Dungeons & Dragons lore!

I believe it's possible but extremely rare.

As an example, Eberron has a kind of planar entity known as the quori, the Lawful Evil masters of the Plane of Dream. One playable race, the kalashtar, came into existence due to a rebellion among the quori, as some sought to bring about a change in the plane to dominate it with a great light instead of the Dreaming Dark.

This rebellion had 67 quori in it, so it's not all that surprising that they opted to flee to the material plane and work against the Dreaming Dark from there, rather than try to fight it out with the entire rest of the plane.

According to the baatezu's creation myth - which you can believe at your own peril - all of the first-generation devils are Fallen Angels. Fiendish Codex II relates how some angels at the dawn of creation became physically and mentally tainted from combating the primordial demons that came surging out of the Abyss, and were eventually given the Nine Hells to keep from ruining the ambience of the Upper Planes. Archdevils like Baalzebul and Zariel aren't part of this original group, but fell from the heavens later. And while the 3rd Edition Monster Manual says that the likes of angels are Made of Good and never lie, steal or do anything evil, even the Book of Exalted Deeds admits that some celestials, like the Warden Archons who closely observe the Material Plane, can be tempted into evil by the same vices that entrap mortals. The 5E Monster Manual is more blunt, and warns that "an angel's moral compass grants it a sense of infallibility that can sometimes spell its undoing." If a celestial being has enough free will to feel things like pride, temptation, or anger, it's possible for it to end up with an Evil alignment despite being made from the heavens themselves.

Conversely, we can assume that a free-willed fiend can theoretically find a path to redemption and switch to a Good alignment despite being Made of Evil, and indeed I hear the Avernus 5E adventure gives players the chance to redeem an archdevil, while the Wizards' website once had articles about a succubus paladin. So why does the BoED suggest it's a waste of time to try to convert a Chaotic Evil demon but not a Chaotic Evil orc?

Mortals just have more freedom and changeability when its comes to alignments, and even in an evil society like the drow's you can find individuals who are better than it, whereas outsiders are to a large extent defined by their alignment. Mortals also have an incentive to change their alignment for the better with the promise that their souls will end up on an Outer Plane that fits them, for good or ill, whereas demons or devils were literally born in the Lower Planes, and know that the heavens want to destroy them.

So if teaching an orc to give up rampaging in the name of Grummsh in favor of having good-natured wrestling tournaments in the name of Kord is difficult, convincing a fiend to become an Ascended Demon is several magnitudes more difficult, like convincing iron to become copper through a compassionate, persuasive argument. It's theoretically possible, and something an epically exalted Good character would seek to do, but it's a lot more practical to just "kill" any fiends you encounter on an adventure to get them off the Material Plane before they cause any more mischief, even if you're trying out the Oath of Redemption Paladin. Good Is Not Dumb, remember.

I know this is how canon treats it, but I never much cared for it. In my homebrew cosmology, there are fallen angels and arisen demons, but they both only make it as far as neutral. The exception are those that changed alignment in the earliest days, when things were more fluid, but then they outright changed outsider type.

Since I used deities-as-powerful-outsiders and deities from all different settings in a kind of Meta Kitchen Sink, an example is Zon-Kuthon from Pathfinder who was a CG celestial but switched alignment in the early days, transforming into a super charged chain devil.

On the flipside, Zariel fell much later and is, therefore, still an angel and only went as far down as Lawful Neutral. She is in Hell, but that's because she's gone absolutely Doom Slayer on the place, fulfilling her orders from Heaven with malicious compliance.

That makes sense from a mathematical perspective, certainly. Say an outsider is up to 50% some combination of Law or Chaos, Good or Evil, and the rest of their alignment is based on their behavior. Even the most dastardly of fallen angels or most repentant of fiends would at best even out as some shade of Neutral.

And that would be a good way to differentiate between mortals from the Material Plane and denizens of the Outer Planes - mortals can completely change their character, reset their moral compass and take up a new alignment, while everything else out there is fundamentally handicapped by being the embodiment of the great ideological forces of the cosmos. Which might lead some angels to have trouble understanding mortals' tendency to do the wrong thing, or some fiends to be jealous of mortals for being able to repent for past mistakes.

Angels fundamentally cannot acting without good intentions, and at worst those intentions can be darkened by zealotry or pride or an overabundance of righteous fury so it comes out to a wash.

Similarly, fiends fundamentally act under some dark impulse or desire, even if they twist it into something halfway resembling benevolence.

One custom demon-god is The Grinding Of Axes, a chaotic neutral deity of vengeance. He patrons anyone who feels they have been justifiably wronged and wants to get even. Evil people are more often than not at the wrong end of that but he is an engine of blind fury disguised as savage justice.

Eberron's immortals use a slightly different approach. (Note that for this I'm drawing from Exploring Eberron and Keith Baker's blog, not much of this usually goes into the corebook because it's not super critical for general use of the setting.)

Eberron's planes are conceptual. Shavarath, for example, is entirely built around the concept of War: war fought for a just end, war fought in the name of imperialism and tyranny, war fought to overthrow that same tyranny from under its boot, war that ravages and destroys without greater cause. Its areas include a WWI-ish stalemate of blasted earth and cloudkill spells, a once-glorious city ravaged by siege, an eternal aerial conflict, a vast naval war, a perpetual guerrilla conflict in Fantasy 'Nam and a Mortal Engines-style region where mobile cities clash, among others. Fernia is the concept of Fire, and has regions expressing aspects of that. And so on.

Celestials, fiends, and other extraplanar creatures that are counted differently (quori count as aberrations, for example) thus embody aspects of their home plane's concept, and have the alignments they do because that's the most appropriate for that aspect. A balor from Shavarath is Chaotic Evil because the aspect of war they express lines up most closely with that alignment: they embody some element of war that is brutal and destructive, without even the pretense of a higher ideal. A balor from Fernia is Chaotic Evil because they embody a destructive element of fire. And so on.

This is generally pretty much fixed. The vast majority of immortals are what they are, and can't grow or learn as mortals do. An angel of Shavarath comes into existence as a mature adult with its perspective already set. It embodies its particular facet of conflict for a greater good, and it may well have done so since before the world of Eberron even existed. Angels of Syrania are usually neutral, passive scholars; they can learn new facts, but it's rare for them to draw personal conclusions from that beyond "I should continue to study this."

Occasionally, you get an anomaly. Perhaps one of Syrania's neutral-aligned scholar-angels travels to the Material Plane to do some research, and becomes corrupted by a desire for mortal worship. Sometimes, a group of nightmare spirits comes to believe that the destiny of their plane is to transform from a realm of darkness into a beacon of light, and it's best to move this along. But this is extremely rare, and can mean that the entity has an unusual degree of identity and free will, that it's been affected by an outside force, or that it expresses an unusual take on the concept it was formed around. Most demons simply don't have the choice to not be a demon, because being a demon is what they came into existence to do.

Mortals get to choose. Mortals can be any alignment. But an immortal is fixed in a way that mortals aren't.

(Another reason you don't see many is that the energy that immortals are formed from has set limits for a given plane and alignment, and a rogue can't be replaced until that energy is recovered by destroying it. An ascended devil will likely be hunted down and destroyed by other devils, so the energy it's made from can be converted back into a non-rogue devil.)

I tend to shape my lore around my players if I'm not using official settings.

If they need me to use gods that Dn D doesn't see usually, Hindu pantheon for example

Edited by heliosKAISER on Nov 26th 2020 at 1:31:27 AM

I had a player ask about Vhaerun, as I use deities from all different settings and drow are not even largely CE in my homebrew, no more than tieflings at least. He argued that Vhaerun's focus on cooperation, equality and mercantilism and encouraging his followers to be "good neighbors" meant he should be TN instead of CE.

So, I read up Vhae boy and decided he was going to be the god of pro-elf, ethnocentric late-stage capitalism trying to create a world where an elf-majority upper class concentrated enough power and resources into their hands that they could flout the rules, exploit the lesser races and indulge in their every hedonistic desire.

Not sure how my player enjoyed that.

Question for a possible character concept.

How much creativity and emotion do Yuan-ti purebloods have, or keep post being transformed from human?

I've been wanting to play a Yuan-ti pureblood for a while, with a varied concept of "petitioned to be transformed but now regrets it" or "was transformed against their will and fights to hold on to humanity". (yes, very VtM, I know )

While musing about what classes might make a good use of this motivation the idea for a Yuan-ti Bard just struck a chord with me (pun intended). The change to Yuan-ti imposing challenges along the lines of Creative Sterility crossed with being forced into a purely technician role in Technician Versus Performer.

I like the idea that they become a sort of consummate actor / performer (and liar) to try and hold on to their past spark, and it allows them to be a party face that can switch the charm and empathy on and off at a moments notice to unnerving effect.

By and large, whatever makes a good story. Yuan-Ti mechanics don't really have any hard and fast mechanics for their emotionless nature (like, they're not even immune to being charmed), nor is there any stat to specifically govern creativity, so it comes down to what your DM thinks, rather than anything else.

So it more comes down to what your DM thinks of your character concept than any specific lore detail.

I'd make it chiefly a matter of roleplaying, but you could give the character specific flaws that reflect their internal struggle. Alternatively, sanity checks to keep track of how well the new pureblood is controlling the ruthless lizard-brain.

Interesting point with them not being immune to being Charmed. I like to run concepts by my DM first to get a feel for the possible, so I do plan on asking. Mostly I'm not sure what, if any, role Yuan-ti have in his setting. He might have them be less evil and emotionless, which would make the concept hard to pull off.

Yeah, it'd mostly just be RP, though having specific flaws to ground it and not flanderize into Mirror Spock would be good. Something like tactlessness or (just to play against type for a Bard) completely blind to anything romantic directed their way or around them.

I like the idea of a tactlessly stoic snake-person insulting everybody, but being too valuable for the rest of the party to kill them. If there is another player going for the opposite performance route, then there could be a great Spock-Mc Coy feud going on for a little bit of comedy. Especially if the story in general is dark enough that some levity is needed.

With all the different beastfolk running around D&D, why isn't there a dogfolk in canon that I know of? Gnolls exist (though hyenas are feliform rather than caniform), werewolves exist, Khenra exist (though they have their odd twin-thing going on); but where are the proper dog-people?

I made a pair of beast-folk, including dog-folk.

Edited by God_of_Awesome on Jan 5th 2021 at 5:43:31 AM

Proper dog people eh?

Like call them the Canixi and be mortal enemies Tabaxi or something?

Edited by Ultimatum on Jan 6th 2021 at 11:32:45 AM

Are they a "natural" evolved species, or magically uplifted dogs? I kinda like the idea in some sci-fi of uplifted dogs having a complicated relationship with humanity, in that they are torn by long-held loyalty towards humanity and feel self-loathing over it, while many of them also want to break free from humanity. If they are the uplifted descendants of ordinary dog-breeds, they might be especially bitter about healh-problems bred into them.

You can do as you like but my general take is taking most any animal-person race and have them be an uplifted animals: gnolls, tabaxi, kobolds, porcine varieties of orcs.

When did the Yeti get horns, and why? In 3rd edition and the original PC-games based on D&D they didn't have horns yet, looking just like white gorillas. The first time I remember seeing any depiction of horned Yetis was in Warcraft III, which I assumed to be a nod to the Wampas in Star Wars.

At least the 4e art gives them horns. Not sure why, but I think they certainly give them more character beyond "arctic white ape".

That Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have a race of brave Mousefolk based off Reepicheep surprises me,on the other hand it's not too surprising since Dungeons and dragons takes it's cues from Lord of the Rings and not Narnia

If it helps, while it's very different from Dungeons & Dragons in basically every respect, there is a culture of sapient rats modelled after Reepicheep in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine.

Weird lore question: other than Githyanki and Mind Flayers, are there civilizations or races a la Red and Green Martians like in A Princess of Mars, or Lunarians / Selenites? Or just "people living on another planet/moon inside the same Prime Material Plane?

Well, depending on which of the possible cosmologies you think the settings fit into (Wot C very explicitly doesn't take a firm stance on that), all the worlds in the Prime Material could just be different planets in the same material universe.

A video on the plane of fire,aka Hell,where everthing burns,even your magical items,and no Holy water can't be boiled in Hell