I am a huge Planescape fan, but I wouldn't shoehorn that cosmology anywhere else.

I also like the 4e concept of planes that peek through the prime material in certain places.

Quote from: TJS;1033956I'm really not seeing why redundancy is bad or why one would want Demons or devils to have a consistent visual identity.

Ask yourself the inverse in question form. Why are a bazillion redundant demon synonyms good? Why do you want demons and devils to look random?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1035184I am a huge Planescape fan, but I wouldn't shoehorn that cosmology anywhere else.

I also like the 4e concept of planes that peek through the prime material in certain places.

4E's Planar Axis was my favorite of all the published settings... it made all four of the main realms (Feywild, Shadowfell, Astral Sea and Elemental Chaos) easily habitable (changing the 'infinite realms of fire, air, earth and water' into one realm where all there countless pockets of the elements (if you can call a continent made of fire a pocket) constantly interacting with each other is someplace adventurers can actually go) at least for the duration of an adventure.

That said, my preference leans more towards a more 'parallel worlds' sort of planes (like the Feywild or Shadowfell only applying to every plane). So the Elemental Chaos would be a parallel world where all the elements were turned up to eleven and each of the gods (or groups of gods) had their own parallel world and their clerics are basically living portals to the power emanating from their god's realm. The Abyss would be a shattered world where the demons rule.

And they all overlap, separated only by the fact that they all resonate at a different dimensional frequency... but where those frequencies overlap there are breaches between the worlds that beings can cross through.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037316Ask yourself the inverse in question form. Why are a bazillion redundant demon synonyms good? Why do you want demons and devils to look random?

Well, if you look at sources in medieval art and folklore about Demons, they have a stunning diversity of forms.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1037633Well, if you look at sources in medieval art and folklore about Demons, they have a stunning diversity of forms.

"My name is Legion, for we are many."

Personally, I prefer demonic forces that have no set form, but adopt whatever form they need to accomplish their purposes; either by possession or shapeshifting. Of course, I also favor this approach for angelic forces as well and the notion that the main distinction between angels and demons is whom they serve.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037784Personally, I prefer demonic forces that have no set form, but adopt whatever form they need to accomplish their purposes; either by possession or shapeshifting. Of course, I also favor this approach for angelic forces as well and the notion that the main distinction between angels and demons is whom they serve.

Back in the early days of Exalted (1e), the Fair Folk were much like this: formless entities that exist outside the world but have to construct forms (and roles) for themselves when they want to come play in reality. It made for great monsters, but fuck me if I could ever figure out how those were supposed to be playable PCs.

Playable would be Exalted's problem. I'd never make anything like that playable for PCs unless they were permanently locked into some form or another (or it was a Superhero game where that sorta shape shifting was their power).

Agreed though that for NPCs/monsters it's fantastic on both sides. You can have everything from seducers who look completely human to hundred foot tall masses of mawed tentacles and eyeballs (and winged humans in white robes to six-winged wheels of fire... actual angels are as weird looking as any demons) and they're all, technically, the same type of critter with no need to invent a new niche for it to fill in an already crowded cosmos.

Quote from: Chris24601;1037787Playable would be Exalted's problem. I'd never make anything like that playable for PCs unless they were permanently locked into some form or another (or it was a Superhero game where that sorta shape shifting was their power).

They did have a version of Fair Folk that were trapped in a single form: Mountain Folk. These were the "dwarfs" of the setting, although their rulers were tall, fit, and very attractive by human standards. These were made playable too, and (IMO) they were much more so than the baseline Fair Folk. The setting had them as allies of the Dragon-Blooded, and they were one of the few splats that could crossover with them without major power imbalance issues. As for the mainline Fair Folk, it was almost impossible to gauge exactly what their power level was supposed to be. Some of their powers had several paragraphs of text that mixed freely between fluff and crunch, and it was often hard to tell where one type of text ended and the other began. IIRC, it was the same author that wrote that Nobilis game that RPG.net loves to gush about. I recall a few players reading some Fair Folk Charms and looking at me confused while asking, "but what the fuck does it actually DO?" On several occasions, I didn't have very good answers to that.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1037633Well, if you look at sources in medieval art and folklore about Demons, they have a stunning diversity of forms.

True, but that is not the point of my question.

If you are going to arbitrarily divide demons into different species like demons, devils and daemons for an absurd reason like filling out the alignment grid, why continue to use the same random generation tables in Appendix D for all three? It makes no sense to me. You can have humans who are different alignments, so it just sounds to me like demons are demons regardless of alignment.

Now, if devils looked like angels... or something along those lines.

Quite honestly I found the alignment grid needlessly frustrating because it led to idiosyncrasies like this. An old school Moorcockian law/neutrality/chaos spectrum is much easier for me to grok.

It depends on the campaign, but my fallbacks are:

Law: Heavenly Order/The Pits of Hell
Neutrality: The Balance/The Hateful Dead/Great Old Ones (last two NE, natch)
Chaos: The Great Abyss/True Fey

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037908True, but that is not the point of my question.

If you are going to arbitrarily divide demons into different species like demons, devils and daemons for an absurd reason like filling out the alignment grid, why continue to use the same random generation tables in Appendix D for all three? It makes no sense to me. You can have humans who are different alignments, so it just sounds to me like demons are demons regardless of alignment.

Now, if devils looked like angels... or something along those lines.

Quite honestly I found the alignment grid needlessly frustrating because it led to idiosyncrasies like this. An old school Moorcockian law/neutrality/chaos spectrum is much easier for me to grok.

That's a case of shoehorning demons into a rules system, which I have never found to be a good idea.

In non-D&D systems, Alignment is not an issue. In those systems, demons can be modelled in different ways.

For example, for Merrie England:Age of Chivalry, I used Enochian Demons and had equivalent ranks of demons and angels. That works really well for medieval European/Near Eastern settings, especially if you use Ifrits in a similar ranking for Islamic demons.

I prefer demons to be of different types, with some randomness. So, Malabranche are winged demons with claws and tails, not very random. Other demons might have very different forms and various supplements have random tables to support that.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1037908True, but that is not the point of my question.

If you are going to arbitrarily divide demons into different species like demons, devils and daemons for an absurd reason like filling out the alignment grid, why continue to use the same random generation tables in Appendix D for all three? It makes no sense to me. You can have humans who are different alignments, so it just sounds to me like demons are demons regardless of alignment.

Now, if devils looked like angels... or something along those lines.

Quite honestly I found the alignment grid needlessly frustrating because it led to idiosyncrasies like this. An old school Moorcockian law/neutrality/chaos spectrum is much easier for me to grok.

I can sympathize with this, sure.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1033870How often do you use extraplanar stuff? How important would you say that a planar cosmology is? Which type would you say is the easiest to work with and why?

I continually use extraplanar realms, critters, and ideas. I adapt the Nordic extraplanar scheme, as I find that you don't really need the scads of different planes that the Great Wheel scheme provides. People start getting flustered when they have more than 5-7 choices, and I like creating within the self-imposed limitation of nine planes of existence. What I am looking for is a collection of primordial and alien realms that can provide adventuring locales that are highly different and infrequent. I'm also looking for otherworldly realms that help explain the cosmology, including the gods and physics, both magical and technological.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1035184I am a huge Planescape fan, but I wouldn't shoehorn that cosmology anywhere else.

I also like the 4e concept of planes that peek through the prime material in certain places.

Pretty much this. Planescape is a beuty in itself. My longest D&D campaign have been set in Planescape for about 6 years now.

The 4e's cosmology was actually very useable and flexible and not bogged down by special plannar rules and magic-as-physics. And you could still go and visit a lot of classic D&D plannar locations and added some new good ones. Like the Feywild and the 4e version of City of Brass. And the Shadowfell is just a more accessable take on Ravenloft/Demiplane of Dread. It is obviously more generic than PS but I don't see that as a flaw since it is to me the best (official) generic version of the planes.

My third preference of planner set up would be a very loosely simple Law vs Chaos version. The Abyss and some higher godly plane were the Law aligned deities reign and have the elemental plane to be the same as the mortal plane.