Why Demons and Devils? why the division? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Why Demons and Devils? why the division? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
ElyasRavenwood
10-13-07, 01:05 PM I am curious why there are Demons and Devils? Is this division there because of the nine alignments?
Another perhaps related question, why is there the blood war? Has TSR, Dragon or Dungeon Magazine, or WOTC published any information on the root of the blood war, why it started etc?
And I will wedge one more question in here. I understand that there is much more published material on demons devils and yuguloths because they are monsters for the player characters to oppose and defeat, Where would I find information on the Solars etc, the angelic hosts, and where they live?

Thanks
Taeldrin Laesrash
10-13-07, 01:24 PM Demons and devils are divided by alignment; the former's CE, the latter's LE.

The Blood War was described in the Planescape supplement Hellbound as a continuation of a law between Lawful and Chaotic beings, continued on by the Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil beings. It's been described as an innate hatred or fear of the other side.

Sadly, one of the best supplements on celestials (In 3e) is the Book of Exalted Deeds.
goldomark
10-13-07, 01:34 PM For 3.5e, you can buy Fiendish Codex one and two. The first details Demons the second Devils. The Book of Vile Darkness also presents Demons and Devils. The Book of Exalted Deeds is were you will find more info on the good guys.

On www.paizo.com, you can find tons of downloads from 2e. They had alot of fluff on the Ds and their counterparts.
ArcTan
10-13-07, 01:34 PM Because Gary Gygax committed to the idea of Law vs. Chaos defining the universe early on in D&D's career, which meant when he was writing up a bunch of stereotypical "demonic" bad guys he had to arbitrarily divide them into Lawful ones and Chaotic ones.

A lot of stuff afterwards has tried to build up on this distinction and make it more meaningful, but it's still pretty arbitrary.

The Blood War is a later metaplot invention to make the division between Demons and Devils more meaningful by not only saying that they have *different* goals but that they have *opposing* goals and that they're constantly fighting.
locustechpriest
10-13-07, 01:37 PM There are a bunch of very knowledgable people in this community who will doubtlessly come by and put me to shame, so don't worry about that. ;)

As far as I can tell, yes, demons and devils originally arose simply because there was Chaotic Evil and there was Lawful Evil, and they wanted something different for each. The Blood War started, I believe, due to inescapable differences in opinion. The simple existence of one is the anathema to the other, so they duke it out in the bordering planes. There is a huge amount of information on the histoy of he BW and lower planes, but you'll get a right propper tutorial from the experts, I'm sure (or at least link you to one). :)

The angelic host is simply ceated servitors to Good aligned deities, they live in their patron's divine realm and do what they are told. Evil divinities have their own unique servitors, so there are no distinct anti-angels... though rumor has it things are going to change up a bit with 4th Ed, making all devils(?) into fallen angels, but ATM only a small portion of them are.
Shemeska the Marauder
10-13-07, 02:07 PM The history of the Blood War (and the history of the fiends themselves beyond that), is best detailed across the following:

2e Hellbound: The Blood War
2e Faces of Evil: The Fiends
2e Planes of Conflict / Planes of Law / Planes of Chaos
3.x Fiendish Codex I
3.x Fiendish Codex II
Dragon Magazine's Demonomicon articles

The Blood War has roots that stretch back to a conflict between the cardinal abstract alignments prior to the outer planes having physically incarnated in their current forms. The original fiends (the baernaloths) created the first CE and LE fiends (obyriths and ancient baatorians), along with creating the yugoloths (as a servitor race). Eventually it manifested in the conflict between the Obyriths and the elemental Vaati, drawing in the Eladrin, the archomentals, and the baatezu (before their fall from LN to LE), among others.

After the collapse of obyrith supremacy in the Abyss, the tanar'ri overthrew their creators, and roughly during the same time period the newly corrupted baatezu descended into the 9 Hells and overthrew the ancient baatorians. At that point the Blood War evolved into its modern incarnation as those two younger fiend races eventually explored beyond their home planes (or adopted home plane in the case of the baatezu), and immediately came into conflict (with the 'loths apparently doing their best to promote the conflict).

Because they're composed of Law or Chaos, not just abstract Evil, devils and demons view one another as anathema. They can't fathom a universe without the destruction or slavery of the other before they ultimately move on to do the same to the upper planes (and in the 'loths' case, they view the whole thing as an experiment or an intentional delay before they seek to bring a unified hegemony of yugoloth dominated evil against the upper planes).

Seperating the fiends allows them to have different histories, different goals and motivations, and to be more complex based upon their alignment differences. Why a difference between demons, devils, loths and demodands? One could easily ask why a difference betweens humans, elves, gnomes, dwarfs, etc.

As far as the celestials, it's important to mark the aasimon/angels as different from the Archons/Guardinals/Eladrin. The former don't personify Good. They might be good aligned, but they're the creations and servitors of good deities, and they personify the will of those gods first and foremost. They'll act in their divine patron's interest, which is usually 90+% of the time but might not always be Good. The Archons/Guardinals/Eladrin are the physical incarnations of the various flavors of Good, linked to a specific plane that mirrors and manifests that alignment the same way the three major fiend races exist as manifestations of the various flavors of Evil.

3e is largely devoid of decent material on the celestials. The BoED was poorly researched in wide swathes of its planar content. The best sources on the celestials comes from the 2e Planes of Conflict / Law / Chaos box sets, with tangential information coming from some of the 2e Planescape Monstrous Compendiums, and the late 2e Warriors of Heaven supplement (though Rip will come along to destroy that book in short order I suspect, and he does have some valid complaints about it).
JulesCARV
10-13-07, 02:14 PM Basically, I think the idea is that you want to have fiends who act like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust or Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost -- honorable gentlemenly evil types -- in case the DM wants to use those, and you also want to have fiends who are ravaging, insane monstrous destroyers pouring out of some portal and destroying everything they come across in case the DM wants to use those.

You could say that they're all the same sort of beings, but I don't think it's immediately obvious.

The thing that doesn't quite make sense in D&D as it is is that evil outsiders are portrayed acting in three ways, but there are, for our purposes, only two types of outsiders (Even if you include yugoloths, they don't fill the third role).

One type is the honorable gentlemanly type with Faustian contracts. ("Greetings. I am the devil Arfactirul, a manifestation of the cosmic forces of law and evil. I understand you are on a quest to acquire the Lost Talisman. I can help you, so long as you're willing to sign this contract...")

The second type is the ravaging destroyer who slaughters everything in its path. ("Die puny mortals! MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!")

The third type is the infiltrating deceiver/possessor. ("I am Jerden Wilkser, a travelling priest of Pelor. I just got into town this afternoon.")

From the Law-Chaos alignment-oriented perspective of D&D, both the second and third types are generally CE demons (Glabrezu and succubi generally being the third type, although imps, quasits, and erinyes might also be considered that type to some extent). However, from the perspective of a DM seeking to use these different types of fiends, how to roleplay them, etc, #2 and #3 are rather distinct.

So... to turn this on its head, my question isn't "why don't we merge the two types of fiends, demons and devils, into one?" but rather "why don't we further divide them, into three?"
sciborg3
10-13-07, 02:23 PM LE seeks domination - to rule over everything with absolute control. CE seeks to make the worlds into "shrieking harem"s, where everything is a means of fulfilling their whims.

Both, of course, are Evil and as Moorcock noted can end up being rather similar. It makes for interesting questions such as how is a cultured demon like Grazz't chaotic? What does it mean to be chaotic, lawful, or for that matter evil?

YMMV.
ArcTan
10-13-07, 02:27 PM Basically, I think the idea is that you want to have fiends who act like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust or Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost -- honorable gentlemenly evil types -- in case the DM wants to use those, and you also want to have fiends who are ravaging, insane monstrous destroyers pouring out of some portal and destroying everything they come across in case the DM wants to use those.

You could say that they're all the same sort of beings, but I don't think it's immediately obvious.

The original concept for Devils and Demons that Gygax came up with includes versions of both in both factions -- Demons have the Succubus and Devils have all kinds of nasty scary killing monsters. Gygax's concept of "Law and Chaos" thought of the two things as these vague, abstract goals people had rather than specifically ways people acted (and so frequently there was no actual difference between the two in practice).

The "big change" in D&D 4e is going to involve re-sorting Demons and Devils so they are actually differentiated by these roles.

The thing that doesn't quite make sense in D&D as it is is that evil outsiders are portrayed acting in three ways, but there are, for our purposes, only two types of outsiders (Even if you include yugoloths, they don't fill the third role).

One type is the honorable gentlemanly type with Faustian contracts. ("Greetings. I am the devil Arfactirul, a manifestation of the cosmic forces of law and evil. I understand you are on a quest to acquire the Lost Talisman. I can help you, so long as you're willing to sign this contract...")

The second type is the ravaging destroyer who slaughters everything in its path. ("Die puny mortals! MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!")

The third type is the infiltrating deceiver/possessor. ("I am Jerden Wilkser, a travelling priest of Pelor. I just got into town this afternoon.")

From the Law-Chaos alignment-oriented perspective of D&D, both the second and third types are generally CE demons (Glabrezu and succubi generally being the third type, although imps, quasits, and erinyes might also be considered that type to some extent). However, from the perspective of a DM seeking to use these different types of fiends, how to roleplay them, etc, #2 and #3 are rather distinct.

So... to turn this on its head, my question isn't "why don't we merge the two types of fiends, demons and devils, into one?" but rather "why don't we further divide them, into three?"

#1 and #3 are traditionally combined to some extent, though. You don't get the chance to make Faustian pacts unless you've infiltrated society to some extent -- how do you make Faust's dreams come true if you can't walk invisibly through the halls of the German Kaiser with the power to command others to your will?

Remember that Mephistopheles spends a lot of the plot of Faust in disguise as various things and people, manipulating the people around Faust for Faust's benefit.
locustechpriest
10-13-07, 02:32 PM The third type is the infiltrating deceiver/possessor. ("I am Jerden Wilkser, a travelling priest of Pelor. I just got into town this afternoon.")

Problem with that being, now Pelor knows you are masquerading as one of his priests. Darn divine senses and name-linked perception! :(

The original concept for Devils and Demons that Gygax came up with includes versions of both in both factions -- Demons have the Succubus and Devils have all kinds of nasty scary killing monsters.

Don't forget the Glabrezu which is said to enjoy tempting mortals with power.
sciborg3
10-13-07, 05:59 PM Don't forget the Glabrezu which is said to enjoy tempting mortals with power.

But temptation is more of a means than an end. Chaotic Evil beings can just as easily use temptation to lure mortals to the Abyss.
JulesCARV
10-13-07, 06:13 PM Hmm... good point on #1 and #3 being combined frequently. What I'm going for, I think, is the distinction between fiends who are bound by their words (and who bind you by their words) and fiends will lie, cheat, and betray without compunction.

I suppose that in terms of D&D, I see demons as consisting of rampaging slaughterers and deceitful infiltrators, and devils as consisting of disciplined legions and gentlemanly Faustian bargainers. Both have a violent aspect and a tempting aspect.

If D&D weren't so caught up in alignment, though, you could divide them on the basis of violence vs. temptation, rather than law vs. chaos. In that case, both the disciplined legions and the rampaging slaughterers would be "violent fiends" and the deceitful infiltrators and the honorable Faustian bargainers would be "tempting fiends."

Of course, then you could end up with four types of fiend. Or you could just turn them all into a single type of fiend.

My sense is this: there are a variety of ways of dividing (or not dividing) the "demons," "fiends," "devils" etc that have appeared in fantasy literature. Some of these are certainly better than others. I'm not sure how well the current D&D system ranks; it's certainly not perfect.

At the same time, I don't think that it's possible to maintain that if D&D would just get over the whole law-chaos distinction and its silly 9-box alignment system, somehow we'd see that all non-D&D fantasy portrayals of the demonic (or diabolical, or whatever) are coherent and obviously fall into a single type of creature. That isn't to say that D&D needs to make a mechanical distinction between the various types of fantasy baddies; just as aberrations are a single category but don't have any single common, coherent features, the same could be true of fiends: they could be the inhabitants of some sort of unitary infernal realm, which isn't organized on any principle, but is rather a wellspring of evil. After all, it's not as if the material plane is organized in a coherent manner; dragons, humans, bluejays, and unicorns are all very different sorts of creatures, but are all from the material plane. Similarly, the infernal realm would have similar diversity, except in that (basically) everything that originates there is evil. At the same time, I don't think that's the obviously right way of doing things either. There are ways of dividing the "fiendish creatures" that detract from the game, and ways of dividing them that could enhance the game.
ArcTan
10-13-07, 08:26 PM But temptation is more of a means than an end. Chaotic Evil beings can just as easily use temptation to lure mortals to the Abyss.

That's the thing. "Lawful Evil" and "Chaotic Evil" are, in the most consistent way to imagine what they mean, descriptions of ultimate metaphysical goals -- "What do I ultimately hope to accomplish with everything I do?" They aren't descriptions of *what* monsters do or how they do it.

So monsters that are physically almost impossible to distinguish are nonetheless completely different "species" because one works for Baator and one works for the Abyss.

Out of all the possible ways JulesCARV lists to divide up the species of monsters in the Lower Planes, I think that's one of the worst ones. It's why we have Demons and Devils that are almost-but-not-quite alike (because Devils are immune to fire and Demons are immune to electricity) for no obvious reason, instead of just saying that a certain kind of Fiend called a Succubus can choose to work for "Chaos" or for "Law" or for no alignment at all, but this is what a Succubus is and how a Succubus fights.

If you *must* divide Fiends, I would prefer to divide them along the lines of "These are physically similar Fiends with a similar origin who act in similar ways", not "These are Fiends who all work for this cause but otherwise have no organizing structure; these are a *completely different* set of Fiends who all work for this opposing cause but otherwise have no organizing structure, and all have almost-but-not-quite parallels with the first set of Fiends".
sciborg3
10-14-07, 10:00 AM Okay, I can see your complaint. I just see exemplars a little different - not necessarily accurate depictions of their own alignments but beings touched by alignments that compose their flesh. They *try* to be shining (or shading I suppose) champions or at the least examples of their alignment but what that really means is up for grabs.

But then the idea of Evil as a force that is causal, or even elemental, seems silly to me. There has to be an underlying motivation otherwise, as sciborg2 (my previous incarnation -RIP) put it, "yugoloths are modrons with the Evil switch turned on"
ElyasRavenwood
10-15-07, 07:36 PM Thank you for all of your thoughts and information. That was very helpful. Thank you Shemeska for pointing me in the right direction in terms of material and for laying things out.
ZeroSD
10-24-07, 08:18 PM The history of the Blood War (and the history of the fiends themselves beyond that), is best detailed across the following:

2e Hellbound: The Blood War
2e Faces of Evil: The Fiends
2e Planes of Conflict / Planes of Law / Planes of Chaos
3.x Fiendish Codex I
3.x Fiendish Codex II
Dragon Magazine's Demonomicon articles

I'll add, not directly Bloodwar related, but some adventures that give you a lot of information on the politics, the adventure path Savage Tide in Dungeon (especially towards the end), and the adventure book Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, both have a lot of planar politics involving Demons in them, and give you some idea of how they conduct their conflicts and alliances.

Despite all the politicing Devils do, Demonic politics are honestly more developed.
Furryhowler
10-28-07, 03:36 PM Demons tempt with passion. Devils tempt with position.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
ElyasRavenwood 10-13-07, 01:05 PM	I am curious why there are Demons and Devils? Is this division there because of the nine alignments? Another perhaps related question, why is there the blood war? Has TSR, Dragon or Dungeon Magazine, or WOTC published any information on the root of the blood war, why it started etc? And I will wedge one more question in here. I understand that there is much more published material on demons devils and yuguloths because they are monsters for the player characters to oppose and defeat, Where would I find information on the Solars etc, the angelic hosts, and where they live? Thanks
Taeldrin Laesrash 10-13-07, 01:24 PM	Demons and devils are divided by alignment; the former's CE, the latter's LE. The Blood War was described in the Planescape supplement Hellbound as a continuation of a law between Lawful and Chaotic beings, continued on by the Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil beings. It's been described as an innate hatred or fear of the other side. Sadly, one of the best supplements on celestials (In 3e) is the Book of Exalted Deeds.
goldomark 10-13-07, 01:34 PM	For 3.5e, you can buy Fiendish Codex one and two. The first details Demons the second Devils. The Book of Vile Darkness also presents Demons and Devils. The Book of Exalted Deeds is were you will find more info on the good guys. On www.paizo.com, you can find tons of downloads from 2e. They had alot of fluff on the Ds and their counterparts.
ArcTan 10-13-07, 01:34 PM	Because Gary Gygax committed to the idea of Law vs. Chaos defining the universe early on in D&D's career, which meant when he was writing up a bunch of stereotypical "demonic" bad guys he had to arbitrarily divide them into Lawful ones and Chaotic ones. A lot of stuff afterwards has tried to build up on this distinction and make it more meaningful, but it's still pretty arbitrary. The Blood War is a later metaplot invention to make the division between Demons and Devils more meaningful by not only saying that they have different goals but that they have opposing goals and that they're constantly fighting.
locustechpriest 10-13-07, 01:37 PM	There are a bunch of very knowledgable people in this community who will doubtlessly come by and put me to shame, so don't worry about that. ;) As far as I can tell, yes, demons and devils originally arose simply because there was Chaotic Evil and there was Lawful Evil, and they wanted something different for each. The Blood War started, I believe, due to inescapable differences in opinion. The simple existence of one is the anathema to the other, so they duke it out in the bordering planes. There is a huge amount of information on the histoy of he BW and lower planes, but you'll get a right propper tutorial from the experts, I'm sure (or at least link you to one). :) The angelic host is simply ceated servitors to Good aligned deities, they live in their patron's divine realm and do what they are told. Evil divinities have their own unique servitors, so there are no distinct anti-angels... though rumor has it things are going to change up a bit with 4th Ed, making all devils(?) into fallen angels, but ATM only a small portion of them are.
Shemeska the Marauder 10-13-07, 02:07 PM	The history of the Blood War (and the history of the fiends themselves beyond that), is best detailed across the following: 2e Hellbound: The Blood War 2e Faces of Evil: The Fiends 2e Planes of Conflict / Planes of Law / Planes of Chaos 3.x Fiendish Codex I 3.x Fiendish Codex II Dragon Magazine's Demonomicon articles The Blood War has roots that stretch back to a conflict between the cardinal abstract alignments prior to the outer planes having physically incarnated in their current forms. The original fiends (the baernaloths) created the first CE and LE fiends (obyriths and ancient baatorians), along with creating the yugoloths (as a servitor race). Eventually it manifested in the conflict between the Obyriths and the elemental Vaati, drawing in the Eladrin, the archomentals, and the baatezu (before their fall from LN to LE), among others. After the collapse of obyrith supremacy in the Abyss, the tanar'ri overthrew their creators, and roughly during the same time period the newly corrupted baatezu descended into the 9 Hells and overthrew the ancient baatorians. At that point the Blood War evolved into its modern incarnation as those two younger fiend races eventually explored beyond their home planes (or adopted home plane in the case of the baatezu), and immediately came into conflict (with the 'loths apparently doing their best to promote the conflict). Because they're composed of Law or Chaos, not just abstract Evil, devils and demons view one another as anathema. They can't fathom a universe without the destruction or slavery of the other before they ultimately move on to do the same to the upper planes (and in the 'loths' case, they view the whole thing as an experiment or an intentional delay before they seek to bring a unified hegemony of yugoloth dominated evil against the upper planes). Seperating the fiends allows them to have different histories, different goals and motivations, and to be more complex based upon their alignment differences. Why a difference between demons, devils, loths and demodands? One could easily ask why a difference betweens humans, elves, gnomes, dwarfs, etc. As far as the celestials, it's important to mark the aasimon/angels as different from the Archons/Guardinals/Eladrin. The former don't personify Good. They might be good aligned, but they're the creations and servitors of good deities, and they personify the will of those gods first and foremost. They'll act in their divine patron's interest, which is usually 90+% of the time but might not always be Good. The Archons/Guardinals/Eladrin are the physical incarnations of the various flavors of Good, linked to a specific plane that mirrors and manifests that alignment the same way the three major fiend races exist as manifestations of the various flavors of Evil. 3e is largely devoid of decent material on the celestials. The BoED was poorly researched in wide swathes of its planar content. The best sources on the celestials comes from the 2e Planes of Conflict / Law / Chaos box sets, with tangential information coming from some of the 2e Planescape Monstrous Compendiums, and the late 2e Warriors of Heaven supplement (though Rip will come along to destroy that book in short order I suspect, and he does have some valid complaints about it).
JulesCARV 10-13-07, 02:14 PM	Basically, I think the idea is that you want to have fiends who act like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust or Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost -- honorable gentlemenly evil types -- in case the DM wants to use those, and you also want to have fiends who are ravaging, insane monstrous destroyers pouring out of some portal and destroying everything they come across in case the DM wants to use those. You could say that they're all the same sort of beings, but I don't think it's immediately obvious. The thing that doesn't quite make sense in D&D as it is is that evil outsiders are portrayed acting in three ways, but there are, for our purposes, only two types of outsiders (Even if you include yugoloths, they don't fill the third role). One type is the honorable gentlemanly type with Faustian contracts. ("Greetings. I am the devil Arfactirul, a manifestation of the cosmic forces of law and evil. I understand you are on a quest to acquire the Lost Talisman. I can help you, so long as you're willing to sign this contract...") The second type is the ravaging destroyer who slaughters everything in its path. ("Die puny mortals! MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!") The third type is the infiltrating deceiver/possessor. ("I am Jerden Wilkser, a travelling priest of Pelor. I just got into town this afternoon.") From the Law-Chaos alignment-oriented perspective of D&D, both the second and third types are generally CE demons (Glabrezu and succubi generally being the third type, although imps, quasits, and erinyes might also be considered that type to some extent). However, from the perspective of a DM seeking to use these different types of fiends, how to roleplay them, etc, #2 and #3 are rather distinct. So... to turn this on its head, my question isn't "why don't we merge the two types of fiends, demons and devils, into one?" but rather "why don't we further divide them, into three?"
sciborg3 10-13-07, 02:23 PM	LE seeks domination - to rule over everything with absolute control. CE seeks to make the worlds into "shrieking harem"s, where everything is a means of fulfilling their whims. Both, of course, are Evil and as Moorcock noted can end up being rather similar. It makes for interesting questions such as how is a cultured demon like Grazz't chaotic? What does it mean to be chaotic, lawful, or for that matter evil? YMMV.
ArcTan 10-13-07, 02:27 PM	Basically, I think the idea is that you want to have fiends who act like Mephistopheles in Goethe's Faust or Lucifer in Milton's Paradise Lost -- honorable gentlemenly evil types -- in case the DM wants to use those, and you also want to have fiends who are ravaging, insane monstrous destroyers pouring out of some portal and destroying everything they come across in case the DM wants to use those. You could say that they're all the same sort of beings, but I don't think it's immediately obvious. The original concept for Devils and Demons that Gygax came up with includes versions of both in both factions -- Demons have the Succubus and Devils have all kinds of nasty scary killing monsters. Gygax's concept of "Law and Chaos" thought of the two things as these vague, abstract goals people had rather than specifically ways people acted (and so frequently there was no actual difference between the two in practice). The "big change" in D&D 4e is going to involve re-sorting Demons and Devils so they are actually differentiated by these roles. The thing that doesn't quite make sense in D&D as it is is that evil outsiders are portrayed acting in three ways, but there are, for our purposes, only two types of outsiders (Even if you include yugoloths, they don't fill the third role). One type is the honorable gentlemanly type with Faustian contracts. ("Greetings. I am the devil Arfactirul, a manifestation of the cosmic forces of law and evil. I understand you are on a quest to acquire the Lost Talisman. I can help you, so long as you're willing to sign this contract...") The second type is the ravaging destroyer who slaughters everything in its path. ("Die puny mortals! MORE BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!") The third type is the infiltrating deceiver/possessor. ("I am Jerden Wilkser, a travelling priest of Pelor. I just got into town this afternoon.") From the Law-Chaos alignment-oriented perspective of D&D, both the second and third types are generally CE demons (Glabrezu and succubi generally being the third type, although imps, quasits, and erinyes might also be considered that type to some extent). However, from the perspective of a DM seeking to use these different types of fiends, how to roleplay them, etc, #2 and #3 are rather distinct. So... to turn this on its head, my question isn't "why don't we merge the two types of fiends, demons and devils, into one?" but rather "why don't we further divide them, into three?" #1 and #3 are traditionally combined to some extent, though. You don't get the chance to make Faustian pacts unless you've infiltrated society to some extent -- how do you make Faust's dreams come true if you can't walk invisibly through the halls of the German Kaiser with the power to command others to your will? Remember that Mephistopheles spends a lot of the plot of Faust in disguise as various things and people, manipulating the people around Faust for Faust's benefit.
locustechpriest 10-13-07, 02:32 PM	The third type is the infiltrating deceiver/possessor. ("I am Jerden Wilkser, a travelling priest of Pelor. I just got into town this afternoon.") Problem with that being, now Pelor knows you are masquerading as one of his priests. Darn divine senses and name-linked perception! :( The original concept for Devils and Demons that Gygax came up with includes versions of both in both factions -- Demons have the Succubus and Devils have all kinds of nasty scary killing monsters. Don't forget the Glabrezu which is said to enjoy tempting mortals with power.
sciborg3 10-13-07, 05:59 PM	Don't forget the Glabrezu which is said to enjoy tempting mortals with power. But temptation is more of a means than an end. Chaotic Evil beings can just as easily use temptation to lure mortals to the Abyss.
JulesCARV 10-13-07, 06:13 PM	Hmm... good point on #1 and #3 being combined frequently. What I'm going for, I think, is the distinction between fiends who are bound by their words (and who bind you by their words) and fiends will lie, cheat, and betray without compunction. I suppose that in terms of D&D, I see demons as consisting of rampaging slaughterers and deceitful infiltrators, and devils as consisting of disciplined legions and gentlemanly Faustian bargainers. Both have a violent aspect and a tempting aspect. If D&D weren't so caught up in alignment, though, you could divide them on the basis of violence vs. temptation, rather than law vs. chaos. In that case, both the disciplined legions and the rampaging slaughterers would be "violent fiends" and the deceitful infiltrators and the honorable Faustian bargainers would be "tempting fiends." Of course, then you could end up with four types of fiend. Or you could just turn them all into a single type of fiend. My sense is this: there are a variety of ways of dividing (or not dividing) the "demons," "fiends," "devils" etc that have appeared in fantasy literature. Some of these are certainly better than others. I'm not sure how well the current D&D system ranks; it's certainly not perfect. At the same time, I don't think that it's possible to maintain that if D&D would just get over the whole law-chaos distinction and its silly 9-box alignment system, somehow we'd see that all non-D&D fantasy portrayals of the demonic (or diabolical, or whatever) are coherent and obviously fall into a single type of creature. That isn't to say that D&D needs to make a mechanical distinction between the various types of fantasy baddies; just as aberrations are a single category but don't have any single common, coherent features, the same could be true of fiends: they could be the inhabitants of some sort of unitary infernal realm, which isn't organized on any principle, but is rather a wellspring of evil. After all, it's not as if the material plane is organized in a coherent manner; dragons, humans, bluejays, and unicorns are all very different sorts of creatures, but are all from the material plane. Similarly, the infernal realm would have similar diversity, except in that (basically) everything that originates there is evil. At the same time, I don't think that's the obviously right way of doing things either. There are ways of dividing the "fiendish creatures" that detract from the game, and ways of dividing them that could enhance the game.
ArcTan 10-13-07, 08:26 PM	But temptation is more of a means than an end. Chaotic Evil beings can just as easily use temptation to lure mortals to the Abyss. That's the thing. "Lawful Evil" and "Chaotic Evil" are, in the most consistent way to imagine what they mean, descriptions of ultimate metaphysical goals -- "What do I ultimately hope to accomplish with everything I do?" They aren't descriptions of what monsters do or how they do it. So monsters that are physically almost impossible to distinguish are nonetheless completely different "species" because one works for Baator and one works for the Abyss. Out of all the possible ways JulesCARV lists to divide up the species of monsters in the Lower Planes, I think that's one of the worst ones. It's why we have Demons and Devils that are almost-but-not-quite alike (because Devils are immune to fire and Demons are immune to electricity) for no obvious reason, instead of just saying that a certain kind of Fiend called a Succubus can choose to work for "Chaos" or for "Law" or for no alignment at all, but this is what a Succubus is and how a Succubus fights. If you must divide Fiends, I would prefer to divide them along the lines of "These are physically similar Fiends with a similar origin who act in similar ways", not "These are Fiends who all work for this cause but otherwise have no organizing structure; these are a completely different set of Fiends who all work for this opposing cause but otherwise have no organizing structure, and all have almost-but-not-quite parallels with the first set of Fiends".
sciborg3 10-14-07, 10:00 AM	Okay, I can see your complaint. I just see exemplars a little different - not necessarily accurate depictions of their own alignments but beings touched by alignments that compose their flesh. They try to be shining (or shading I suppose) champions or at the least examples of their alignment but what that really means is up for grabs. But then the idea of Evil as a force that is causal, or even elemental, seems silly to me. There has to be an underlying motivation otherwise, as sciborg2 (my previous incarnation -RIP) put it, "yugoloths are modrons with the Evil switch turned on"
ElyasRavenwood 10-15-07, 07:36 PM	Thank you for all of your thoughts and information. That was very helpful. Thank you Shemeska for pointing me in the right direction in terms of material and for laying things out.
ZeroSD 10-24-07, 08:18 PM	The history of the Blood War (and the history of the fiends themselves beyond that), is best detailed across the following: 2e Hellbound: The Blood War 2e Faces of Evil: The Fiends 2e Planes of Conflict / Planes of Law / Planes of Chaos 3.x Fiendish Codex I 3.x Fiendish Codex II Dragon Magazine's Demonomicon articles I'll add, not directly Bloodwar related, but some adventures that give you a lot of information on the politics, the adventure path Savage Tide in Dungeon (especially towards the end), and the adventure book Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, both have a lot of planar politics involving Demons in them, and give you some idea of how they conduct their conflicts and alliances. Despite all the politicing Devils do, Demonic politics are honestly more developed.
Furryhowler 10-28-07, 03:36 PM	Demons tempt with passion. Devils tempt with position.