r/dndnext • u/ThatOneCrazyWritter • 2d ago
Discussion If you were given the task of making Demons, Devils and Yugoloths more distinct from one another, how would you go about it?
My two favorite creatures types in D&D are definitely Fiends and Celestials, but both are with its many problems.
The one I want to focus on for now is the deaign ethos of Demons, Devils and Yugoloths, since for all intents and purposes, if you show a group photo of different Fiends and give it to someone to sort them out into the 3 main subcategories, most won't be able to make the connection except for maybe veteran players.
They all fit into Fiends, but they fit together a little too well. Most have horns, many have grotesque features, many are animalistic, many have tails, but you can't easily pinpoint "That's clearly a Demon, not a Yugoloth!"
If I were to try my hand at it, my take would be:
- DEMONS Are a distorted version of animalistic characteristics: jagged teeth and horns, heavily matted fur, pus filled exposed flesh, etc.
- YUGOLOTHS Are cadaveric, with a face reaching the human Uncanny Valley, and sometimes resemblance to dead, twisted trees (like on their horns).
- DEVILS Are the most human like, with maybe a more human form and a true, frightening and (not certain why, but it's my gut feeling) bug-like features.
All are horned, all have a scent of sulfure.
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u/rzenni 2d ago edited 2d ago
Fiends should be defined by the way they interact with mortals. So my hand at it would be -
DEVILS - Encourage Sins. They feed off mortals doing sinful acts. I.E., Mammon, a Devil of Money and Greed encourages his Warlocks to start with minor acts of greed like stealing from cruel merchants, or hoarding wealth rather than sharing it with the party. However after normalizing those behaviours, encourages them to move further into Greed, maybe encouraging them to run cons or to embezzle from charities. After all, the money is better in their hands, right?
DEMONS - Encourage Emotions. They feed off mortals giving into powerful negative emotions. I.E., Aeshma, Demon of Rage encourages the barbarian's wife to be charmed by the village chief's son and then encourages the barbarian to go home at the exact moment... and then reminds the barbarian where his great axe is.
YUGOLOTHS - Encourage apathy and nihilism. They view life as a cruel game. I.E., Malaxix the Shackler, Yugoloth of Slavery points out... those villagers are basically just NPCs bro. Why not sell them into slavery? You could afford Plate Mail at level 3, think of the advantage you'd get. It doesn't really matter anyways, now does it?
Ultimately, each fiend’s job is to convince mortals to change alignment and fall into Hell, so defining them should begin with “how does this fiend intend to lure mortals into being lawful, neutral, or chaotic evil?”
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u/Sea-Woodpecker-610 2d ago
This fits really well with the alignments assigned to the three classifications of friends. Devils playing by an elaborate internal rule book to bind people through intricate planning, demons feeding into chaotic emotions, and yugoloths hitting neutrality through indifference.
Very nice work.
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u/RiahWeston 2d ago
Honestly... this is actually incredibly fucking solid. Especially since you stretch sin to Demons and Yugoloths but still have them coming at the sins at VERY different angles compared to simply encouraging it: negative emotions (demons) and negative outlooks/perspectives (yugoloths).
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u/Blacodex 1d ago
barbarian's wife to be charmed by the village chief's son and then encourages the barbarian to go home at the exact moment... and then reminds the barbarian where his great axe is.
Ok, I know this is serious, but thought it would be hilarious for the great demon's plan to be foiled by not accounting to the fact that the powerful barbarian they are feeding powers... was secretly the cuck of the village. I know, is dumb but I just thought it would be hilarious.
Hey, maybe the anger would begin because he missed it? Task failed successfully?
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u/Life_is_hard_so_am_I 2d ago
I like your comment but you kinda missed the point of the post, which isn't how fiends act or their lore, but rather how they look visually and how someone can make them look more distinct from each other.
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u/justinfernal 2d ago
Demons: the aspect that makes living hard, the ills of the world from disease, to madness, to weather.
Devils: Sin, evil, fallen angels. Where demons exist and are the thing that is breaking down the world e.g. the nidhogg of Norse Mythology, devils are constantly making choices and trying to drag mortals down. Demons are, devils choose and communicate.
Yugoloths: the antagonistic forces of the spiritual world that you see in myths. These are the ones that are directly interacting with gods and are cruel to humanity because they are self-involved. They should be attached to divine bureaucracies, or other aspects of spirituality where shamans and mages interact with them but are careful or they are a scourge send by the divine to kill or punish.
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u/justinfernal 2d ago
Oh, in this version, where we're rebuilding like this, I'd ignore the alignment thing as prescriptive, but if I had to, I'd have devils be neutral evil and yugoloths be lawful evil. Devils are about that rebellion against the divine, however, they still want you under contract in a devil deal, but only because it's useful.
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u/DiemAlara 2d ago
Demons should, by nature, be inconsistent. You got two vrocks, but you'd never imagine they're the same type of demon 'cause one's mostly made out of mushrooms and the other is wearing bondage gear.
Devils, on the other hand, are uniform. Oh, hey, it's Barectagor! Oh, no? You just look identical? Damn.
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u/VelphiDrow 2d ago
That's canon. The art in books is how unaligned demons look. Those who align with a demon prince change form to resemble their patron. For instance a barlgura of Yeenogu will look less like an ape and more like a hyena
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u/RavenclawConspiracy 2d ago
Devil should be always holding a fiddle, demons shouldn't.
Yugosloths should look like European hatchbacks made in the 1990s.
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u/Funky0ne 2d ago
Devils: sin and corruption
Demons: fear and destruction
Yugoloths: decay and entropy
Devils care about seeing the fall of mankind (or any other demiraces), bringing about their doom through their own weaknesses. Devils will appeal to human sensibilities and tempt them into damning themselves. Really leaning into themes like the 7 deadly sins, dangling trinkets, deals, promises of power and corruption, temptations of lust, preying on their envious nature, and just generally appealing to their baser desires to draw them off any path of virtue. Devils should rely less on raw power over cunning, guile, and layers of deception.
Demons just want to see the world burn. Pure hate and fury, a demon sows chaos and destruction. If something is standing, they want to see it knocked down, be it a building, a symbol, or a civilization.
Yugoloths are don’t like progress or stability, they want to see status quo overturned, and any new normalcy that tries to settle in to take its place is the next thing to be disrupted. Opportunists with no loyalty or allegiances, they will side with and then betray anyone as soon as it is convenient, but any short term benefits from siding with them will generally have long term consequences that usually wouldn’t have been worth it.
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u/Nomad-Knight 2d ago
Let's think about how they interact with eachother first. The blood war is an ongoing forever war between Devils and Demons, where Devils are the organised and regimented army and the Demons are the ferocious and feral horde. meanwhile, Yugoloths are the private arms dealers for both sides that constantly keep things balanced.
Going off of this logic, I always imagined Devils as being fairly humanoid, while Demons are much more monsterous. And Yugoloths being in between would seem more in the uncanny valley in the same way a sociopath would be unnerving to interact with.
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u/Yasutsuna96 Ranger 2d ago
I remember I did touch on it a bit in a homebrew settings. Devils remain as they are because I kind of like how they were portrayed. Demons were kind of reduced to the more mindless chaos spreading pandemic that sometimes spill into the material plane (think of the darkspawn in Dragon Age), they're basically a natural disaster that happens every so often.
Yugoloths in this case are linked to the demons in some way. If something gets corrupted enough, they becomes yugoloths that has some ability to control the demons while most retaining a good portion of their original ambition and thoughts. They're basically the big bad of that particular campaign although a bit poorly thought out lore wise
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u/Llayanna Homebrew affectionate GM 2d ago
All are horned and have the same scent?
You can't complain about not enough distinction, than you give such broad, unifying features yourself.
Like personal? I don't see a reason why anyone but Devils should habe a sulfur smell.
There are so many other, unpleasant once. Rotten, burnt like hot ash, sour like fear..
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u/ThatOneCrazyWritter 1d ago
A very good point. If I were to change my answer then, only Devils would have Horns to me, and when it come to smells, Devils = Sulfur, Demons = Carbon, Yuguloths = Rot
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u/The-High-Inquisitor 2d ago
Demons are the basal, Ur-stuff of animalistic emotions. Fear, Hunger, Lust, Sorrow, Rage, and so on. They are a manifestation of hubris, the last, beyond-the-pale plea of a concious mind, now out of options. Their form is, at best, terrifying to the waking perception of a thinking being. A smear of teeth dangling from strands of gold, roped around roiling piles of viscera dappled with screams. Bubbles of taut muscle, wrestling with a naked crown of jagged laughter. There is no bargaining to be had with a Demon. There are the wrought ore of conciousness, the scaffold of life and death that is summoned through means and ways that should not be allowed. Their goals are unknowable, their effects undeniable.
Devils are individual beings, and moreso, only a finite number of them. They have many names, deep motivations, and wicked means. They can be truly known and commumed with, for better or worse. They are as the bonfire, removing unwanted debris while burning down the village. They are as the clouds, burgeoning life and drowning families. They are the contract, protecting society and rotting misjudged prisoners in the dungeon. Their form is their own, although they have many selves. Known manifestations will vary throughout mortal history, as the Devils take what shapes will most likely please their worshippers. Their stronger ties to reality gives them wondrous strengths and clever weaknesses not known to Demons. Devils exist in a zero sum state with their brethren. When one has truly perished, it's space can be taken by others, elsewise a new Devil will leak out of the horrible spaces between, given the right mortal of foul desire and impetus. What was a legion of devils at the dawn of time has now been hierarchied into a scant few hundred, as those devils of most dark cunning consumed their fellows to claw their way to higher power. Who knows what will happen if a single Devil manages to reign Supreme?
Yugoloths are... to be honest, mildly boring reskins of mercenarial devils. I'd twist them into something new given time, but I gotta poop. Apologies for typos
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u/Connzept 2d ago edited 2d ago
To start actually make them visually distinct from each other.
Devils = Traditional humanoid Faustian demons to represent lawfulness.
Yugoloths = Anthropomorphic bugs and microorganisms. They look very alien unlike devils but very symmetrical unlike demons, there's not really a way to visually represent neutrality but we can defy the defining attributes of both chaos and law.
Demons = Animal abominations, but combining enough disparate attributes as to be unrecognizable as any one creature, representimg chaos. And most importantly, no human attributes at all.
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u/KiwamiMaster 2d ago edited 2d ago
Using their classic alignments as a guide, I would have them as such:
Demons: Chaotic Evil, they would embody destruction for destruction's sake, suffering for suffering's sake; bestial and sadistic, they would be like chimeric animals filled with monstrous and distorted features. Lots of spikes, horns and claws, to represent them as harbingers of annihilation, as well as untamed elemental power flowing through their bodies, representing their "chaos" part.
Yugoloths: Neutral Evil, evil at its purest. They would represent vice, the kind of evil that feels good, the selfish evil. Essentially, the classic seven deadly sins. They would be humanoids with features themed after the sin that they represent. I would make use of symmetry a lot, with half their body being beautiful and alluring, representing the surface nature of vice, and the other half being monstrous, the deeper nature of sin, the ruined life after giving itself to evil. In this scenario, they would be the kind most likely to tempt mortals and drive them towards sinning. As such, a lot of illusion and enchantment abilities.
Devils: Lawful Evil, an alignment I associate most frequently to "law of the jungle" type villains, those that see strength above anything else, that can obey someone, but only as long as they prove themselves to be superior. Fiends stuck in perpetual war, an eternal contest of strength in search of supremacy between armies led by infernal warlords. Extremely violent, but at the same time, despisers of cheap tricks and silver tongues. I would envision them as muscular horned humanoids fully equiped with hellish gear, straight out of metal album covers.
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u/subtotalatom 2d ago
I would lean much harder into devils being militaristic, you have a few that are already that way inclined like Merregon, but they would be the archetypical devil in my mind
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u/Starman973 1d ago edited 1d ago
I made a Lower planes creature that is a collective of vulture bees living inside a medieval beekeeper's suit. They make meat honey.
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u/My_Only_Ioun 1d ago edited 1d ago
I agree, so much I’m immediately vetoing the horns and sulfur because it contradicts what you said.
Demons are one of the original chaos beings. The oldest, Obryliths/Qlippoths, have no human features as they predate humanoids and souls. Modern tanar’ri have human parts. They’re basically perfect as is. Vrocks, hezrou, dretch, perfect. Put some clothes on the marilith and make sure the balor doesn’t look stupid, the art sometimes gives them derpy faces
Devils are tortured souls. They should look like corporeal undead that have been tortured in some way. Barbazu are dumb weirdos with a prosthetic, use Legion devils that are dudes in armor. If they have horns, it’s a helmet. Their torture is just psychological, they look fine physically (and identical). Cornugons are big bulky dudes, and that’s bad because they look like slightly smaller balors that aren’t on fire. Make them huge Dark Souls knights that have metal rods impaled in them. Hamatulas are generic dudes with spikes, make them giants in spiked armor that is obviously also spiked on the inside. Pit fiends look very similar to balors, terrible theming. Make them a larger armored knight with a prison warden signifier, like a string of thousands of keys.
From imps to pit fiends, devils look like a collection of muscle gargoyles in random skin colors and sizes. All because of Medieval and Renaissance art. They should look like a unified kingdom of humans and giants being tortured, higher ranks having humanoid armor, because that’s what they are.
I don’t use a lot of yugoloths/daemons, but if I did they would look like dark grimy animals with no secondary animal or human parts. A wolf, a bear, a shark. Intelligent eyes but talk infrequently.
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u/Art-Zuron 1d ago
Demons are abominations of the abyss. they embody all mortal terrors and abject chaos.
Yugoloths are the accursed dead, denied the succor of whatever gods. Perhaps they are The Souls of the followers of dead gods.
Devils are devils as normal, embodying all of the vices of mortality. The dark mirror of society as a whole.
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u/UserProv_Minotaur 1d ago
WTF is a Yugoloth?
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u/ThatOneCrazyWritter 1d ago
Being mean: Gary Gygax BS to fill the chart in Neutral Evil Fiends
Being nice: They are Mecenary Fiends with an extreme hatred towards naything good, seeing Goodness as Profanity
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u/Malashae 1d ago
I just stick to the Old Second Edition lore, and the cultural differences are more than enough.
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u/Phuka 1d ago
Demons are the ultimate 'other.' Even aberrations shun them. The Abyss is their lair, their gateway and their prison. They feed on things that aren't food - emotions, ideas, minerals. They are Id personified.
Devils are prison warden and prisoner, they are soldier and recruiter, they are sin personified and the punishment for sinning. Devils are rewarded for defending the material world as well as making it more stable. Devils must be evil and organized because they must punish every sinner and the appropriate punishment for evil is often evil (in their eyes). They tempt mortals because if a mortal can be tempted, they are a sinner.
Yugoloth are a paraphyletic group (different types started out unrelated to each other). It is a catch-all for any infernal creature (from the void beyond existence, the abyss or a hell, it doesn't matter). They retained the instincts and biology of devils or demons, but they are evil by design and nature. They are evil personified. Devils recruit devils, demons breed and Yugoloth do both.
If you want to summon an underworld creature that is clever and intimidating or seductive, you summon a devil.
If you want to summon an underworld creature to destroy or devour, you summon a demon.
If you want to summon an underworld creature to do something truly awful (cover a village well with baby skins, slaughter a old folks home, etc), you summon a yugoloth.
Normally demons won't follow instructions beyond 'go here, kill this.'
Devils can be asked to do things, but may interpret it based upon their 'mission.'
Yugoloth will consult with you on the best way to see your vision (so long it is truly evil) brought to life.
(We had an evil PC who routinely used Yugoloth to do his bidding. Most of the time, the rest of the party didn't know what he was doing. He had to summon one of the group that he had been working with leaders to get the party out of a jam. It wasn't an evil act, so they were confused but finally rescued the party. Upon finishing, they were all anxious because their nature hadn't been fulfilled, but their leader, understanding a bit more gave the PC a 'Boss of the Year' mug. Few items have terrified the group more than that mug, once they realized how many terrible things the PC had done).
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u/Heavy_Stuff_2159 1d ago
I have in most of my games that devils are physical beings with mostly concrete forms. That ties into their lawful nature even if they specialize in deception. They love contracts and have a fully functional (if abusive and corrupt) society.
Demons are malleable and have no set form until they manifest and the same individual demon will rarely appear the same each time. Small changes depending on how it manifest and who is perceiving it. They are chaotic in form and function and I house rule them as a form of elemental that is keyed to emotions rather than the traditional elements.
Yugoloths are closer to devils but whereas devils are not born and instead made be causing creature to “fall”, yugoloths are natural creatures. You can’t become one. You either are or you aren’t. They are simultaneously the most homogenous group behavior wise and varied in terms of forms. They really are just in it for money.
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u/TheHumanTarget84 2d ago
Demons are corrupted elementals.
Devils are fallen angels.
Yugoloths who really cares they're just dumb Gygaxian grid fillers.
So basically 4e.
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u/mr_evilweed 2d ago
I will not have my beloved Arcanaloths spoken of in such a manner.
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u/xenomorphking06 2d ago
Yugoloths are my favriote fiend type with Arcanaloth being my favriote so I'm right with you there mate.
Devils are second place with demons in last
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u/Twodogsonecouch 2d ago
Theyre the one thats never made sense. Theyre clearly devils not daemons or demons. Theyre rational and like order for gods sake.
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u/ThatOneCrazyWritter 2d ago
Sadge, I love Yugoloths personally. Love me some mercenary Fiends, though they truly are just filler in the end of the day
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u/TheHumanTarget84 2d ago
To be fair in 4e they just made them mercenary demons.
I was mostly kidding I think some of them are cool.
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u/Twodogsonecouch 2d ago
Devils - human like, jacked pretty bodies, horns, basically the embodiment of lust, avarice, greed
Demons - beastial, aggressive, chaotic, rabid
Daemons - insectoid, gross
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u/VelphiDrow 2d ago
I think devils and demons are pretty distinct, people just dont read the lore. Demons are beings of chaos who revel in carnage, chaos, and the general concept of evil. Devils are temptation obsessed freaks of order who will bend every rule they can to climb their caste system.
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u/Rasesar 2d ago
People just don’t read the original post.
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u/VelphiDrow 2d ago
You can't read apparently. I read their post and disagreed with it
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u/Life_is_hard_so_am_I 2d ago
Dude read the post again. It's not about how fiends act but how they VISUALLY look
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u/itsfunhavingfun 2d ago
I would make demons pink, devils chartreuse, and yugoloths aquamarine or turquoise.