Dausuul said:
Hmm. I'd call that "concept" rather than "theme," but I get your point.
Much obliged.
And here's another thing to think about: If we're splitting up concepts on the basis of "devils tempt and corrupt, demons slaughter and destroy," that demands much more far-reaching changes than 4E made. If demons have to give up succubi, devils should have to give up all the militaristic warrior-devil types that dominate their middle ranks. You'd clean out everything from lemures to gelugons. The only survivors would be imps and succubi, and the handful of high-ranking devils like pit fiends that combine subtlety with combat prowess.
I'm not sure I'd say it "demands" that, but I'll certainly agree that the existing devils don't, for the most part, play towards that theme very well. When's the last time you saw a hamatula or an osyluth play the corrupter?
Kamikaze Mudget said:
And they have a recent history of bastardizing themselves when it suits them (arguably, that history is not so recent).
I'd say that the bulk of it is recent; and that this doesn't negate the fact that they also have strong game traditions, as well.
I think the design criteria for 5e (ie: a "big tent" where fans of every e are welcome) mandates that they take into account the 4e devil-style succubus. You may question whether this is or is not the right criteria to design for (I tend to think it's a pretty good call), but given that constraint, 5e cannot retcon the 4e devil-style succubus, regardless of the reasons they may have for doing so. Rename, recategorize, re-explain, re-contextualize (what I wouldn't give to see one of these Wyatt columns talk about what DMs can do to adapt their monsters to their OWN games, instead of laying down some absurd new canon!), but it needs to be a part of 5e, if 5e is to be a system that welcomes all comers.
I don't disagree that this is probably the best way that they can attempt reconciliation; I just, as I mentioned previously, personally think that making reconciliation the paramount concern isn't necessarily the best decision (though I can understand why WotC thinks that it is).
Given that constraint, I wonder what may be some alternative ways that one could work to satisfy each camp. I think Wyatt's proposition isn't bad (it just ignores DM agency in favor of laying down What Is True In D&D, which is a bigger problem than Wyatt). I can think of a few other ways it can be done (admittedly, I'm not familiar with the fiction Wyatt lists as part of the canon that he feels inclined to adhere to, so this may violate that).
I don't think that this is One True Way-ism any more than any other aspect of issuing any (but the most thin) narrative for a particular creature with a strong theme over the life of the game. It's not One True Way-ism to say, for example, that displacer beasts are so named because of their ability to appear a few feet from their actual location, rather than the fact that they're exiles from the Feywild who've been "displaced" into the mortal world. When you talk about a monster, that tends to involve defining what the monster is.
Succubi are demons who love to destroy the world with sexuality. Erinyes are devils who tempt mortals into acts of depravity of all sorts. A succubus comes into town and leaves a syphilitic plague behind her. An erinyes comes to town, and suddenly the local king gets a lot more...forceful.
In all honesty, I'd have preferred this. Unlike succubi, erinyes have never had a strong theme in the context of D&D, and from what I've heard, most people used them as "sex devils" already.
The big thing is, the borders of "succubus" need to expand. It can include the destructive-lust succubus that you and I favor, those succubi are part of the model still. They just aren't the ONLY part of that anymore. It's a bigger tent, because the designers have determined that embracing 4e fans is more important to them than strictly defining the succubus as one specific kind of fiend only. I can't really fault them for that choice.
I think that splitting the difference would have been more effective had they had "traditional" succubi alongside erinyes as infernal succubi - maybe a note about how "recently, the Ministry of Hell has tried to rebrand the erinyes as the 'safer' alternative to succubi amongst mortals, even going so far as to co-opt the term 'succubi' for the erinyes."
That, to me, would have solved the entire problem entirely, to what I suspect would have been everyone's satisfaction.
