Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6696144" data-attributes="member: 4937">That seems a reasonable concern.  Your DM would be amiss in my opinion to call something a devil and it not be marked by unrelenting ill-will toward the universe generally, and if it did not in fact have an angle by which it could profit at your expense.  It would be I think a rule of Hell, that no devil may lawfully offer a contract in which he did not profit over the one contracted with.  A devil which made a fair deal, which was good for both parties, would presumably lose his license and his stature and be subjected to the most painful and degrading tortures for so injuring the honor of Hell.Sure.  Presumably there are somethings a Neutral won't engage in, otherwise what is the difference between having an N on the sheet and an E?Good luck with that...Convince them that the premise of a deal with a devil is that you can't strike a bargain with one that doesn't screw yourself.  If the deal didn't screw you, they wouldn't make it.  Figure out what the catches are that the DM might have thought of.  Worse come to worse, try to add clauses to the contract that close whatever loopholes you fear.a) It would be quite logical to give you protection getting into something, but then try to insure you can't leave.b) It would be quite logical to try to help you with the part of the task that benefits Hell, while stopping you, deceiving you, or contracting against you for whatever part of the task doesn't benefit Hell.  Make sure you have clauses that don't let them both contract with you and work against you at the same time.   In particular, it would seem to me that the obvious angle here is that the devils intend you to close two of the three portals successfully, and will do everything in their power to stop you closing the third and will have laid a trap to that end.c) If you sell your brother's soul to hell, I suspect that gives hell full title to your soul as well by legal right.  By what right would they receive stolen goods, but wouldn't they have a right to the souls of diabolists?  Doesn't selling your brother's soul to the devil definitely change your alignment one step more evil?  Make sure you know what laws govern the final disposition of souls in the afterlife.  If there is some sort of grand contract enforced by a God of Destiny or some sort, you could find yourself on the wrong end of some cosmological boilerplate that says basically, "Whoever makes deals with devils, there soul is owned by devils if no other party can show they have a greater claim."  You could end up a CE who betrayed demons to devils and as such, forfeited to Hell.  And if there are no catches, then you aren't really dealing with devils.  Instead, you've got a DM that likes the word devil for all the resonance it has, but has no interest in actually following up on it.  He's one of those figures praised by the devil in Greenfield's story, "I don't know who has been spreading this tale that there's anything fair going on in Hell, but I'd really like to thank them!"  Of course, that's a lie.  The devil knows well that it is the devil's themselves spreading the lie that there is something fair going on in Hell.</blockquote>

Verification