Changes to Devils and Demons

[delericho]

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?

Dragons are colour-coded for our convenience, so why not demons and devils also?

 

[hong]

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


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?

You know... every time I've used a dragon, it's been pretty much just a _dragon_, without any of the gigantic edifice of a dozen chromatic and metallic types, conflicts, organisations and whatnot built up over 25 years of other people's campaigns. So you may be on to something here.

 

[Gez]

No, they're not. Gnomes are going to be in the first Monster Manual. The fact that they won't be in the first PH doesn't mean they won't be a playable race. In fact, I am fairly positive they will be presented as a playable race in the FR Player's Guide (due out after the 4E FRCS, probably in September).

I hope not. Forgotten Realms gnomes used to be interesting, but ever since they've replaced humans as the denizens of Lantan, they've turned into just a copy of Dragonlance tinkers.

Which I hate with the fiery passion of one thousand supernovae.

Eberron gnomes, that's another story.

That makes no sense to me. Let's look at mythology:

- Succubi are temptresses, enticing mortals to fall into damnation through the promise of carnal pleasure.

- Erynies are the torturers of the Cosmos. They seek out those guilty of abominable crimes and torture the hell (pun intended) out of them.

How is that "similar territory"?

Territory as in the same metaphore in the Monty Pythons. Succubi and Erinyes both have huge tracts of land.

Maybe someone on the WOTC staff has femdom fantasies... Look for a lot of leather and a whip in the new illustration.

Of course, the Drow sort of cover that territory already...

Let's fold them with the Succubi!

Well, that's all folks. I'm out. Goodbye, good night, that's it. I'm done with even the idea of 4e. This is just a STUPID change to make that completely invalidates all the old material on the planes. To hell with it, and to hell with WotC. I'll stick with 3.5 for... well, as long as it takes for them to realize all these changes are a bad idea. (See you in 2010 or so.)

See sig.

I think pit fiends are too iconic as devils for them to be "demon transplants."

But then again, one might have thought succubi too iconic as demons for them to become "devil transplants"...

What if they change elves into elephants?

Then the long-lived critters with huge ears would be replaced by long-lived critters with huge ears. I don't see the change.

One thing occurred to me.

Devil will be the weapon wielders.

Demons will not.

Currently, the top Devil, the Pit Fiend, has no weapons.

Currently, the top Demon, the Balor, wields weapons.

Will we see a switcheroo (moving the Balor away from his inspiration, the Balrog)? Will the top fiends not be representative of their kind?

Speculation begins... now.

And what of the Marilith?

I'm all for it, actually. The current way feels so darn illiterate.

Change that to "over-literate" and I could agree. Gorgons as metallic bulls comes from medieval bestiaries...

 

[Jer]

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.

I suspect it's something like this, though I bet they just moved the demonic Succubus to being a devil. The Erinyes will probably show up (something has to go into MM II, III, IV, V, VI, etc.), and hopefully it will be as terrifying as the Erinyes of myth, and not a succubus with different wings (as I was remined yesterday when I pulled out my Planescape MC to see what the big difference was between the two of them -- bat wings vs. feathered wings in the grand scheme of things. Both of them looked like Victoria Secrets models, actually...)

& 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.

Eh, I think this is all more personal taste. I mean, the source of the Law/Chaos stuff in D&D comes from the work of folks like Moorcock and Zelazny. It's been a long time since I read either one, but the various representatives of Chaos never seemed quite as disorganized or unstructured as one might think from the name -- the names seemed to represent two sides of an argument based on degree, not polar opposites. I mean, Elric's people were on the side of Chaos, yet they built a huge empire and maintained it for thousands of years. And the Chaos Lords who showed up rarely seemed like swirling masses of unstructured madness, but instead scheming demons with plots and plans that spanned millenia.

In other words, I don't think that it's been watered down over the years, I think it's always been kind of watery. That's part of why I'm glad that they're looking at de-emphasizing alignment in the new edition - fantasy has moved on in ways that D&D hasn't, and the alignment system is trying to be too many things beyond what it was originally designed for.

 

[Desdichado]

(To admit my own biases, I came into the game via Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters D&D. My view of the game was heavily colored by the idea that I should be building my own world including my own planar geography. The whole idea introduced in 2e that all of the D&D settings were linked together in some kind of grand cosmology - whether through Planescape or through Spelljammer - was foreign to me, and really kind of an unwelcome assumption that I often had to dissuade players of during the mid-90s when they sat at my table. That's probably at least part of the reason why I don't see why any of this stuff should make much difference - it's just fluff and I've been modifying fluff in every D&D product I've bought since I started in this hobby. And, in the long run, fluff is a heck of a lot easier and more fun to modify than mechanics are in my book.)

Wow, that sounds eerily familiar to my own experience. Can someone get this guy a beer or something? Well said.

 

[DarthDiablo]

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.

Alignment is getting on overhaul, so I'm guessing they need more distinction between Demons & Devils other than LE/CE.

The Designers have already said they are returning to more mythological roots (e.g. Thor was mentioned as a possible core God) so I can see why Devils are becoming more Judeo-Christian. Lucifer & his rebel angels were kicked out of heaven for betraying God (not to mention the Sin of Pride). Perhaps they will use the 7 Deadly Sins as more fluff for the Devils. Layer 1 of Hell could be the Gateway, 2-8 each representing a Deadly Sin with layer 9 being Asmodeus' "capitol" of Hell. This could also see the Erinyes return in a "Wrath" form.

The designers have also stated they are creating monsters to be more encounter-specific, so they won't have 2 monsters fitting the same role. Erinyes were looking too much like the Devil clone of a Succubus, so I can see why they only want 1 Fiend temptress. However, I too would like to see them return as spirits of vengence & destruction.

For those who are concerned about the "Blood War", that was a 2nd Edition invention, a battle between the Tann'ari & Baatezu. In 1st Edition it never existed. Demons lived in the Abyss & Devils lived in Hell. Baator did not exist. Neither were known to cross over into the others domain. If 4th edition removes the Blood War & it makes you fell Sloth, Envy or Wrath, just keep it in your campaign.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Wow, that sounds eerily familiar to my own experience. Can someone get this guy a beer or something? Well said.

It's my experience as well. I've been taking a jackhammer to Planescape for 15 years and rebuilding it into something that looks a lot like D&D 4E's demons/devils in every campaign I run. I never cared much for Planescape, or the Blood War era outsiders.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Alot of fiends are interested in collecting mortal souls, but they do so in drastically different ways. Should we combine them all?

No - but as we've pointed out repeatedly, the succubi and the erinyes in D&D don't do so in drastically different ways.

 

[BluWolf]

That's not the point. If it doesn't make sense to new players, it needs to be justified somehow or junked. (IMO, and apparently the O of the 4E design team.)

As someone who's brought in a half-dozen players in the last two years, I will state with absolute conviction that a large number of D&Disms that many veteran players don't even notice cause new players to say "whaaaa?" When bringing folks into my Midwood campaign, it was the D&Disms, not the setting-specific stuff, that regularly stopped the game for a round of "whaaaaa?"

A previous Design & Development article mentioned WotC watching newbies play with just the books from behind a one-way mirror. While they had fun, they got a lot of it backwards and they had a whole lot of "whaaaa?" moments.

"Whaaaa?" moments should always be intentional, and the result of a DM intentionally slinging a curveball, not because of the cruft of a 30 year old game.

This is extremely well put and I could not agree with more.

 

[Shade]

Rich replied:

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Wow, I'm sort of surprised -- more people were reading than I thought. It looks like I stirred up a real hornet's nest with my comments on the work I'd recently done on devils.

For those of you worried about mashing succubus and erinyes together... I do think there's room in the game for both a fury and a succubus. The problem is, erinyes have rarely been depicted as furies (ironic, given the name of the monster). Even in 3.5--about the most fury-like depiction of the monster in a long time--erinyes have charm monster at will. It's their iconic shtick, really. That's the sort of thing we would like to improve on.

One quick point of clarification I'd like to make... Don't assume that we're going to apply the 'Points of Light' conceit to existing campaign worlds. I think Realms and Eberron would prosper if they got just a little more points-of-lightish, but we're not going to overthrow worlds with that much breadth and history.

Dropping (for now) or retconning the erinyes--no problem here.

This doesn't address the more far-reaching concern of myself and others--that demons and devils (as a whole) are being mix n' matched or merged. To reiterate: making a succubi a devil is the big warning flag.