D&D 4E Daemons in 4e

[Neuroglyph]

Just reviewed the Goodman Games - Critter Cache 5: Daemons on my blogsite this morning. I am seriously becoming a fan of these guys.

I was pretty annoyed when they took Daemons out of play in 4e - it's nice to know I wasn't the only one looking to put them back in play.

 

[the Jester]

They still exist in 4e, they have just switched over to different types of creatures- mezzodemons, nycademons, ravasta, etc.

 

[Neuroglyph]

Yep... am well aware of those monsters - in fact I reference them in my blog

But as an independent race of creatures, they disappeared from the 'verse, and the supplement I reviewed does an awesome job of adding them back into play again.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, its kind of a matter of taste and perspective. I think the 4e designers goal was to trim back the proliferation of "almost the same thing" classifications of (particularly lower planar) creatures. The individual creatures still exist and you can still pretty much do the same stuff with them you could before but it makes some things cleaner. Like Daemons are now mechanically Demons and thus subject to the general rules for that type of creature (like for purposes of Demon Slaying weapons).

I haven't actually read the GG Critter Cache on them, but if I was going to use them a decent amount in regular 4e I'd just say basically "OK, there are one or more Abyssal layers these guys hail from and they have some Lords (Anthraxus, etc) that rule there and the place is called Pandemonium (or whatever it was)." Of course the CC could be pretty handy for filling out their ranks etc.

I think generally this kind of approach works pretty well for all sorts of oddball types of lower planar creatures. Some of the more lawful groups could have domains in the Astral Sea vs Abyssal layers of course, or have their own Elemental Domains outside the Abyss depending.

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

Yeah, its kind of a matter of taste and perspective. I think the 4e designers goal was to trim back the proliferation of "almost the same thing" classifications of (particularly lower planar) creatures. The individual creatures still exist and you can still pretty much do the same stuff with them you could before but it makes some things cleaner. Like Daemons are now mechanically Demons and thus subject to the general rules for that type of creature (like for purposes of Demon Slaying weapons).

Yup, I agree with all of this, and I do think that was the designers' goal. I think even back in 3E, there were folks who thought the yugoloths were un-needed. My memories of the daemons go back to 1E and 2E, where they had more of a distinct identity. That's what I was trying to capture in CC: Daemons, and I added a healthy dose of Greek mythology (the titans) to make them stand apart from the demons and devils.

I haven't actually read the GG Critter Cache on them, but if I was going to use them a decent amount in regular 4e I'd just say basically "OK, there are one or more Abyssal layers these guys hail from and they have some Lords (Anthraxus, etc) that rule there and the place is called Pandemonium (or whatever it was)." Of course the CC could be pretty handy for filling out their ranks etc.

I think that's a fine approach to integrating the daemons into the standard 4E cosmology. I wrote the daemons' background so that you could pretty much put the Pit of Tartarus anywhere in the cosmology. I put it in the Astral Sea, but it would work just fine in the Elemental Chaos or even as a layer in the Abyss. My daemons are born from the union of god and primordial, so they can fit in with elemenatls or immortals without much effort.

BD

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Cool I might just have to get a copy if I need some more baddies. Nice work on monster collections in general, there are some pretty useful monsters in them.