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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 5181571" data-attributes="member: 2205">I'll take your word for it; I wasn't playing D&D already by the time 1e changed to 2e.  I do know, however, that the Monstrous Manual that I looked at (likely a later printing) had them renamed.  I also know that probably more was written about the fiends in 2e than at any time before or since.  And that a lot of the really iconic fiendish moments in D&D were in "classic" 2e adventures; Dead Gods, March of the Modrons, etc.Maybe it was really Planescape that brought fiends back after generic 2e took them out, but they certainly had an extremely strong presence in 2e nonetheless.Indeed; that was fundamentally the excuse that BADD and whatnot used to fuel their anti-D&D campaign.  Not to mention what tons of preachers, pastors and other religious leaders have said about it over the years as well, especially during the heyday of the 80s.It's hard to say that that's problematic, though, as it's fundamentally part of what launched D&D into the popularity that it enjoyed.  Many of us wouldn't be playing D&D and may not even have ever heard of it if it wasn't for the fiends in the Monster Manual, and the counter-reaction to them.  Blackleaf's Legacy, if you will.I think that's a rather uncharitable, IMO, and certainly false assumption that folks can only figure out something gamist to do with a bunch of mechanics for some cool, evil monsters.  I don't need saving from this quandry you've devised, because this slippery slope logical model you've developed its based on a number of assumptions that simply don't have to be true, and nothing in the official rules or whatever dictates that it must exist, or even suggests it, really.  Demon and devil stats are in the monster books because they're cool creatures to fight in game, just like everything else in the books.  What to do with them, if anything, is (as always) up to the GM.  Only some products, and then usually very specific to a certain campaign setting, have provided very much in the way of "ecology" of the fiends, or attempted to place them in the world.  They're just monsters, like all the rest in the MM, and they can be used however you like, because almost everything in the MM is just about how they act in combat.In my campaigns, fiends are (relatively) common either because they've 1) defeated their angelic opposition and caused them to retreat from the mortal world, 2) are invited by the power-hungry, or 3) just because that's how outsiders are in my campaigns.  We call them demons, but hey, if we knew angels, we wouldn't like them any better.  They're outsiders.  The concerns of mortals are of no consequence to them.  Maybe that's more amoral and indifferent rather than "evil" when you get right down to it, but from our perspective, it's awfully hard to tell the difference.Of course, I downplay alignment in my games quite a bit too.  Alignment has had various iterations through the years, from the Law-Neutral-Chaos of early editions, the nine point alignment of AD&D through 3e, the fuzzy alignment of Eberron, and the five point alignment of 4e.  Alignment seems less like a fundamental part of D&D given the very different interpretations of it over the years than fiends do.</blockquote>

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