How do you make demons really scary?

[Shemeska]

It's easy to make a monster powerful. Stick a couple of big numbers on it, and you're done. A tarrasque is powerful. It ain't scary, though.

How do you make your players afraid of demons? You know how The Omen is more scary than Star Wars, despite a child being able to make a window fall on someone doesn't exactly compare blowing up the entire planet.

What abilities and traits do you give your scary demons that make your players hesitate before turning the lights out that night? How do you distinguish between powerful cabs scary?

Here's my initial attempt at a demon. It is only partway they, but I gave it some malevolent planning abilities that I hope players will find creepy. I have a long way to go though.

View attachment 61527

Speaking as someone who has published a lot of fiendish material and has been accused of running Call of Cthulhu within D&D, here's my advice:

I think that you're approaching it from the wrong direction here to an extent. Mechanics and rules don't make anything scary. Some crunch can be used to better effect in-game to make players uneasy or scared, but it isn't the rules portion that evokes that reaction. It's more about the DM's ability to portray that atmosphere in-game - but for evoking that from the monster itself, the flavor text and description are paramount in providing the DM with the tools and most importantly the inspiration to do that in-game.

IMO of course.

 

[Shemeska]

Pathfinder ceustodaemons (aka guardian daemons/guardian yugoloths) are threatening, but for a variety of reasons they aren't particularly frightening right out of the book.

I wanted to use one in a demiplane my players were locked within. They find this thing locked within a warded cell, begging to be released, threatening them if they didn't let it out. They don't consider the situation all that worrisome, and then they notice that the fiend is spattered in its own blood, and its back and spinal column show signs of massive surgical intervention. They hold up a light and see the inside of its cell where it has compulsively written the following over and over and over again on the walls in its own blood:

"Never change. Never grow old. Never sleep. Never dream. Never rest. Never hope. Never die. Please PLEASE LET ME DIE!"

Creeped them the hell out as they realized that something else, something unknown, has been tinkering with the fiend like a living toy. No mechanics at all used there, but the delivery helped set the stage for when they encountered the thing that was responsible.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

Don't go for scary. Go for disturbing. Scary is momentary. Disturbing stays with you.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

They find this thing locked within a warded cell, begging to be released, threatening them if they didn't let it out. They don't consider the situation all that worrisome, and then they notice that the fiend is spattered in its own blood, and its back and spinal column show signs of massive surgical intervention. They hold up a light and see the inside of its cell where it has compulsively written the following over and over and over again on the walls in its own blood:

"Never change. Never grow old. Never sleep. Never dream. Never rest. Never hope. Never die. Please PLEASE LET ME DIE!"

Creeped them the hell out as they realized that something else, something unknown, has been tinkering with the fiend like a living toy. No mechanics at all used there, but the delivery helped set the stage for when they encountered the thing that was responsible.

Now THAT'S the way to do it!

"Disturbing" is much more effective than "scary." You can make something scary just with the tone of your voice, music in the background, lighting, etc., but all that goes away when the lights come on. A really disturbing scene will stick with your players and continue to bother them over time.

To use an example from another medium, one reason the Hellraiser films went off track was due to the directors/writers losing sight of what was most effective about them. The key point was that the Cenobites weren't horribly tortured beings - they did those things to themselves, and found pleasure in doing so. Their "victims" were people who had actually gone out of their way to attract the Cenobites and ask for assistance in doing the same thing. The novella made this point well. The first movie watered it down a bit. The second movie kept the aspect of desire leading to that state of being, but completely threw out the idea of Cenobites creating their wounds themselves. Subsequent films lost the basic point altogether, because the writers assumed that it was scary to have an unstoppable torturing monster pursuing you. That's true, but it's much more effective to dwell on the disturbing fact that the monsters and the victims are no different than each other, and actually sought out their fates.

 

[Celebrim]

Creeped them the hell out as they realized that something else, something unknown, has been tinkering with the fiend like a living toy. No mechanics at all used there, but the delivery helped set the stage for when they encountered the thing that was responsible.

That maybe true but I'd like to again point out that the fiend itself wasn't scary. The fiend itself was simply gross. In fact, you actually made the fiend something of a figure of pity. The actual scary thing is the unknown thing that is torturing the fiend. And if that other thing is also a fiend, I think it loses - it decompresses - the horror. The viewers are relieved. And honestly, the whole scene is probably more disturbing if the thing being tortured in that way isn't a fiend but is something more sympathetic that has been reduced to such a state.

Let me simplify the point. If it's a demon; it's already cliché.

 

[Shemeska]

That maybe true but I'd like to again point out that the fiend itself wasn't scary. The fiend itself was simply gross. In fact, you actually made the fiend something of a figure of pity. The actual scary thing is the unknown thing that is torturing the fiend. And if that other thing is also a fiend, I think it loses - it decompresses - the horror. The viewers are relieved. And honestly, the whole scene is probably more disturbing if the thing being tortured in that way isn't a fiend but is something more sympathetic that has been reduced to such a state.

Let me simplify the point. If it's a demon; it's already cliché.

My players get the hell out of this thread now:



















Demons out of the book are often cliché, which is why if you give it a name and a history, you need to make it different and unique in some capacity for it to be effective. Make it transcend the stats and make the players exist in a limbo of not knowing what the hell it is. Don't let them classify it by association with something that has a firm statblock.

As for the situation I mentioned before, the creature that was responsible was itself a fiend. Sort of. That's the best word for it really. Transcendent abomination might be a better word.

Tegresin the Laughing Fiend (see Here and more in depth Here)

As portrayed in the game it's superficially sympathetic, it's genuinely kind to the PCs, it's sort of cute looking, and it's lonely. It's also imprisoned by entities never named for reasons never explained, and it is utterly and completely amoral. It's ferociously powerful, immortal, and completely without care or connection to the reality that it's stuck within. As such, the only thing it's doing is making other creatures suffer so long as it has to endure existing alongside them. It isn't gross, it has reasons behind its malevolence though the particulars might not be voiced or explained, but they're presumed given the way it acts. It doesn't come across as growlsnarlIeatyoubecauseI'mamonster or something like that. I try to make it more complex and since someone else said it, I'll repeat it, 'disturbing'.



Artwork by the awesome and talented Beth Trott

 

[pickin_grinnin]

That maybe true but I'd like to again point out that the fiend itself wasn't scary. The fiend itself was simply gross. In fact, you actually made the fiend something of a figure of pity. The actual scary thing is the unknown thing that is torturing the fiend. And if that other thing is also a fiend, I think it loses - it decompresses - the horror. The viewers are relieved. And honestly, the whole scene is probably more disturbing if the thing being tortured in that way isn't a fiend but is something more sympathetic that has been reduced to such a state.

It's not gross. It's disturbing, on multiple levels. There is something that is worse than that fiend. The fiend itself is displaying very recognizable emotions with which you can empathize. You are feeling bad for a fiend that may have done horrible things to other people. You have to decide whether to leave it to a fate that nothing should have to face, release it and risk the lives of others, or kill it despite the fact that you know it has a deeper emotional level than you first suspected. All disturbing things, and very effective. Disturbing things are also scary.

The unknown thing is scary, but in a different way.[/quote]

Let me simplify the point. If it's a demon; it's already cliché.

If you use any monster from any mythology, or make up one of your own that bears any resemblance to a known monster, it's a cliche. If you are playing fighters or wizards or whatever in a fantasy campaign, it's a cliche. The impressive thing is taking a cliche and turning it around into something else.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Scary is as scary does. That demon just destroyed people who would casually enslave it. The demon isn't even the bad guy in the scenario. Nasty and pissed off, yes. I'd be pissed off if people tried enslaving me when they had trouble.

To make the demon scary, first it needs agency. Summoning is a way of controlling a demon. You do not summon demons if you want them to be scary. You invite them to bargain with and they can leave at any time - get the summoning wrong and they can leave into this world. Second, to get to the demon, you need to deal with intermediaries first who build it up both because it's giving them occult powers and because they are themselves scary. Then the PCs find a corpse of a would-be summoner and realise that means the demon itself is loose.

(And the best way to stop a demonic ritual from working? Spam the ritual until the demon gives up and creates a new one because the proverbial phone was ringing off the hook).

 

[Celebrim]

It's not gross. It's disturbing, on multiple levels.

I'm afraid you aren't going to be able to inform me about my own emotional states. You find it disturbing. I find it gross. Heck, now that I'm seeing the pictures I'm not even finding it gross.

The rest of your description has the same problem. You are trying to inform me about my internal emotional state. You are missing the mark repeatedly, except when you say, "Disturbing things are also scary." Point is, it isn't a disturbing scene (to me), and neither my logic nor my emotions with regard to this scene are what you are expecting them to be.

If you use any monster from any mythology, or make up one of your own that bears any resemblance to a known monster, it's a cliche.

For example, a peryton isn't clichéd despite being a monster from mythology because people have no idea what to expect. Is it going to be silly? Is it going to be lame? Is it going to be scary? What does it 'do'? In that regard, a peryton makes a better 'demon' - in the sense of an implacably evil foe - than a demon does.

Part of the reason that there is a link to Slaad in my signature rather than demons is that at least with Slaad, there is more of an unknown quantity. With a demon, the only way to make it an unknown quantity is to not make it a demon. My word for that later approach is 'lame'.

This isn't in fact anything people haven't noticed before. When Paizo did it's version of 'Return to the Isle of Dread' in Savage Tide, many people complained (rightly I think) about the fact that instead of giving the island a Lovecraftian theme, it ended up being just another 'stop the demon lord worshiping wierdos' adventure path. It ironically made the scenario more normal and less frightening than their own riffs of imagination had been when they only had those weird heat loving salamander things to deal with. One way to deal with this is to go ahead and make demons Lovecraftian, which is reasonably at some level, but involves tearing down peoples expectations until you might as well not call them 'demons' at all. Lovecraft didn't bother to do so, and wasn't the worse for it.

 

[Yora]

In my campaign, demons are formless spirits that can exist in the material world only through possession or temporary bodies created through summoning spells (which normally last only a minute or two). And most of the time, possession is irreversible. Once the demon takes over control of the body, the soul is already consumed and can not be restored. All that's left is to destroy the body and force the demon back into its native realm.
They don't neccessarily need living humanoid bodies, corpses or nonliving matter exposed to high levels of chaos energy can also work, appearing like undead or elementals.