Changes For Fiends and Rich Baker

[JonSetanta]

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WotC_RichBaker
Member

Join Date: Jun 2003


Default Re: Rich Baker's Blog
Howdy, folks --

Sorry for the long delay, but it's been a crazy week. I got back from GenCon on Sunday the 19th and took Monday off (we normally get a day off after a weekend-eating show). This past weekend I took my family down to the Oregon coast and spent three days in Pacific City, just to get in one last little breath of summer before school starts up again for the girls. Going to the beach out here does not involve much swimming, since the water is icy cold and often has dangerous rip currents. It's more about building sand castles, flying kites, and maybe reading a book.

Anyway, let me tell you what I've been up to since GenCon. In a word: monsters. The writing team (that's me, James Wyatt, Bruce Cordell, and Chris Sims) is working on fleshing out the Monster Manual entries and doing a bit of a "story" pass on the monsters. Last week I spent a couple of days working on devils. Here are a couple of devilish tidbits I'll leak for now:

- Devils are angels who rebelled. They rose up against the deity they served and murdered him. The crime of deicide is unimaginably perverse for angels, and hence devils were cursed and imprisoned in the Nine Hells.
- The Nine Hells are what became of the murdered deity's divine realm after his death. The Hells are the devils' prison, and it is difficult for them to get out without mortal aid.
- We've re-sorted demons and devils a bit, since we want these two categories of monsters to make a little more sense. Devils tend to be more humanoid in form, usually fight with weapons, and often wear armor. Most have horns, wings, and tails. One consequence of this: the erinyes and the succubus were holding down pretty similar territory, so we've decided that they're the same monster, called the succubus, and it's a devil.
- Ice devils don't look like other devils. We've decided that they are actually a demonic/yugoloth race... one that was entrapped by Mephistopheles long ago in an infernal contract. So ice devils hate other devils, retain their insect-like appearance, and have a special loyalty to Mephistopheles. It's one of the reasons why Asmodeus has never chosen to move against Mephistopheles. Asmodeus would of course win if he did, but that would let the ice devils out of their contract.

Anyway, that's the sort of stuff us story guys are working on. More later!

All I have to say is AWWWWWWWWWW THOSE BITCHES! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!
Here we've been playing with shitty sortups of devil here, demon there, and now they go and shuffle it like a deck of cards???

Do they realize- well OK yeah they intend to make all previous editions of 3.x even more obsolete... but this... :jawdrop:

[Voss]

Didn't we do this one before?

Still, I haven't found any version of 'fiends' very satisfying in any version of D&D, so I can't get worked up about this.

btw, what are 'shitty sortups'?

[JonSetanta]

That the devils are supposedly already similar to humanoids, mentally and physically, yet we have things like the devil-with-slug-butt and big hulking demon-like things such as Pit Fiend.
Meanwhile, there are demons very, very humanoidish... with no reason why, and no pattern for any of it.
It's all too cartoony.

That, and there never has been clear definition as tho how humanoids become devils, which ones were once humanoid, and which ones were once fallen angels.
Not even a sniff of how fallen angels become devils.

Then this bit about succubi being devils, well.. that should have been in D&D since the beginning, so no good will come of this reshuffling.

My idea would be to simply introduce new armor-wearing, weapon-wielding humanoid-like devils that displace the old beastly ones.
They don't need to scramble 30+ years of this cosmology; it's unnecessary.

[CalibronXXX]

Blah

[Catharz]

Well, this looks like an improvement. Hopefully the Law/Chaos dichotomy on the lower planes is gone too, as I can't imagine all the fallen angels being natural bureaucrats.

[Voss]

So, sigma, you don't like how it is, but changing it is also bad?
Thats a no-win, either way.

[JonSetanta]

1189838533[/unixtime]]So, sigma, you don't like how it is, but changing it is also bad?
Thats a no-win, either way.

You got it.

[Draco_Argentum]

1189838533[/unixtime]]So, sigma, you don't like how it is, but changing it is also bad?
Thats a no-win, either way.

Standard Gamer thought pattern there.

[JonSetanta]

I just don't see why they had to ruin what we have, even if it's not perfect.

A new devil race would be easier to do, too. I just don't get it...

Hope something good comes out of the new edition.

[Cielingcat]

All I have to say is thank god. I fucking hate the cosmology of D&D, and this is at least a step in a less dumb direction.

Also, anything that pisses of Planescape fans gets my vote.

[shirak]

This is Fiendish Codex 2 all over again. Why can't people design a setting without making real world influences blatantly obvious? WTF man? WTF?

[JonSetanta]

Yea the change does seem a bit Blake-ish now that you mention it being real-world.

Maybe they'll do it right this time, with level advancements for every PC-worthy race included with the 'monster', or even make each PC-worthy Outsider a LA+0 base race with racial levels...

[Koumei]

The re-shuffling just sounds annoying more than anything else, and I liked the distinction between Succubi and Erinyes - they're not both out to drain your soul out through your wang, after all.

As for the fallen angels thing, it's sort of much of a muchness. Part of me thinks "Damnit, now there'll be even more Christian influence, the alignments are going to suck more than ever."

Another part thinks "meh, it's a common enough idea in fantasy, and it means that, if the Blood War continues, there's a better reason than "We're Lawful, they're Chaotic" for it." You've got the Original Monstaz' who don't want the new kids on the block messing with their turf, and you have the Devils who still have a degree of their Celestial pride and disgust at Demons.

[erik]

I wouldn't mind if the whole monster manual was scrapped from the get-go and things were done proper. Drop the color coded dragons, get rid of crap like ogre mages, and come up with something new and exciting. If the outrageously stupid legacy cosmology gets scrapped, then all the better. And go away alignments, just... go away.

[shirak]

1189859681[/unixtime]]I wouldn't mind if the whole monster manual was scrapped from the get-go and things were done proper. Drop the color coded dragons, get rid of crap like ogre mages, and come up with something new and exciting. If the outrageously stupid legacy cosmology gets scrapped, then all the better. And go away alignments, just... go away.

Amen

[Koumei]

The shocker lizard speaks great wisdom.

Therefore I propose those changes be implemented and shocker lizards become the next majorly cool thing.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Shocker lizard cock? I walk.

[Koumei]

Says the furry

I didn't mean "Half Shocker Lizard" templates and all that.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Point of order,. I'm not actually a furry. I just like their porn.

[Koumei]

I find that to be 100% acceptable.

[Catharz]

1189843072[/unixtime]]Also, anything that pisses of Planescape fans gets my vote.

Yeah, and I hope the Lady of Pain fucks you up the ass with her Bladed Strap-on of Sorrow.

[virgil]

Now that's just...eww. Besides, if you want Planescape to rape someone, it needs to be Shemsheka the Marauder two-teaming with the Smiling Fiend

[Koumei]

1189893569[/unixtime]] it needs to be Shemsheka the Furfag two-teaming with the Smiling Fiend

Fix'd

And who's the Smiling Fiend?

I'll mention that, as someone who's never played 2Ed Planescape with all the stupid rules involved, I like the game, but then again, things that mess with the Planescape ideas of how things work don't bother me, so I have the feeling that the fans that Ceilingcat wants to piss off are the annoying kind, not the casual fan.

Also, it occurred to me that Devils==Fallen Angels means they're stating from the word go that Outsiders can be different from their listed Alignment. That "[Evil] creatures with Alignment: Always Evil" aren't actually Always Evil.

I mean, presumably, getting thrown into another plane and changing in form was due to their punishment for killing gods and rebelling en mass, and no-one would care about individuals changing alignment.

[erik]

1189864821[/unixtime]]
Therefore I propose those changes be implemented and shocker lizards become the next majorly cool thing.

I am all in favor of this, but you will likely find no bigger fanboy of shocker lizards than I.

I was no more pissed with WotC than when they mistakenly errata'd Shocker Lizards from having 5 int down to 2 int, like mere beasts, cunning creatures no more... well maybe equally pissed with 3.5, since they repeated the error of having 2 int shocker lizards.

I've been tempted to start playing DnD minis for one reason only. The person who wins the big badass tournament gets to pick a mini to be designed (since apparently my emailed suggestions to R&D that a shocker lizard would make an interesting addition to the mini wargames have gone unheeded). Realism prevents me from acting on this temptation.

[virgil]

The Smiling Fiend is a friendly/kind store owner in Sigil, selling knick knacks from across the planes, and usually of highly coincidental usefulness. His eccentricity is the fact he's an arcanaloth.

My reference to Shemsheka was to the Planescape character (also an arcanaloth), not to the poster who goes by the same name.

Granted, I don't really hold any particular ill-will to the poster. He/she isn't what I would call as hostile or deragatory towards others, and when I'm actually in the mood for fluff posts I don't find the work distasteful.