Aug25
on August 25, 2016
Sympathy for the Devils
Devils are a classic D&D foe inspire, of course, by the mythological “Devil” figure as a corrupter and tempter. Lawful evil and proud of it, they are the creatures that buy your soul and make deals, which their lawful nature forces them to abide by to the word. It’s a classic archetype from myth and legend with two small problems.
- Devils don’t have anything in their stat blocks to really give them special powers to either take souls or award bonuses in exchange for souls.
- They don’t really get any bonuses or benefits for claiming souls.
What devils do with souls in the D&D cosmology has come up a few times, but it’s unclear. In some sources they’re traded as currency, which means devils are making deals basically for money. But souls seem like a pretty inconvenient form of money, especially if they’re squirming larvae. You’d expect the devil to gain some sort of power from gaining souls, not just a fatter wallet.
I’ve always liked that there’s never been a clearly defined explanation of how these things work, mechanically, because the GM should be able to set them as best befits the story. What a devil offers should be contextual, and change depending on what the party most wants at the time, and would be potentially willing to sacrifice their soul for. Likewise, what selling one’s soul could mean for the party would also best be handled by the GM, since it should make the party regret their decision. If it were prescribed by the rules, and penalized combat ability, then a party whose campaign focuses heavily on intrigue and social skills would be fools not to take the deal, while if it caused a penalty to social skills, then a dungeon delving party would have no reason not to take the deal.
I think that best of all is to play genie with it and make the offer and punishment poetically linked – the party of noble paladins and clerics asks for the power to defeat the evil lich, so they get turned into vampires; one embroiled in Game of Thrones-level corrupt nobles asks for the ability to discern the truth when someone lies to them, so they are no longer able to lie or even hide truths themselves.
That’s completely reasonable and logical. Which is why I ignored that idea: reasonable concepts make for terrible comic strips. Comedy comes from illogic and absurdity.
Hah! Fair enough.
I totally agree with L.A. DuBois. I used to have devilish fiends appear in hours of distress and propose pacts to the party. The counterbalance wouldn’t be the soul of a PC (something that has no way to affect a campaign, unless the PC dies and you want to raise him back), but some deed to be done lest the unflulfilling party incur in a tremendous curse.
The deed itself didn’t seem evil at first, but would deeply affect the course of the campaign toward its end, giving a darker turn to later events.
(“Don’t worry! The temple is protected from the undead by holy relics buried within the catacombs.” “Wait, like those we collected 3 months ago and distributed amongst smaller shrines across the country?”)
Common adage: “If you stat it, they will kill it.”
General form: “If it is measured and quantified, players will find and use means to exploit it.”
Specific instance: “If the benefits that can be claimed from receiving or stealing someone’s soul are ever standardized, codified, and/or homogenized, players will find some way to steal/trade souls themselves to reap the benefits, alignment be (literally) damned.”
Devils become more powerful with every soul they get, that’s implied lots of times. And I like that it’s not part of the stat blocks :-)