D&D 4E Yugoloths in 4E

[The Little Raven]

- If the demons are more elemental and monstrous, while the devils are more humanoid than previously, why even retain the Ice Devil, mention it was a Daemon (though that admission could have been metagaming), rather than making it a demon.

Daemons are demons, now. Ice Devils are demons "on loan" to the devils.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Planescape wasn't cancelled in the way you mean. It didn't have a seperate product line in 3e, but it was virtually omnipresent with every planar reference from the 3.5 DMG to the Manual of the Planes, the Planar Handbook, the BoVD, the BoED, Fiendish Codex I, Fiendish Codex II, and Expedition to the Demonweb Pits...

Come on, Todd. You sung a very different tune in the years before the Fourth Edition announcement when you complained (perhaps not unjustly, but that's not relevant) about all of the "disregard and disrespect" shown to Planescape's established canon in the same Third Edition products you're praising here - especially the Planar Handbook and the Book of Exalted Deeds. Remember? They gave the Lady of Pain a definite gender and alignment? They changed the names of all the guardinal leaders?

Let's not pretend that Planescape qua Planescape has been respected and preserved in Third Edition. First Edition's Great Wheel is not the same as Second Edition's Planescape is not the same as Third Edition's Great Wheel, each is simply an alteration of what has come before to suit the needs of the present edition. Ask Erik Mona about what Planescape did to the politics of the Nine Hells he knew and loved in First Edition, for instance.

Fourth Edition might be a more radical alteration, but it's a difference of degree, not kind.

 

[Shemeska]

Come on, Todd. You sung a very different tune in the years before the Fourth Edition announcement when you complained (perhaps not unjustly, but that's not relevant) about all of the "disregard and disrespect" shown to Planescape's established canon in the same Third Edition products you're praising here - especially the Planar Handbook and the Book of Exalted Deeds. Remember? They gave the Lady of Pain a definite gender and alignment? They changed the names of all the guardinal leaders?

Heh. Hold on now. I didn't give my opinion of the books in that list you quoted, I just said that Planescape and the Great Wheel cosmology were the basis on which they were written so far as a continuity of basic cosmology went.

If you want me opinion, I'd rate the Planar Handbook 4/10, and the BoED 1/10 for various reasons. On the other end of the spectrum, FC:I is a 10/10, and FC:II is an 8/10.

Some of the designers behind 4e's cosmology and fiend changes are interestingly enough the same folks behind the material in the Planar Handbook and BoED that were so poorly received in 3e. That's one of the reasons I'm not exactly keen on 4e's planar content.

 

[Dausuul]

Yeah, daemons/yugoloths as Blood War mercenaries never sat very well with me. It's just not very impressive for a race that ought to be the absolute embodiment of evil.

If I were to design the "pure-evil" race for a Great Wheel cosmology, they would be malevolent, apparently emotionless creatures. While the demons seek to destroy the world and devils to control it, these beings would seek only to spread hopelessness and despair, to extinguish all light in the multiverse. They would seem rather cerebral, even contemplative, next to the other fiends.

I don't mind keeping the Nine layers, but I hope that the new origins and differentiation have writers use devils more in adventures and campaigns. Maybe it's just the last few years, but it seems like lately demons and the Abyss get all the love. I suspect a lot of that is that the Abyss is much more of a open sandbox for new stuff. Want to create your own demon lord? No problem, you can even create a whole new layer of the Abyss to call your own at the same time! However, the Nine Hells are limited to, well the nine Hells and nine specific planar rulers. You can always add new diabolic nobility (The Duke of Irritation), but I think for most writers that's not the same as being able to put in your very own demon lord.

I agree; although I think also that the Abyss is much more vivid and colorful.

When you get right down to it, the Nine Hells is just another ugly, nasty dictatorship, of the kind we see in the real world every day. There's not much in the Hells to really catch the imagination of players, DMs, or adventure designers; just a series of layers, all full of darkness, fire, and ugliness (except for Cania, which is full of darkness, ice, and ugliness). The Lords of the Nine similarly lack conceptual "hooks." To people who haven't made an effort to immerse themselves in Hells-lore, they all tend to blend together; a bunch of nasty, ugly, boring devils grubbing for power, in a bunch of nasty, ugly, depressing places.

The Abyss, on the other hand, has bright, clear distinctions and lots of concepts that beg to be explored. Orcus and Demogorgon aren't just another couple of indistinguishable demon lords. They're very different both in appearance and in theme, and each has imposed his persona on both the terrain and the denizens of his layer. When you see crawling reptilian horrors in a diseased jungle, you know you're dealing with Demogorgon. When you see an endless horde of undead warriors shambling across a desolate wasteland, that's Orcus. And the Abyss contains every imaginable type of terrain. Jungle, arctic tundra, desert, swamp, mountains--it's all there, along with all kinds of bizarre places that have no real-world analogues.

Part of the problem stems from the rigid hierarchy of the Hells; when every one of the Dukes has pretty much the same array of minions, it's hard to tell them apart. Furthermore, the constant rise and fall of archdevils means that the leadership of each layer is constantly changing, so it's hard to develop a strong association between a given layer and its reigning Duke.

As presented in 3E, the Abyss has vastly more scope for adventure than do the Hells. I hope 4E remedies this by making the Hells similarly vivid and putting more focus on the persona (appearance, theme, et cetera) of each of the Dukes of Hell. Develop a set of distinct minions for each of the Nine, and make the layers of the Hells a lot more visually separate. Adjust the nature of infernal politics so that there isn't this constant turnover among archdevils. It's supposed to be a plane of rigid order, for God's sake--how come the major demon lords stay the same century after century, but there's a new Duke of Hell every ten minutes? The Dukes might gain or lose influence, but the actual downfall of one of the Nine should be a world-shaking event.

At the same time, deal with the problem FourthBear pointed out by opening up more design space in the Hells for DMs and adventure writers to flex their creative muscles. Give the Hells a little of the "points-of-light" treatment. The Dukes of Hell reign from mighty citadels, but their power becomes attenuated as one moves away from those citadels. In the distant regions of the Hells, there is room for lesser devils to set themselves up as local lords. Such devils still owe allegiance to their Dukes, but aside from sending a yearly tribute of souls, they operate fairly independently--though most would give up that independence in a heartbeat for a chance to become power players at the Ducal court. Each of these lesser devil-lords exerts the same kind of terrain-shaping influence over its domain that the Dukes do over their layers, just on a much smaller scale.

 

[Shemeska]

Yeah, daemons/yugoloths as Blood War mercenaries never sat very well with me.

Only the lesser yugoloths were heavily used as Blood War mercenaries. The greater yugoloths sold them like cattle, and used them to influence the course of the Blood War. The greater 'loths were distinctly different in their outlook and their actions.

If I were to design the "pure-evil" race for a Great Wheel cosmology, they would be malevolent, apparently emotionless creatures. While the demons seek to destroy the world and devils to control it, these beings would seek only to spread hopelessness and despair, to extinguish all light in the multiverse. They would seem rather cerebral, even contemplative, next to the other fiends.

That's exactly how the arcanaloths, ultroloths, and baernaloths were described in the more in-depth sourcebooks (and to a lesser extent the nycaloths). The arcanaloths for instance viewed the Blood War as their own personal experiment into the nature of evil, exploiting their own lesser fellows and their wayward CE and LE cousins as living data points to butcher and watch like rats in a maze.

 

[Ripzerai]

It's not obvious to me.

I apologize. I thought it would be obvious to everyone, but I forget sometimes that not everyone is equally familiar with the history of the game.

Daemons, in Vault of the Drow, were introduced as natives of the three lowest planes, Tartarus, Hades, and Gehenna. They were not linked any closer to the Abyss than to the Hells. Claiming that making them natives of the Abyss is a way of bringing them back toward their original roots - if this is what the book in question actually claims - is a misrepresentation.

For the official pronunciation of "daemon," see Dragon #93, page 26. (DAY-mun)

I won't venture to guess whether it's a deliberate misrepresentation or something somebody's actually convinced themselves, but it's not an accurate summary of what daemons were like when they were first introduced.

This is, of course, predicated on the idea that the summary in question actually appeared in the book, and wasn't just a random poster's interpolation.

And we wouldn't want logic to get in the way of people's emotions, now would we? We might get called insensitive or something.

Your sarcasm is cute but, since you presented no evidence to back up your claims, extremely hypocritical.

 

[Incenjucar]

I have to say I like the notion of the yugoloths being sourced from the "pure evil" source...

It would be interesting to have the evil and chaotic aspects of creatures based on their nearness to the heart of the abyss... at the very pit, things are ultimately evil and the annihilation is more like a black hole... further out, chaos is the most distinct aspect, and the annihilation drive is more about chunks of rent matter...

The difference of erasing something and ripping it asunder.

 

[pemerton]

I don't mind keeping the Nine layers, but I hope that the new origins and differentiation have writers use devils more in adventures and campaigns. Maybe it's just the last few years, but it seems like lately demons and the Abyss get all the love. I suspect a lot of that is that the Abyss is much more of a open sandbox for new stuff. Want to create your own demon lord? No problem, you can even create a whole new layer of the Abyss to call your own at the same time! However, the Nine Hells are limited to, well the nine Hells and nine specific planar rulers. You can always add new diabolic nobility (The Duke of Irritation), but I think for most writers that's not the same as being able to put in your very own demon lord.

W&M is very clear that they want devils to see more use in adventures. They give this as one reason for promoting Asmodeus to divinity - they think that divine machinations by a leading evil god are more likely to get picked up on in play.

They also agree with you that demon lords have the advantage that they can be made up as needed. They advertise as a good thing about demon lords that they want to keep.

 

[The Little Raven]

Your sarcasm is cute but, since you presented no evidence to back up your claims, extremely hypocritical.

Except you claimed that "And yeah, obviously folding them into the demonic race has nothing to do with "the origins of these creatures."" with nothing to explain it, simply because you're upset about one of your preferred elements getting the chop, instead of presenting any kind of real argument about why it's so obvious things aren't that way.

So, I figure it was your emotions getting in the way of your explaining why it's obvious, rather than a lack of understanding that other people don't necessarily see it that way.

 

[Steely Dan]

The separation of daemons/yugoloths (hate that name) from demons and devils always seemed a little contrived (since I first saw them in the 1st Ed MM II), IMO.

I do like the idea of daemons being a primal/prototypical demon-like offshoot, like the new fluff for Ice devils.

For the record, I totally dig Planescape, but some of it was definitely a bit contrived/forced in order to explain mechanical aspects of the game (alignment etc) in a meta-plot sense (rule of three etc).