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<blockquote data-quote="Merlion" data-source="post: 2514186" data-attributes="member: 10397">I have...or at least some times have...a problem with how Outsiders...or more specificaly the exemplar Outsiders, fiends, celestials, etc are presented and dealt with in D&amp;D, on a couple of levels. One, is the whole spirit/body fusion thing. I tend to think of demons, angels etc as spiritual entities that take on physical forms. In D&amp;D they are more or less purely physical beings that reproduce physically (I assume), and that once you kill them in their physical bodies, there dead. Of course in older editions, this was not the case...when defeated, the spirit of such a creature fled back to its home plane.Nextly, on a more philosophical level, they are treated as more or less embodiments of the planes of alignment and/or of the alignments themselves that come into existence being totally evil or totally good. And yet they have minds, Int, Cha, and Wis scores. So the question is, do they have free will? If so, that means a Pit Fiend could decide to change and follow the path of good...but what would happen? And if not...can something be truly evil, or good, if it has no choice in the matter?Now the easy obvious answer to this quandry would be to say that fiends were all originally Celestials that fell from grace. The only trouble with that is how to explain their vast numbers, and the fact that there are generally more types of fiends than types of celestials.Also, a biggy for me is deciding how I would want to handle things like half celestials and half fiends. To me, having them be capable of reproducing is a bit...odd...but I do like the option for players and creatures and what have you.Thoughts, suggestions?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Merlion, post: 2514186, member: 10397"] I have...or at least some times have...a problem with how Outsiders...or more specificaly the exemplar Outsiders, fiends, celestials, etc are presented and dealt with in D&D, on a couple of levels. One, is the whole spirit/body fusion thing. I tend to think of demons, angels etc as spiritual entities that take on physical forms. In D&D they are more or less purely physical beings that reproduce physically (I assume), and that once you kill them in their physical bodies, there dead. Of course in older editions, this was not the case...when defeated, the spirit of such a creature fled back to its home plane. Nextly, on a more philosophical level, they are treated as more or less embodiments of the planes of alignment and/or of the alignments themselves that come into existence being totally evil or totally good. And yet they have minds, Int, Cha, and Wis scores. So the question is, do they have free will? If so, that means a Pit Fiend could decide to change and follow the path of good...but what would happen? And if not...can something be truly evil, or good, if it has no choice in the matter? Now the easy obvious answer to this quandry would be to say that fiends were all originally Celestials that fell from grace. The only trouble with that is how to explain their vast numbers, and the fact that there are generally more types of fiends than types of celestials. Also, a biggy for me is deciding how I would want to handle things like half celestials and half fiends. To me, having them be capable of reproducing is a bit...odd...but I do like the option for players and creatures and what have you. Thoughts, suggestions? [/QUOTE]

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