Yugoloths: Do They Have an Identity Beyond the Blood War?

[Scribe]

I'm glad that folks like those older posts of mine!

I love the Blood War, I love the old lore of the Devils and Demons and Yugoloths. I really hope that stuff comes back.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Looking at 5E spells, demons seem easiest to summon but hardest to control, and devils are more difficult to summon but can be cooperative, but yugoloths don't have any spells dedicated to summoning them.

Extrapolating from this, it seems that either A) mortal spellcasters don't have much interest in summoning extraplanar mercenaries, or, more likely, B) yugoloth mercenary services are prohibitively expensive for most. Someone who wants yugoloths working for them has to plane shift over to their domain themself to hash out a deal in person.

"You can hire me for 500. You can trust me for 10,000 more." - Mezzoloth quote from FR Wiki

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Or the spell summoning yugoloths is too dangerous or problematic....


Summon Fiendish Mercenary
3rd level conjuration
V, M (100 gold pieces covered in humanoid blood)
1 minute casting time

You summon a fiend with a challenge rating of 4 or less that does not have a devil or demon tag from the Great Mercenary Bizarre on Gehenna. The fiend will remain on the plane you are on when you summoned it for 24 hours unless killed or banished. The fiend will offer its service for a set price (usually 100 gold pieces per CR level, which does not include the 100 you already spent [the Bizarre's cut]). If you decline to pay that amount up front, the fiend is free to act as it will for the 24 hours. Fiendish mercenaries are not particularly loyal, and if they are offered more money by someone else, they can change allegiance for the remainder of the 24 hours.

While the fiend is serving the spell caster, it will act as it perceives the spell caster's best interests, attacking anything that attacks the spell caster and following most orders (except for orders like "don't work for anyone else").

If you cast the spell using a higher spell slot the challenge rating of the fiend increases by 1.

After a few encounters with monsters with lots of treasure ended poorly, the wizards' guild destroyed all written copies of this spell. Occasionally a warlock who displeases his/her patron will find this spell on their spell list.....

 

[Quickleaf]

@MechaTarrasque Can I just say: I love that you wrote a summoning spell that describes where the fiend gets summoned from!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

The true benefit of Yugoloths is that you can create your own motivations for them; the General of Gehenna, the head-honcho of Yugoloths, is a very mysterious being dwelling within his crawling castle. What is their motivations? Do they have a grand plan? Or do they revel in the profit the Blood War brings them?

It isn't made clear, and IMO it shouldn't be. But the General sounds like a great villain to me, one where you can create your own motivations for your own game.

 

[Scribe]

You can always do that. This segment of outer plane creatures should be as defined as any other, while still having flexible NPCs to leverage.

That fact the lore exists for them already, just makes it easier to see they could have more depth.

I hate the retcons of some of that stuff. Probably reason one on my dislike of 4ed.