Wandering Monsters: Deceitful Devils (Or Is It Demons?)

Dungeons & Dragons does not exactly have the best track record when it comes to translating critters from real-world mythology into the game, so it does not bother me much if the succubus ends up being a devil, demon, or something else entirely. What does bug me is when someone argues that it should be a demon “because that is what is was before” and/or that the wikipedia article cites it as a demon.

In regards to the first argument I was one of those who preferred them as devils, both because a Lawful alignment seemed better suited for a being trying to use deceit and subterfuge to corrupt a soul, and devils in general had a strong theme of corruption (as opposed to Chaotic demons,
who favored the route of destruction).

Additionally I am of the opinion that repeating material from past editions just for the sake of repeating it is a terrible idea. This is why we have attacks and some spells determining success in different ways (except for magic missile, which is the only spell that automatically hits), a heavy reliance on magical healing, rigid classes, magic systems that make no sense at all, per-day resources, angels that just look like winged humans with different skin colors, curses with benefits, and more.

As for the second one, why stop there? Previous depictions of the succubus described them as monstrous rather than attractive, but even later representations made it so that close inspection could reveal features like bird-like claws or tails. They would also collect semen from men, then an incubus would use it to impregnate women, though I am not sure if they just give it to an incubus or change their gender. Interestingly the Arabian version could only be seen by certain people, and even then they would just see a cat, dog, or similar animal.

All of this sounds a lot more interesting than a woman wearing a devil costume that can make out with you and use a souped-up version of charm person as a spell-like ability. I would make them monstrous (or at least be unable to hide specific features), gender neutral (but able to change their shape and/or gender), and also tack on illusions so that they could at least pretend to give creatures whatever the desire most. It would also be cool to have a variant power set that would render them invisible to most people, or make them just see an animal.

But we will most certainly get a succubus that is female and sexy and will totally make out with you because that is how it was before.

I am also not too keen on the idea of making cambions specific to succubi. I get that that is how it works in mythology, but where does that leave tieflings, who will apparently have randomized physical traits? Are we going to have a unique name for each kind of half-fiend? Is there any reason that draegloths are specific to Lolth, or that durzagon are the result of an infernal bargain? Why not just make a set of half-fiend powers for each type of fiend that Dungeon Masters can attach and justify as they see fit?

That sounds a lot better and more useful than books filled with arbitrary race-fiend-flavor combinations.

Wandering Monsters: Three of a Kind

Though I am generally a fan of fiendish things, there is a lot about this article that bugs me.

For starters, each of the monsters is basically a slight variation at best of the same concept: cambions are the offspring of a mortal and some kind of fiendish creature, draegloths are essentially a specific type of cambion, and tieflings are the ancestors of people that mingled with fiends (so, less powerful cambions).

Seeing a pattern?

These do not need to be three distinct monsters. Even though you could make a case for the tiefling, the mechanical implementation of its fiendish heritage would be similar to the cambion (which I will get into below).

I do not even remember cambions from 3rd Edition, except that maybe there were mentioned in the half-fiend template. A bit of research revealed that they only made an appearance in Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, a book that I owned, skimmed, but never used. 4th Edition put them in the first Monster Manual, where they just came across like winged tieflings, fiery-emphasis and all (which is not a sufficient tagline to get me to use something).

The plan for Next is to present them in two flavors: those with a demonic heritage will have a variety of appearances, while those that trafficked with devils will for some reason all look like Tim Curry from Legend, despite devils also having a variety of appearances.

I guess one out of four is not bad?

The more powerful the fiendish parent, the more powerful the cambion. The parent will also determine qualities like resistances and immunites. Makes sense, and is something that I wish they had done with tieflings for awhile, now. What I would love to see–besides devil-cambions having a more diverse appearance–is a table with a list of devils and demons with some suggested physical features, traits, and powers that you can attach to an existing creature.

Yes, I am making yet another toolbox suggestion.

An eeevil toolbox.

The draegloths is, as I said, basically a cambion. Why does it get a special shout out? Why do they have some kind of special association with drow? I have no idea, except that I guess it was in a Drizz’t novel (one of the few that I have actually read)? The article makes mention that its uniqueness suggests that “other distinct varieties of half-fiend might exist”, so I would put the draegloth in the cambion entry along with some other examples (I would also not for some reason restrict it to drow).

And last but not least (well, maybe last in terms of overall power), the tiefling. Tieflings are probably my favorite race, or at least somewhere in the top three, having dug their hooks into me since my Planescape days back when I still played 2nd Edition.

Their hellish hooks.

I remember that they used to have a variety of potential physical features, including the random ability and side-effect tables from Planewalker’s Handbook, which I still own. The change to their flavor and appearance in 4th Edition kind of bothered me, but probably not for the reasons you have heard (ie, it is not how it was before).

What bothered me was that here we were in yet another edition, and like 3rd Edition they all did the same thing. I get that they had an association with Asmodeus, so their look and powers made sense, but what about other devils: what about a tiefling with a succubus ancestor that gets a bonus to Diplomacy and a charm ability, or an ice devil, so she gets cold resistance and can, I dunno, add cold damage to an attack?

To me this is better than simply having a player roll from a table to see if they have goat hooves and some other random, probably unrelated power: like cambions it would make more sense to tie their physical appearance, traits, and magical abilities (if any) were tied to their heritage, which is how I did it with a tiefling homebrew I posted almost a year ago.

This would also work just as well with tieflings that result from pacts with devils (like the 4th Edition ones), allowing people to easily mix and match tieflings created by blood or bond.

Wandering Monsters: Demonic Cults

And here I was thinking that we would not get a Wandering Monsters article today. What is even more surprising is that I like a lot of what it has to say (in particular the entries on Demogorgon and Baphomet); though only a few paragraphs, each type of cult has its own defining word–madness, destruction, and decadence–as well as a solid foundation to build adventures on.

The Cthulhu association with Demogorgon is an angle I had never considered before, despite the fact that he is apparently allied with Dagon to some capacity. I dig it, but then I tend to dig many things associated with the Cthulhu mythos.

Demogorgon’s appearance has changed several times over the editions, and I am hoping that they keep the more recent renditions, namely this one:

Despite running a Greek-themed campaign, I had not given much thought to Baphomet until now. I love the adventure seed of cultists abducting people in order to ceremoniously murder them in a maze, and will fit that in at some point (though I might have the characters captured, too).

The bit on Graz’zt is the weakest, but still delivers some solid flavor on the sort of things his cultists might do. If nothing else is presents a good argument on why a nice chunk of tieflings might have similar traits, maybe even a thematic warlock pact.

All in all I think that this was a pretty good article. I like the direction they are heading, and each of them has given me a clear idea of how I might use them in my campaigns.

Wandering Monsters: Devils & Demons

I never had much issue remembering the different between baatezu and tanar’ri back in 2nd Edition, partially because I was really into Planescape, but mostly because I would just need to recall if they were in the front or back of the Monster Manual.

It was not until we got demons, daemons, and devils in 3rd Edition that things became a bit muddier…until I just learned to remember that devils were the Lawful side of the trinity, and that we rarely played to a point where any of them really mattered anyway.

Though a Planescape fan I did not care much for their extraplanar alignment-battle, which is disappointing because it looks like that demon and devil lore is getting rolled back an edition or two. I really enjoyed 4th Edition’s changes to demon flavor, changing them into corrupted elemental destroyers, while clearly dividing them from their hierarchical tempters-of-souls counterparts. Though relegated to a sidebar in Manual of the Planes, 4th Edition also provided a (better?) reason for the Blood War to exist.

I do not mind the idea of two opposing evil forces eternally duking it out (even with a third party playing both sides), but I am hoping that whoever is in charge of story gives us a more compelling reason than “because, alignment!” A motivation–preferably a solid one–or some actual stakes would be a nice change of pace.

As for the actual denizens, I am happy to see them staying away from laundry lists of spells and spell-like abilities. As I have said before I disliked having to pore through other books to take notes on what spells do what, and take time going through lists trying to figure out what I should do (especially when there are lots of ineffectual, low-level stuff to dismiss).

Cold iron and silver vulnerabilities are back (as well as magic), which is fine by me as I kind of missed material-based vulnerabilities such as fey and cold iron. I know some people complained about fighters toting around “golf bags of weapons”, but as long as they do not go back to 3rd Edition’s DR/30+ values then it remains a perk instead of a necessity. In this instance I guess 5th Edition’s resistance mechanic is the lesser of two evils.

Individually most of these guys do what they have always done; balors have a flaming whip and lightning sword, mariliths are six-armed, half-serpent dervishes, ice devils are insect-like in appearance and can create walls of ice and storms, and so on. There are some interesting tidbits in there, though, such as glabrezus being able to attack with their pincers and cast spells with their human-like set of arms and mariliths potentially using Expertise Dice.

I am kind of disappointed to see the succubus return to the demonic horde. Conceptually it made more sense to peg them with a Lawful alignment given their role of tempters and more subtle spell selection, and I know a lot of people agree with me (and disagree), so it is nice that it got its own poll question. I guess we will have to see what the majority wants.

I am interested to see how things continue to unfold in terms of story and mechanics. Maybe the Blood War will have a variety of causes and goals that you can pick from (alignment, abyssal shard, or something else?), maybe devils will become more strongly associated with sins, and maybe there will be a stronger, clearer divide between them all.