Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[Ripzerai]

is there any reason why, say for instance, a demon prince could not choose to create a realm in the same fashion as a deity.
I quite liked the idea that they 'burn it away' - nice.

A good portion of the prince's power comes from the layer. If the prince "burns away" the layer's sentience - effectively killing it - and replaces it with its own power, it would mean a dramatic weakening. The demon would have to live like a god, gaining power only from souls, worship, sacrifice, portfolio, and reputation. The being would no longer be a personification of the Abyss, only a god like any other. Any power drawn from the layer would only be a feedback loop, divine power empowering the same divine power, rather than forces drawn from chaotic and evil acts throughout the multiverse.

It's possible for an entity to be both a demon and a god - as Orcus was - gaining power from both worship and the Abyss. There's not really any reason for such a being to choose to give up demonic power and become only divine. The Abyss is eternal, but worship is fleeting.

 

[Shemeska]

Its already been well established in 3rd Edition that deities (and by extension demon princes, archdevils) are nothing like their Planescape incarnations.

They're virtually identical now to their 2e incarnations save for the fact that they've been given stats. The flavor, the important stuff, hasn't changed in any real appreciable way. They're still the unquestioned rulers of their respective planes, and the deities who inhabit these planes don't argue the fact so long as their own domains are left alone. It's just that now since they have stat blocks that tend to be longer than their descriptions, they no longer cleanly fit into their notches on the planes as they did previously. But this verges on another argument for another time, and there's multiple ways to handle it, so let's avoid that tangent.

But compared to 1st Edition the planes were cuddly. The planes were practically no more dangerous than the prime material worlds - which sort of makes a mockery of Rips idea that it would be such a hostile place even the demons are dropping like flies, let alone the mortal visitors.

They weren't necessarily hostile back then, they were just ill described and largely not elaborated upon greatly, and treated in a very different manner than since then. For the most part they were treated as extraplanar dungeons, and while you can conceivably still treat them as such, their elaboration in 2e and the continuation of that in 3e has made them less that than the alignments made manifest, places of horror and beauty, places of the greatest and worst of the multiverse taken flesh in sometimes familiar and sometimes alien fashion, the battlegrounds of the alignments where above all, belief is power.

It's grown beyond its roots, but those roots are still there if you want to have that sort of focus in your game. The way the planes have gone and developed since then doesn't prevent you from using them in the way you want for epic gaming. It didn't go away since then, but the idea that only high level PCs could go to the planes was abandoned, though it's blatantly obvious that the planes are hideously dangerous and not to be taken lightly in the least way. In fact it was rather openly stated that if you approached the planes with a hack and slash kill everything that moves approach, you were going to end up very dead, very fast, simply because the denizens of the planes, especially the lower ones, were just that hostile and that deadly.

The danger was there, it was there perhaps more than it had been before, but you were advised to avoid it for the sake of keeping PCs alive for the sake of a long term campaign. The opening portions of the PS campaign box have some interesting advice on the subject and how to handle relatively lower level parties when you have the option of going to such hostile places. Regardless of level though, you aren't going to get away very long with approaching things with an 'I am mighty, I can kill it because I am the hero' point of view.

Its hardly kneejerk - I've played 2nd Edition, by your own admission, you haven't.

I've never played using the actual 2e game mechanics, I didn't play DnD till 2000. I've played most of the 2e settings though, right from the 2e books, using 3e mechanics. That has to be one of the best things about said settings, be it Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, etc that most of the books were light enough on the rules that they're perfectly valid to plug right into a 3e game. Twenty years from now they'll still be useful in whatever system DnD is using, as opposed to some other books that you might find to be largely invalidated once their stat blocks no longer mesh with a new system.

Well as far as I know the only book mentioned so far, that I haven't read, has been Faces of Evil and based on what you have told me about it I am somewhat glad of that.

I'm tempted to buy you a copy just to have you read it, and possibly change your mind on the topics it so beautifully covers. It really is a spectacularly written book, in my opinion the single best book on its topic so far written, and one of the best supplements in any edition of DnD.

How?

I don't use any of the specific rules regarding alterations to cleric caster levels on different planes inrelation to the home plane of their deity, nor the rules that modified weapon +'s depending on the plane of their forging when you went to other planes. I've only rarely used the material on spell keys and power keys (only fully using them in a one shot evil game). And for better or for worse, I run the planes as post Faction War, which isn't always a popular thing among PS purists.

W/ regards to the setup of the planes themselves, I use Shadow as a full plane rather than a demiplane (which it was previous to 3e). That's the one cosmology alteration in 3e that I like, and I -really- like it. Beyond that I use an ordial plane, or have as valid the assumption of one, though it was a fan creation on mimir.net rather than from PS proper. I also utilize at least one partial sublayer of the Astral known as the House of Memory, which was created by Orri aka Orriloth aka one of the drunk guys at Hellhound's Suite that night at GenCon this year Beyond that are a subtle but significant number of alterations to the prehistory of the lower planes, in specific I've gone out of my way to elaborate upon the role of, and personalities of, the various extant Baernaloths, and some of the lesser elaborated Abyssal Lords.

And FWIW, don't expect much out of me over the weekend, I'll be otherwise occupied.

 

[IcyCool]

A bit of light-hearted banter here and there is only intended to lighten the atmosphere not offend anyone. Shemmy, Rip and I know each other pretty well (longtime online sparring partners) and I would certainly like to think none of us take offence at anything the others typed. I certainly apologise if any of my comments have offended either.

Ah, I hadn't realized this sort of thing was common and accepted amongst you three. I just hate to see someone resort to name calling in an otherwise interesting debate, as that usually kills the debate.

*shrug* Carry on then, soldier.

 

[Nightfall]

Oi! Hiya Nightfall matey!

I saw your post, though it seemed more of a statement rather than a question, and with me still having to deal with the terrible twins here, I decided against a reply.

Hope you are keeping well, or at least as well as can be in this post-Scarred Lands wasteland of a world?

Sokay Krusty mate. I understand. I'm alright and planning on fixing the wrong done to SL by this wasteland approach.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Howdy Rip!

Heh. It didn't say kobolds weren't deities either - obviously that's not a very good line of reasoning. Being a deity seems worth mentioning.

So is Tiamat not a deity then?

This all seems a bit needlessly nit-picky. It didn't mention it in the Monster Manuals (where it wasn't really necessary) but it mentions it in both Deities & Demigods and Manual of the Planes (where it was necessary).

Firstly, since greater deities are capable of planar travel at will, this is irrelevant.

Its not a matter of whether the deity can get there, its a matter of whether they can best the adversary in their home plane and, more to the point, whether they are willing to take the risk to do so.

You'll notice in the original stats that it remarks on Demogorgons enmity with Orcus. It doesn't talk of their enmity with a lone Vrock. Rivals require rivalry. Demogorgon is not the rival of anonymous greater deity 'y'. So theres no impetus for either to war with the other, its not a fire Demogorgon is likely to fuel.

Your idea that deities are always gunning for weaker deities as trophies doesn't add up, and neither is it something thats solved by making the likes of Demogorgon a greater deity, because he would still be prey to Overgods and so on and so forth.

Theres also the notion that overarching deities of evil won't take kindly to upstart greater deities of elsewhere invading their 'turf'. Those sort of actions are going to lead to reprisals or all out war in some cases, unless there is an established enmity amongst the protagonists to begin with.

Secondly, Set was a greater deity who lived in the Nine Hells - why didn't he take them over?

One greater deity versus multiple lesser powers, I don't fancy his chances that much. In fact it actually states this in 1st edition Manual of the Planes!

"While a united devilkind is too powerful to defeat, they are not powerful enough or unified enough to launch a war and drive Set from 'their' Hells."

Thirdly, you're incorrect - the Manual of the Planes actually says "Few Greater Powers make the Abyss their home," which is very different from none.

Well cropped. It actually says "Few Greater Powers make the Abyss their home, as they would have to continually deal with the upstart demon life that fills the plane."

Its perfectly clear that the sentence implies there are none, otherwise the word 'would', would be redundant.

It then goes on to list those deities who do have realms in the Abyss and confirms there are no greater deities amongst them!

You might want to brush up a little on 1st edition cosmology.

I'll struggle on.

Except we know they won't always, since there are a number of deities dwelling in the Abyss - Vaprak, Tou Mu, Lu Yueh, Laogzed, Urdlen, and Kali, to just name the 1st edition ones.

None of which are even a remote threat to the demons stranglehold on power in the Abyss...and most of which probably are souped up demons anyway.

Demons aren't inherently racist - they mostly hate all things equally. Baatezu are racist; tanar'ri miscegenate freely and even with relish. They don't treat their half-breed offspring well, but they don't treat anything well - what's important is that they don't kick things out just because they're not tanar'ri.

Unless they view them as a threat to their dominance.

Only greater deities (and planar lords) were anything close to omniscient in 2nd edition - their nearest rivals, the intermediate gods, could only sense in a 100 mile radius or near their worshippers.

But you're right - the power to expel pantheons wasn't their only power; obviously, they had some sort of ability to protect themselves from divine attacks as well. It was vague, but vague is better than horribly broken, as 1st and 3rd edition are.

1st Edition wasn't broken at all (see above). I agree with you about 3rd Edition though.

Because there was a concern about making a cosmos that made some sort of self-consistent sense as far as the relationship between deities and planar lords went - something that Gygax tried spiritedly to do, but never really managed.

On the contrary, he succeeded with aplomb.

Who are these "you and your cohorts?" Remember that The Primal Order thread I contributed to, hawkeye? I've never complained about divine-level campaigns!

I do believe that's what you're doing right now, and I can't even tell what brought this on. We're trying to take your books away or something?

I was only biting on the "make them yourself, use your imagination for God's sake" line.

So to take the mature stance...you started it!

Deities don't have servants?

Yes, but, as with their masters, they are going to be relatively weaker than the natives.

He's the titular prince of all demonkind, a handsome trophy by any standards. And he's a major force of evil - his defeat would be a great triumph for the forces of Good. Demons, who respect only strength (and are not particularly racist), might well serve the one who defeated their master.

The trophy idea isn't really that practical (see above).

And gods don't always need reasons - mysterious ways, you know.

Deities are not stupid, they are not likely to risk their very immortality on a whim.

Asmodeus, as the uncontested ruler of an entire plane, is an even more tempting target. Hextor would have offed him long ago in your cosmology.

Very unlikely. Even assuming Hextor's native layer was also the 9th (otherwise he'd have no chance at all), he would have to get past Asmodeus interior defenses and defenders before he got to Asmodeus anyway. With equal forces you would still be at a massive disadvantage because the defenders will have had centuries to prepare the defenses.

The outer planes are linked to the various worlds by astral conduits. So where do the invisible walls come from? It's the invisible walls that are the arbitrary part.

Agreed, but I don't think we need them now (see my previous post to you on this).

Better wait till later, when I mention the fact that only female baatezu are sterile - durzugons have baatezu fathers. Better yet, when you read that part, you can go back and edit this last line so you don't look quite so foolish.

I half suspected Planescape would concoct some arbitrary excuse for it.

No, I didn't say that. In fact, that's what the fiends are counting on. They believe they can win against every other race - but to do that, they have to upset the Balance.

No, physical combat is the agent by which the job is completed. Demogorgon and his armies might grow stronger than the legions of Azzagrat, but this won't do him much good until he tries them out.

So to win they have to upset the balance, but to upset the balance they have to win - it all seems a bit circular.

 

[Ripzerai]

So is Tiamat not a deity then?

She wasn't presented as one in the 1st edition Monster Manual, or the Greyhawk supplement before that. Both she and Bahamut were presented as non-divine creatures in the 2e Draconomicon, too. In 1st edition Deities & Demigods and the 1e Manual of the Planes she was given the powers of a lesser deity, as were all planar lords by default (and this, I would argue, was a retcon rather than their original interpretation), but it wasn't actually clear that she was a goddess proper in the same sense as Zeus and Thor until Monster Mythology came out in 2nd edition and defined these things, unless you associated them completely with Paladine and Takhisis.

In first edition the idea was, more or less, if you rule a layer of a plane you automatically get the powers of a lesser god. I'm not sure this made them actual gods necessarily - TSR went back and forth on that. The 1e Manual of the Planes always said treated as a deity rather than is a deity. 1e Deities & Demigods didn't make that distinction. In second edition a variety of approaches were tried - like I said, the Draconomicon made Bahamut and Tiamat non-divine "Racial Paragons." Monster Mythology made a number of the 1st editon Abyssal lords actual lesser deities, with worshippers and everything, while Planes of Chaos made others "quasi-deities," almost but not quite divine. The Lords of the Nine Dragon Magazine article defined the archdevils as being equivalent or greater in power than the gods, but different in nature.

And WotC continues to go back and forth on this issue to this day. Tiamat is definitely a goddess, but Bahamut's divine status in the Forgotten Realms is unclear. Orcus appeared as a god in the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting and in Ghostwalk but has appeared as a sub-god in the Book of Vile Darkness and subsequently.

I expect - some glorious day - things will stabilize and we'll have planar lords that can adequately defend their realms against attack.

Demogorgon is not the rival of anonymous greater deity 'y'. So theres no impetus for either to war with the other, its not a fire Demogorgon is likely to fuel.

That's silly and short-sighted. He's chaotic evil and ambitious. He's one of the most prominent rulers of the Abyss. His plans are going to contradict someone else's eventually. It's stupid to design a cosmology that will fall apart when that day comes - as, logically, it has before and will again.

The Monster Manual said he was a rival of Orcus, but that's not going to be his only rival. The Monster Manual II introduced Graz'zt, and said that he was Demogorgon's rival too. In the Gord books Demogorgon allies with Nerull and opposes a third of the other rulers of the Abyss. Politics are messy and shifting, in the Abyss as much as anywhere else.

Your idea that deities are always gunning for weaker deities as trophies doesn't add up

Sure, it does, when the trophy is as impressive as Demogorgon is. You can't just say something doesn't add up without justifying your claim.

and neither is it something thats solved by making the likes of Demogorgon a greater deity, because he would still be prey to Overgods and so on and so forth.

"Overgods" ought to be powerless outside the crystal spheres they guard, as they were in Planescape. Gods who ascend beyond greater status end up on a new plane of reality as far distant from the Outer Planes as the Outer Planes are from the Material. It's only when you have an infinite hierarchy in the same Great Ring that you run into trouble.

Theres also the notion that overarching deities of evil won't take kindly to upstart greater deities of elsewhere invading their 'turf'.

There shouldn't be any overarching deities of evil other than the fiendish lords - they're the ones who personify the alignments, not ordinary deities. Demogorgon, Apomps, Mydianchlarus, the General of Gehenna, and Asmodeus are the ones who punish upstart greater deities, or upstart deities who claim to be "overarching deities of evil" - because the turf is always truly theirs.

"While a united devilkind is too powerful to defeat, they are not powerful enough or unified enough to launch a war and drive Set from 'their' Hells."

Well, exactly. Set's victory is assured by the fact that devilkind isn't united. Think of it this way - both Baalzebul and Mephistopheles want the throne of Hell more than anything. Set allies with one of them and together they oust Asmodeus. In gratitude, Set is given Stygia for his own. Why hasn't this happened?

Well cropped. It actually says "Few Greater Powers make the Abyss their home, as they would have to continually deal with the upstart demon life that fills the plane."

Its perfectly clear that the sentence implies there are none, otherwise the word 'would', would be redundant.

Um, no. "Few" means there are few of them, not that there are none of them. There is no sense in which the word "few" means "none at all" - that's just not one of the definitions of the word. Few is relative, sure - it might mean only two, or "only" a few hundred (depending on how many gods of other ranks there are in the Abyss). But it's not so relative that it can mean anything you want it to mean.

The word "would," in this context, means that the greater gods who choose not to dwell in the Abyss would have to contend with the tanar'ri, if they indeed chose to dwell there. "They" refers to those greater gods who have decided not to dwell in the Demonium, not those who have - obviously they do continually deal with upstart demon life, as the demons themselves do.

It then goes on to list those deities who do have realms in the Abyss and confirms there are no greater deities amongst them

The gods who appeared in Deities & Demigods were hardly the only gods in the multiverse even at the time that book was published. Note that no Greyhawk-specific gods were mentioned in that book, few or no Forgotten Realms gods were mentioned, few Dragonlance gods were mentioned, and there were many deities who appeared in Gods, Demigods, and Heroes (D&Dg's predecessor) that weren't mentioned later, many deities from Dragon Magazine, and deities from everyone's personal campaigns.

None of which are even a remote threat to the demons stranglehold on power in the Abyss...and most of which probably are souped up demons anyway.

Of the group, only Laogzed has tanar'ri blood, and many of them had better stats than Orcus or Demogorgon.

Unless they view them as a threat to their dominance.

They don't have to (and can't possibly) defeat every Abyssal ruler - they only have to defeat the famous ones who have presumedly been around for more than a brief time, despite so many powerful, agressive entities sharing the cosmos with them.

I was only biting on the "make them yourself, use your imagination for God's sake" line.

Fine, don't use your imagination. Rely entirely on rigid mechanics for every conceivable situation - I don't think they're necessary, myself. That line was a response your assertion that we needed to know precisely how many souls (or whatever) tanar'ri had to devour to gain a hit die. I think winging it works fine, personally. I'm not sure what that has to do with my desperate cohorts and I trying to force you to play the game a certain way with our powerful message board-based mind control techniques.

Yes, but, as with their masters, they are going to be relatively weaker than the natives.

Well, that's how it should be, certainly, but I'm not sure how, in a scenario where Demogorgon is a lesser god and his servants are mostly sub-divine (or even demigods - but I don't think a chaotic evil lesser god could risk having many demigods in his realm, for fear they'd gang up on him), he's going to be stronger than his divine adversaries.

Deities are not stupid, they are not likely to risk their very immortality on a whim.

If they can only be killed on their home plane, they're risking nothing, and the prize is very great. Even if they didn't try to hold Gaping Maw afterwards, notoriety can translate into power for gods. If they're opposed to chaotic evil, any defeat of a major lord is a great victory for the entire multiverse.

Even assuming Hextor's native layer was also the 9th (otherwise he'd have no chance at all), he would have to get past Asmodeus interior defenses and defenders before he got to Asmodeus anyway.

That's not a problem if Hextor is the more powerful deity. An intermediate god can reasonably break anti-teleportation wards prepared by a lesser deity and then completely avoid any other defenses or defenders that might be in his way.

So to win they have to upset the balance, but to upset the balance they have to win - it all seems a bit circular.

Everything in the Great Wheel is circular (that's the Unity-of-Rings premise), but the logic is sound. By upsetting the balance (by interfering with the Material Plane, mostly), they assure victory in their outer planar battles - which upsets the balance even more, which aids them in further victories.

 

[Shemeska]

Ah, I hadn't realized this sort of thing was common and accepted amongst you three. I just hate to see someone resort to name calling in an otherwise interesting debate, as that usually kills the debate.

I don't personally care for it myself actually.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Shemmy mate!

They're virtually identical now to their 2e incarnations save for the fact that they've been given stats.

Even the feel is somewhat different when the relationships between mortals and immortals (including Demon Princes) is not so black and white (as it was in 2nd Edition).

The flavor, the important stuff, hasn't changed in any real appreciable way.

Well I think this goes to the heart of the matter as to what is important between us. I prefer a balance between flavour and crunch.

They're still the unquestioned rulers of their respective planes, and the deities who inhabit these planes don't argue the fact so long as their own domains are left alone.

Same as 1st Edition then.

It's just that now since they have stat blocks that tend to be longer than their descriptions, they no longer cleanly fit into their notches on the planes as they did previously.

Thats only valid in Deities & Demigods though. James Jacobs articles have shown that you can have the crunch and the fluff at the same time.

But this verges on another argument for another time, and there's multiple ways to handle it, so let's avoid that tangent.

Okay.

They weren't necessarily hostile back then, they were just ill described and largely not elaborated upon greatly, and treated in a very different manner than since then. For the most part they were treated as extraplanar dungeons, and while you can conceivably still treat them as such, their elaboration in 2e and the continuation of that in 3e has made them less that than the alignments made manifest, places of horror and beauty, places of the greatest and worst of the multiverse taken flesh in sometimes familiar and sometimes alien fashion, the battlegrounds of the alignments where above all, belief is power.

It's grown beyond its roots, but those roots are still there if you want to have that sort of focus in your game.

Obviosuly any elaboration is going to expand on the previous material. By the time we reach 6th Edition there is going to be more official material on Orcus than there is now for instance.

The way the planes have gone and developed since then doesn't prevent you from using them in the way you want for epic gaming.

Only if we use the 2nd Edition 'stats' for such beings.

It didn't go away since then, but the idea that only high level PCs could go to the planes was abandoned, though it's blatantly obvious that the planes are hideously dangerous and not to be taken lightly in the least way. In fact it was rather openly stated that if you approached the planes with a hack and slash kill everything that moves approach, you were going to end up very dead, very fast, simply because the denizens of the planes, especially the lower ones, were just that hostile and that deadly.

You could say the same about a Bandit Keep for 1st-level adventurers - in that if you rush in and hack and slash you'll end up dead.

I've never played using the actual 2e game mechanics, I didn't play DnD till 2000. I've played most of the 2e settings though, right from the 2e books, using 3e mechanics. That has to be one of the best things about said settings, be it Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Planescape, etc that most of the books were light enough on the rules that they're perfectly valid to plug right into a 3e game. Twenty years from now they'll still be useful in whatever system DnD is using, as opposed to some other books that you might find to be largely invalidated once their stat blocks no longer mesh with a new system.

Indeed, so to an extent there is no point updating the material. Even less so than the likes of Greyhawk and Forgotten Relams because the ravages of time are less likely to change things.

I'm tempted to buy you a copy just to have you read it, and possibly change your mind on the topics it so beautifully covers. It really is a spectacularly written book, in my opinion the single best book on its topic so far written, and one of the best supplements in any edition of DnD.

Well my birthday is April 30th.

And FWIW, don't expect much out of me over the weekend, I'll be otherwise occupied.

No problems, been a bit busy myself.

 

[Upper_Krust]

Hey Rip!

She wasn't presented as one in the 1st edition Monster Manual, or the Greyhawk supplement before that.

So are you saying she can't be one then?

Both she and Bahamut were presented as non-divine creatures in the 2e Draconomicon, too. In 1st edition Deities & Demigods and the 1e Manual of the Planes she was given the powers of a lesser deity, as were all planar lords by default (and this, I would argue, was a retcon rather than their original interpretation), but it wasn't actually clear that she was a goddess proper in the same sense as Zeus and Thor until Monster Mythology came out in 2nd edition and defined these things, unless you associated them completely with Paladine and Takhisis.

But the point of the matter is, people with Deities & Demigods or Manual of the Planes knew she was a deity - it made no difference whether anyone without those books knew or not.

In first edition the idea was, more or less, if you rule a layer of a plane you automatically get the powers of a lesser god. I'm not sure this made them actual gods necessarily - TSR went back and forth on that. The 1e Manual of the Planes always said treated as a deity rather than is a deity. 1e Deities & Demigods didn't make that distinction.

Agreed.

In second edition a variety of approaches were tried - like I said, the Draconomicon made Bahamut and Tiamat non-divine "Racial Paragons." Monster Mythology made a number of the 1st editon Abyssal lords actual lesser deities, with worshippers and everything, while Planes of Chaos made others "quasi-deities," almost but not quite divine. The Lords of the Nine Dragon Magazine article defined the archdevils as being equivalent or greater in power than the gods, but different in nature.

But as you have illustrated the difference between 1st Editions various treatments was minimal.

1. Lesser Deity
2. (Treated as) Lesser Deity

Whereas 2nd Edition had them defined as:

1. Racial Paragons
2. Lesser Deities
3. Quasi-deities
4. Something Else (possibly akin to greater deities)

These are the same beings! Yet you still advocate 2nd Edition has the best treatment of the cosmology!

And WotC continues to go back and forth on this issue to this day. Tiamat is definitely a goddess, but Bahamut's divine status in the Forgotten Realms is unclear. Orcus appeared as a god in the Forgotten Realms Campaign setting and in Ghostwalk but has appeared as a sub-god in the Book of Vile Darkness and subsequently.

Yes, but even you recognise that the differences you have stated are setting based. Whereas the differences in 2nd Edition were from generic products.

I expect - some glorious day - things will stabilize and we'll have planar lords that can adequately defend their realms against attack.

A return to 1st Edition then you mean.

That's silly and short-sighted. He's chaotic evil and ambitious. He's one of the most prominent rulers of the Abyss. His plans are going to contradict someone else's eventually. It's stupid to design a cosmology that will fall apart when that day comes - as, logically, it has before and will again.

Demogorgon isn't going to spit in Odin's soup if he can help it.

The Monster Manual said he was a rival of Orcus, but that's not going to be his only rival. The Monster Manual II introduced Graz'zt, and said that he was Demogorgon's rival too.

Exactly, and all are more or less equally powerful.

Theres no enmity between vastly different powered beings - thats what I am trying to say.

In the Gord books Demogorgon allies with Nerull and opposes a third of the other rulers of the Abyss. Politics are messy and shifting, in the Abyss as much as anywhere else.

Actually the Abyss was split into three factions. The power of the Theorpart was so great that if you didn't have one, you weren't a 'player' in the game.

Its also illustrative of the Demon Princes Lesser Power being comparable to Greater power when they have the home plane advantage, because Nerull (even with a Theorpart himself) didn't risk just waltzing in to take on Graz'zt (who also had one even though the Theorparts would have cancelled each other out) and take his portion of the artifact by force.

Sure, it does, when the trophy is as impressive as Demogorgon is. You can't just say something doesn't add up without justifying your claim.

Demogorgon isn't going to be an impressive trophy for a Greater Deity.

"Overgods" ought to be powerless outside the crystal spheres they guard, as they were in Planescape.

Why not then the guardian of that particular crystal sphere then?

The term Overgod probably has too much baggage for you - how about Elder One, Old One, First One, Time Lord, Proto-deity, Lady of Pain, Galactus etc.

Gods who ascend beyond greater status end up on a new plane of reality as far distant from the Outer Planes as the Outer Planes are from the Material. It's only when you have an infinite hierarchy in the same Great Ring that you run into trouble.

That doesn't mean to say such beings are never encountered therein.

There shouldn't be any overarching deities of evil other than the fiendish lords -

I'd like to think Nerull-Infestix was certainly one.

they're the ones who personify the alignments, not ordinary deities.

But they are not the ultimate personifications of their alignments because they do not rule alone (unlike Nerull-Infestix).

Demogorgon, Apomps, Mydianchlarus, the General of Gehenna, and Asmodeus are the ones who punish upstart greater deities, or upstart deities who claim to be "overarching deities of evil" - because the turf is always truly theirs.

Demogorgon doesn't rule nor personify the entire Abyss. Technically Apomps, Mydianchlarus (I hate that idea so much - bring back Anthraxus!) and the General of Gehenna, at best, rule under Nerull-Infestix. Asmodeus only really controls three layers (those of his faction).

The way I generally like to see it is charted on my website.

Control a single layer = Demipower
Control multiple layers = Lesser Power
Control a single plane = Intermediate Power
Control multiple planes = Greater Power

Well, exactly. Set's victory is assured by the fact that devilkind isn't united.

Seths victory is not assured. The status quo is assured. If Seth acts against the devils they will team up to defend themselves, because if he takes them on alone they know they will fall one by one. But neither are the devils unified enough to launch an attack. None of the Archdevils want to be first in the door to face Set.

Think of it this way - both Baalzebul and Mephistopheles want the throne of Hell more than anything. Set allies with one of them and together they oust Asmodeus. In gratitude, Set is given Stygia for his own. Why hasn't this happened?

Simple. You can sum it up in the phrase "better the devil you know".

Also Baalzebul (or Mephisto) would rather be begrudgingly subservient to Asmodeus (whom at some stage they might have a chance against), rather than the more powerful Set, not to mention theres no way they can trust Set to not eventually destroy them anyway. Whereas Asmodeus can't destroy them because they'd have home layer advantage over him.

Um, no. "Few" means there are few of them, not that there are none of them.

Its pretty clear from the text and the list that there are none.

There is no sense in which the word "few" means "none at all" - that's just not one of the definitions of the word. Few is relative, sure - it might mean only two, or "only" a few hundred (depending on how many gods of other ranks there are in the Abyss). But it's not so relative that it can mean anything you want it to mean.

The word "would," in this context, means that the greater gods who choose not to dwell in the Abyss would have to contend with the tanar'ri, if they indeed chose to dwell there. "They" refers to those greater gods who have decided not to dwell in the Demonium, not those who have - obviously they do continually deal with upstart demon life, as the demons themselves do.

If I say "Few people make active volcanoes their home because they would have to continually deal with the noxious gases, heat and lava flows", it doesn't mean that a few do.

The gods who appeared in Deities & Demigods were hardly the only gods in the multiverse even at the time that book was published. Note that no Greyhawk-specific gods were mentioned in that book,

There are no listed Greyhawk gods with home planes in the Abyss and no Greater (Greyhawk) deities in the Nine Hells.

few or no Forgotten Realms gods were mentioned, few Dragonlance gods were mentioned,

Given the Takhisis/Tiamat dichotomy its obvious that specific settings were not necessarily meant to be integrated. The exception would probably be Greyhawk. However Manual of the Planes (1st Ed.) was written after Gygax departure from TSR, whether that had an impact on the books contents is unknown.

and there were many deities who appeared in Gods, Demigods, and Heroes (D&Dg's predecessor) that weren't mentioned later, many deities from Dragon Magazine, and deities from everyone's personal campaigns.

Did any (non-setting based) published material specify any deities as having their home planes in either the Abyss or the Nine Hells?

Of the group, only Laogzed has tanar'ri blood, and many of them had better stats than Orcus or Demogorgon.

The might have had more hit points than some demon princes, but overall I don't think their stats were noticeably better.

Vaprak hp 198, AC 0, Magic Resistance 50%, +1 or better weapon to hit.
Orcus hp 120, AC -7, Magic Resistance 90%, +3 or better weapon to hit.

They don't have to (and can't possibly) defeat every Abyssal ruler - they only have to defeat the famous ones who have presumedly been around for more than a brief time, despite so many powerful, agressive entities sharing the cosmos with them.

Yes but once you make a habit of killing demon princes, they are going to make a habit of attacking and terrorising everything you hold dear. Eventually you'll lose, and few if any allies are likely to come to your aid, because lets face it, you started this war.

Fine, don't use your imagination. Rely entirely on rigid mechanics for every conceivable situation - I don't think they're necessary, myself. That line was a response your assertion that we needed to know precisely how many souls (or whatever) tanar'ri had to devour to gain a hit die.

How is that different from saying we need to know how many experience points are needed to gain a level?

I think winging it works fine, personally. I'm not sure what that has to do with my desperate cohorts and I trying to force you to play the game a certain way with our powerful message board-based mind control techniques.

...so you admit it then!?

Well, that's how it should be, certainly, but I'm not sure how, in a scenario where Demogorgon is a lesser god and his servants are mostly sub-divine (or even demigods - but I don't think a chaotic evil lesser god could risk having many demigods in his realm, for fear they'd gang up on him), he's going to be stronger than his divine adversaries.

Probably because you are not well versed in the home plane advantage mechanism. Its probably a bigger advantage than a step up in power.

A typical Lesser Deity with Home Plane advantage would be more powerful than a typical Intermediate deity.

If they can only be killed on their home plane, they're risking nothing, and the prize is very great.

But if you are defeated outside your home plane, any being that can see into the astral plane (deities among others) can instantly follow your silver cord back to your home plane (blind teleport roll to succeed...about a 50% chance back then IIRC) and finish you off.

So if Heironeous fights Demogorgon and loses, Demogorgon might follow his spirit home and finish him off while hes rejuvenating and technically incapacitated. The risk for Demogorgon is that if the teleport result is awry hes going to kill himself, which will mean hes snapped back to his home plane to rejuvenate.

Even if they didn't try to hold Gaping Maw afterwards, notoriety can translate into power for gods. If they're opposed to chaotic evil, any defeat of a major lord is a great victory for the entire multiverse.

A greater deity with trophies of lesser deities (or weaker) is hardly a worthy hunter. I mean its unlikely you would even gain any experience points from the encounter.

If Odin is chatting to Zeus and says "I destroyed Demogorgon the other day", Zeus is not going to hi-five him and whoop "You da man!"

That's not a problem if Hextor is the more powerful deity. An intermediate god can reasonably break anti-teleportation wards prepared by a lesser deity and then completely avoid any other defenses or defenders that might be in his way.

Well firstly that assumes we convert 1st Edition Hextor to intermediate power (wherein he was only a lesser power). Secondly, (even if Hextor is an Intermediate Power), within a deities realm you cannot neccessarily simply trump their wards even if you are normally more powerful, so you'll still have to go in the front door. Added to which the defender will have both mundane and magical defenses anyway.

 

[Shemeska]

I'd like to think Nerull-Infestix was certainly one.

...

But they are not the ultimate personifications of their alignments because they do not rule alone (unlike Nerull-Infestix).

...


Technically Apomps, Mydianchlarus (I hate that idea so much - bring back Anthraxus!) and the General of Gehenna, at best, rule under Nerull-Infestix. Asmodeus only really controls three layers (those of his faction).

So. Completely. Wrong.

The whole Nerull-Infestix thing is only from Gygax's Gord novels as far as I know, which makes it irrelevant here. If that was ever mentioned in any 1st ed source that was a part of DnD proper, and I don't believe it was, it has since been utterly rewritten in 2e and 3e. Apomps is completely divorced from the yugoloth heirarchy, he hates them and would love to destroy them out of spite at his fellow Baernaloths. Mydianchlarus and the General of Gehenna aren't beholden to any deity; yugoloths in general despise deities as the bastard spawn of mortal beliefs and devotions, though the 'loths themselves have a nearly religious fanaticism for the abstract concept of evil which they themselves are manifestations of.

And what the heck is this about Asmodeus only really controlling 3 layers of Baator? I'm sorry, but you're completely wrong on that. He controls the 9th, controls the rank and file Baatezu by way of the Dark 8, and while the other Lords of the 9 each control their own layers of the plane, Asmodeus can and does order them around when push comes to shove, though each of them would of course ultimately prefer to usurp his throne.

Seths victory is not assured. The status quo is assured. If Seth acts against the devils they will team up to defend themselves, because if he takes them on alone they know they will fall one by one. But neither are the devils unified enough to launch an attack. None of the Archdevils want to be first in the door to face Set.

Well, Levistus is winning a war versus Set (and Sekolah) to the point that Set's layer in Stygia has actually shrunk in size by a very slight amount. Inside Set's domain perhaps Levistus wouldn't want to be first in line, but on Stygia at large we can see who is winning at the moment.

Its pretty clear from the text and the list that there are none.

No, no it's not. I don't see how you can infer that 'few' means 'none'. If they had wanted to mean none, they would have said none. You're ultimately changing the meaning of the word otherwise. They didn't list all the powers in the Abyss in the list you're talking about, just ones they felt were important. It wasn't all inclusive, so whichever greater deities are in the Abyss, they simply weren't noted in that small list, but they very clearly are in fact there from what was mentioned in the text. Few =! none.

If I say "Few people make active volcanoes their home because they would have to continually deal with the noxious gases, heat and lava flows", it doesn't mean that a few do.

Yes it would actually. We know intellectually that people can't survive inside active volcanos so people would look at you funny for using that sentence as an example, but you would in fact be implying that some small number of people do in fact live in them. That's what the word 'few' means.

Did any (non-setting based) published material specify any deities as having their home planes in either the Abyss or the Nine Hells?

Quite a few did as I recall. I'll have to look them up later, but they're there. 'On Hallowed Ground' will have them listed out.