Fiendish Codex III: Yugoloths poll

[Lord Rasputin]

No. Two books for fiendish outsiders is already one book too many.

 

[sckeener]

Do I want to see it, yes, but it isn't going to happen. At best there will be a great Dragon magazine with the Yugoloths as the theme.

 

[Dykstrav]

I can kinda see how having demodands in with yugoloths would definitely help fill the pages. Since they both populate the NE planes I'd let it slip in. What I'm most interested in is some more in-depth material on Hades and Tartarus.

But I'd also like to see a bit more material (perhaps a chapter in this theoretical NE fiend book) about night hags, larvae, and the soul trade they perform in the NE planes.

Add all this into one book and I think it could easily sell at least as well as the current Fiendish Codex products.

 

[Shemeska]

But that's the problem. When will it ever get a chance to shine if it doesn't receive a chance at all?

From what I've gather in past editions, yugoloths were as prominent as the other 2 major fiends, but for some strange reason WotC did not carry this over into the 3rd Edition.

In 1e they were all about the same.
In 2e the yugoloths might have actually had more words under their belt than the other fiends.
In 3e the 'loths were underplayed from the outset because they weren't in the 3e MM, thus "not core", and initial 3e books avoided the use of anything "not core" even when it would have made sense. And when you consider that the 'loths were originally going to be in the MM but were excluded because of the twin concerns of page count issues and not wanting to swamp the book with too many outsiders, they're more a victim of bizarre circumstance than anything else.

But I also suppose that if you skipped 2e, you probably know next to nothing about them by comparison to the other fiends, and they might indeed appear like a third wheel, less important than the Baatezu and Tanar'ri, rather than as the puppetmasters of the lower planes which the weight of their flavor text portrays them as.

WotC stuck themselves in a cyclic little rut: People don't think the 'loths are important because we don't publish much material about them, and we won't publish much material about them because people don't see them as being as important. It's a self created conundrum.

 

[Razz]

Do I want to see it, yes, but it isn't going to happen. At best there will be a great Dragon magazine with the Yugoloths as the theme.

Strangely, you would figure Dragon Magazine would portray a "Yugoloth" themed issue or have at least one large yugoloth article at some point. But it's been close to 7 years since 3E was released and the only yugoloth article we got from them were merely yugoloth creations, the "Battleloths".

Now I praise Dragon highly, but there's a couple of things they need to consider doing once and for all and one of them is publishing more yugoloth articles. We have enough devils&demons (especially demons) now.

 

[Sammael]

IMO, another important reason why 'loths are so underplayed in 3.x is that they were greatly overplayed in Planescape. EVERYTHING was a freaking yugoloth scheme, whereas the other paragons of evil were portrayed as bumbling idiots. If anything, this had its roots in the de-devilization that was going on in 2e. TSR did not want to have prominent devils and demons, even under different names, so McComb and others turned to the yugoloths, which were really nothing like the Judeo-Christian demons (insect people? fox people? alien-like people?). In other words, yugoloths were safe to use to begin with, and so they were given a much larger role than in 1e (in which they were more closely associated with disease than in 2e).

 

[pogre]

I voted yes, but I would actually prefer it if FCIII dealt with all "other" fiends, not just Yugoloths. Thus, it'd have a chapter on Yugoloths, a chapter on Night Hags, Nightmares, and Larvae, a chapter on Rakshasas, a chapter on Gehreleths, and a chapter covering "minor" fiends (bladelings, hordlings, and so on).

This I would pick up, but just a book on 'loths? No thanks.

 

[Xyanthon]

I would most assuredly pick up a FC III. However, like others have mentioned, I'd like it to have other fiendish outsiders in it as well.

 

[Crust]

Yugoloths are huge in Forgotten Realms.

A trio of nycaloths caused the destruction of Myth Drannor. It would be incredible if they were statted out (slim chance of that... I'd be interested in the author's ideas). Scott Ciencen did a great job covering The Trio Nefarious as the commander/spy/berserker trio in The Fall of Myth Drannor 2E supplement. Very cool.

Yugoloths also made an appearance in Rich Baker's The Last Mythal series.

In The War of the Spider Queen series, the ultroloth Inthracis is a key foe (and a cool baddie... at least in Resurrection).

I tend to use yugoloths more than demons or devils. Not sure why. Could be the influence of the above. One of the major foes in our previous campaign was an ultroloth sorcerer, and PCs had to fight hordes of mezzoloths, nycaloths, and canoloths on various occasions.

Yugoloths are the "other" fiend. Besides, Wizards is on a roll with Fiendish Codex II. It seems like there's a third I just waiting to jump in.

 

[Pants]

This I would pick up, but just a book on 'loths? No thanks.

QFT.

Also, I'd hope that any FCIII wouldn't be just a 'loth mastubatory fest of how they manipulate everyone and everything. We had enough of that in 2e. While I like the loths and the master manipulator angle, I hope it isn't overplayed.

As for other fiends, night hags, hordelings, barghests, and demodands/gehreleths would be perfect.