Oh jeez, this is awkward. The first point is that it's the same logic as the atropal being in the Abomination folder rather than on the Undead subpage, it's being grouped by "family" first over creature type.
Second point is that this page is now redundant and ready to be deleted. All the relevant information about Fiends in general (much of which turned out to be applicable to Outsiders in general) is on the Creature Types subpage, and all the creatures on this page have been copied onto the main Creatures index.
Current earworm: "Time of Death"
Amateur Veteran
Wait a minute, when did we decide to split the demons, devils and yugoloths off to a separate page each?
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We didn't. Someone decided to do it arbitrarily, it would seem.
The Danse Macabre Codex
Well, how do we feel about it? It seems stable enough for now, but I still think that we might want to move the archfiends to the deities pages at some point.
I guess it means all those little demons and devils can now be put into individual folders for ease of locating, saving mouse wheels some wear and tear. Not so much a fan of how it leaves a bunch of miscellaneous Blood War-adjacent evil outsiders left behind on this page.
As for the archfiends: on the one hand, these creature pages are more of a bestiary than a conventional character sheet, and there aren't any other individuals to be found in them. But, an argument could be made that, since demon princes and devilish dukes have routinely appeared in monster manuals as entities PCs could face and defeat, they belong on the creatures pages more than the deities section. I'm not terribly invested in the issue, though, I'm busy going through 2nd and 3rd Edition sourcebooks for more tropeable monsters.
Current earworm: "Time of Death"
That's probably the best way to handle that, yes.
I'm not too torn up about this myself, mostly because I don't personally consider it a problem for hub pages to also list miscellaneous characters who don't fit neatly into other categories.
That is a very fair point, but I would counter-argue that:
- In at least some editions (mainly the older ones, admittedly, not really so much now), true deities are also at least potentially confrontable by players.
- The current "deities and associates" section already includes some explicitly statted creatures (mainly the Elder Evils, but a bunch of dragon gods were also retconned into "just" being super powerful monsters in Fizban's).
- Archfiends can in at least some editions be worshipped by and grant spells to clerics, so they also fill the gameplay and setting niche of deities.
All valid points, though your final score will be reduced for reminding me of Fizban's handling of the dragon gods.
As I said, I'm not invested in the issue, so if someone wants to make a quasideity page for the archfiends, I'm not stopping them.
Elsewhere on the page I raised the question of whether such a page should be "archfiends" or "archfiends and celestial paragons," and at the moment I'm leaning toward the former. There isn't nearly as much to say about the Celestial Hebdomad and Talisid's Companions compared to the wealth of material about demon princes and archdevils, so most of the tropes I imagine seeing on their entries would concern their appearances and their combat abilities, not so much who they are.
Though if someone thinks I'm wrong and has some interesting celestial lore to add to a character entry, please correct me.
Current earworm: "Time of Death"
I wouldn't know about the celestials necessarily, but I have been thinking about whether or not there might be enough material to make something interesting for the slaad lords — at least a couple seem to have appeared fairly consistently over time.
That said, I don't currently have the time or inclination to take on that particular project, but maybe in the next few months.
Amateur Veteran
This isn't strictly a priority at the moment, but I was thinking that if/when the page grows long enough to need splitting, it mightn't be a bad idea to move the demon princes and archdevils off to a page in the deities section. I don't actually know how things work in 5th edition mechanically, but I know they're treated as deities in 3rd and even in 5th are worshipped in-universe. That and the Elder Evils are in the same general boat and are listed in the deities section in the header, so there's that.
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By my extremely precise method of copy-pasting the trope page into Word and counting how many pages its text takes up, we're now at approximately 110 Word pages, about four away from reaching the character limit on the trope page. Removing the "Other Fiends" section from the bottom of the page and merging them with the greater list of monsters only gets it down to 99 Word pages, while removing the demon princes and archdevils' sections gets it down to about 76 Word pages.
So yeah, giving those named fiends their own page seems to be a good move, since it's not like we have any unique entities on the other creature pages. And since 3E archfiends at least can create aspects the same as proper gods, it isn't that much of a stretch to have them in the deities section.
The follow-up question would be whether the archfiends get their own page, or if they end up on a more general "unique outsiders that aren't quite deities" page with the Celestial Hebdomad, Court of Stars, and Talisid's Companions.
Current earworm: "Time of Death"
It seems Gargauth is needlessly mocked/portrayed as ineffectual on this page(when it isn't the case in-universe). Specifically in parts:
Considering the many different factions with an interest in preventing this from happening, including almost every single god worshipped on Toril, this is unlikely to happen.
and
Small Name, Big Ego: Even at his strongest, Gargauth is a small fish in a big pond. His ambition to drag Toril into hell would never succeed, considering the many, and much more powerful, gods who would work to prevent this.
With his plan at dragging Toril to Baator to become it's tenth layer, the possibly weaker then (more about this in a moment) Mephistopheles nearly realized this plan in Neverwinter Nights expansion Hordes of the Underdark (yes from a video game, but is, or at least was considered canon). With gods, and other factions, Gargauth researches secrets of Imaskar, to basically cast their spell of banishing/blocking all gods residing on the planes from Toril, like Imaskari originally blocked the Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian pantheons (as mentioned in the original Powers & Pantheons ). Cyric (a greater gods) outright used a tome of magic created by Gargauth, to try to find Kelemvor's soul.
As to the allusion he is stronger than Mephistopheles, Gargauth was described in pre-4E (directly mentioned in 1E AD&D, implied in latter editions) sources as the most powerful devil sans Asmodeus (even before Gargauth achieving true godhood), by Ed Greenwood himself in his first proper appearance (as Gargoth) in Dragon #91 (in the article Nine Hells revisited), and even suggested in Dragon #75 (referred as Astaroth, but in context, it's obvious it meant Gargauth, especially that the article there - The Nine Hells, was written also by Ed Greenwood).
In D&D, other demigods (like Vecna, when he was one) or even mortals (like Szass Tam), (or as mentioned, Mephistopheles) attempted and almost succeeded, or even succeeded with comparably or more ambitious plans.
So should the parts I mentioned be deleted?
Edited by Jazirian333
Amateur Veteran
I've mentioned this on the undead discussion page, but it didn't get replies so I'd like to bring this up here to see if more people notice it.
Is it really necessary to add so many images to every character/creature entry? I understand using multiple images to show drastic changes in design (Zariel's an obvious case where this is warranted), but in most cases these are really just graphical upgrades — the images are largely the same, the art has just gotten better with time. They seem to just take up a lot of space for no real gain, and most character sheets on the wiki limit themselves to one picture per entry anyway.
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I concur. And if need be, we can probably just mention how the art has changed over the years and provide links to the image in the trope entry.
The Danse Macabre Codex
Should we maybe organize devils by place in the hierarchy instead of alphabetically?
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I don't think that's a good idea, personally. As we've seen with 5th edition the exact position of each devil in the hierarchy can shift, sometimes drastically as in the case of amnizus and the abishai. If we organize them that way now and a future edition shuffles the hierarchy again, we'll have to shuffle the devils around as well.
The Danse Macabre Codex
Can we include an entry for the Infernal, even if it's just a link to the Abominations section of the A monster categories? Or maybe make the Abomination section link to this page?
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