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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7870184" data-attributes="member: 4937">[USER=6801226]@MechaTarrasque[/USER]: The lack of symmetry between the exemplars has always bothered me, and again I think it is best explained by the meta rather than the fiction.The fictional inspiration for 'demons' is the pulp fiction of the famous N appendix that represents the stories that Gygax is trying to recreate. In that context such as the Conan stories or Leiber's 'Swords' stories, a 'demon' is not a demon as we usually use the term, but rather some sort of far realms Lovecraftian horror that magicians lure into this realm and force them to serve them. As such, it's not at all surprising that there is in the source stories no symmetry between demons and anything else. There are no good exemplars and the 'demons' of these stories are not necessarily related to each other in origin, and are not evil exemplars either. They are demons only in the sense that something like a Mind Flayer is a demon. Unfortunately, when actually describing demons, D&D made the regrettable decision to take inspiration not mainly from the pulps, but from occult demonology. And it wasn't long before people were importing in angels/celestials in various forms to resist the demons/fiends/infernals. However, there has always been a reluctance to actually let the angels do this, because it doesn't happen (much) in the source material that supernatural powers of good show up and save the day, and there is always a fear of deprotagonizing the PC's if they aren't the ones who are ultimately representing the forces of good.For my part, I tend to employ symmetry and resolve the problem by making all the exemplars relatively rare (but equally common) on the material plane, and use a lot of native outsiders or 'spirits' to fill in the gap in encounter design. This gives up certain plot elements, like the classic portal to hell through which demonic hordes threaten to invade, but in the context this plot element to me never made much sense anyway outside of a strictly Moorcock spectrum where all the exemplars are equally hostile to mortal life and so the DM is explicitly anointing neutrality as the correct and right moral and ethical system.</blockquote>

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