No more Malcanthet?

[helium3]

Once 3e hit, every setting got its own cosmology and was no longer uncomfortably shoehorned into some giant, wierd metasetting that had no rhyme or reason whatsover other than a metagame vision of alignment taken from D&D's earliest days. Settings like Dragonlance and Dark Sun which were both intended to have completely seperate cosmologies....cosmologies connected to the settings and rooted in the assumptions of those settings were forced to be part of some giant cosmic hub system.

Oh yeah, then began the retroactive rationales.....

Even the greatest scholars of the their respective worlds didn't know the 'dark' of the planes and were nothing but bumpkins compared to the planar's worldly, cynical sophistication. So the wisest sages of Krynn didn't know that their Abyss was really just the planar domain of Takhisis and their Greater Goddess was merely Asmodeus' guard dog so to speak. They didn't know that their Paladine's Dome of Creation wasn't really a plane of reality all its own but merely his domain on another plane.

Athasians had no idea that they were just in some magically impenetreble crystal sphere that was bobbing like an apple amongst a bunch of others in a infinite fishbowl of flammable liquid all of them surrounded by a bunch of alignment based planes.

I might be griping about some, or even a lot of, 4e's mechanical changes, but if there is anything I am grateful for it is that 4e is casting off the shakles of the Great Wheel and letting it be what it always really was....Greyhawk's Cosmology. The Great Wheel IMO turned everything into a bland, homogenized gruel by attempting to be everything to every setting and ultmimately damaging the uniqueness of each setting arbitrarily crammed into it.



Wyrmshadows

Amen Brutha!!!

 

[Tewligan]

EDIT: Hm - unnecessarily snarky, now that I read it. Never mind!

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, I'm glad that Malcanthet might get turned into a devil. I mean, reading her writeup in the Demonomicon and then in the Savage Tide, I have absolutely no sense why she would be considered a demon. She's into long term planning, meticulous, and not spontaneous. She wants to tempt mortals into doing evil, and not wantonly destroy things.

Sounds like a devil to me.

I'm hoping that demons will look a LOT more like Obyrith in 4e and devils will be more, umm, convential looking. Sure, you might have some extra tentacles or other dangly bits hanging from devils, but, demons should look like something M. C. Escher would draw after a bad acid trip.

 

[Lord Zack]

Honestly you don't know what you're talking about. Demons aren't just "Rawr, me smash". They're all about dissent and disorder as well as getting what they want, being Chaotic Evil. But they don't just go around breaking things and hurting people randomly. The less intelligent demons do that yes, but the more cunning ones might prefer more subtle ways of spreading chaos and evil, though strong and intelligent demons like Demogorgon might also engage in some smashing when it suits them. Malcanthet and her Succubi for instance corrupt mortals into being more chaotic and evil. They're methods have little to do with they're alignments and more to do with they're capabilities.

 

[Hussar]

Honestly you don't know what you're talking about. Demons aren't just "Rawr, me smash". They're all about dissent and disorder as well as getting what they want, being Chaotic Evil. But they don't just go around breaking things and hurting people randomly. The less intelligent demons do that yes, but the more cunning ones might prefer more subtle ways of spreading chaos and evil, though strong and intelligent demons like Demogorgon might also engage in some smashing when it suits them. Malcanthet and her Succubi for instance corrupt mortals into being more chaotic and evil. They're methods have little to do with they're alignments and more to do with they're capabilities.

See, I disagree. I see demons as as much chaotic as evil. That means that long term strategies are right out the window. They are engines of destruction.

Tempters of mortals? That's what devils are for. After all, tempting a mortal to kill his family and sacrifice them to the patron is much more devilish to me. It smacks of planning, subtlety, insidiousness.

None of these adjectives fit with chaos. Chaos isn't subtle. Chaos doesn't plan. Chaos is the raw rage that drives someone to burn down his house to kill the cockroaches. Chaos is the mob burning the town in a riot.

With devils, you get the personal touch. Slow, gentle leading down the path of damnation, paved all the way with good intentions.

If demons were about subtlety and guile, why make them chaotic? That's what neutral and lawful evil is for.

It's that last bit of your post,

They're methods have little to do with they're alignments and more to do with they're capabilities.

that I really disagree with. Demons and devils are the embodiments of those alignments. They aren't just chaotic and evil, they're CHAOTIC EVIL. Their alignments should reflect their methods. If a character isn't acting in a chaotic evil manner, then they aren't chaotic evil. Give them the abilities to reflect their nature or change their nature. One or the other.

 

[Lord Zack]

Well then, we'll have to agree to disagree then I guess. I guess I just have a different definition of chaos.

 

[Clavis]

Whatever they do with Malcanthet, hopefully they'll at least get an artist to at least make her look sexy. All the depictions I've seen make me wonder how the poor girl ever gets anyone to fall for her.

Even in their natural form, ordinary Succubi should be the kind of creature that you willingly face damnation for. The Queen of the Succubi should be so alluring that you beg to be allowed to tongue-clean her feet for all eternity.

 

[Badkarmaboy]

Well why don't we just call it "World Of Warcraft with Dice" then, hm? sigh

Oddly enough, I've been playing (A)D&D for 20 odd years, and gnomes alignment and the Outer Planes have all been a happy part of that. Mechanics change, big deal, but when you start changing the "fluff" though, oh boy....

Sometimes, tradition IS a good thing.

Ah, the D&D-as-WoW comparison rears its ugly head.

FWIW, I don't see how removing the Great Wheel makes D&D WoW with dice. I never found it to be that integral to my games. I seems though it was pretty important to you, though.

 

[Minicol]

Ah, the D&D-as-WoW comparison rears its ugly head.

FWIW, I don't see how removing the Great Wheel makes D&D WoW with dice. I never found it to be that integral to my games. I seems though it was pretty important to you, though.

Just that, maybe no. But let's talk about the wizard, shall we ?

At least, Wow is the popular game of choice now. it's not dance-dance revolution. Hell wait, that could be better in fact, since we would get the bard back.

 

[ruleslawyer]

It seems to me that Lilith matches a patron/ruler for the succubus quite well. Plus she's a bit more "mythologically famous" than Malcanthet.