D&D General Pros and Cons of Combining Hells and the Abyss.

[Azzy]

In my campaign setting, I've nixed the Great Wheel altogether. Demons, devils, yugoloths, etc. all come from the same place (outside of my setting's planar cosmology).

I don't really see the need to keep them seperate if you're not using the Great Wheel or the concept of the Blood War (other than because you want to).

 

[aco175]

My campaigns never seem to get there since 3e days. My players might have some sense of layers and above and below, but do not know much. The PCs might see something and not know if it is a demon or devil, but generally attack monster-looking things destroying the town. The townsfolk do not care what is attacking them either, just that someone killed it.

I guess the answer is; how much do you or the players care about knowing what is out there. If it comes up, then fine, otherwise it is something you do not need to plan.

I could see a cosmos where there are 3 'good' planes above and 3 'bad' planes below. Each has 2 traditional planes and a more neutral plane where everyone is and they fight it out. The true neutral ground is the Earth where these forces can pass through trying to get to the others. It is a funnel between the good and bad planes so the angels and gods keep watch on Earth while the demon and devils want to corupt it to be one step closer to taking over the good planes.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

I've taken all of the fiends and split them between Devils and Demons. Devils are the dark protectors of the cosmology, the first line of defense against the corrupt horrors of the abyss and the Far Realms. The are lawful beings that lean more neutral then evil or good and their leaders, the Arch-Devils, also act as the gods of law, civilization, and its economic structures.

Demons meanwhile are more eldritch, with their leaders being more concepts of corruption and vileness in the cosmos, and are only known by simple Monikers like The Ruiner, The Devourer, The Butcher, The Torturer, The Undeath, and so forth. The yare wholly evil and want to break the cosmos.

 

[Alzrius]

Over the years I have had them combined and seperate. Looking to nail it down for my homebrew continuity and looking for constructive inputs for and against.

The way I'd approach this is to note that, given their overall similarities (i.e. they're both evil planes of existence where bad people go when they die, and are filled with malevolent spirits (that is, demons and devils) who want to bring woe to the living), the question then becomes if you see enough salient differences to justify keeping them separate.

Traditionally, those salient differences were the law/chaos dichotomy, and how that set up the differences in the ways that demons and devils tried to harm mortals. But if you don't think that distinction is particularly strong, or don't see it as being very notable, then there's probably no real downside to combining them.

 

[el-remmen]

In my old homebrew, "The Stem of Hell" was a demi-plane built inside the Abyss - nine levels built to reach the Outer Planes and battle the gods - an attempt to project order onto the roiling chaos of the Abyss in order to conquer the heavens and the universe. This was much too orderly for the demons who were against any kind of organization or cooperation, and so every few millennia or so they try to tear it down until they get bored.

In my current homebrew I have not bothered to detail any planes and I won't until it becomes relevant (which it may never be). Heck, I haven't detailed any kind of cosmology.

 

[Steampunkette]

I'm weird in that I like Planes but also I hate planes...

Certain planes I like. Having heaven or hell just be "Earth but different" like the Plane of Shadow? Yes, please! Give me a whole Celestial Plane of various worlds spinning in light rather than darkness, each its own special kind of joy. And an Infernal Plane where each world is its own unique hell...

But then stuff like... the Elemental Plane of Fire. I hate it. It's so pointless and weird. "The air, the ground, and everything else is fire!" just never felt interesting or engaging to me. Sure, the City of Brass is there (And the Brass is also fire, I guess?) but it's just -dull- as a concept.

And then some stuff... it's probably just easier to do a Planet. Or, like, a series of planets. Mechanus, for example, is much more interesting as a group of quasi-borg working outward to try and 'order' the universe... and bumbling the entire way because the universe is too big for anything they do to matter and leads to interesting ideas for breakdown behind them. Pandemonium as a place that was once 'ordered' by modrons but has fallen into screeching chaos without order's steady hand.

To me that just feels 'better' and I'm not sure why.

As far as combining the Abyss and Hell: Sure. The pro is that you have a hellish plane of constant battle and different forces of law and chaos battling each other for the souls of the damned. Which is something you already have with two different hell-realities, you're just now saying they cohabitate rather than living next door to each other. Works fine.

The only significant difference is that when people get randomly assigned to a plane when a Plane Shift or something goes wrong you have to collapse a couple options.

 

[nevin]

I have turned the Abyss into the borderlands with the primal Chaos of creation where things to troublesome to be left in creation are cast out. the Hells are the border that keeps them out. So when you leave the hells to enter the Abyss you are leaving behind all the rules you know.

 

[Corinnguard]

I think the Nine Hells and the Abyss are both separate planes and a part of the Lower Planes of Evil at the same time. All of the good-aligned planes, likewise, are part of the Upper Planes of Good.

That said, I think the elemental planes should be one world and an echo of the Material Plane, just like the Feywild and the Shadowfall are. The elemental plane would resemble a Material Plane world, but one that is very geologically active because of the constantly warring elementals.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I kinda like the Blood War, if only as a reason the material plane is overwhelmed by fiends. But aside from Hell they're (nearly) all in a broad, vague Abyss that contains more than anyone can map or count - demons are chaotic and therefore impossible to categorized.

Hell/Baator is devils and some other distinctly lawful fiends like Xill and Formics and Chasme. The Abyss is basically everything else that's an evil outsider, from daemons to tannari and mariliths to slaad and rakshasa.

The third outer plane is just all the upper planes combined. You have to go past Mt Celestia to get in though, so that's where the angels hang out.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't use alignment, so I don't worry much about the cosmology of the various planes. I just grab and pick whatever the story needs, so I guess I see the various planes more as a multiverse. Insofar as I think about them at all. If I need to really define a setting for a particular story, I just add the details then. For example, when Tiamat came into the story, I did present her as trapped in a kind of crappy hellscape situation, and this is one of her valid grievances with Bahamut, in my story.