NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scrivener of Doom" data-source="post: 7902514" data-attributes="member: 87576">1. The 1E Monster Manual included type I to type VI demons; there were no type VII or type VIII demons (except perhaps in Arduin Grimoire?).2. Type I-VI demons were actually introduced in OD&D's Eldritch Wizardry.3. On the contrary, it is clear that Gygax (well, as clear as anything could be with Gygax who loved the non sequitur school of game "design") did mean for there to be a demonic hierarchy as evidenced by the rankings of same from type I to type VI. Further, the hit dice issue is not as clear cut as the 1E Monster Manual would have you believe because, if you go back to the Eldritch Wizardry source, Gygax intended for the type IV and type VI demons to have lower hit dice but those hit dice being a higher value. (Demogorgon and Orcus were also noted as using the higher hit die value.) Why did he do this? Who really knows. I just assume it was yet another non sequitur that he never had time to develop or explain and that his editor was told to ignore.4. I seem to recall that the random tables in the DMG were first published in The Dragon (as it was). I've gone through Dragondex and some of PDFs but cannot find if my memory is faulty or not. It would be interesting to read the commentary that goes with the introduction of these tables to see if there was any underlying logic or if it was just something interesting to publish. I tend to agree that a creature type that is supposed to be the exemplar of chaotic evil should be a lot more chaotic than its carefully structured hierarchy of power would otherwise lead us to believe. Monster Manual II's hordelings/hordlings were actually a much better representation of chaotic evil paragons than Gygax's demons (despite being, IIRC, neutral evil).</blockquote>

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