Thoughts on Demons, Devils, Fiends, and other evil incarnate

[countingwizard]

I kind of want to gauge what peoples thoughts are on the use of these creatures in D&D, both as a referee using them and as a player encountering them.

For me, the use of these moral incarnations are kind of hokey. I avoid using them in my games because I don't really care about setting up a story of good vs evil and I don't want players to walk away from a game feeling like they just had to sit through a common trope. I'd rather my players face off against the weird. But a few evil incarnations are super weird. Lovecraftian weird. So I always keep a list of these in my back pocket to pull out anytime I want to challenge the players with something powerful, alien, and unknowable.

As a player, I really hate encountering demons. The bubble of darkness they emit is very dry and orderly if implemented by the exact rules. That ability feels very bland and predictable, and is just more annoying than it is scary or challenging. The demon's ability to gate in others (and stronger) of its kind is also annoying and seems unreasonable due to how frequently it can do this and the probability that gated in demons will gate in more demons, and so on in a daisy chain effect. Usually when I encounter a demon in a game, I'm thinking of ways to avoid it so that I don't have to sit through an hour or more of the bullnuts it is going to take to resolve the gating and the missing of attacks due to magical darkness.

I'm thinking about integrating demons a bit more into my next dungeon, intermixing them alongside undead and giving them more of a greek "daemon" flavor. I'm considering ditching the bubble of darkness effect and replacing it with an farther reaching effect that extinguishes torches and "light" spells within a certain range, while dimming and reducing the range of light from lanterns and "continuous light". I'm also considering changing the physical forms and descriptions of some of the demon types, making them more ethereal/smokey and amorphous but still effected by the same weapon types.

As for the gating issue, I think AustinJimm's Planet Eris setting solves it for me. Any time there is a chaos incursion the Gods of Law can intervene. I would interpret gating as a chaos incursion since those demons weren't invited into the world by mortals. Then as a referee, all I have to do is make a judgment about whether the demons are going to stick to the Chaos/Law neutrality pact or whether I'm going to blow up the battle and start summoning in heavy weights and gods to fight alongside the players.

[creases]

I would give Type III demons a power they get in 3.5e which, in my opinion, makes them potentially really scary: once per month, they can grant a mortal one wish. This is for plot device purposes, because they can tempt mortals into committing acts of evil. They might use this to get complete strangers to make assassination attempts on the PCs, or make their closest allies turn on them. The demons might not be scary in a straight fight, but they can be scary as long term villains by putting layers of pawns in the PCs' way.

[delta]

These are reasonable thoughts. Certainly the classic globe effect of darkness I've always thought to be stupid; in my Book of Spells product I switched it to extinguishing all lights and light spells in range, pretty much like you've suggested. (And thus monsters with infravision can take advantage.) Alternatively, the version in Chainmail covers the whole table and has the feel of an eclipse, fog, deep clouds, or something. I also agree that chain-gating is a pain in the ass (but Gygax seems to have really embraced it; it occurs in a scene in his Sea of Death novel, as I recall).

I also feel a bit queasy about demons seeming to imply the whole AD&D planar structure with Hells and the Abyss and so forth. On the other hand, I pretty happy to keep Tolkienian Balrogs in the game. Maybe that's a fine hair to split.

[Desparil]

Sept 4, 2019 10:18:41 GMT -6 countingwizard said:

As a player, I really hate encountering demons. The bubble of darkness they emit is very dry and orderly if implemented by the exact rules. That ability feels very bland and predictable, and is just more annoying than it is scary or challenging. The demon's ability to gate in others (and stronger) of its kind is also annoying and seems unreasonable due to how frequently it can do this and the probability that gated in demons will gate in more demons, and so on in a daisy chain effect. Usually when I encounter a demon in a game, I'm thinking of ways to avoid it so that I don't have to sit through an hour or more of the bullnuts it is going to take to resolve the gating and the missing of attacks due to magical darkness.

I'm thinking about integrating demons a bit more into my next dungeon, intermixing them alongside undead and giving them more of a greek "daemon" flavor. I'm considering ditching the bubble of darkness effect and replacing it with an farther reaching effect that extinguishes torches and "light" spells within a certain range, while dimming and reducing the range of light from lanterns and "continuous light". I'm also considering changing the physical forms and descriptions of some of the demon types, making them more ethereal/smokey and amorphous but still effected by the same weapon types.

The demodands from AD&D Monster Manual II might be up your alley. They don't have darkness as an at-will power, and their ability to summon others of their kind only works in Tartarus, and even then there is a fixed limit to how many can be summoned in any particular location. Limiting summoning abilities for demons and devils would also be an easy change to make if you wanted. Shadow demons (Fined Folio) might also be good - they need to be in darkness to be a major threat, but they can only cast darkness, 10' radius once per day so they really have to make it count. They also fit really well alongside undead.

[doublejig2]

Surrounding these fiends with dark cults is always welcome in the campaign. For the diabolic or demonic against the populace, apply them in nth level subterfuge to a debilitated urban setting.

[eotb]

I use the lower planes extensively and ditch evil deities instead, but I’m aiming for evil as evil. Not “G v E” unless players want it - if they play a paladin it’s hard to escape that - but evil as alien, ravenous, and entirely devoted to d**ning the prime.

That doesn’t necessarily involve players because the upper planes equalize the other way, but it makes clear the stark difference between evil and merely venal neutrality

In actual play, if a devil is involved the players likely never know. It almost never presents itself as it is; devils are deceivers and tempters, greasing the path to hell with what is always in the players’ short term interests for what seem minor and reconcilable deviations from their choice patterns to date. Suspicious players can, if they try, suss out a devil but they must be willing to play a game within a game - put it unexpectedly in a position where touching silver objects is expected and normal, etc. of course Magic’s can shortcut this but what if resistance works and they receive a false negative?

Demons are not indirect though they can have a subtlety if highly intelligent. But their end goal is always violence and destruction. At some point in the not-distant future they’re opening a can of cosmic whoop ass in your General direction. The versions in the books are just examples, as demon-types are infinite, so I tend to make up uniquely demons if placed. No sage or trainer can give you a worthwhile blueprint on fighting demons (though the best sages may find information on a specific demon).

And then there are their cults. I love making up cults. Little nests of freaks that spread like viruses.

[tetramorph]

I don’t use corporeal demons.

Demons are ethereal. They can possess. They might effect things through magic. But they have to become incarnate to do anything else.

But all the Fell beings and most chaotic monsters are just incarnate demons.

[talysman]

Years ago, I did a series of blog posts rewriting demons, devils, and the like for single-axis alignment, no planar cosmology OD&D. I compiled the material into a PDF (Our Infernal Neighbors,) but plan on redoing this.

By "no planar cosmology", I mean there's no ethereal plane, no astral plane, and no other planes. There are ethereal and astral states of matter, but these exist in the "real" world. Infernal beings live in an ethereal state deep below the surface of the earth. Saturnians (my version of slaadi, but based on Clark Ashton Smith's stories) travel astrally from another planet.

Most of the infernals in my rewrite are Chaotic. Devils are Lawful, and are supposed to be the jailors for infernal beings and spirits of dead evil human beings, but ages of doing this has made them cynical. They try to prove that humans don't deserve their existence by tempting them to do evil, then incarcerate them.

I didn't really mess too much with their darkness ability, but I did try to simplify a lot of other infernal powers, including replacing the lengthy lists of spell-like powers with improvised spell guidelines. For example, demons can cast any spell with a fire, mind, or illusion effect, up to a max spell level equal to their rank (infernal ranks are in general related to hit dice: half the infernal's rank, round down, plus 6 equals the creature's hit dice.)