Daemons (NE hierarchy and plane)

[Shadowscale]

From what I've been able to search and gather about Yugoloths, or Daemons there's a lack of information on specific monsters akin to the devils and demons listed in the monster manual and how one would interact with these creatures being in between the chaos of demons and crazed hierarchy of devils.

My questions are what are all the daemons, do they have stats?
How would you expect them to act, also how would you get on their good side?
Also how is Hades organized, compared to Baator and the abyss?

Was thinking of playing a neutral evil, cleric, daemonbinder type character
with improved familiar can one obtain a daemon familiar?
Come to think of it, I'm unsure what language they even speak.

[Psyren]

Afroakuma has a thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?372289-afroakuma-s-Planar-And-Other-Oddities-Questions-Thread-5!&p=18515880#post18515880) for questions like these, or he may pop in here.

In the meantime, there's some info on them in Fiend Folio. Basically they are opportunists, neither especially devoted to tyranny nor mayhem, willing to employ whatever means to achieve their ends.

[Malistrae]

Manual of the Planes also has some basic information about yugoloths / daemons. I would suggest using 2ed Planescape materials, if you want actual lore, since we have several yugoloth entries in the various monster manuals, but the lore parts are just copy-pasted from Fiend Folio. 3ed hasn't been kind to yugoloths.
About starting a daemon-focused PC: Unlike devils or demons, there are no feats, prcs, spells, etc. connected to them (that I know of). You could always homebrew them, but if you are commited to using official material, you would get a lot more flavor and mechanics from switching to CE or LE and using devils / demons.

[DeltaEmil]

Manual of the Planes also has some basic information about yugoloths / daemons. I would suggest using 2ed Planescape materials, if you want actual lore, since we have several yugoloth entries in the various monster manuals, but the lore parts are just copy-pasted from Fiend Folio. 3ed hasn't been kind to yugoloths.
About starting a daemon-focused PC: Unlike devils or demons, there are no feats, prcs, spells, etc. connected to them (that I know of). You could always homebrew them, but if you are commited to using official material, you would get a lot more flavor and mechanics from switching to CE or LE and using devils / demons.There's the Scion of Sorrow feat in Champions of Ruin (a Forgotten Realms sourcebook) that gives you a bonus on stuff once per day.

I say the main reasons why yugoloths are payed little attention in 3.x is the lack of named archfiends with specific goals, and the lack of sexy seductress fiends like the succubi and the pleasure devils (I'm glad that FC 2 is/was trying to get away from erynies as LE-succubi). The general of gehenna on his uber-discworld luggage-city is just too nebulous, and the oinoloth is also just a sickly looking fiend that gets replaced regularly and whose duty is to only create some kind of magical disease. The overarching theme of the yugoloth in 2nd edition is that they're fiendish and untrustworthy mercenaries who might be playing the devils and demons for their nebulous evil plans. That's kinda it.

[Eldan]

The lower ranks are opportunistic mercenaries. The higher ranks are opportunistic mercenaries and the books go out of their way to mention that they are oh so subtle and smart and are probably behind every plan and scheme on the lower planes.

There's a few general themes to them, especially the higher ranks:

Emotionless: many of them seem to at least present a facade of clinical detachment and a kind of fake civility, especially in the higher ranks. It's far from perfect, though, and occasionally, they will slip into destructive rages. This comes from their attachment to the Wastes, too, which are the same, draining joy and emotion from everything they touch. Evil is a thing that happens anyway, the natural state of the universe is eat or be eaten, so they make very sure to be on the eating side. It goes a bit beyond that, though, and they are given to cruelty, as well. The clinical part is important, too, many of them are presented as akin to evil scientists who study the breaking of minds and civilizations.

Fear: not only are many Yugoloths cowardly and opportunistic themselves, they seem to delight in giving themselves fearsome aspects in an often quite theatrical fashion. They don't just want to defeat their enemies, they want to crush them and everything they love.

Deception: see the above two, regarding slipping facades. Yugoloths are given to chronic lying and backstabbing, but they are good at it. Good enough that some still deal with them, which is amazing. There's hints, here and there, that they are orchestrating the entire blood war, too, as an experiment, setting the chaotic and lawful sides of evil on each other's throats just to see the results of such a war. When dealing with a 'loth, one will never be entirely sure of its motives, its plans or even its identity. Their uppermost ranks, the Ultroloths, have no faces, and I like that symbolism a lot. They tear off their own faces during transformation.

Plague and futility: dealing with a Yugoloth is a lose-lose situation. They don't want anyone to win, they want to be those who lose least or if they can't have that, they want everyone to lose so much that no one can enjoy a victory. They bring entropy and diseases wherever they go and they spread the draining influence of the Wastes. Burn it all and rule the ashes. Unlike demons, the burning is more important than the ruling, and more thorough.


There are a few "Archfiend" equivalents of them. There's the Oinoloth, who rules Khin-Oin, the wasting tower, a hollow spinal column the size of a city. There's the General of Gehenna, who is all mysterious and anonymous and rules the race from the Crawling City. And then there's the Baernoloth (http://mimir.planewalker.com/forum/eta-all-13-demented-cycle-stories).

[atemu1234]

The reason you don't hear about Daemons much in 3.5 is because they're supposed to be working from the background. They've got all the planning of devils, all the depravity of demons, and all the goals of both. In essence they are the perfect expression of evil; they don't want chaos. They don't want order. They want pure, complete destruction.

[Eldan]

To be fair, most outsider races were barely mentioned in 3E. The Devils and the Demons got their own book, the celestials were mentioned BOED, but the Modrons? Manual of the Planes a bit. Slaad? Barely any fluff anywhere. Eladrin? Monster Manual and BoED again. Guardinals? What are those again? Rilmani? Those had like half a page of text in Fiend Folio.

For Daemons, you can find stats for third edition in MM2 (3E), Manual of the Planes (3E), Fiend Folio (3.25). There's also some weird ones in Stormwrack of all places and MM4.

For better fluff see the Planescape sources Planes of Conflict, Hellbound: the Blood War, Planescape Monstrous Appendix I+II and Faces of Evil.