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Message: <blockquote data-quote="M.L. Martin" data-source="post: 5181275" data-attributes="member: 4086">What do you mean by 'D&D'? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  If you mean what most people take as 'classic' D&D--the 1st Ed/3rd Ed/Paizo/4th Ed experience, I'd say the game could probably be renamed Dungeons & Demons and be more accurate, if more problematic from a marketing standpoint. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  However, there are other streams of D&D that make less use of them--Dragonlance includes them rarely (I think there's a marilith prowling the Temple of the Dark Queen in Neraka and that's generally it in the original modules; they likewise tend to show up sparingly in other sources), BECMI didn't even have stats for them until the Immortals set, and Ravenloft treated them as the kind of thing that you should probably encounter only a handful of in a campaign--but that should be utterly terrifying to the players (even moreso than usual for Ravenloft villains or for fiends) each time.   Perhaps it's the Ravenloft influence, but if you're going to be using Absolute Evil, IMO, it should be treated as something dramatic, so IMO, they shouldn't be the ubiquitous and all-levels villains that D&D has sometimes treated them as. I think that at times, the game's gotten top-heavy with them, with a massive focus on demons, and sometimes demons for their own sake, with massive attention to Abyssal/Infernal politics and the like, such that their role as enemies of goodness fades away and they almost become rivals/role models/supporters rather than archenemies. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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