Shemeska
Adventurer
The article was a move in the right direction, and it warms my black, twisted, Planescape-loving heart that it moves back towards the iconic 2e/3e Blood War.
The LE/NE/CE distinction between the fiends is something that is unique and iconic to D&D, and playing it down does it a disservice. It's cool, it's awesome, and I'm happy that it seems to be coming back. I didn't expect it, but I'll take it.
As for the article and the 'loths, they're mentioned briefly. It would have been best to see them treated on equal footing as the demons and devils, otherwise I fear that they'll be back to being second-class fiends as in 3e when they got cut from the MM for space reasons (to appear later scattered across multiple books). The brief mention of gehreleths/demodands though was pretty cool. Someone has been reading 2e.
As for the succubus, this isn't even a question for me: succubi are demons. They're among the iconic, classic demons of D&D and they're been there for almost longer than I've been alive. If you want to change them to something antithetical to that (as in 4e) that's something best reserved for a specific campaign setting change, not a default. Their default should be as CE tempters to mortals primal, lustful desires. To tear them away from the order and structure of family, pledges of love, betrothal, and the laws of society and to surrender to chaotic bliss. The 4e treatment of them always struck me as a needless change, doubly so for the continuity headache when it was forced onto other settings who evolved with a cosmology radically different from PoL.
The LE/NE/CE distinction between the fiends is something that is unique and iconic to D&D, and playing it down does it a disservice. It's cool, it's awesome, and I'm happy that it seems to be coming back. I didn't expect it, but I'll take it.
As for the article and the 'loths, they're mentioned briefly. It would have been best to see them treated on equal footing as the demons and devils, otherwise I fear that they'll be back to being second-class fiends as in 3e when they got cut from the MM for space reasons (to appear later scattered across multiple books). The brief mention of gehreleths/demodands though was pretty cool. Someone has been reading 2e.
As for the succubus, this isn't even a question for me: succubi are demons. They're among the iconic, classic demons of D&D and they're been there for almost longer than I've been alive. If you want to change them to something antithetical to that (as in 4e) that's something best reserved for a specific campaign setting change, not a default. Their default should be as CE tempters to mortals primal, lustful desires. To tear them away from the order and structure of family, pledges of love, betrothal, and the laws of society and to surrender to chaotic bliss. The 4e treatment of them always struck me as a needless change, doubly so for the continuity headache when it was forced onto other settings who evolved with a cosmology radically different from PoL.