want demons and devils to be immediately recognizable for which type they are to your players?

You can't subvert people's expectations if they don't have any expectations to begin with.

 

[Aloïsius]

Just out of curiosity, why do many of you want demons and devils to be immediately recognizable for which type they are to your players?

Because, if they are not the same, they should not look the same ? And, if they are repsentatives of two different races, then there should be some common traits for those races ? I always had a hard time figuring a succube becoming a glabrezu because she seduced and corrupted some random mortal...

Note that I like the "two forms" idea I have see here and there, which each kind of outsider having an humanoid form and another one very different.

 

[Jedi_Solo]

Just out of curiosity, why do many of you want demons and devils to be immediately recognizable for which type they are to your players?

As a couple others have said - if they are supposed to be different than they should be different. If Elves and Dwarves and Humans and Halflings are all different in description so much so that the casual observer is able to tell the differance when they (at least in 3.X) are all Humanoids; why is there the large mish-mash that is the collection of Demons and Devils?

If the PC isn't supposed to be able to tell what a monster is (as in Dragon or Kobald or Demon or Devil - I'm not asking for stat blocks to be printed on a critter's forehead) then that should be the purpose of the monster - to confuse the player... like the Changeling or Doppleganger. It shouldn't feel like the designer threw a dart and this one landed on "Demon" while the last dart landed on "Devil".

 

[kenmarable]

I wonder whats next the powers that be decide that Balors and Pit Fiends are too much alike and decide one of them has got to go? I don't like it.

I'm receiving a premonition of the 4E monster manual... ah, it's the entry for "dragon". Hmm...

Dragon

Breath Weapon: Roll on Table 1a and 1b.

Table 1a:
1-10 Line of energy damage
11-20 Cone of energy damage

Table 1b:
1-5 Acid
6-10 Cold
11-15 Electricity
16-20 Fire

Appearance: Roll on Table 2.

Table 2:
1-2 Black
3-4 Blue
5-6 Brass
7-8 Bronze
9-10 Copper
11-12 Green
13-14 Gold
15-16 Red
17-18 Silver
19-20 White

Yep, they cover similar territory, so why bother making them any different? Who cares if we published an entire book explaining how different and unique they can be used in people's games?

 

[Desdichado]

It wasn't intended to be. Please don't ascribe motives.

I didn't.

In terms of what Wormwood said (not WotC with 4e), if you're wanting to redefine basic creatures in the game, the CE and LE fiends in this case, because you don't see how they're different from one another when those differences are pretty obvious from just the material in the MM and maybe the MotP at most, maybe you'll find something more tailored to your ideas elsewhere. Without even going into any in-game history, their basic motivations and attitudes w/ respect to one another and how they interact with mortals including PCs, is part of their core being. If you want to erase most of that apparently, a different system with different core assumptions for basic monsters might be more appropriate.

I think possibly you've spent too much time with Planescape if you assign such priority and importance to whether or not erinyes and succubus are separate creatures. There's nothing intrinsically "D&D" about either creature, frankly, and certainly nothing intrinsically D&D about keeping them separate. Telling me that "why don't I just go find another system" (what does system have to do with anything we're talking about anyway?) is frankly something that I find bizarre in this case. Losing erinyes because the designers felt they were too similar in concept to the succubus is: at most, an incredibly esoteric, fringe, tiny minor detail, unless your campaign is completely founded on the difference between demons and devils.

Knowing what I do of you, Shemeska, that may be so. But if you assume that it's something that matters to most of the rest of D&D players, I'm going to say that I think you're probably wrong there.