i always liked how they looked like aliens, and the idea of opportunistic schemer fiends just makes a lot of sense
although it was always weird the most prominent characters were all furries

>>95900570 (OP)
They never really seemed to have a role beyond "play both demons and devils against each other for profit", and most yugoloth/daemons you were likely to see the rare few times they show up were just evil furries.
One good thing Pathfinder did was give daemons more of a defined role and theme, although that did come from appropriating some of the role of demons. In PF devils are like they are in DnD, embodying lawful evil and tyranny and seeking to dominate the universe, while demons are born from and embody sins and seek to spread their sins to create more demons. Daemons, meanwhile, embody a nihilistic kind of evil that just wants to see the universe burn and all life extinguished, and different daemon types embody different means of death.

Only the Ultoloths have a good concept and visual design. The other types were too generic. Their biggest advocate on the internet for a long time was a literal furry tranny, so that probably didn't help.

>>95900657
>Their biggest advocate on the internet for a long time was a literal furry tranny
Who?

>>95900672
A guy who went by Shemeska(female character) on the Wizards of the Coast forums. He megapoasted about Yugoloths all the time and wrote a lot of fanfiction centered around Arcanoloths(the furry caste).

>>95900710
Plenty of people who aren't trans use female character names, though Shemeshka also had a male symbol in her/his sheet anyway so I'm not sure how it works here
Arcanaloth fanfiction is undoubtedly furry as shit though

>>95900720
No the guy writing about Shemeshka trooned out.

>>95900570 (OP)
>yugoloths are underrated
I feel that way about demodands. Just a bunch of fat bastards who seem to want nothing but put people in cages and poke them with pointy sticks. Perfectly basic, perfectly functional.

I like the yugoloths with one human hand for contract signing

>>95900570 (OP)
Everyone uses them wrong.
They're all backstabbing mercenaries.
Some are corporate. Some are military.
All work for the highest bidders.

>>95900641
PF's portrayal if daemons as malicious embodiments of death/entropy is objectively one of the coolest fiend depictions out there.
A much more original, and creepier, look at Neutral Evil than Yugoloths imo.

>>95900641
I first read about PF's fiends and when I later read about the D&D ones, I was a bit disappointed.

>>95904472
>>95904471
You lack imagination.
>>95901045
Agreed.
>>95900720
Shemeska had good ideas about 'loth's, but went sideways after a couple years. He certainly had material worth mining for gems.

>>95905852
>You lack imagination
Nah, Paizo just had a better idea than JotC.

battleloths are the funniest shit in d&d tbqh
>+1 weapon that can bite your enemy on its own turn, but also will ask your enemy to pay it better and if they do it'll turn on you

>>95900570 (OP)
I've only ever used them once in a campaign: They subcontracted the PCs to do their job for them (retrieve a demon's weapon from a devil) in exchange for some piece of information the PCs had no gold or souls to pay the yugoloths for otherwise.
That 'loth on the left looks fucking stupid by the way.

>>95900570 (OP)
What's up with baernaloths anyway?

>>95908757
>archfiends bow to the baernaloths
>in contact with the upper planes
>rumoured to possess psychic abilities
>control hades with an iron fist
>own castles and banks all over the lower planes
>direct descendants of the ancient primordial bloodline
>will bankroll the first cities in the far realm
>own basically every DNA editing research facility on the planes
>first designer babies were be baernaloth babies
>all said to have 200+ IQ
>ancient Zakharan scriptures tell of fiends who will descend upon the lower planes and will bring an era of pain and unprecedented suffering with them
>They own Nanobot R&D labs around the planes
>Your PCs likely have baernabots inside them right now
>The baernaloths are in regular communication with the solars Felarathael and Lashrael, forwarding the word of Ao to the Court of Corellon
>They learned fluent Abyssal in under a week
>Nation states entrust their gold reserves with the baernaloths. There's no gold in the Counting House in Baldur's Gate, only in Hades
>The baerns are about 40,000 years old, from the space-time reference point of the base primer.
>In reality, they are timeless beings existing in all points of time and space from the baern bang to the end of the universe
>The baernaloths will guide the planes into a new age of ignorance, war and hate

>>95908757
I always liked the theory that they were survivors from a previous kalpa or iteration of the multiverse. They possessed the accumulated knowledge of all the eons and then some, but were so old and had gone through so much trauma over their inconceivably long lives that they were all batshit crazy and it wasn't clear how competent they still were. Kind of like evil Yodas; eccentric crones who may or may not be worth paying attention to.

>>95905922
So...what you're saying is Neutral Evil fiends would not be mercenaries and would rather obsess over specific entropies?
Sounds retarded.

>>95910874
>would
?
Anyway, Paizo's idea is more compelling, it gives NE fiends a solid theme and allows for easy mnemonics like "Drowning Daemon" when it comes to the specific varieties, so you don't need to remember the fancy-schmancy proper names. Not to mention their head honchos are Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that's just cool.
Meanwhile yugoloths are ALL disloyal mercenaries, their identity is tied to a conflict between other factions. Without the Blood War, they're just monsters and furries that ping on Fiend detectors.

>>95911472
NTA but I'm just not really sold on the concepts of Paizo's daemons, they just seem like another flavour of 'destroy everything' and we already have demons for that

>>95910874
>>95911472
The thing about the mercenary aspect is that it's not completely removed from the PF version. Szuriel, the Horseman of War (Genodice, really) is known to hire out her daemons as merc armies to anyone stupid enough to use their services. Said morons are depressingly common.

>>95913465
The difference is thus:

Demons want to turn everything into a cruel and anarchic hellscape where they can do anything they want all the time because they're stronger, and what they want to do is various mortal sins since they're embodiments of thoses. They want shit to continue to exist because if shit didn't exist they couldn't do anything.

Daemons on the other hand want to kill everything down to the last microbe. They genuinely wish everything everywhere was dead, including other daemons. Once the Daemons kill everything else in the universe, they'll kill each other until only one is left, and that last one will kill itself. The goddess of death lets a demon and a devil stand in front of the gate that leads to Abaddon(the plane of Daemons) to try to convince Neutral Evil souls filled with destructive nihilism to go to either Hell or the Abyss because that's preferable to literally everyone else in existence.

>>95913522
I kinda play like them because my Daemons also have a lot of well made 3.5 Yugoloth conversions I found online.
So not all are nihilistic, some are just egotistical other egotistical, greedy and opportunistic but attached to the world so they are mercenaries.
Same way you can play Devils as mafiosos, sort of commies, sort of fascists and even anti-heroes from their point of view.
Demons - infinite ways, like the layers of the Abyss

>>95913954
Sounds like the first would be baatezu and the second would be tanar'ri.

>>95916687
>Sounds like the first would be baatezu
Devils don't want anarchy.

>>95916687
Lorelet moment

>>95916687
>>95916746
>the second would be tanar'ri
The tanar'ri don't want to destroy everything either. In fact I don't know of a tanar'ri type that does apart from maybe some balors and Orcus.
Demons annihilating everything and then themselves would be a consequence of their nature, not a reflection of their desires.
Demons want different things. Pazuzu wants to corrupt good-aligned mortals into evil. Vrocks want to torture things. Mariliths want to lead armies and fight worthy opponents. Graz'zt wants to have sex. Et cetera.

>>95916687
Yeah, this is the problem I have with them, broadly. They just kind of feel like they could fit into baatezu/tanar'ri divides, which yugoloths couldn't

>>95911472
Yugoloths and PF Daemons are so different they could coexist in the same setting without stepping on each other's toes, so doing a direct 'which one is better' comparison seems unnecessary. You're right that the Blood War kind of stunted the thematic development of the Yugoloths though. There was no way for them to develop a proper identity and find their place in the sun when the Law vs Chaos conflict always overshadowed everything involving the lower planes.

>>95916835
One comparison I've seen in some book was that baatezu were like an organized evil army, while the tanar'ri were like a screaming horde of psychos. While the Blood War is going, sure, Babau and Molydeus are herding the rest into it, but without a proper common enemy and clear roles? Who knows. Tanar'ri are probably chaotic enough that long-term plans only work out of dumb luck.

>>95918724
Correct. One analogy I like is think of everyone in the realms as black people, devils as American police officers, and demons as serial killers that exclusively target blacks. Don't let that make you think devils are better, though. Devils and demons are equally dangerous, the former is just more predictable.
Even a common enemy isn't enough to "organize" the tanar'ri, really. Graz'zt, Demogorgon and Orcus are still fighting each other as the Blood War goes on.

>>95919288
This is probably the most retarded post ever to grace this board in a while.

They are the worst archetype.
I outright replaced them in my setting by a different neutral evil species who's basically ultra utilitarian.
Laws exist and are useful, until they aren't.
Breaking your word is useful but break it too much and people don't trust you anymore.
They don't like soul business because it also endangers them.

They're also extremely xenophobic and they apply fascism/dictatorship on anyone that isn't them and apply anarchism to their own (because they ultimately have all the same goal).
I adapt their neutrality to an extreme sense of survival and pack mentality and the evil to an extreme sense of selfishness and "dehumanization" of anyone that isn't them.

>>95919476
I found it to be a humorous and truthful analogy myself.

>>95916687
I think that Pathfinder's Demons and Daemons should be swapped. Nihilistic obsession with snuffing life fits more Chaotic Evil while increasing suffering seems more Neutral Evil.

Maybe not "should" it's too late for that, but they do feel like their goals would fit better if switched.
>>95918418
I agree.

>>95920401
Nihilistic obsession with snuffing life fits evil. Doing it in a chaotic manner, i.e. randomly killing without a system in mind, fits chaotic evil. Doing it in an ordered manner fits lawful evil.

>Orcus bows to the Yugoloths

>>95913954
D&D'S Orcus is the same and I like his version better because life simply annoys him. He wants all heartbeats to stop so he can finally have some eternal peace and quiet.

>>95900570 (OP)
What do you think is the deal with the General of Gehenna? Is he even real, or an inherited title, or what? Does he actually give orders?

I ran them over 10 years ago in a 3.5 game as the ultimate bad guys of the campaign, the party discovers the Blood War could have ended a long ass time ago but the 'loths were keeping that from happening so they can continue easy war profiteering (I sure didn't come up with it but I don't remember what sourcebook I stole it from). Demons were ravening lunatics unable to accomplish much despite their power and numerical advantages, and devils were too busy being bureaucrats to wipe them out. This the 'loths, being entirely selfish, nihilistic, opportunistic bastards were able to play them both easily. I played them as half Gus Fring, half kid frying ants with a magnifying glass. Nowadays I think 9 point alignment is fucking dumb so I likely wouldn't include them in my setting.

>>95923804
Dunno about yugoloths, but it's been implied in at least one comic that celestials push the war on because if it ended, the winner would be everyone else's problem.

>>95923855
I don't remember which comic but I stole that too. It was one particular solar who was doing it, and some pissed off eladrin found out, but since they were perma-banned from Celestia for being edgy CG assholes and even guardinals wanted nothing to do with them, they press-ganged the party into going to LG heaven and tattling on his boss. They succeeded, he fell and turned into a horned devil that the party fought some time later.
I'm getting nostalgic and I sort of want to run another game now, but in 2025 am I going to run into "You included a gay character and he isn't 100% perfect and morally flawless, you're a literal fascist and deserve to die" and "You included a gay character and he isn't a 100% twisted, deranged caricature, you're a literal fascist and deserve to die"? I'm too old for that shit nowadays.

>>95923855
I think the most good-aligned action to take regarding the Blood War would be to simply let it happen and keep it contained in the Lower Planes. Devious shit like secretly pushing the war on doesn't fit good-aligned modus operandi.
>>95923968
Shouldn't a fallen solar have become unique devil like Zariel or Malkizid?

>>95924095
>become unique devil
Correction: become a unique devil

>>95923804
Nice concept, but
>wipe them out
The Abyss itself would just shit out a new type of demon if the tanar'ri were wiped out. War would continue.
That's if the devils could wipe out the tanar'ri in the first place, which I think they couldn't. The devils would overextend themselves trying to occupy the Abyss, face a tanar'ri insurgency, and eventually be kicked out. The Abyss would ebb, but not yield.

>>95924095
I was half cribbing existing lore and half making up my own shit. I also wanted him to be a boss fight without having the party get into epic levels.

>>95923804
>Nowadays I think 9 point alignment is fucking dumb so I likely wouldn't include them in my setting.
Based. Do you use anything else instead or just ignore the concepts of an alignment system?

>>95926035
As much as it pains me to type this, anon, I've been almost entirely nogames since that group split and we went our separate ways. I've certainly not met enough nerds IRL that I would be willing to put the required work to D/GM for since. But if I did...I would certainly ignore alignment as far as PCs are concerned, but maybe capital-letter Good/Evil, Law/Chaos exist on a cosmic scale so I can keep using Planescape-y cosmology and outsiders everyone is familiar with.

>>95924095
Yeah, the oddest part of the comic is that I think it was a LG one shown doing that, too, like a solar aasimon or something. He also pulled a pretty smug "oops" where he granted a flawed wish to a fiend, and also "forgot" to tell him tima passed differently in the plane they were at.

>>95923968
I'm not sure why a gay character would have to be brought up to begin with, like, it's not like they're supposed to be making out in front of everyone 24/7 in a D&D campaign world.
You're also more likely to be required to go that way if you, for some reason, are running 5e.

>>95926583
>I'm not sure why a gay character would have to be brought up to begin with
Do you not write your NPC's families into your games, or even have them mention them? I did, and every great once in a while they were gay. In particular, I shamelessly ripped off the gay blacksmith couple from Dragon Age Origins for the party's enchanted arms dealer/fence, and one adventure I stole from that Samurai Jack episode with the Spartans was about them rescuing a dwarven Sacred Band of Thebes from a golem army. I wrote them as normal fucking people of their demographic who had personalities beyond their sexuality and so modern leftoids will want me dead for not having them be absolutely flawless Mary Sues and and modern rightoids will want me dead for not having them be pedophiles who are trying to get their kids to chop their dicks off

>>95926685
Fags (pedos) are far less than 10% of the human population and not at all normal. They also reproduce by bad touching children and have no place in any rpg where you're not killing fictional fags (pedos).

>>95923968
Fags all go to Hell where they belong.

>>95913954
Demons are all different. They're all evil, but they don't have a unifying theme other than might makes right and each does what it wants. If a demon wanted to create a beautiful heaven and fill it good aligned souls it can torment whenever they displease it, it surely could and would. Just look at the Christian deity. He's absolutely a demon. One moment he's acting all holier than thou and the next he's genociding babies and encouraging his followers to rape and pillage. Don't believe me? Read your bibles people. It's all in there as clear as day. Want examples?

www.evilbible.com

Verify that shit for yourself using your own bibles.

>>95918374
Yugoloths are mercenaries. Why?
Maximum profit, maximum power, maximum suffering by any and all means necessary as long as the end results make as many souls as possible miserable. They don't give a shit about nihilism. Even nihilism would just be a means to an end. They're the ultimate devious, backstabbing, two-faced assholes.

>>95926685
>I wrote them as normal fucking people of their demographic who had personalities beyond their sexuality
Sort of my point. Did their sexuality even come up?

>>95928266
You read that far into my post to quote it but apparently missed the part where I mentioned their families? Fucking disingenuous retard.

>>95927259
Why is it that you reeking, screeching, malformed subhumans absolutely cannot stop thinking about child/adult sex.
It absolutely DOMINATES your tiny minds, next to black cocks.

There's no such thing as a bait too obvious for /tg/.

>Canoloth: blind yugoloth with long tentacle tongue
>Echinoloth: blind yugoloth with long tentacles
>Voor: blind yugoloth with long tentacles
What the fuck where they thinking

>>95929870
you forgot to mention how canaloths disable teleportation within 60 feet

>>95900570 (OP)
These two guys should have been aliens instead of fiends.

>>95932689
I also forgot how all three are known to eat the things they kill.

>>95932717
Then they'd just be obyriths.

>>95935699
Primordial evils that existed before the first mortals were even thought of is a sadly underused idea. Evils made from mortal souls should be nothing more than foot troops to the true horrors that are out there.

>>95942401
Nah, Pathfinder had it right, they should be enemies like qlippoth and demons are.

>>95942401
I liked that one 4e idea where the demons were a primordial evil, and the devils were actually angels who waged a war against them so long that they turned evil too.

>>95919288
>think of everyone in the realms as black people

>>95929250
>copes, seethes, and projects, but forgets to dilate
Why are you so obsessed with other people's kids?

>>95900570 (OP)
>yugoloths are underrated
They are better than trabantloths and ladaloths

>>95955648
I was going to accuse you of bumpfaggotry, but this is a pretty funny pun.

>He's STILL at it 4 days later. Bringing up not only child rape but gaping crotchwounds out of nowhere
Damn, autism + sexual starvation + tranime have really done a number on you dweebs.
It'd be funny if it weren't so degenerate.

>>95950080
>He's STILL at it 4 days later. Bringing up not only child rape but gaping crotchwounds out of nowhere
Damn, autism + sexual starvation + tranime have really done a number on you dweebs.
It'd be funny if it weren't so degenerate.

>>95913954
Are you just a fag who has to show his hate boner for the Bible or do you just have that kinda of habit of giving unwanted opinions

>>95957976
Opps sorry man wrong guy
Meant for >>95927305

>>95935699
That's still a demon, I said they had to be actual aliens.

>>95959470
Aren't ilithids actual aliens?

>>95960748
Yup. Possibly from a very distant future, but I'm not sure if that's a later addition.

Now I'm remembering that they never brought back the THOON illithids

>>95948212
You don't even have to think, playing Baldur's Gate 3 is sufficient.

>>95966796
Welp, the other anon had bring up human races, obviously someone was gonna bring up 5e. Thread's over I guess.

>>95960748
Yes, but they are another archetype of alien.

>>95961148
I think that was part of the original lore but got retconned later.

>Devils
>Daemons
>Demons
>Demonads
>Divs
>Obyriths
>Kytons
>Asuras
>Rakshas
Why?

>>95968351
The future part I read in a 2e or 3e book.
The Illithid planet was in Dragon Magazine at least in the AD&D 1e era, or maybe earlier.

Post-3e canon really doesn't matter, to be fair.

>>95968791
You forgot Gehreleths

>>95968791
You forgot Oni
>>95971182
Those are Demodands

>>95900641
FPBP.

>>95968791
Hop off Obyriths, buddy.