D&D General How do devils actually get to the world from hell?

[Micah Sweet]

I like to think they use public transport, but like, think of the city with the worst public transport you know, it's worse in hell. Devils trying to get to the prime plane to start possessing people but the train out of hell has broken down... again.

Still working on that Interplanar Hellport.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

This why I preferred TSR's monster entries, particularly 2e's work. They didn't assume the only thing that mattered was combat.

In my opinion, it is not about lore, but perceived permission. Up until 3.x it was taken for granted that a DM could make up their own lore but 3.x had rules for everything and making rules up was frowned upon. I remember the RAW vs RAI arguments here. I remember adventure reviews where there would be a long list of monster build mistakes listed. 4e continued this.
5e as far as I know encourages reskinning and making whatever changes to monsters and so on to make the adventure work.

 

[Shades of Eternity]

imp-o-grams is how I would do it.

adjust them to act as messagers for hell as a whole.

make it easier to open a portal to release them at key locationss, and let them wander the planet.

 

[Emerikol]

I don't (personally) believe they ever lost the ability to teleport without error, it just got shifted to a more narrative thing. For me, they still have it. For someone else, they might decide a hell portal is the only way.

This works for the prime material plane but still doesn't explain how they get to the prime material plane.