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!
Since Devils are no longer 'elemental' Lawful Evil beings of the Great Wheel, I wonder that means they ditching Planescape's Blood War, at least in the core.
I'm certainly not going to jump on the bandwagon and say that 4e is a disaster, but they are adding quite a bit of background information to the core game that changes the way the entire "world" of D&D has been portrayed for a long time.
It's going to make fitting a traditional world into the 4e frame a little more difficult.
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Wolfspider
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Meh. This is the first bit I've read about 4e that I don't like. There's no reason for them to retcon D&D planar fluff. And this stuff about devils rebelling sounds too much like Catholic teaching for me. I prefer a more fantasy take on the gods. More Sword & Sorcery with it's Ape and Spider Gods and less like Medieval Europe with Monotheism.
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Another bit of info that will probably be great for new players but makes older ones who've played through various editions wonder what they're thinking.
For instance, will the pit fiend and balor be combined into one entity? Despite them having a lot more "Kewl" factor tha nthe sucubus and eryines, they basically occupy the same slot too no?
... Bleah. I'm not happy about this one at all, but it is nothing I can't put back to normal I'm already familiar with the background of the Great Wheel back to back so as nifty and new as this may be (and it might grow on me as time goes on) if I still hate it next year I'll only need the stats of the critters.
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"If the Good Lord wasn't just and good, he would never have granted the perfection that is Dr. Tran onto the sinners and heathens of this barren Earth." - Wooster
"Dr. Tran = "-The Ent
Absolutely. It may well end up being a cool picture at the end, but it is far far too drastic a shift in the D&D mythology for me to call it anything but a mistake at this point.
Ah well.... I was buying the system anyway.
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LP- Jessica Taylor(2)
"If the Good Lord wasn't just and good, he would never have granted the perfection that is Dr. Tran onto the sinners and heathens of this barren Earth." - Wooster
"Dr. Tran = "-The Ent
I like it. It's still pretty generic - the god they rebelled against could be anything; doesn't need to be a Christian-style creator deity. Could be a god of pain, or of the sky, or anything. The rebellion's the important part.
I never thought there was enough tangible stuff to differentiate demons and devils. Different origin stories is a nice touch.
I can certainly see why it's not so popular with other people, though. Apart from the addition of the Blood War, the D&D demon/devil setup has stayed pretty constant over the game's history. I wouldn't have expected changing it to be a priority.
I actually agree. I think it's kind of cool that they're carving out some unique niches for demons and devils, beyond the lawful/chaotic thing. Don't get me wrong, I think the whole Blood War concept is very cool, but I guess I don't have enough attachment to it to really care if it's brought into 4e core. If they resurrect Planescape, I imagine they'll just change it back.
(Also, the whole "deicide" bit takes it somewhat far afield from Catholic teachings. )
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I think it's kind of cool that they're carving out some unique niches for demons and devils, beyond the lawful/chaotic thing. Don't get me wrong, I think the whole Blood War concept is very cool, but I guess I don't have enough attachment to it to really care if it's brought into 4e core. If they resurrect Planescape, I imagine they'll just change it back.
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