About a Pit Fiend´s fate

[Garktz]

Hi playground, I´m having a really weird (at least for me and my dm) question regarding a Pit Fiend.

We are currently playing the Rise of the Runelords campaign, we have encountered a pit fiend that was about to die and thanks to my party (I was opposed) he died.
(If anyone has played the campaign before, yes, the dam part)

Now, me being an evil wizard (lawful evil, leaning sightly more towards lawful than evil) worshiper of Asmodeus, I do know the value of a nice chance to get a great deal option so i.ve choosen a Cacodaemon as my advanced familiar just for the Soul Lock ability, I though it would be a great thing to have when dealing with devils (via planar binding).

So when i saw the Pit Fiend dying.... well, the soul of a Pit fiend in my power would be so valuable.... either to negotiate with someone else or to take it to Nessus and let him reform as a way of saving him by keeping his soul....

I sent a message to my dm to tell him that my Cacodaemon has taken his soul and after the session he told me that it wasnt possible because he believed that they dont have a soul for me to keep but if I find a source saying that i can take it, i could make it mine....



Tl;tr: does a pit fiend have a soul for me to keep via Cacodaemon´s Soul Lock ability? in case it does, can anyone point me to a source?

We are playing pathfinder, but a 3.5 source might also help

[Durzan]

I dunno if they do have souls or not, but Demons are outsiders and killing one in the material plane will just send the straight back to Hell... Uh I mean the Abyss. So...

1. I doubt its "dead."

2. Creatures that die and get sent to the abyss typically become demons... I think.. So you could make the argument that any Demon / Devil's physical body IS their soul, therefore you could use your ability...
You might be able to convince your GM to fudge the rules a bit on this, but remember what he says, goes.

[Malimar]

No dice, the rules are pretty explicit that a pit fiend, as an outsider, does not have a harvestable soul:


Unlike most living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When an outsider is slain, no soul is set loose.

On the other hand, the cacodaemon's Soul Lock ability targets "any sentient creature", so you could potentially make an argument that specific trumps general.

[Coidzor]

Pitfiends are a soul, the culmination of a journey through a form of Lawful Evil "enlightenment" by rising up the ranks of the Infernal Bureaucracy.

Normally you can't capture the essence of outsiders without taking their body. However, the sole exception is when they die on the material plane in a way that sends their essence back to their outer plan of origin in order to reform their body from raw planar matter.

Back in D&D, they actually had a punishment form that Pitfiends and the form below Pitfiends would be demoted to for various failures, such as dying in an embarrassing way and having to reform.

So part of this depends on how it died and what sorta death it got.

I could definitely see a GM limiting the ability to mortal creatures, or at least making it specifically not work on outsiders.