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Nifft
2021-06-27, 08:16 PM
There is no species of demon. There are types, categories, classifications, but they do not live and breed.

They are not life as we know it, for all that lives has moral choice, and demons do not.

Yet we know they do exist, in their types, categories, and classes.

What are they, truly?


(homebrew flavor text welcome)

Tanarii
2021-06-27, 08:54 PM
It always puzzled me that demons, the epitome of Chaotic Evil, mostly come in 6 specific forms/types, and even the other varieties are recognizable forms.

Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-06-27, 08:54 PM
It always puzzled me that demons, the epitome of Chaotic Evil, mostly come in 6 specific forms/types, and even the other varieties are recognizable forms.

Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes.

Very much agreed.

Lord Raziere
2021-06-27, 09:04 PM
It always puzzled me that demons, the epitome of Chaotic Evil, mostly come in 6 specific forms/types, and even the other varieties are recognizable forms.

Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes.

depends. would you call laziness a lawful trait?

RandomPeasant
2021-06-27, 09:34 PM
Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes.

Seems like a good way to make sure that most DMs never use Demons ever. Also I'm pretty sure consistency of form is a Chaotic trait in D&D for some reason. All the Chaos outsiders are Giant Frogs, while Law gets are all sorts of weird crap like "sentient dice" or "space ants" or "robocops".

Alcore
2021-06-27, 09:42 PM
What are they, truly?


(homebrew flavor text welcome)

Simon didn't say Dungeons and Dragons... :smallbiggrin:


The embodiments of sin. Emotional and mental constructs created subconsciously by man to prey on them. So long as man comprehends evil they shall exist.

Pauly
2021-06-27, 10:25 PM
It always puzzled me that demons, the epitome of Chaotic Evil, mostly come in 6 specific forms/types, and even the other varieties are recognizable forms.

Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes.

Early editions of Warhammer had this. It got dropped for a couple of reasons.
1) speed of play
2) random combinations being either too powerful or not powerful enough for a given encounter. Making it hard to get the goldilocks power level.
3) players being unable to prepare for an encounter.

False God
2021-06-27, 10:47 PM
There is no species of demon. There are types, categories, classifications, but they do not live and breed.

They are not life as we know it, for all that lives has moral choice, and demons do not.

Yet we know they do exist, in their types, categories, and classes.

What are they, truly?


(homebrew flavor text welcome)

Is this a statement? Or a postulation?

If we assume this is a true statement, then 'demons' are viruses. They take the forms they take because those are the forms most effective at spreading the "infection". They don't breed, they infect and spread, either directly via injecting some of their essence into a subject, or indirectly via coercing/convincing mortals to do evil. Mortal souls then join the mass of energy from which demons are spawned, and after some time, a new demon is formed. Demons are made from this mass of evil which is why they have no real free will, they are extensions of the greater evil, not unique individuals.

Tanarii
2021-06-28, 12:07 AM
Early editions of Warhammer had this. It got dropped for a couple of reasons.
1) speed of play
2) random combinations being either too powerful or not powerful enough for a given encounter. Making it hard to get the goldilocks power level.
3) players being unable to prepare for an encounter.
Yeah, the first one is a big problem. Warhammer isn't the only game that does this, and it definitely increases prep time, having to roll up enemies instead of just pulling a premade package out of a book.

The second one is mostly a problem if you tailor to the party. But even then it's not if the system has good advice on creating enemies and evaluating their power. You can just add/remove/tweak features from the initial random rolls until it gets close to what you want. Which, of course, increases the prep time even more.

I've got no problems with the third one. Sounds like a feature, not a bug.

Of course, even a small list of random variances for each "type", balanced against each other if we care about maintaining a specific challenge rating, would emphasize the chaotic nature of them nicely.

icefractal
2021-06-28, 01:40 AM
A bootleg version of truly chaotic stats would be to take random monsters, change their appearance unrecognizably, and slap "Demon Traits" on them. Fairly fast, fairly easy to judge CR, and I'd say that the unpredictability / un-planability of them is an appropriate feature for Demons.

It'd be annoying if all monsters worked like this, but as a single type of foe? Why not? After all, part of being truly prepared is being ready to handle unexpected situations as well as possible.

Vahnavoi
2021-06-28, 02:55 AM
A demon is a secondary entity created by mental energy of a primary entity, chiefly, humans. The most common demons are bad dreams - collections of frightening images conjured up by the brain during sleep, born from waking world trauma and stress. They lack coherence and appearance of sentience, so most don't recognize them as demons.

A more recognizable demon is a specific kind you can meet during lucid dreaming. To those who don't know, lucid dreaming means dreaming while knowing you're dreaming. This typically allows some control over the dream's contents. But sometimes, an entity appears that resists your control. Typically, it is in shape of another person, with appearance of a will of its own. It is actually a part of your own will, a partition of your own persona, but it might not feel that way when it is antagonizing you in a dream.

A step worse than that is sleep paralysis and hallucinations that go with it. Stories of incubi, succubi, nightmares and alien abductions are likely based on such experiences. Sleep paralysis appears at the very edge of sleep and the waking world: your consciousness may be awake, but the mechanism that keeps your body still while asleep is still functioning. This can feel like a massive weight pressing you down. As your consciousness slips back to the direction of sleep or otherwise struggles to explain with this apparently immaterial weight, it can conjure up the demons - what oppressed you in your dream is now right there in your room.

It may be tempting to think demons are hence not real, but alas, that would be an oversimplification. Power of belief is real here: the more you believe in a demon, the more you feed the mental process powering it, the more real it feels and the more likely you are to lose your sleep, your sanity and your life. Yes, life. Demons can be lethal. Stress is a killer, so when your body and mind get caught in a self-reinforcing stressor, it will eat away your health, or drive you to questionable actions.

Typically, you don't have to worry about your demons becoming physical in the waking world. With effort, you can maybe communicate it via a story, or by drawing it, sculpting it etc. to give it a form visible (or otherwise sensible) to other people. Then, your demon may become their demon. But it's truly rare for a demon to be so well-conceived that it can be made an independent physical entity.

In speculative fiction, the barrier of objective physical world and subjective mental world is frequently lowered - sometimes, the latter is even posited to have primacy over the former. For example, in Megami Tensei series, mental energy can be physically extracted, and with sufficient quantities, demons can feed on it and human flesh to gain a physical form, belief becoming fact, virtual becoming actual. In the Matrix, a computer can hack your brain to not only put you in shared dream, but it can also use a specific program to co-opt your entire consciousness to run a demon. Yes, agents are demons. In the sequel, it's taken to its logical conclusion, when a demon overtakes the waking world persona of a human. In Warhammer, the psychic emanations of living beings have slowly created an Otherworld which, for some reason, can sometimes overlap with and invade material reality.

t209
2021-06-28, 03:01 AM
We can go with "manifestations of emotions and thoughts".
Or I've been into Warhammer Fantasy and 40k's concept of demons along with influence of Elric Chaos vs. Law.

Mordante
2021-06-28, 04:48 AM
I don't think demons are evil. I can be mistaken but the way I treat demons in RPGs as a force of nature. To be evil you have to be aware of evil and good. Demons don't make a conscious decision for their actions. Just like Orcs in 40k are maybe the only non-Evil race in the game, since they don't have a concept of good or evil.

Anonymouswizard
2021-06-28, 05:09 AM
There is no species of demon. There are types, categories, classifications, but they do not live and breed.

They are not life as we know it, for all that lives has moral choice, and demons do not.

Of course they breed. Where do you think all those half-demons come from?

More seriously,, I tend to use 'demon' as a descriptive rather than prescriptive term unless I'm running something like In Nomine. A demon is 'a supernatural creature of malicious intent', and it's a label applied by to whatever they think fits. It might also have a more scholarly meaning with a bit more consistency, but at the end of the day it's still a term applied because of various qualities, and creatures of diverse origins can be demons if they fit that.

Eldan
2021-06-28, 07:09 AM
Early editions of Warhammer had this. It got dropped for a couple of reasons.
1) speed of play
2) random combinations being either too powerful or not powerful enough for a given encounter. Making it hard to get the goldilocks power level.
3) players being unable to prepare for an encounter.

Early Editions of D&D had it too. Not for demons, though, but weirdly for the neutral Evil hordelings.

Silly Name
2021-06-28, 07:42 AM
You want the truth? The honest-to-Celestia truth? You think you can handle it?

Demons aren't a race. Demons aren't a type, or a classification, or anything like that.

Demons aren't real. Come on, how utterly convenient was it that just after good ol' Asmodeus falls to Baator, there comes a terrible threat of infinite numbers and powers, which requires to be kept in check by exactly the kind of forces the Duke of the Ninth had at disposal? How nice for him, how great that this threat is so damn powerful that the gods agree to the Pact Primeval in exchange for the devils' vow to fight the Blood War?

There are no demons, there have never been. There's just devils and damned souls, twisted and corrupted, driven mad by the Big A, sent to the Abyss and convinced they are incarnations of pure chaos and evil and must forever fight and destroy the world. They're just another pawn in Asmodeus' plans, even Orcus, even Demogorgon. Of course, they don't know it - if they ever did, such knowledge was ripped clean from their deformed skulls to ensure they will not compromise the plan.

Oh, you'll say I'm mad, that this is just a conspiracy theory based on nothing, that it's utterly ridicolous to ever entertain this idea! As if the Abyss and its infinite layers aren't madness! But just ask yourself - wouldn't it be so much easier to keep the Blood War a stalemate if the same entity was in control of both sides? Just so he can wait for the right moment to claim that the demon threat has been dealt with forever, and once more set his sights on the top of Mount Celestia, on the Prime itself? On the whole Wheel, and perhaps even beyond.

Fear the Old Snake, fear the knowledge of his secrets. Because now you know, and nobody who knows lives long.

Nifft
2021-06-28, 07:58 AM
It always puzzled me that demons, the epitome of Chaotic Evil, mostly come in 6 specific forms/types, and even the other varieties are recognizable forms.

Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes. There are some hints that ye olde AD&D 1e intended demons to be more varied -- "Type II" for example could be taken to mean that more than one form of creature resided in that type -- and the parenthetical names beside "Type IV" and higher seem to be names of individuals, rather than species.


Seems like a good way to make sure that most DMs never use Demons ever. Also I'm pretty sure consistency of form is a Chaotic trait in D&D for some reason. All the Chaos outsiders are Giant Frogs, while Law gets are all sorts of weird crap like "sentient dice" or "space ants" or "robocops". Chaos also has Chaos Beasts (which were Outsiders in at least one edition), and in some of my games the default Chaotic Outsiders are Fey.

But this is not their thread.


Simon didn't say Dungeons and Dragons... :smallbiggrin:

The embodiments of sin. Emotional and mental constructs created subconsciously by man to prey on them. So long as man comprehends evil they shall exist. Non-D&D content is explicitly welcome.

Please do elaborate about why these sinful embodiments seem to fall into types, categories, and classes (i.e. into forms which are easy for the GM to use).


Of course they breed. Where do you think all those half-demons come from? Strong vertical swording.


Early Editions of D&D had it too. Not for demons, though, but weirdly for the neutral Evil hordelings. Yeah those guys were weird.

There have been tables for other Outsiders, for example I remember seeing a Slaad table in some edition or other, and there was that Tiefling random table too.

Tanarii
2021-06-28, 08:33 AM
We can go with "manifestations of emotions and thoughts".
Or I've been into Warhammer Fantasy and 40k's concept of demons along with influence of Elric Chaos vs. Law.
I mean, inD&D they're manifestations of dead souls twisted by the plane they've entered. That's why they aren't really a "race".

The same is true for most outsiders.

DwarfFighter
2021-06-28, 09:02 AM
There is no species of demon. There are types, categories, classifications, but they do not live and breed.

They are not life as we know it, for all that lives has moral choice, and demons do not.

Yet we know they do exist, in their types, categories, and classes.

What are they, truly?


(homebrew flavor text welcome)

Is this a riddle?

jjordan
2021-06-28, 10:04 AM
I'm with False God on this one. Demons are viruses/parasites. In my settings demonic beings of god-like power are actual strands/planes of reality. Orcus doesn't rule a plane of existence, he is the plane of existence. As chaotic creatures they are kind of like ant-hills in reverse, lots of disparate intelligences which are part of the greater intelligence. These creatures are parasites/predators/viruses which seek to consume/destroy other realities/planes of existence. Or, at least, that's how we explain them. They are alien and, ultimately, not understandable.

So far as forms go.... In my settings creatures have a hard time maintaining a physical form outside of their reality. It takes a lot of power to maintain a physical form in the astral plane where your body simply wants to disperse into nothingness. Other realities will physically attack your form like the foreign body it is until it is destroyed. Creatures tend to assume one of a library of forms because they know how to use those forms and those forms have advantages (coupling a form to the beliefs/fears of the locals grants additional power to the form, for example). We see demons in a certain way so demons appear in that way to take advantage of belief so they can manifest for a longer period of time. Or they take possession of a pre-existing form, which will ultimately destroy the form after a long enough period of time. They could try to create stable hybrid forms capable of carrying them (looking at you Aasimar and Tieflings) but that tactic is more for the ordered realms, chaotic evil doesn't tend to think that far ahead or have the capability of restraining themselves from taking advantage of a short term opportunity.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-06-28, 12:34 PM
I'm with False God on this one. Demons are viruses/parasites. ... These creatures are parasites/predators/viruses which seek to consume/destroy other realities/planes of existence. Or, at least, that's how we explain them. They are alien and, ultimately, not understandable.


My setting treats demons as souls infested with virus-like parasites. Specifically, the entities called jotnar. They're basically entropy-spirits, entities that exist only to consume and destroy all that exists, birthed at the Oblivion Gate at the heart of the Abyss. Notably, this makes them kin to the undead.

Undead are the result of dead bodies becoming infested by jotnar (intentionally via spells or otherwise). They are animated and the greater ones retain some fragment of the original soul's memories and personalities (those parts reflected in the physical body/brain) but really only want to destroy all things. Liches and vampires blur the lines--they're dead, but the original soul still exists and keeps the jotnar at bay by feeding it soul energy from other beings.

Demons are either spirits of the dead who died in areas heavily contaminated by demonic essence and thus infested by jotnar, those who were partially consumed by demons (and thus infected), those who were infected via ritual (becoming daemonhost while alive) or, in the case of the greater demons, those who willingly in life welcomed the jotnar in and caged it in a box made of stolen souls. They all require soul energy to survive, which they get by making pacts with mortals (whose souls are the most prized meals) to commit blood sacrifice or by hunting in Shadow for loose souls to devour.

As for forms, those with significant demonic essence cannot exist on their own in the Mortal plane under normal conditions--they are rejected. So the forms they take are bodies provided by their summoners or agglomerations of flesh that they take when the veil is very thin and they burst through (usually temporarily and always only the minor ones). The greater demons can take on just about any shape they want, ranging from the attractive to the horrific.

KorvinStarmast
2021-06-28, 12:53 PM
What are they, truly? The embodiment of chaotic evil, and FWIW, if you go back to the DMG for AD&D 1e, they have a random monster creator in the back. IIRC the original for that was in the Dragon Magazine, in an article way back when.


Appendix D: RANDOM GENERATION OF CREATURES FROM THE LOWER PLANES Literally, you rolled up its characteristics from the tables, and the results were freaky random stuff. Good fun for a one shot. The players never encountered one before, and they'd never encounter the same one ever again if they survived. One-of-a-kind monsters.

Tanarii
2021-06-28, 03:23 PM
For 5e lore specifically, Abyssal energies infest, then warp and twist the Prime Material Plane at the point of the incursion. The more (and more powerful) the demons entering the Prime at that point, the quicker it happens. Until eventually a Demon Lord comes through, and the world in question drops into the Abyss.

Presumably the same Abyssal energy is how new souls arriving in the Abyss turn into demons.

So calling it kinda like a virus, one based off the plane itself, but carried by its inhabitants, isn't too far off the mark.

jjordan
2021-06-28, 03:53 PM
My setting treats demons as souls infested with virus-like parasites. -SNIP-A better version of my take on the subject. I like that.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-06-28, 04:13 PM
A better version of my take on the subject. I like that.

Thanks! I'll admit that it's rather inconsistent with a good chunk of the Great Wheel cosmology in implementation details (my Abyss is only about the size of Earth, and orbits between the planes in such a way that summoning demons is easier at some times than at others and the whole "afterlife" is....very different, something like the Feywild, Shadowfell, and PF's Fugue Plane mashed up with other influences; the gods have very little to do with any of it). For instance, I've thrown out cosmological alignment entirely--you can find demons that range anywhere between Chaotic Evil (ie the Red Fang, patron of bloodlust, uncontrolled *thropes, etc) and Lawful Evil (the White Skull Oro-laen is known for always keeping his deals and actually being reasonably easy to work with, although his methods are horrific). Demons are pretty much evil from everyone else's point of view, due to the whole "corrupt the world and devour souls" thing. Devils range from LG to CE, and only some of them fight demons; most of them actually get most of their juice running errands for the gods (in a sort of mafia-like fashion). The gods had nothing to do with creation--the current set is only 250 years old[1].

[1] This is the second major set, the first were eaten by the universe when some adventurers caused it to nearly slip out of alignment and collapse. The energy the universe provided to the gods was needed elsewhere to prevent catastrophe. So then, after things stabilized, it nominated new ones out of elemental lords and former mortals. Whether they wanted to be gods or not.

jjordan
2021-06-28, 04:51 PM
Thanks! I'll admit that it's rather inconsistent with a good chunk of the Great Wheel cosmology in implementation details... -SNIP-Ultimately I say that all cosmologies are flawed models which explain observable reality to varying degrees of accuracy and I tend to ignore The Great Wheel altogether by having NPCs observe that it's an out of date model which has been replaced by better theories, notably strand theory. They then ask the PCs which third-rate tutor instructed them and if s/he was sober occassionally.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-06-28, 05:56 PM
Ultimately I say that all cosmologies are flawed models which explain observable reality to varying degrees of accuracy and I tend to ignore The Great Wheel altogether by having NPCs observe that it's an out of date model which has been replaced by better theories, notably strand theory. They then ask the PCs which third-rate tutor instructed them and if s/he was sober occassionally.

Heh. Point taken.

I'll note that my cosmology is well modeled--it's a cosmic machine, run by the Great Mechanism (initials chosen very carefully) and created by the Dreamer whose body the GM is. And a very limited one at that--the entire "universe" (out to the border of the Dreaming Dark[1]) is only ~2 AU in radius (about the size of the inner Solar System out to the asteroid belt). And everyone is very clear about this. Every scholar of any note knows exactly what the structure of the planes is and how they relate to each other.

There are unknowns--the origin and destiny of souls is one such thing. Everyone (well, the scholars anyway) knows what happens to spirits after they die, but that's temporary. ~100 years at most. After that, after they pass through the Gates of Infinity under the gaze of the Watcher? Not even the gods know. Nor any of the ancient beings, not even the Watcher who has watched at those gates since mortality began. And where do new Sparks (souls) come from? Are they recycled? Are they one-and-done? No one knows. There are lots of theories, but as far as I've ever been willing to commit, they're all correct. And all wrong. Yes, even where they contradict each other.

[1] The Far Realms-equivalent, but effectively an inter-multi-verse concept space. Distance out there is not euclidean at all; they're measured in distance between concepts and existence is a matter of will and imagination. Where the Dreamers who created all the Dreams (universes) swim, including the Awakener who dislikes the whole idea of the Dreams and wants to end them all by absorbing them into itself and then ending its own existence. That's what the angels conduct endless war against--the fragments of the Awakener that besiege the universe, seeking to alter its very laws. Are jotnar Awakener? No--their nature exists outside of the Dreaming Dark entirely and would consume all things including the Awakener itself.

Luccan
2021-06-29, 01:52 AM
AFAIK, creatures like Demons and Slaad are defined almost entirely by their relationship to Law in D&D. Demons are rogue Devils, at least in the lore I'm familiar with. Slaad are the result of trying to impose order on ultimate Chaos (and while they all have a similar look, their reprodcution cycle contains a paradox for one of the higher orders of Slaad that can only be solved by completely breaking causality and logic).

Eldan
2021-06-29, 03:33 AM
I'm not actually familiar with any lore that makes demons rogue devils in D&D.It's an interesting idea, where did you get it from?

Alcore
2021-06-29, 07:52 AM
Non-D&D content is explicitly welcome.

Please do elaborate about why these sinful embodiments seem to fall into types, categories, and classes (i.e. into forms which are easy for the GM to use).Take a person and raise them in complete isolation and then ask him what is good and what is evil/bad. Ignoring the fact that such a person wouldn't have the language necessary you would get a unique response. We are not raised in a vacuum; cultural and religious norms norms shape how we think; but we are also unique.

When we think of lust and demons we will, inevitably, think of sex and succubi. It is iconic. That doesn't address one issue; the individual one. See, lust is not sex. They are definitely relevant to each other but lust is more about sensations and that moment of elation. Which brings me to my favorite boss; a succubus. Not just any succubus though... i adjusted her attributes, gave her short swords and replaced most of her spells with two permanent effect from the Book of Erotic Fantasy. So came the moment that the cultists needed to buy themselves time (while she was the last boss she was not the final encounter) and unleashed that amazonian beauty. Then the damage dice started falling and the party suddenly realized they were on a timer...

The Succubus of Bloodlust was winning. It was glorious.


So demons in my settings (occasionally not D&D) tend to be both diverse and static. They are meant to be archtipical of sin and thus less a person (while we have seven sins we still contain the seven virtues) yet humans are complex and so are our thoughts. So while the majority of demons cling to what society thinks any demon that contains more than one sin or, inversely, represents something more narrow (and personal) is far more likely to be an individual in its own merit.



So looping back around...

Being manifestations they are only perfect in their home plane. If it causes no headaches i implement taint rules and then go on to make pious rules and there is usually a third option (nature/balance) that attacks both. So while standing next to a demon might give you taint the demon might itself becomed "tainted". Heaven help any Outsider who has the misfortune (or blessing) to be named and cemented as an iconic individual. What we find sinful now might not remain in a thousand years.

Which is how my settings get around how society exists and why angels and demons are not terribly common. Angels can't just come down whenever and demons can't just rise up; they risk becoming moraly grey as they absorb the undiluted matter of the plane or named where they are stuck as they are and, if their virtue or sin becomes outdated, lose power without believers changing them. Holy and unholy places tend to be bastions as a result.

Luccan
2021-06-29, 11:36 AM
I'm not actually familiar with any lore that makes demons rogue devils in D&D.It's an interesting idea, where did you get it from?

I could be misremembering random bits of personal and online head-canon as actual lore. I can't find anything about it with a quick search. My bad, sorry.

JNAProductions
2021-06-29, 11:58 AM
I could be misremembering random bits of personal and online head-canon as actual lore. I can't find anything about it with a quick search. My bad, sorry.

Oh no! You misremembered a detail about magical elf games!

TO THE PITS OF TARTARUS WITH YOU! :P

On topic, I do think it'd be cool to have more malleable demons, but it'd also be a lot more work both for the designers and the DMs. Not an impossible amount, but the system as it stands now works okay for me.

Beleriphon
2021-06-29, 02:35 PM
It always puzzled me that demons, the epitome of Chaotic Evil, mostly come in 6 specific forms/types, and even the other varieties are recognizable forms.

Seems like any given demon should be a mashup of random table generated forms and attributes.

Weren't they originally just Type I through VI with the listed beastie an example? So the idea was a Type VI most did this kind of stuff, and here's an example?


I'm not actually familiar with any lore that makes demons rogue devils in D&D.It's an interesting idea, where did you get it from?

Grazzt is one of them as far as I know. A few others seem to be, Dagon might be, or Dagon might be older than the Great Wheel.

Anonymouswizard
2021-06-29, 03:10 PM
Yeah, the issue with random demons is the time it takes to determine them. It's why I prefer demons as NE (although I don't use alignment, and to be honest I don't tend to run D&D if I can avoid it so I don't have to contrast then with devils). Both Demon: the Fallen and In Nomine have explicit categories of demon (seven for DtF, eight major varieties for IN) but justify it because of reasons we can't go into here.

Although even outside of such games 'lawful evil outsiders=devils chaotic evil outsiders=demons' is very much a D&Dism and isn't universal even in fantasy RPGs. Most would put D&D's devils as demons (and most don't have alignment anyway). Unknown Armies does have a demon/fiend split as an example, but the definitions are completely different. A demon is a ghost, just for starters.

Trafalgar
2021-06-29, 10:40 PM
I always find demons and devils in D&D to be kind of boring. Take Moloch for example (who I know is a devil not a demon).

Allen Ginsburg's Moloch (https://youtu.be/Nonab6djMAA) is way more interesting than than the D&D Moloch (https://media.wizards.com/2018/dnd/dragon/19/DRA19_Moloch.pdf).

Second Wind
2021-07-01, 02:57 AM
I treat outsiders as fully alien. They cannot exist in the material plane, but can send and receive information. With assistance from our side, they can even imprint on mortal brains, partially destroying the mortal's original personality to create a hybrid. The hybrid is not an outsider but carries an outsider's memories, distorted through the funhouse mirror of material neurons. The hybrid is a separate entity and can act independently, or it can keep syncing with the outsider.

To the hybrid, our reality is familiar and alien all at once. Their bodies are natural to us but only half-natural to them, and as their understandings grow, many of them twist their shapes in search of something suitable. That's where you get Monster Manual stat blocks.

'Demon' can refer to the outsider, to the hybrid, or to tiefling/aasimar spawn who are fully native to the material plane but inherit strange bodies.

LudicSavant
2021-07-01, 03:21 AM
There is no species of demon. There are types, categories, classifications, but they do not live and breed.

They are not life as we know it, for all that lives has moral choice, and demons do not.

You can hardly turn a corner in the D&D lore without bumping into another redeemed demon or a fallen angel. As such, it seems to me that they very much do have moral choice.

EggKookoo
2021-07-01, 05:34 AM
Are we playing "in my setting"? Because if so...

The Abyss is a massive magical construct designed to compute a solution to a problem. The elder god people-entity-things discovered a flaw in creation that will eventually doom it and them. The flaw seems an unavoidable consequence of the fundamental nature of reality. They spent eons trying to fix it but were unable to though direct effort. So they created something that would endlessly churn out possible solutions, one after the other, in the hopes that someday one of them will hit on something useful. Kind of like the million monkeys approach. Hey, these guys have nothing but time, might as well use it. Demons are just a byproduct (or are they the solution itself?).

The Nine Hells were created as a barrier to keep Abyssal chaos from "infecting" the rest of reality. Kind of like a shell.

King of Nowhere
2021-07-01, 11:50 PM
What are they, truly?


(homebrew flavor text welcome)

My homebrew flavor text is that they are personifications of suffering. All the bad emotions of the material plane have power, and this power congeals and takes the shape of fiends.
Fiends then feed on all the negativity - with demons favoring the "death and destruction" variety, and devils favoring the "stress and anguish" variety.
If there is an excess of those emotions, new demons/devils spawn. If there is a lack, some of them wither and die.
If everyone in the material plane was perfectly good and happy, the whole of the nether planes would disappear

jjordan
2021-07-02, 08:08 AM
My homebrew flavor text is that they are personifications of suffering. All the bad emotions of the material plane have power, and this power congeals and takes the shape of fiends.
Fiends then feed on all the negativity - with demons favoring the "death and destruction" variety, and devils favoring the "stress and anguish" variety.
If there is an excess of those emotions, new demons/devils spawn. If there is a lack, some of them wither and die.
If everyone in the material plane was perfectly good and happy, the whole of the nether planes would disappearNice homebrew. But now I'm trying to work out ways of weaponizing happiness.

Millstone85
2021-07-02, 01:05 PM
In the beginning was Limbo, but not the Limbo of color-coded frogs and changing-yet-familiar landscapes. It was a true expanse of unbound potentiality, from which emerged all manners of new essences and entities.

Then a few of the plane's spawns grew in power and formed a fragile but effective alliance. They banished all others to the far edges of reality, into the void of things that should not be. And so no new rivals could appear, the victors created Mechanus and a clockwork symphony that would send waves of predictability through the chaos-stuff of Limbo.

The creatures called gormeel slaadi are perhaps this process at its most successful. They emerge from the chaos-stuff, only to immediately embrace the cosmic order. But other slaadi resent the patterns imposed on their kind, and they attack the clockwork servants of Mechanus on sight. As time went on, this would become a philosophical foundation for many inhabitants of the nascent multiverse.

Eventually, two arcs of planar energies formed between Mechanus and Limbo. Of these arcs, one embodied concordance between the forces of Law and Chaos, while the other was the manifestation of their irresoluble opposition. Each arc would then develop into a series of planes, soon known as the realms of celestials and fiends.

Among the latter are:

the devils, fiends with an unrelenting hatred of Chaos.
the demons, fiends with an unrelenting hatred of Law.
the yugoloths, fiends who thrive on the conflict itself.

However, rumors abound that all three types of fiend are being manipulated by ancient beings who each simply seek to conquer reality:

Asmodeus, leader of the devils, is said to actually be, or serve, a dissatisfied creator of the multiverse who schemes to wipe it all clean and start over.
The bottom of the Abyss is said to be a portal to the Far Realm, where banished entities are planning their grand invasion.
Yugoloths are said to somehow, in some ineffable way, work for something even more sinister.

The especially pessimistic and cynical, such as a certain Mordenkainen, think the same about celestials. "I know not what sits at the top of Mount Celestia, or hovers above it, but trust me on this: When you are told Be Not Afraid, heed that commandment, because you should be terrified."

Calthropstu
2021-07-02, 03:43 PM
There is no species of demon. There are types, categories, classifications, but they do not live and breed.

They are not life as we know it, for all that lives has moral choice, and demons do not.

Yet we know they do exist, in their types, categories, and classes.

What are they, truly?


(homebrew flavor text welcome)

Same with all outsiders. And yet, half demons are a thing. And, in lore, there are examples of archdemons having children together iirc in an attempt to mess with power balances.

But you are correct. They are outsiders. Plain and simple. Most of them are amalgamations of several mortal souls squeezed together to wring out the purest of chaos and evil energies. In pathfinder, it was the Daemons who taught the abyss to spin mortal souls into these concoctions.


Nice homebrew. But now I'm trying to work out ways of weaponizing happiness.

Ask Black Mage from 8 bit theater.

Millstone85
2021-07-02, 04:33 PM
Ask Black Mage from 8 bit theater.I am guessing that you are referencing this page (https://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/11/27/8-bit-chronicles-3-of-3/). The guy essentially invented Ur-priesthood.

Calthropstu
2021-07-02, 06:05 PM
I am guessing that you are referencing this page (https://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/11/27/8-bit-chronicles-3-of-3/). The guy essentially invented Ur-priesthood.

Affirmitivication.

Duff
2021-07-08, 07:54 PM
Please do elaborate about why these sinful embodiments seem to fall into types, categories, and classes (i.e. into forms which are easy for the GM to use).


If you want demons as embodiments of sin, there's a simple excuse for having most demons in categories -
Each individual demon is created by a specific sinful act. And most common sinful acts are pretty similar. The petty theft demon created when J stole L's purse and when G lifted an apple from the fruit shop are statistically interchangeable. It's an unusual Lie Demon who's meaningfully different to the others - maybe especially clever lies, or ones with great consequences.

Or if you want to have demons as the embodiment of chaos, use a template.
Type 1 demons are between 4 and 5 feet tall and will have 3d6 hitpoints. They have 2 attacks per round, choose for each demon what sort of attack. Maybe one has piecing claws and another has 2 mouths to bite with. Their armor score is 5, but that can be tough and rubbery, hard and chitinous, scaly or they might wear chainmail. They move at 7 - some slither snake-like, some have 2 legs and some have more. Each one has a unique power
7 demons require 14 rolls, (HP and power for each) the rest is flavour text and you give as much or as little as needed and they all look and feel different