When did good and evil outsiders become so mundane and boring?

[Spore]

I speak strictly in the sense of D&D and its surrounding pop culture. Heroes seem to never be afraid of these which is weird since even angels are described as scary not because they are winged super beings but because their form is so incredible it makes the human mind race. After all we fear what we cannot understand. Demons too. Most demon summoners in RPGs know what they are dealing with, and usually villains are also "too cool to show emotion" when they are not undead liches, half-fiends or some sort of angel-demon hybrid thingie.

Often it is even a hard sell on DMs when the monsters explicitly have a fear aura surrounding them to portray to the players that they should be afraid unless they are immune to fear. The barbarian is like "it can bleed so I can kill it." The rogue is cold and calculating, the wizard probably prepared a banishment spell and the cleric thinks this guy is playing for OUR team. Yet all of them are subjected to an Archon's aura of menace. Come on you could emote at least a little bit.

I get that D&D is about empowerment, especially for people who should rightfully be afraid of even a simple knife attack IRL (heck even special forces prefer to avoid knife combat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa69ZbsLfFQ)) but part of the emotional journey of a RPG game is imho to meet insurmountable odds that you can later overcome. The dragon that burns down your hometown that you can kill in the prelude to the finale of overthrowing the villain. The orc raider king that stole all of your belongings and you don't duel him to death but into submission, lending your forces their strength to attack the villain's citadel.

Back to the topic at hand. the last years transformed demons from surreal (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/df/Ill_dict_infernal_p0139-123_buer.jpg/220px-Ill_dict_infernal_p0139-123_buer.jpg) creatures (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/dragonage/images/4/41/Rage_demon_concept_art.jpg) of nightmares (https://227rsi2stdr53e3wto2skssd7xe-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/DnSx16-X4AAAtlm-e1538585810162-730x280.jpg) to basically hunky beefcakes (https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/descent2e/images/6/6f/Demonlord_newartwork.jpg/) (ignoring succubi who are popular for obvious reasons).

And I get desensitizing due to overexposure of (online and televised) media as well as different genres. But D&D is as mainstream as it gets, and tieflings and aasimars, while special in lore and fluff, in practice, no one bats an eye after these.

[jintoya]

They became boring when D&D became more about winning than playing a character or escapism.

[Pleh]

Making Tieflings and Aasimars core races definitely drops a lot of the mystique behind the angels and demons.

"Beware! Mephistopheles is coming!"

"Oh, Uncle Meph? I'll call gradmother in hell and see if she can talk to him for us."

Some of that otherwordly horror has gotten shifted to almost exclusively Lovecraftian horror elements. You don't see the Half Shoggoth as a core playable race, do you?

Kind of the same problem with Dragonborn. Dragons used to be invincible terrors, they were made intelligent to add a new layer of horror to their might, and then they got sympathetic and relatable, and now we have a whole race and class born out of mixed marriages with dragons.

We tend to Domesticate scary stuff over time, as we become familiar with it.

[jintoya]

Making Tieflings and Aasimars core races definitely drops a lot of the mystique behind the angels and demons.

"Beware! Mephistopheles is coming!"

"Oh, Uncle Meph? I'll call gradmother in hell and see if she can talk to him for us."

Some of that otherwordly horror has gotten shifted to almost exclusively Lovecraftian horror elements. You don't see the Half Shoggoth as a core playable race, do you?

Kind of the same problem with Dragonborn. Dragons used to be invincible terrors, they were made intelligent to add a new layer of horror to their might, and then they got sympathetic and relatable, and now we have a whole race and class born out of mixed marriages with dragons.

We tend to Domesticate scary stuff over time, as we become familiar with it.
This I is why I'm not allowed to play as otherworldly horrors, because they get scarier when I do...I once ate my party when asked to be the "secret villain"

[Spore]

We tend to Domesticate scary stuff over time, as we become familiar with it.

You make a fair point.

https://pics.me.me/voidspacer-my-roomba-is-scared-of-thunderstorms-i-was-sitting-30316369.png

[MoiMagnus]

The problem is not linked to outsiders.
Goblins are a joke instead of being vicious and dangerous.
Orcs are more stupid than dangerous.
Dragon are yet another creature to hunt for its loot.
Vampire are ... well, what modern media made from them.

Modern vision or D&D universe, on top of being influenced by videogames and films, is highly influenced by parodies and other humouristic variations of the universe.

I'm not convinced that's a bad thing, as it clearly answer a need for peoples not only to escape reality (trough fantasy), but also to escape serious subjects (trough 2nd degree, 4th wall breaking, ...)

But I have to agree it does make it more difficult to build a universe astonishing and/or frightening.

[Kaptin Keen]

They always were. You just got older.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I think the Game of Thrones has some influence too, since there's so much in that series about the gross evil ordinary people do that fantastical evil beings seem a little tame and well-behaved.

[Spore]

They always were. You just got older.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/912/638/d67.jpg

[Tvtyrant]

Basically because what makes supernatural stuff scary is the inability to deal with it, and D&D is about dealing with things. Imagine The Exorcist if Conan Stevens became so angry he punched the demon out of the girl.

[AceOfFools]

They always were. You just got older.
"It has stats, so we can kill it," has been a meme since at least 2nd edition (i.e. before I was born).

There were discussions on the best way to beat gods based on their published stats on the usenet forums that were precursors to the modern internet.

[Kaptin Keen]

No, I'm serious. They have been 2-dimensional, boring enemies since time out of memory. But when I was a teenager, outsiders seemed awesome! Only they weren't. I was just a teenager, and easily impressed.

[Tvtyrant]

Or your tastes have just changed and are not any more objectively good now then they were then.

[Malphegor]

if you stat it...

Yeah they kinda lose their edge by RAW application. My DM seems to like making them truly unknowable- we’ve met some devil... guy... thing... we think... who basically plucked a fireball in mid flight and without effort recharged someone’s spell slots. That’s silly powerful, and I for one was spooked by the casual display of ‘hah your rules are meaningless to me’.

But even there, I got the sense that if the forces of evil are keeping an eye on us, that means we’re rattling cages. They’re afraid. We’re a threat.

Which suggests we can take them on. Eventually.

And that turns survival horror into a butt whupping action movie. The Xenomorph isn’t in the ship ventilation, it’s in the open in the snow, and it is fleeing whilst we come for it. The devil’s deals have been rejected, and we are coming for him.

We were weak, but in their flame of antagonism, we are tempered. And we are coming.

D&D makes horror hard to cultivate without having statless beings of plot and DM fiat. Because if it has mechanical things, it can be taken down. Everything dies with sufficient application of magic at sufficient velocity.

Sometimes one needs to remember the dungeon is usually built to keep the adventurers out, and rarely the monsters in. One of these things is more feared than the other.

[Kaptin Keen]

Or your tastes have just changed and are not any more objectively good now then they were then.

Oh come on! There is no objectively good, or bad ... at all. They're social constructs. But! Aging and growing incrementally smarter over time is a real thing (mostly - there is solid evidence that some percentage has the exact opposite progression), and my experience is a possible explanation for Sporeegg's ditto.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Or your tastes have just changed and are not any more objectively good now then they were then.

Yeah. I see a lot of players who have become jaded. The things they're experiencing haven't changed, but the players have.

It's one reason I like playing with new people. Seeing their reactions to things rekindles the flame of wonder in me.

[Xuc Xac]

They became boring when D&D became more about winning than playing a character or escapism.

That's how D&D started. It was a wargame where you controlled one guy instead of a whole army. It was like making a first person shooter based on units from Warcraft. The idea of acting like the character was a real person instead of a pawn the player used to solve the GM’s puzzles came much later.

Demons first appeared in 1976 in the "Eldritch Wizardry" supplement. They were called "Type I Demon", "Type II Demon", and so on up to Type VI. Giving them actual names with character and personality was introduced later.

[Kaptin Keen]

It's one reason I like playing with new people.

Playing with a bunch of 12-14 year olds is an absolute joy! They can still be scared witless by a darkness spell =D

It does feel like I'm cheating tho =)

[Conradine]

In my opinion, Extract Drug is very very popular between adventurers.

[Yora]

Planescape.

Which I say as a huge fan of Planescape. The thing with Planescape is that it has strong elements of subversion, caricature, and satire. This works really well for that setting, but being the corner of D&D where the planes and their native creatures were described in the greatest detail, it kind of became the standard reference frame for what they are in D&D in general.

And for pretty much any setting that isn't Planescape, this approach doesn't really fit.


"It has stats, so we can kill it," has been a meme since at least 2nd edition (i.e. before I was born).

There were discussions on the best way to beat gods based on their published stats on the usenet forums that were precursors to the modern internet.

I think this goes back specifically to Deities and Demigods for 1st edition in 1980.

[Lord Raziere]

eh.

such things tend to lose their mundanity when you stop making them able to talk to you in a normal conversation.

angels and demons have their own languages. you want languages to start meaning something, enforce it by making that comprehend languages spell isn't there and then make them only speak their language. lack of common language does wonders to make things unclear. now make their actions more inscrutable and have a completely different view about alignment and morality than you, maybe make it so that even speaking causes them to hurt mortals a bit, and you got a much less mundane outsider.

[Particle_Man]

I remember scaring my players just by role playing the standard drow prisoner they had as if he was the Heath Ledger version of the Joker. Stats on paper can’t scare players. DMs can.

[Spore]

angels and demons have their own languages. you want languages to start meaning something, enforce it by making that comprehend languages spell isn't there and then make them only speak their language. lack of common language does wonders to make things unclear. now make their actions more inscrutable and have a completely different view about alignment and morality than you, maybe make it so that even speaking causes them to hurt mortals a bit, and you got a much less mundane outsider.

I mean even if this is some sort of "alignment language" stuff from D&D 1 or so, I feel the intent is much less the understanding and more the fact that they both wouldnt even TALK to a mortal if it can be helped and secondly the fact that there are now celestials and fiends statted down to even CR 1-2 even though this means you fight a single flipping soldier from the Blood War which is both expendable and probably instantly ressurrectable.

And while I like the idea of celestial 'Good' is not morally good (so angels would destroy an orphanage if the resulting explosion would kill a powerful demon) and fiendish 'Evil' has its merits (as emotions give the mortals agency over their own fate), I would much rather see them as alien and detached creatures from other worlds that demand servitude, sacrifice and honorification.

[Pleh]

They always were. You just got older.

Possible, but it seems needlessly reductive.

It's not like we haven't seen the whole culture and community likewise shift. Your point is probably valid, but is likely not the complete solution.


I remember scaring my players just by role playing the standard drow prisoner they had as if he was the Heath Ledger version of the Joker. Stats on paper can’t scare players. DMs can.

This. The scariness of Angels and Demons really is about how you play your cards.

Players too familiar with their stats? Modify them. Too familiar with the fluff? Take it up a notch. Familiarity breeds contempt. Always find new ways to breathe new terror into your monsters.

[NichG]

Numerical stats, spell lists, and visual descriptions are incapable of supporting fear and awe on their own. To get that reaction and sustain it, a creature has to cause players to doubt their approach to the world by its very existence.

An example would be Pact's depiction of demons, where the protagonist encounters one that causes other people to forget their existence when it lands a blow. No save, no mix of people who remember and people who forget. Facing something like that invites a particular doubt - have we fought this thing before, has it killed a former party member already? It seems impossible in a tabletop context where players live outside of the mechanics, but if you drop hints that something like that did happen, you can feed the doubt.

A creature that gains power over those who know its name changes the usual dynamics of play in that more knowledge becomes worse, not better. A creature where agreeing with it in conversation is binding, and who can look like anyone, means you always have to watch what you say. Etc. Things where, if you knew they existed, your standard operating procedure would have to change even if you never meet one.

[Max_Killjoy]

The D&D approach to worlds and monsters is quite good at stripping them of both wonder and terror.

These outsiders, good, evil, otherwise, are all named, categorized, analyzed, codified. They have standardized abilities and weaknesses, all neat and clean and to be dealt with formulaicly.

Just like all the Alignment-coded, color-coded "planes" they reside in.

[Constructman]

The D&D approach to worlds and monsters is quite good at stripping them of both wonder and terror.

These outsiders, good, evil, otherwise, are all named, categorized, analyzed, codified. They have standardized abilities and weaknesses, all neat and clean and to be dealt with formulaicly.

Just like all the Alignment-coded, color-coded "planes" they reside in.

If you want your players to fight them, they need to have a set of abilities and attributes and not be able to pull new ones put of their asses, lest you get accused of just making **** up as you go.

The question is, do you want your players to fight them?

The Mafia boss is much more intimidating than a simple thug, even if one is rarely seen and the other is about to break your nose. As soon as the boss has to take matters into his own hands and do the dirty work himself, his credibility decreases. However, as long as he is in the shadows, manipulating things behind the scenes, he remains a fearsome figure even if he never personally lays a finger on his enemies. The same applies to RPG enemies, Archfiends included. If they have to confront the party directly, something has gone terribly wrong with their plan and their credibility and intimidation factor decreases appropriately. But as long as the party never sees them, but knows that they're there and are actively working to make their life miserable, then they can retain some shred of scariness.

[Mechalich]

If you want your players to fight them, they need to have a set of abilities and attributes and not be able to pull new ones put of their asses, lest you get accused of just making **** up as you go.

The question is, do you want your players to fight them?

The Mafia boss is much more intimidating than a simple thug, even if one is rarely seen and the other is about to break your nose. As soon as the boss has to take matters into his own hands and do the dirty work himself, his credibility decreases. However, as long as he is in the shadows, manipulating things behind the scenes, he remains a fearsome figure even if he never personally lays a finger on his enemies. The same applies to RPG enemies, Archfiends included. If they have to confront the party directly, something has gone terribly wrong with their plan and their credibility and intimidation factor decreases appropriately. But as long as the party never sees them, but knows that they're there and are actively working to make their life miserable, then they can retain some shred of scariness.

To this I'd add that, because RPGs in general and D&D in particular have very bad mechanics for running away, the minute you put something on the playmat at all it has to be reduced to within a certain statistical range or the GM might as well just say 'rocks fall...' and move on. This is particularly bad in higher-level D&D with scry and die tactics where the implication is that the moment your characters become any sort of significant threat to the demon lord in any way whatsoever he dials up his high-powered inter-dimensional kill squad and ends them.

D&D, by its very nature, can't play seriously past a certain power point (where this is located varies by editions, and in some forms of 5e may not be exceeded at all), which makes pretty much all enemies mundane and boring unless they can be bizarre and weird. Nothing is intimidating because nothing is serious, gameplay is low immersion, and the cheese is omnipresent. Planescape, wherein the modern versions of most fiends were more or less developed into their present forms (there has been some tinkering about the edges since, the Eryines for instance, but it's pretty modest) understood this, and created outsiders that were wacky and weird and bizarre, not primordial and scary, because that fit with its thematic approach of jaded self-aware cynicism - an approach that is quite common across the fandom, as can be seen in OOTS and various other portrayals of D&D-type tabletop play.

[Inchhighguy]

This is really a ''how you play the game" sort of thing. Anything in the game is what you make of it.

You can make outsiders strange and weird and unique beings.....or you can have then be carboard cuts outs for the PCs to kill.

The same is true of anything else...dragons, undead, drow....whatever.

[The Insanity]

I don't know. When did you start playing them as mundane and boring?

[Pauly]

The problem isn’t that the outsiders are statted and in the monster manual. The problem is that players have read and studied the monster manual.

Plagues used to be scary, now people know hygiene rules and most people know how to combat them, so they’re not as scary as they once were.
In The Hobbit, Smaug is terrifying right up to the point where Bilbo spots the gap in his armor.
Zombies were scary until “cut off its head” became a trope.

The other main problem is that outsiders (+Dragons) often get portrayed as having human like emotions, ambitions and sensibilities. So the players treat them more as Scooby-Doo villains (there’s a person under the mask) than as scary otherworldly beings.

The solution, as I see it are:
(1) To keep the actual stats and vulnerabilities hidden from the players. Certainly let the players work out from clues and interactions what they may be, but if the player knows “I have to hit this creature from behind, after casting debuffs 1 and 2, using an X-type attack” the critter is no longer scary.
(2) The DM has to role play the critter in a way that conveys it is inhuman in the way it thinks. For example Dragons are often portrayed as being very proud and responding to flattery and incivility, however a dragon would probably treat the capering of humans the way we’d respond to a friend’s pet rat.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you want your players to fight them, they need to have a set of abilities and attributes and not be able to pull new ones put of their asses, lest you get accused of just making **** up as you go.

The question is, do you want your players to fight them?

The Mafia boss is much more intimidating than a simple thug, even if one is rarely seen and the other is about to break your nose. As soon as the boss has to take matters into his own hands and do the dirty work himself, his credibility decreases. However, as long as he is in the shadows, manipulating things behind the scenes, he remains a fearsome figure even if he never personally lays a finger on his enemies. The same applies to RPG enemies, Archfiends included. If they have to confront the party directly, something has gone terribly wrong with their plan and their credibility and intimidation factor decreases appropriately. But as long as the party never sees them, but knows that they're there and are actively working to make their life miserable, then they can retain some shred of scariness.

Even if the PCs encounter them or fight them, that doesn't mean they have to be neatly laid out as known commodities. Maybe if more of them are unique instead of being a fixed pile of HP and special attacks...

What I'm getting at is that if I had a game where PCs were opposed by demons and devils, I'd strip away all of D&D's "must fill monster manual entries" cookie-cutter stuff, and have every demon or devil beyond the cannon fodder level by a unique creature in some ways, so that the players couldn't just recite the MM entry from memory.

[Kaptin Keen]

Possible, but it seems needlessly reductive.

It's not like we haven't seen the whole culture and community likewise shift. Your point is probably valid, but is likely not the complete solution.

Needlessly reductive seems to be my thing, to be honest. I focus on what I consider to be the most likely, or most weighty, reason for a thing - and make no mention of other, lesser factors, though of course they will exist, almost universally. Also, sometimes I'm just plain wrong =)

However ... the whole culture and community has shifted, I agree. I'd say towards better (or at least simpler and more fluid) mechanics - and worse games. But I don't think that shift has impacted outsiders, particularly. They literally always were .. sad, 2-dimensional saps.

[Elves]

People are talking about the difficulty of portraying them as "horrifying" in a pen and paper game but it seems like you're talking more about the creatures themselves.

Angels and demons are typically important because of what they represent in a religious context. D&D's metaphysical context (great wheel/world axis), which it forces them into, is very abstract and doesn't feel that important, so they lack punch.

So one answer is to create a relevant metaphysics for your world, and make the metaphysical beings be linked to that as well as feeling like natural parts of the setting.

In the case of the World Axis, angels are supposed to be the servants of the gods, so the question really gets pushed back to the metaphysical sterility with which D&D gods are typically portrayed. Bring the gods to life in the world and angels will naturally feel potent as a result. You probably want to get rid of their wings (it's not like they even use them to fly anyway, usually).


The other part doesn't really need an answer. Yes, depicting demons as simple beefcakes is lame, so you just don't have to do it.


And of course there's always something to be said for abandoning categories. No angels and demons, no simple antithesis of supernal and infernal beings. Make them both in one, or make new forms of metaphysical being, or maybe there are no metaphysical beings, just mortals with special traits and powers, or maybe there's no such thing as the metaphysical and the planes are part of the real world, etc.

[Grim Portent]

And of course there's always something to be said for abandoning categories. No angels and demons, no simple antithesis of supernal and infernal beings. Make them both in one, or make new forms of metaphysical being, or maybe there are no metaphysical beings, just mortals with special traits and powers, or maybe there's no such thing as the metaphysical and the planes are part of the real world, etc.

Seconding this.

Even if angels and daemons exist as discrete categories it should be near impossible to tell which is which. Even something as simple as having them be divided by faction or theme rather than alignment helps. Throwing all the outsiders into multiple factions of varying allegiance helps make them less cookie cutter. No good reason a god can't command heavenly and hellish hosts once you stray from the default bland stuff, plenty of mythological figures would straddle that line pretty happily.



Leaning more on the unnatural biology angle helps too. I don't mean things like rotten mounds of flesh that still move, or wacko gorilla monsters, things like wheels within wheels ever turning, bodies composed of multiple disassociated parts that float in perfect symmetry, even just a big floating mask with a corona of light is weirder with the right setup than most depictions of outsiders.

Also, less weapons. A powerful daemon or angel should be able to unmake mortals with their voice alone, if it needs to stab you it makes them more mundane. If a floating geometric shape starts killing you by speaking of your past misdeeds it tends to freak you out.

[Mechalich]

Also, less weapons. A powerful daemon or angel should be able to unmake mortals with their voice alone, if it needs to stab you it makes them more mundane. If a floating geometric shape starts killing you by speaking of your past misdeeds it tends to freak you out.

The problem is, in a game this is just some sort of magical attack. Games are reductionist - they reduce everything to numbers and formulae - and most table-top games are extremely low immersion (heck, in the present day its a lucky GM who can get their players to put their cell phones away during play), so describing something in a scary way doesn't really accomplish much.

Also, very few gamers are actually interested in playing horror games or games with heavy horror themes, to the point that even games that are pitched as being about horror don't get played that way (White-Wolf designers were notorious for being angry about this) and because of low immersion players often don't react to events that could in another context be horror themed with horror but with humor. D&D makes this worse because characters past a certain level are notoriously difficult to damage in any sort of permanent fashion: kill you, drain your essence, drain your strength, all these things can be fixed and none of them is nearly as terrifying as an encounter with a rust monster.

And of course, the reputation of the rust monster is also illuminating - should a GM actually take stuff away from the player's characters that cannot easily be replaced, they shall face out of game fire and fury the likes of which would never be seen by merely having a balor lop some character's head off.

Mundane and boring fits monsters, even highly fantastical monsters, in D&D and many other tabletop games, because it fits the mood and playstyle that tends to unfold at tables (and in D&D-based video games) where the party proceeds to go through enemies of all shapes, sizes, and supernatural natures like a steel & spell blowtorch.

[Grim Portent]

The problem is, in a game this is just some sort of magical attack. Games are reductionist - they reduce everything to numbers and formulae - and most table-top games are extremely low immersion (heck, in the present day its a lucky GM who can get their players to put their cell phones away during play), so describing something in a scary way doesn't really accomplish much.

Also, very few gamers are actually interested in playing horror games or games with heavy horror themes, to the point that even games that are pitched as being about horror don't get played that way (White-Wolf designers were notorious for being angry about this) and because of low immersion players often don't react to events that could in another context be horror themed with horror but with humor. D&D makes this worse because characters past a certain level are notoriously difficult to damage in any sort of permanent fashion: kill you, drain your essence, drain your strength, all these things can be fixed and none of them is nearly as terrifying as an encounter with a rust monster.

And of course, the reputation of the rust monster is also illuminating - should a GM actually take stuff away from the player's characters that cannot easily be replaced, they shall face out of game fire and fury the likes of which would never be seen by merely having a balor lop some character's head off.

Mundane and boring fits monsters, even highly fantastical monsters, in D&D and many other tabletop games, because it fits the mood and playstyle that tends to unfold at tables (and in D&D-based video games) where the party proceeds to go through enemies of all shapes, sizes, and supernatural natures like a steel & spell blowtorch.

That is a big issue with D&D, true. I know I've never even felt mildly perturbed at any of the foes I've faced in D&D. Hell my current D&D character wrestled a freaking basilisk and won, which rather took any intimidation factor it may have had when I was holding it down and biting it. Or that time I couldn't hit a drow reliably so I just grappled him and held him over a campfire until he burned to death while he flailed at me.

The Rust Monster I think is emblematic of the core issue of D&D which is lack of consequence. Even dying is a mild inconvenience, so losing gear is the only real loss measurement that means much.

[gkathellar]

Around the time you started to see them as cliched. Change things up to avert the cliches, and the problem will resolve itself.

[Pleh]

I don't think that shift has impacted outsiders, particularly. They literally always were .. sad, 2-dimensional saps.

You could say the same abput wizards, elves, barbarians, and orcs. The depth and dimensionality of any character is only as robust as the person playing it makes it to be. Angels and Demons require no more or less work than the PCs themselves.

Problem is that oftentimes the DM uses cookiee cutter statblocks as a shortcut to developing deep characters, which us exactly what the monster reference book they spent money for was designed to let them do.

I try to get into a habit of using cookiee cutter statblocks as often as I can so I can spend more time fleshing out a generic character rather than trying to build something from scratch that likely would have been similar in the end anyway. So angels and demons mostly just need more thought and care put into them.


Angels and demons are typically important because of what they represent in a religious context. D&D's metaphysical context (great wheel/world axis), which it forces them into, is very abstract and doesn't feel that important, so they lack punch.

This is a great point. Giving a pantheon and cosmology that has actual teeth in the game will naturally lend more gravitas to the angels and demons that belong to that corner of the cosmos.


And of course there's always something to be said for abandoning categories. No angels and demons, no simple antithesis of supernal and infernal beings. Make them both in one, or make new forms of metaphysical being, or maybe there are no metaphysical beings, just mortals with special traits and powers, or maybe there's no such thing as the metaphysical and the planes are part of the real world, etc.

A common perception of angels and demons is that they were at some point in history literally identical, if your setting describes demons as fallen angels (though an interesting subversion of the trope would be to make demons the natural state and angels are the redeemed version). In any case, when you use this trope, you can easily get into plots where *not only* are the players not sure who is a demon or an angel, but also they can't be absolutely sure any angel or demon isn't going to wind up switching sides in pursuit of their goals.

Treat it a bit like a Constantine comic book and watch your angels and demons become WAY more interesting for your players.

[Mechalich]

The Rust Monster I think is emblematic of the core issue of D&D which is lack of consequence. Even dying is a mild inconvenience, so losing gear is the only real loss measurement that means much.

It's not a D&D issue at all though, it's a gameplay issue generally, one that's found across mediums. Players hate, hate, having to face real and serious consequences in games. In video games consequence is avoided by the save function, and your game design had better allow players to save sufficiently often to avoid wasting significant time or the knives will come out. In tabletop, any consequences need to be something you can brush off in order to get back to the action in a hurry.

And yes, there are games that violate these trends, but they tend to be niche and they appeal only to a specific portion of the playerbase, kind of like horror movies appeal to a specific portion of movie goers. Also like horror movies the subgroup that's into this sort of thing is really, really into it, and, additionally, the economic niche is one that is served by particularly low budget and often obscure fare. I'm sure there's a great horror game out there somewhere - probably on drivethrurpg - that has terrifying otherworldly demons that the right table can use to get properly freaked out by. I'm also sure it will never go mainstream.

D&D is, to extend the analogy a bit too far, the Marvel of table-top gaming, and it's 'outsiders' if done well are more like Thanos and Dormamu: big, pointlessly pathological, and often literally on fire. Scary? Not really. Satisfying to bash through the skull with a hammer? Yes.

[2D8HP]

....Imagine The Exorcist if Conan Stevens became so angry he punched the demon out of the girl.


Please someone make that film, it sounds so much better!

[Spore]

D&D is, to extend the analogy a bit too far, the Marvel of table-top gaming, and it's 'outsiders' if done well are more like Thanos and Dormamu: big, pointlessly pathological, and often literally on fire. Scary? Not really. Satisfying to bash through the skull with a hammer? Yes.

Honestly I had an idea just now. I am honestly terrified for my little bard's life in one of my games. Because he deals with problems by proxy meaning he helps his surrounding world to be heroic and awesome. Alone he can't even deal with a small quasit or a goblin. He is part of a group, and mechanically he has a role that is going to become more and more vital, but both on a mechanical and a fluff level he is HOSED without allies.

And then I thought back which villains were most satisfying, which encounters with LOSS where most memorable, and it is always the ones where something is taken away that isn't the character itself but something important to him or her. A priestess' boyfriend murdered someone and was executed. A knight's mount was disintegrated, his dwarven friend killed. If you enforce heroic types in your group and not the egalitarian mercenary, villains (and to this extend, outsiders) harming loved ones (which stat blocks that basically say 'you win'), suddenly gaming becomes emotional again without subverting the empowering gameplay or shackling the players by virtue of DM fiat.

Of course in order to harm a character with that, he or she needs to create loved ones to threaten.


Please someone make that film, it sounds so much better!

Isn't that one called The Evil Dead? :smallamused:

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think it all comes down to "play the character, not the stat block." For both sides. If the players play their characters as actual people (not as abstract entities that have perfect knowledge of the mechanics), they won't take things lightly. They'll form connections to the world. If the DM plays the "monsters" as actual beings, each with personality, goals, and desires[1], the players won't be able to simply punch their way through things (except in high-optimization 3e, which is all sorts of broken).

[1] I find that trying to portray truly alien desires and thought-processes just gets players to tune out. They can't rationally predict what the creature will do, so they take the most expedient option and basically ignore the creature unless it's directly in their face. Not to mention, humans don't do alien well at all. "Humanizing" villains and creatures can make them even more scary, because you let the players' imaginations take some of the load. That way, you can simply suggest possibilities. Nothing is as scary as what the players can come up with for themselves.

[Tvtyrant]

Please someone make that film, it sounds so much better!

I think they made a couple shows about it, honestly. Buffy being the OG one.

[Man_Over_Game]

What's the answer, then?

How do you include dragons, undead, drow, shoggoths, etc. in a way that shows them as the demonic forces that they are?

[Pleh]

What's the answer, then?

How do you include dragons, undead, drow, shoggoths, etc. in a way that shows them as the demonic forces that they are?

This is where the fun begins.

As you correctly point out, a lot of these monsters will tend to bleed into each other unless you use some sharp delineation.

The easiest answer is clearly that you pick one or two to focus on, rather than squeezing them all into the heinous evil category.

But when you really got to fit them all into the same box, you gotta give each of them something unique and different. The problem I see is that the Far Realm abominations really have nothing going for them except madness and horror, so it's hard to give them a villain niche that doesn't lessen the horror of other villains.

I think it's important to recall what makes a villain or monster scary. They always represent a threat, so I view Abberations as threats on sanity and the player's mind. Sure, they might happily skin you alive, but the point is more that they don't find this idea unusual.

Dragons are a threat on wealth, including real estate. They are greedy and hoard shiny things. They are as powerful as a flying tank, and they won't share anything. Not territory, not resources, not anything. Even the good aligned dragons hoard wealth. Even if you're a peasant without two coppers to rub together, the gluttony of a dragon is insatiable. Best you can hope for is they'll eat themselves into a food coma for a few decades (and you won't be part of the feast).

Undead represent the threat of disease. They "want" to rob us of our health, eating our flesh, blood, or contaminating us. You get the idea.

Drow are the evil side of elves. They are people born to superior talent and quality of life. But they're also slavers. They want our labor. They represent a threat of oppression.

Then we have the Demons. They're known for making deals to own your soul. Demons threaten your eternal fate, your afterlife. In RPGs, this is a baseless threat, because your afterlife is a footnote in your game. Who cares if you end up in one of the heavens or hells? I mean, a lot of people have done a lot of work trying to justify that evil characters would prefer to live in hell. So making a deal with a devil seems just win/win. To make Demons scary, the threat the pose to your soul should be real. Suppose dying to a demon had the risk that you might not be able to be resurrected, since your soul might not be free to return. Yeah, a lot of undead hold this threat as becoming undead is a great way to lose your ability to return, but for devils to keep their niche as the predators of the spirit world, they need the power to actually damage or destroy a character's everlasting soul.

[Bohandas]

I speak strictly in the sense of D&D and its surrounding pop culture. Heroes seem to never be afraid of these which is weird since even angels are described as scary not because they are winged super beings but because their form is so incredible it makes the human mind race.

By the time the players start encountering these things that are superbeings as well, unless its some minor outsider like a lantern archon or a quasit, in which case they are stock-in-trade religious or arcane organization, if not necessarily for any member of said organization.

It also doesn;t help that most of the "spirits" are made of meat.

[redwizard007]

What's the answer, then?

How do you include dragons, undead, drow, shoggoths, etc. in a way that shows them as the demonic forces that they are?

Really? Stop using them as CR appropriate encounters. If my PCs see a dragon they run. If they see a devil, they die. If you want them to be scary then let it be known and follow through on the threat. If your players don't want that kind of game they will let you know. Sometimes they even figure it out before the first TPK.

I'm serious. Talk to your players first. Be honest with what you want to do and why. Be ready for them to ignore you and "Leroy Jenkins." Then hand them a new character sheet. It breeds a different type of playstyle, but no less fun.

For the record, I am not an old-school ToA style Gygax GM, but there are consequences in my games.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Really? Stop using them as CR appropriate encounters. If my PCs see a dragon they run. If they see a devil, they die. If you want them to be scary then let it be known and follow through on the threat. If your players don't want that kind of game they will let you know. Sometimes they even figure it out before the first TPK.

I'm serious. Talk to your players first. Be honest with what you want to do and why. Be ready for them to ignore you and "Leroy Jenkins." Then hand them a new character sheet. It breeds a different type of playstyle, but no less fun.

For the record, I am not an old-school ToA style Gygax GM, but there are consequences in my games.

So an imp or wyrmling = TPK threat? Even at level 20? Because that's what that means to me. Am I reading you wrong?

[redwizard007]

So an imp or wyrmling = TPK threat? Even at level 20? Because that's what that means to me. Am I reading you wrong?

Entirely wrong. That may have been my fault.

If the party is level 10, send them a CR 18. If they are level 1, send them a CR 8. Something that qualifies as deadly at the very least. If you give them a fighting chance with a "terrifying creature" then it isn't really terrifying. Their options need to be heroic-delaying-action, run-like-hell, or die.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Entirely wrong. That may have been my fault.

If the party is level 10, send them a CR 18. If they are level 1, send them a CR 8. Something that qualifies as deadly at the very least. If you give them a fighting chance with a "terrifying creature" then it isn't really terrifying. Their options need to be heroic-delaying-action, run-like-hell, or die.

But...why? That kind of anti balance is one bad roll away from an involuntary TPK, which leaves people feeling like the DM is out to get them. D&D does not do fleeing well, especially from things that move faster than you do.

D&D, to me, is about being a hero. And if there's a large swath of things that are just "no, DM says you run or die", and you can only run because he decided to play the monster stupidly, it's hard to be a hero. That's more fitting for a CoC game IMO. I want my character to push through the fear and do things. Heroic things. But I guess de gustibas and all that...

But then again, I've never been one for horror or terror. I want players to care about the consequences. Not for themselves, but for the people, things, or ideas they care about. And that doesn't require singular big scary things at all.

[redwizard007]

But...why? That kind of anti balance is one bad roll away from an involuntary TPK, which leaves people feeling like the DM is out to get them. D&D does not do fleeing well, especially from things that move faster than you do.

D&D, to me, is about being a hero. And if there's a large swath of things that are just "no, DM says you run or die", and you can only run because he decided to play the monster stupidly, it's hard to be a hero. That's more fitting for a CoC game IMO. I want my character to push through the fear and do things. Heroic things. But I guess de gustibas and all that...

But then again, I've never been one for horror or terror. I want players to care about the consequences. Not for themselves, but for the people, things, or ideas they care about. And that doesn't require singular big scary things at all.

That's fine, but then you are resorting to DMs acting ability to instill terror. That's going to be a mixed bag at best.

[PhoenixPhyre]

That's fine, but then you are resorting to DMs acting ability to instill terror. That's going to be a mixed bag at best.

By why even have try to instill terror at all? That's what I don't get. Terror isn't fun. Terror isn't heroic, especially when you can't fight through it. Sure, there can be things that are way out of the party's league, but relegating whole categories of creatures to that status just means you might as well not stat them at all. Because only throwing ones they can't handle means their stats are irrelevant entirely.

[redwizard007]

By why even have try to instill terror at all? That's what I don't get. Terror isn't fun. Terror isn't heroic, especially when you can't fight through it. Sure, there can be things that are way out of the party's league, but relegating whole categories of creatures to that status just means you might as well not stat them at all. Because only throwing ones they can't handle means their stats are irrelevant entirely.

Ok. So what do you want to get out of your outsiders, etc?

[Max_Killjoy]

"Terror" is a thin line anyway, since gamers all understand on some level that the "standard role" GM can in theory just keep piling on until the threat is beyond the PCs' ability to handle.

And "horror" is about helplessness, and most gamers aren't looking for a steady diet of helplessness.

[Arbane]

It's not a D&D issue at all though, it's a gameplay issue generally, one that's found across mediums. Players hate, hate, having to face real and serious consequences in games. In video games consequence is avoided by the save function, and your game design had better allow players to save sufficiently often to avoid wasting significant time or the knives will come out. In tabletop, any consequences need to be something you can brush off in order to get back to the action in a hurry.

Conversely, nobody likes having their character permacrippled because of a few bad die-rolls. (Or bad judgement, true. But when a DM says "Well, make better decisions! :smallamused:", the most common decision made is to find another DM.)

[Kaptin Keen]

You could say the same abput wizards, elves, barbarians, and orcs. The depth and dimensionality of any character is only as robust as the person playing it makes it to be. Angels and Demons require no more or less work than the PCs themselves.

Problem is that oftentimes the DM uses cookiee cutter statblocks as a shortcut to developing deep characters, which us exactly what the monster reference book they spent money for was designed to let them do.

I try to get into a habit of using cookiee cutter statblocks as often as I can so I can spend more time fleshing out a generic character rather than trying to build something from scratch that likely would have been similar in the end anyway. So angels and demons mostly just need more thought and care put into them.

No, that's simply not true. Outsiders are - by design - endless hordes of identical, unmotivated evil. The blood war is a stunning example of just enormously unimaginative, crappy design: Endless armies fighting endlessly for no reason what so ever, with no result what so ever. There are many flaws in published RPG works, but none quite so galling as the outsiders*.

I hardly ever use cookie cutter enemies for anything - but then on the other hand, I hardly ever really use combat either. Not ... really. Generally, there's only boss fights. And I'm not saying that's a good thing, btw, just that I'm generally not very good at running combat, and also I find it tedius. Especially if it's just .. 'an encounter'.

* Some outsiders are cool - like, bariaur are awesome. Even if they too are 2-dimensional, they're so blank, fluff wise, that I can do anything I want with them.

[Bohandas]

"It has stats, so we can kill it," has been a meme since at least 2nd edition (i.e. before I was born).

There were discussions on the best way to beat gods based on their published stats on the usenet forums that were precursors to the modern internet.

They don't even need stats. I've personally devoted thought to how to kill the Lady of Pain and Lord Ao (the omnipotence of both seems to be highly local, and they seem to be tightly entangled with their respective locales, so if those locales could be damaged or shut down (such as by sealing all of Sigil's portals from the outside, or sealing off Realmspace like Athas) they might be weakened or killed


Basically because what makes supernatural stuff scary is the inability to deal with it, and D&D is about dealing with things. Imagine The Exorcist if Conan Stevens became so angry he punched the demon out of the girl.

Which brings up the related issue that angels and demons are supposed to be spiritual beings, so you shouldn;t be able to punch them. Yet in D&D you totally can.

[Arbane]

Which brings up the related issue that angels and demons are supposed to be spiritual beings, so you shouldn;t be able to punch them. Yet in D&D you totally can.

If you can wrestle an angel, you can punch one. More I cannot say without breaking forum rules.

[Glorthindel]

I found the Van Richtens Guide series of Ravenloft books solved this block for me.

Each one takes a traditional monster (Vampire, Werebeasts, Mummies, Ghosts, Golems, Liches, Demons), and deconstructs it. They encourage you to stop thinking of them as blocks of hit points, and address them at the core roleplay level - what is their curse, how does it tie into their personal history, and crimes, and how does that influence their powers, strengths, and vulnerabilities.

It really hammered home that players shouldn't even be coming at these types of monsters without making an effort to investigate and understand the particular creature. Suddenly when a Ghost is immune to all attacks because the party have not bothered to learn that it is only vulnerable when a specific incense tied to their death is burned in their presence, or that the werewolf instantly regenerates all wounds that are not inflicted under direct moonlight, then they learn to be afraid.

Granted, this requires trust between players and DM's (such that the players know the DM isn't just stonewalling them out of spite, and that a solution really does exist), and the first couple of times you use it, you need to give the players an easy escape option (since odds are they aren't going to be expecting such a sudden departure from the book norm), but with a decent group of players, once you establish that the supernatural, celestial, and infernal does not play by the standard set of rules, you can make some really fun (and properly respected by the players) encounters.

[Pleh]

No, that's simply not true. Outsiders are - by design - endless hordes of identical, unmotivated evil. The blood war is a stunning example of just enormously unimaginative, crappy design: Endless armies fighting endlessly for no reason what so ever, with no result what so ever. There are many flaws in published RPG works, but none quite so galling as the outsiders*.

I hardly ever use cookie cutter enemies for anything - but then on the other hand, I hardly ever really use combat either. Not ... really. Generally, there's only boss fights. And I'm not saying that's a good thing, btw, just that I'm generally not very good at running combat, and also I find it tedius. Especially if it's just .. 'an encounter'.

* Some outsiders are cool - like, bariaur are awesome. Even if they too are 2-dimensional, they're so blank, fluff wise, that I can do anything I want with them.

Orcs are, by design, endless hordes of identical, ummotivated bandits.

Elves are, by design, endless hordes of identical, unmotivated racist superiorists.

Barbarians are, by design, endless hordes of identical, unmotivated superstitious beatsticks.

Wizards are, by design, endless hordes of identical, unmotivated scholars and mad scientists.

Ergo, practicing reductionism with RPG elements can always strip an element down to an uninspiring trope that feels lame. Instead, we should focus on what can be added to these elements to make them work.

Just because a person might belong to a culture that is at war doesn't mean that individual is directly involved. After all, if a given demon is very entrenched in that conflict, what brought them to the material plane that the heroes are encountering them?

If a monster has more than 3 intelligence, it stands to reason that they have a name. If they have a name, then they are unique to other members of their people.

The fact that you find outsiders and the blood war uninspiring doesn't mean it's objectively shallow. It means the creators worked very hard to leave ample room for customization.

You know the blood war is optional fluff, right? If you don't like it, handle them better in your games.

Maybe we could handle this question better by turning it around. How would you change outsiders to make them interesting?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ok. So what do you want to get out of your outsiders, etc?

A cardinal point of my setting is that almost everyone in it is, fundamentally, a person. They're "human", for lack of a better word. Meaning that they all have desires (strange though those might be), all have agency (so no one is good or evil except by personal choice, including outsiders), and they all are in some measure comprehensible. The gods were once mortal (200 years ago, in fact). Any time you meet an outsider (including elementals in this category) on the Mortal plane, they have a body and so can be dispersed. This is because they have to be portrayed by me, and I'm human and so can't portray truly alien things well at all. The only truly alien mindsets are found among the kami, but those don't interact directly except as translated through mortals, and the Incarnations (manifestations of concepts that have been "broken"), but those are few and far between (and certainly not uniformly terrible).

Kinds of beings are categorized by their role in the universal economy, not by their alignment.
Angels are empowered by the universal Mechanism to the degree that they follow their oath to protect and police the Astral and Elemental planes, especially against threats from Beyond. They don't interact with mortals, and when they do they're of the "had to destroy the village to save it" mentality. They're understandable, just not incredibly friendly most of the time.

Devils are the messengers of the gods (appearing in angelic form some of the time), as well as the contract workers of the universe. They "police" the Mortal plane. They take tithes of the energy of mortals in exchange for non-divinely-mandated services and are generally organized into mafia-like families by specialty. 90% of the time, that outsider is really a devil.

Demons once were mortals (or outsiders) who chose to gain power by consuming the whole soul of a mortal or who were exposed to the corrupting influence of the Abyss long enough to be unable to live comfortably outside its ambit. Despite being universally reviled by everyone else, they're not inherently evil, just inherently dangerous. They have just as much a vested interest in the survival and progress of the universe as anyone else and have their plans and goals. Heck, the PCs at one time made a deal with a couple of the Demon Princes for aid, because the alternative was even worse.

Elementals (including genies and other denizens of the elemental planes) are responsible for maintaining the Mortal realm, from whence all power comes. The water cycle? That's the job of the plane(s) of Water. Refreshing the air and the weather patterns? That's not photosynthesis, that's the plane(s) of Air. Thermal regulation? Not coming (directly) from the sun, but from the plane(s) of Fire. Geophysical changes? Not plate tectonics, but the planes of Earth and Fire cooperating. Etc. The plane of Earth is responsible for the fact that despite the world being inhabited for millennia, new mines can find new minerals. Basically everything that "physical laws" do here on Earth is done by the elemental planes.

Now none of this means that these creatures are benign. Their motives and goals are frequently at odds with those of individual mortals; the wolf is understandable to the sheep, despite being fundamentally opposed to their individual well-being. But many of them will talk first; even those that won't still have goals and plans that a mortal might understand.

[Telonius]

I think the roots of the issue came long before D&D even existed. Familiarity breeds contempt, and things aren't as scary when they're not utterly indestructible. When extraplanar beings started to be something you could fight and have some kind of a shot of beating, and stopped being something you should run away from (or at least not attract their attention), they started the slow road to being mundane. Trying to pick my examples very carefully (per forum rules), but consider how things shifted in literature between Paradise Lost, to Faust, to "The Devil and Daniel Webster," to the "Deveels" of Robert Aspirin's "Myth" series. Same thing's at play over the course of the series, Supernatural. Demons started out as completely undefeatable monsters; it ended up with Crowley cracking jokes about Moose and Squirrel.

[Kardwill]

So an imp or wyrmling = TPK threat? Even at level 20? Because that's what that means to me. Am I reading you wrong?

Redwizard's post was a reply to "How do you include dragons, undead, drow, shoggoths, etc. in a way that shows them as the demonic forces that they are?"

If that's what you're aiming for, then why would you ever send a wyrmling against the PCs? The only wyrmlings to be encountered are in their nest, and if the PCs ever kill them while mommy dearest is away, then they just unleashed a rabid beast of fiery doom that will track them to the end of the world, and devastate whatever city they're calling home. And maybe they'll pull a Smaug, and the beast's fury will be its undoing, but its passing will be remembered for generations to come.

Of course, that may not be your idea of a fun game, and it's fair. And I tend to work the same way (awe inspiring heavy hitters do exist in my campaigns, but I don't throw them at the PCs face, they have to be sought or antagonized, with all the danger that ensues) But if you only throw level-appropriate encounters and fair fights at your players, including watered-down versions of your Ancient Evils, everything WILL feel mundane. No reason for the dragon or the devil to make a stronger impression than an orc. And preserving/recreating the sense of wonder of these things is the topic of this thread.

I really dislike the "size-and-color-coded for convenience" dragons of D&D, because its purpose is to create weak dragons for the PCs to slaughter, and that feels wrong. Doesn't mean they have to be unkillable, but even if the PCs do kill them, dragons should be special. Not an encounter, not a treasure-guardian, not "some monster in the manual"... It's a Dragon!

[PhoenixPhyre]

I really dislike the "size-and-color-coded for convenience" dragons of D&D, because its purpose is to create weak dragons for the PCs to slaughter, and that feels wrong. Doesn't mean they have to be unkillable, but even if the PCs do kill them, dragons should be special. Not an encounter, not a treasure-guardian, not "some monster in the manual"... It's a Dragon!

If that's so, then why give them stats at all? They're just pure DM fiat at that point, the animate equivalent of "rocks fall, everyone dies."

That, to me, is a total waste. And makes it so they just don't get used, because throwing challenges like that (that aren't challenges because the party cannot win under any normal circumstances) is widely considered to be bad play.

And I don't subscribe to the idea that dragons should be "special". Powerful, yes. But if they're apocalyptic doom machines...then either the setting is DOOOOOMed, the beasts are so rare as to be negligible, or it's ruled by these beasts and there's nothing to be done about it. Any one is not to my taste. It strongly restricts the stories I can discover in the world by forcing it down certain paths. And in a game called Dungeons and Dragons, there better be both dungeons (adventure sites full of strange beasts, treasure, and...well...adventure) and dragons. As allies, as enemies, as people that get interacted with...any of the above.

I ran an adventure with multiple groups (at different times). It involved putting an end to sheep thefts for a local goblin tribe. The culprits were some other goblins-turned-bandit, being led (secretly) by a black dragon wyrmling (it was a level 2 adventure). The goblin chief was described as a large, fat goblin who the party found en flagrante with some less-than-willing females. Every group unanimously, without discussion, decided to string him up by his guts. They got...inventive...with him. On the other hand, when I described the dragonling as having smooth spots on his neck and "wrists", as if from fetters and limping a bit, plus his speech about not going back to "him", every group decided to break stealth, talk to the dragon, and eventually help it on its way in return for it promising not to raid any other civilized folk. One group even spent resources to try to heal it. That dragonling (along with another thing found in the tiny hoard it had amassed) were foreshadowing for a couple later quests. The point of the story is that if you break out of the "dragons are apocalyptic doom beasts" mindset, you can use them in many ways and make them much more real. My groups treat every dragon they encounter with a healthy respect, despite the fact that so far only one of them (a crazy, mutated green) has been openly and directly hostile. They don't need them to be unfightable doom beasts for that. Same with demons, devils, etc.

Having apocalyptic doom beasts in an RPG doesn't engender awe or terror in me. It feels lazy, like it's just a fixed element of the plot that there's nothing that we can do about, so we should adapt to it or ignore it. Like there being two moons. It's just a background fact. The things that engender terror or awe are the things that have to be interacted with. I'm a firm believer in the idea that people are the true monsters. But then again, all my monsters are people, whether they're shaped like people or not, so that holds trivially.

[Pleh]

If that's so, then why give them stats at all? They're just pure DM fiat at that point, the animate equivalent of "rocks fall, everyone dies."

That, to me, is a total waste.

I feel like there's a middle ground here.

Suppose there was a Deck of Dragon Stats. You meet a Dragon, you're not sure what kind it is (size and color are no longer guaranteed information). You know types of dragons are very resistant to certain attacks, but you have to live long enough to identify the dragon, or live long enough to work it out by trial and error.

Now, so long as you haven't worked out what you're up against, they are similar to DM fiat level of strength and encourage players to make tactical retreats. Once players have idetified a viable strategy, it's back to just a particularly dangerous monster.

On the point of PC retreat in RPGs, I think it's critical to make sure any monster that the players might want to back off from needs to have priorities besides killing the party. The monster should have some other objective the Party was preventing so by their retreat, the monster has reason to continue as if they were dead, letting them escape. By the time it's a grudge match and the objective IS to kill the heroes, they should have had enough encounters with this particular dragon to have a fighting chance.

[Bohandas]

Elves are, by design, endless hordes of identical, unmotivated racist superiorists.

I thought elves were identical unmotivated hipsters

[Bohandas]

"Terror" is a thin line anyway, since gamers all understand on some level that the "standard role" GM can in theory just keep piling on until the threat is beyond the PCs' ability to handle.

And "horror" is about helplessness, and most gamers aren't looking for a steady diet of helplessness.

I just had a brainwave. What if they gave the players a bunch of ancillary low level redshirt retainers to control in addition to their main character and then gave them bonus xp at the end of the adventure for the number of redshirts that survive.

[Kaptin Keen]

Stuff

Elements designed to be individualised are not elements designed to be identical. Orcs, barbarians and so on are - by design - meant to be expanded upon, given backgrounds and indivuality.

Demons, by design and by contrast, are not. They are quite literally endless hordes of copy/pasted identical fodder.

How would I handle the blood war? I wouldn't.

Ok, the designers have the cosmology entirely wrong. There is no great struggle among the alignments and their respective planes on the outer ring. Metaphorically you could maybe say there is, but it's important to note that the outer planes are derivative - they are representations of the ebb and flow of the prime material, of the minds and hearts and souls of mortals.

So if there is any sort of struggle on the outer planes, it is only as a metaphorical representation of a real struggle among mortals on the material plane.

How would I then handle outsiders?

Well, good question. In Weaveworld (by Clive Barker) the Incantatrix Immacolata creates a .. spirit? .. I seem to recall she names The Rake. He summoned powers he couldn't control, they flayed him, and Immacolata summoned him as a ... 'demon', of sorts. A flying, boneless skin who flays her enemies. Point being, The Rake is unique, terrifying, has a history and a background that informs his powers and abilities. There is a hell somewhere, where Domville (the guy who became The Rake) is eternally flayed by the Cenobites for daring to summon him - and also, some shard of what he once was is summoned to serve Immacolata because he had the nerve to try and seduce her. He's in a very bad place, and there's really no upside for him to any of it.

I don't much use demons at all, and I'm not quite Clive Barker, but that little bit of fluff there seems pleasing to me. A soul as thoroughly damned and tortured, in a specific and personal hell designed for him. That's a proper damn demon for you.

[Pleh]

Elements designed to be individualised are not elements designed to be identical. Orcs, barbarians and so on are - by design - meant to be expanded upon, given backgrounds and indivuality.

Demons, by design and by contrast, are not. They are quite literally endless hordes of copy/pasted identical fodder.

I just disagree. Nothing in D&D monster stats for demons are meant to imply these creatures must needs be identical any more than elves (who, I'll point out, also have a monster manual entry in 3.5). Demons are an element designed to be individualized. In fact, literally every monster in the manual can be easily individualized if you just modify their fluff and/or statblock, same as building a different type of elf.

The blood war is just a default stand in piece of fluff for demons so DMs who have no preference have something to use. D&D demons aren't intrinsically attached to that paradigm.


Ok, the designers have the cosmology entirely wrong. There is no great struggle among the alignments and their respective planes on the outer ring. Metaphorically you could maybe say there is, but it's important to note that the outer planes are derivative - they are representations of the ebb and flow of the prime material, of the minds and hearts and souls of mortals.

So if there is any sort of struggle on the outer planes, it is only as a metaphorical representation of a real struggle among mortals on the material plane.

This only suggests that demons don't fit your personal headcanon, which is fine, but it only says they are ill suited to your games. It speaks to subjective dependency, not to objective quality.


How would I then handle outsiders?

Well, good question. In Weaveworld (by Clive Barker) the Incantatrix Immacolata creates a .. spirit? .. I seem to recall she names The Rake. He summoned powers he couldn't control, they flayed him, and Immacolata summoned him as a ... 'demon', of sorts. A flying, boneless skin who flays her enemies. Point being, The Rake is unique, terrifying, has a history and a background that informs his powers and abilities. There is a hell somewhere, where Domville (the guy who became The Rake) is eternally flayed by the Cenobites for daring to summon him - and also, some shard of what he once was is summoned to serve Immacolata because he had the nerve to try and seduce her. He's in a very bad place, and there's really no upside for him to any of it.

I don't much use demons at all, and I'm not quite Clive Barker, but that little bit of fluff there seems pleasing to me. A soul as thoroughly damned and tortured, in a specific and personal hell designed for him. That's a proper damn demon for you.

I've always liked handling Ghosts like this. Rather than generic spirits with no backstory, what if they were halfway non combat encounters that dealt more with researching what kept them trapped here. Like in Witcher III.

Funny thing is, nothing prevents me from simply doing that in my games (and I often incorporate some level of that kind of story behind them).

I've never read Clive Barker, but these Cenobites that eternally punish mortals in an isolated domain seem like they tend to fit the profile, "a rose by any other name."

The thing about the fiction of hell is that it wouldn't be a very small place full of only a small number of individuals. Say you have 6 billion unique demons similar to the Rake narrative, but changing the details. They all are there being punished for whatever they've done wrong and they now exist as a combination of suffering and terrible power.

What you have are generic demons - on average. Each demon is unique, but statistically looking at the group dynamic, similarities will begin to crop up. Since no one has time to sit down and write out 6 billion unique demons, we abstract them to a generic statblock (or say about 12 generic statblocks) that can then be adjusted to fit a particular demon any time it would appear in the game.

Almost like having a generic elf statblock that gets modified any time an elf appears in the game.

As a side note, you may want to look into SCP stuff, if you haven't already. It sounds about like what you describe with Barker's Rake. It actually might be quite effective to model unique demons after SCPs (the ones that fit an RPG at least).

[Lord Raziere]

the weird thing is that technically outsiders are just mortal beings who ascended/descended to their stations, so really both beings in question once you remove the nonsense cosmic morality bull, are just hyper-enhanced humans with very different philosophies.

because lets be real: thats all they really are. humans with lot of enhancements and holding themselves to a certain philosophy of selflessness/selfishness. given the number of stories of people becoming angel or demon and the potential for one outsider to become another- redeemed demons, fallen angels- when you really think about it in that context, humans are just larvae angels and demons are just angels with different beliefs. To the point of it just being a matter of switching the programming if the concept of corruption and purification is introduced in, because you can force one to become the other against their will either way.

so really, angels and demons are just magical transhumans who can be reprogrammed to become the other back and forth. of course if you want to preserve the morality of it you can say the demons are the viruses I guess and angels are the programming working right.....assuming the gods aren't themselves evil in any given setting and the demons aren't right in rebelling against them. because its not hard to see the potential fascist oppressive pitfalls that can come from powerful gods served by legions of loyal angels who believe that they are truly doing the right thing and won't listen to anyone else about it. the usual set up of demons being evil is too obvious for description.

really in most depictions, angels and demons are just winged humanoids with different aesthetics for shorthand, sure there are greater variations for demons, but thats mostly for interesting, varied combat so there is incentive to make more as filler.

[Kaptin Keen]

I just disagree. Nothing in D&D monster stats for demons are meant to imply these creatures must needs be identical any more than elves (who, I'll point out, also have a monster manual entry in 3.5). Demons are an element designed to be individualized. In fact, literally every monster in the manual can be easily individualized if you just modify their fluff and/or statblock, same as building a different type of elf.

The blood war is just a default stand in piece of fluff for demons so DMs who have no preference have something to use. D&D demons aren't intrinsically attached to that paradigm.

The fluff for lower planes outsiders is pretty specific: Demons of all lower tiers are just so much meat for the grinder. It's not about the stats, it's about the story telling.


I've always liked handling Ghosts like this. Rather than generic spirits with no backstory, what if they were halfway non combat encounters that dealt more with researching what kept them trapped here. Like in Witcher III.

I do all undead in this way - with the possible exception of mere animated skeletons ... but then I hardly ever use those, so ...


Funny thing is, nothing prevents me from simply doing that in my games (and I often incorporate some level of that kind of story behind them).

I've never read Clive Barker, but these Cenobites that eternally punish mortals in an isolated domain seem like they tend to fit the profile, "a rose by any other name."

The thing about the fiction of hell is that it wouldn't be a very small place full of only a small number of individuals. Say you have 6 billion unique demons similar to the Rake narrative, but changing the details. They all are there being punished for whatever they've done wrong and they now exist as a combination of suffering and terrible power.

What you have are generic demons - on average. Each demon is unique, but statistically looking at the group dynamic, similarities will begin to crop up. Since no one has time to sit down and write out 6 billion unique demons, we abstract them to a generic statblock (or say about 12 generic statblocks) that can then be adjusted to fit a particular demon any time it would appear in the game.

Almost like having a generic elf statblock that gets modified any time an elf appears in the game.

As a side note, you may want to look into SCP stuff, if you haven't already. It sounds about like what you describe with Barker's Rake. It actually might be quite effective to model unique demons after SCPs (the ones that fit an RPG at least).

You cannot reasonably make a billion unique demons with each their own clever back-story and personal hell torture.

You can, however, avoid making hell and demons a boring drudgery of same-ness by not using boring, samey demons - and only using those you create, uniquely. It's what I do with demons, undead ... and elves, actually. Also, I don't use statblocks, at all. I modify every single monster I ever use.

On the other hand, I'm really, really bad at combat - so that's part of the reason. Generally, any combat encounter is against a single, powerful enemy designed for that particular fight, and hardly ever against a group of enemies. Oh, I do use some sort of boss+minions setups, but frankly the minions tend to be throw-away fodder ... ironically, they fulfill all the criteria I hate about demons.

You should consider reading Weaveworld. It made an immense impression on me, back in the day - enough that I read a pile of other Clive Barker books, without really liking any of them. But Weaveworld was great (to me, as a much younger and less jaded reader).

Oh and um ... the cenobites were some sort of thing. They're not really in the Weaveworld book, but they're the demon guys in Hellraiser, if you've seen or read about that one. I believe they're ... mortals who ... gained immortality and power through suffering, or some such nonsense. I suppose I could look it up.

Edit: Looked them up, got none the wiser. A friend of mine read Barker compulsively many years ago, and my above explanation is what I recall of his. It could all be entirely incorrect =D

[Bohandas]

I've never read Clive Barker, but these Cenobites that eternally punish mortals in an isolated domain seem like they tend to fit the profile, "a rose by any other name."

The thing is that in their original conception they didn't punish people, they generally dealt with people who sought them out due to havig been deadened to mortal sensation by lives of hedonism and excess. Those who can handle this new level of sensation become part of the cult of the gash and become cenobites themselves ('cenobite' literally means 'someone who has been inducted into a religious order'), those who can't handle it, can't handle it.

[Willie the Duck]

I speak strictly in the sense of D&D and its surrounding pop culture. Heroes seem to never be afraid of these which is weird since even angels are described as scary not because they are winged super beings but because their form is so incredible it makes the human mind race. After all we fear what we cannot understand. Demons too. Most demon summoners in RPGs know what they are dealing with, and usually villains are also "too cool to show emotion" when they are not undead liches, half-fiends or some sort of angel-demon hybrid thingie.

The thing is, even in non-D&D media, these ideas like angels are scary because their 'form is so incredible it makes the human mind race' is mostly depicted in block text (such as books we can't really quote on these forums, or the fanfic thereof some guy named Dante once wrote). Outside of that, it is usually an informed attribute (the artwork of angels where they are in the 'unknowable monstrousity' form instead of the 'giant humans with wings and trumpets' forms? Mostly pictures of giant balls of wings and eyes that are only really scary in that they are references to passages in religious texts that are actually scary).

And that's the problem. Making something consistently scary (or let's just use the general term awesome, as in inspiring of awe) is a genuine writing challenge, something that even people who devote their career to it (the Clive Barkers or Steven Kings of the world) do so at select points in some of their works, and even then maybe only a simple majority of people (who are already self-selected as people who pick up a horror book) will find any given of their books all that effective.

I've had DMs who've managed to make a creature encountered genuinely scary. Actually that's happened several times. But each one was a fleeting thing that's hard to replicate.


They became boring when D&D became more about winning than playing a character or escapism.


"It has stats, so we can kill it," has been a meme since at least 2nd edition (i.e. before I was born).
There were discussions on the best way to beat gods based on their published stats on the usenet forums that were precursors to the modern internet.


I think this goes back specifically to Deities and Demigods for 1st edition in 1980.

As others have mentioned, jintoya, you might want to bone up on your game history. AOF and Yora, if we're discussing 'once gods have stats, they just become monsters,' it actually goes back to 1976's Gods, Demigods, and Heroes for oD&D. This is also the one where beating up Zeus et al for their stuff became an enduring trope. The designers were getting upset by what they saw as game power inflation, and tried making gods and heroes rather tame*, mechanically, to reinforce the idea that simply being 8 or 12 HD was supposed to be powerful (so your 14th level character you somehow built up over 12 months of gaming who had all the good magic items was just the DM being a pushover and you didn't really earn it, etc.). It didn't go over like that.
*Leading to the Tim Kask quote, "This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's. Perhaps now some of the 'giveaway' campaigns will look as foolish as they truly are. This is our last attempt to delineate the absurdity of 40+ level characters. When Odin, the All-Father has only(?) 300 hit points, who can take a 44th level Lord seriously?"


It's not a D&D issue at all though, it's a gameplay issue generally, one that's found across mediums. Players hate, hate, having to face real and serious consequences in games. In video games consequence is avoided by the save function, and your game design had better allow players to save sufficiently often to avoid wasting significant time or the knives will come out. In tabletop, any consequences need to be something you can brush off in order to get back to the action in a hurry.

Getting back to the action is a definite issue. Even if the DM is willing to do something permanent like permanent level, hp, attribute, or magic item loss, the worst that they can do is kill off your character completely (in a 'fall into the lava pit' style situation where all your accumulated stuff also disappears). At worst, you were rather attached to that character, and maybe character creation in this game/edition is rather time consuming. I've known one group who one time tried to play 'if your character dies, you have to wait until the campaign ends to play again.'-- it worked about as well as you would imagine.


D&D does not do fleeing well, especially from things that move faster than you do.

I keep seeing this stated, but both early and late editions that's not really the case. OD&D and AD&D 1e had hard and fast rules about number of twists and turns you had to go around before monsters (of various level of intelligence/hunger) would break off pursuit. 5e has actual chase rules, such that a character with 5' less speed than their pursuers is not guaranteed to be caught. Certainly the overall tone of TSR-era D&D always was 'use the morale rules, intelligent opponents do not fight to the death, most all sapient creatures will negotiate.' I think a lot of people ignored those rules, and some are pretty silly (the orcs will stop pursuing if you turn a corner only makes sense as a simplification of an unspoken 'because there are other creatures in this dungeon that they are scared of, so they won't stray too far from their territory'), but they are there.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I keep seeing this stated, but both early and late editions that's not really the case. OD&D and AD&D 1e had hard and fast rules about number of twists and turns you had to go around before monsters (of various level of intelligence/hunger) would break off pursuit. 5e has actual chase rules, such that a character with 5' less speed than their pursuers is not guaranteed to be caught. Certainly the overall tone of TSR-era D&D always was 'use the morale rules, intelligent opponents do not fight to the death, most all sapient creatures will negotiate.' I think a lot of people ignored those rules, and some are pretty silly (the orcs will stop pursuing if you turn a corner only makes sense as a simplification of an unspoken 'because there are other creatures in this dungeon that they are scared of, so they won't stray too far from their territory'), but they are there.

Context is key here. I was specifically talking about fleeing from big things like demons and dragons, all of which move way faster than the party does. An adult dragon has a fly speed of 60. You can't even disengage enough to start the chase rules--it's always in melee if it wants to be unless you're a high-level monk. And you'll tire well before it does--a dragon may claim 10-20 miles of terrain at least.

Monsters can flee, assuming the party lets them. That's because there's enough of them to not be able to hunt down each one if they scatter. The party doesn't have that luxury very much in most games.

[NichG]

Permanent consequences to things outside of an individual character are another way to go. The PCs revive, but the city burns. In one campaign I introduced a tempting/corrupting energy that could be used to empower things but twisted their purpose. One of the PCs used it to modify 'Cure Light Wounds' and found that their version (which was more potent, but basically caused horrendous mutations with repeat exposure) would also tend to spread itself to other casters and replace the original version in their spell lists. It was also addictive.

They were rightfully pretty careful around that energy in the future, without the effects needing to make anyone in particular unplayable or at significant disadvantage.

[Willie the Duck]

Context is key here. I was specifically talking about fleeing from big things like demons and dragons

Ah, okay. Within this context, I agree. Your actual statement was levelled at D&D in general, and I've seen a lot of people make claims about (particularly early, TSR-era) D&D that clearly never noticed the pursuit rules printed right there in the books. My apologies. You are correct, D&D seems to have always assumed that at levels 1-4 you were in the dungeon, and thus had a bunch of inherent passage-and-corridor level ways of evading pursuit, and levels 3-8 you were hexcrawling --where it was supposed to be dangerous (what are you doing out of the dungeon?) but you are big damn heroes now, so figure it out, and levels 9+ you are playing king and castle, or else you are doing planeshopping adventure and both you and your opposition have teleport (so why care about movement speed?). Running away often meant leaving behind the poor schmuck stuck in melee with the dragon, and that was part of the expected outcome. Which works... provided characters are interchangeable, or resurrection is possible (hope you like recovery expeditions :smalltongue:).

[The Library DM]

Playing with a bunch of 12-14 year olds is an absolute joy! They can still be scared witless by a darkness spell =D

It does feel like I'm cheating tho =)

Yeah, tormenting teen newbies is the most fun I’ve ever had as a DM. :smallbiggrin:

Of course, back when I started out as a teen myself, one of the best moments we had was when the PCs opened the bottle with the cat in it in B1... everybody freaked! And freaking the players out was the whole point of that bit, so it’s a tradition that goes back a long way.

Back to the OT, I think it’s all in the presentation. If you tell the players it’s a demon, they have no reason not to simply view it as yet another potential notch on the axe hilt. But if you describe evidence of power and evil, and the very much clear signal that “This foe is beyond all of you! Your swords are of no use here!”, well then, that’s going to provoke a different reaction.

(This is one of the reasons my standing rule in D&D is, nobody but the DM reads the MM and the DMG. NOBODY.)

[Psyren]

I don't know. When did you start playing them as mundane and boring?

^ This, but two additional things as well:

1) D&D is about empowerment, which is a key reason it doesn't do horror or unease very well. You have the tools to change that, but you have to fight against the system to do so - layering on variant systems like sanity or tweaking existing ones like delaying or even capping leveling.

2) For outsiders in particular, angels and demons lost their niche as the "bizarre outsiders" once D&D started including Lovecraftian and Goetian stuff. No real reason to put everything into that thematic niche.

[Lord Raziere]

^ This, but two additional things as well:

1) D&D is about empowerment, which is a key reason it doesn't do horror or unease very well. You have the tools to change that, but you have to fight against the system to do so - layering on variant systems like sanity or tweaking existing ones like delaying or even capping leveling.

2) For outsiders in particular, angels and demons lost their niche as the "bizarre outsiders" once D&D started including Lovecraftian and Goetian stuff. No real reason to put everything into that thematic niche.

Yeah, Demons and Angels are more for morality play stuff these days. they appear to offer good and bad choices and try to persuade you to be a good or bad person. of course in a game, this never really works with PCs because they're not in moments of weakness where they can morally go either way and people generally don't play out their weaknesses, so its always an angelic win if the PCs aren't murderhobos and always a demon win if they are. because you have to really be not caring to actually listen to the demon when the choice of right/wrong is so obvious.

of course, I guess the more plausible way to make it less obvious to the PCs is for both of them to be in disguise and for the demon to try and convince the PCs that the angel is just a trick if they reveal themselves and try to convince them its the right decision with their angelic nature alone, so both of them are forced to speak as if they're normal humans trying to convince them one way or the other.

[InvisibleBison]

This is one of the reasons my standing rule in D&D is, nobody but the DM reads the MM and the DMG. NOBODY.

So what happens when you're playing with someone who's previously DMed?

[Max_Killjoy]

(This is one of the reasons my standing rule in D&D is, nobody but the DM reads the MM and the DMG. NOBODY.)



So what happens when you're playing with someone who's previously DMed?


Yeah, this isn't 1979, the idea that there are "players" and then there are those who have "graduated" to "DMs", and that "players" shouldn't read parts of the system, should have died a long time ago.

[oxybe]

My world doesn't have a blood war and most things resembling the standard D&D cosmology I decided to keep has been tossed into a blender and poured into a different mold, with some other spices and flavours to taste.

Demons are the corrupted form of mortal creatures. A tiefling is a corrupted human, an orc a corrupted elf, a kobold a corrupted dwarf, etc... These are very purposeful entities in the malicious service of a deity-like figure, an ancient and mad chaotic entity that wishes to undo the order of the cosmos and return all to the twisted chaotic mess it was before the deities started putting things in some measure of order. They are at best akin to a twisted AI wearing a meatsuit that now only resembles in vague passing what it once was. There are no good orcs, and if you see one, there is likely a whole pile of trouble nearby.

Devils are corrupted lesser divinities, demigods, powerful supernaturals and their various messengers. Devils are all unique creatures as the powerful forces needed to twist these great entities will never warp two in the same way. If orcs are trouble, these are your reason to take an extended and sudden vacation out of the county.

There are no "good" outsiders. what would have been considered an "angel" in D&D are now "messengers". The intermediaries between gods and mortals of all ideologies. As such the solar in service to a god of farming and the home will have a vastly different mindset then one that serves a war god, or one that follows the god of death. Check who they're serving first and act appropriately.

Elementals are still there. Chilling and being all elemental-y.

[Bohandas]

"It has stats, so we can kill it," has been a meme since at least 2nd edition (i.e. before I was born).

There were discussions on the best way to beat gods based on their published stats on the usenet forums that were precursors to the modern internet.

And to be fair beating gods has its place in fantasy literature, Lu Tze's duel with the god of time at the end of Pratchett's The Thief of Time comes to mind



I speak strictly in the sense of D&D and its surrounding pop culture. Heroes seem to never be afraid of these which is weird since even angels are described as scary not because they are winged super beings but because their form is so incredible it makes the human mind race. After all we fear what we cannot understand. Demons too. Most demon summoners in RPGs know what they are dealing with, and usually villains are also "too cool to show emotion" when they are not undead liches, half-fiends or some sort of angel-demon hybrid thingie.

Like in that old Adam Sandler movie?
http://s1.thcdn.com/productimg/0/600/600/43/62443-1341318758-690240.png