Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Demons need more Chaos

Look at this picture:

Now tell me quickly, are they demons or devils? If you are a true D&D/Pathfinder aficionado, you probably recognized them as demons. But they don't really look all that different from devils. You could easily file the serial numbers off that Hezrou and turn it into some new kind of devil. Think about that, the very essence of Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil are virtually indistinguishable. This has never sat right with me. Demons are supernatural Chaos in its vilest form. They aren't merely superpowerful orcs, they are pure Chaos and pure Evil.

Now, the Evil part is fine. They slaughter the innocent, they corrupt the powerful and they destroy beauty and goodness whenever they can. However, the Chaos part just doesn't come through. One Vrock is pretty much indistinguishable from every other Vrock. If they were truly Chaotic (as opposed to chaotic), every demon should be unique and constantly changing. They should constantly be growing and losing new limbs, developing new abilities while losing others. The Babau you are fighting this round should suddenly morph into a Nalfeshnee next round and then a Dretch after that. What we really need is a random demon generator. Maybe it's too much work for the DM, especially if demons figure prominently in his campaign, or maybe such a system doesn't work well with an exception-based system like Pathfinder. It is something I've been thinking about trying for awhile, so I guess I will find out eventually.

-Rognar-

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

They're not Chaos embodied. They are Chaotic. Each Demon does what it needs to to survive, but beyond that it is out for itself. It cares not about the group but about itself the greater demons know how to exploit that though or at least intimidate the lesser demons into cooperating. They are entities that thrive on physical destruction not warping beasts that embody chaos itself.