Citing (sometimes canonical) redeemed succubi as a precedent...

>Citing (sometimes canonical) redeemed succubi as a precedent, your party paladin wants to redeem a Balor to become his best bro for life
Would you allow this, or are there demons you would deem non-redeemable while others are redeemable?

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Redemption for natually evil beings is impossible in all but the most pefect circumstances - circumstances that can't be replicated deliberately.

If angels can fall, then demons can rise.

But it's not common. At all.

>Dunking the head of a balor in the river styx

Had it happen in a group before. DM rulled it clean slate amnesia. I would have said hes now just a walking cleave machine not knowing why hes walking and cleaving.

What would you have done? Party ended up taking him and giving him to the Dustmen for work.

Provided I'm not running demons as almost like computer programs designed to corrupt and collect mortal souls like I usually am, yes. What's good for the goose is good fir the gander.

I don't know what setting the case in the book of exalted deeds refers to, but if it's like anything else in that book it isn't really worth applying to my game anyway
It's also a bit more complicated than pointing at someone and assuming he'll be your bro if you tell him how great being good is

Sure why not, if you were retarded enough to allow a redeemed succubus why not a Balor or Marilith, eck why not a chain demon or even a lord hell. Sky's the limit as they say.

Fuck the canon, there's no such thing as redeemed succubi. Demons can never not be evil.

It's make-believe dude, do whatever you think is fun for you and your player.

But angels can fall?

The book of exalted deeds cites a Illithid actually not a succubi.

If any demon can be redeemed they all can, demons are in theory simply creatures drawn from the liquid ichor of dark chaos.

Though if a demon turns it'll likely cease being a demon. Like a paladin falling or the like.

Are you going to post more delicious sucubi or are you going to be a shit?

Why not Satan?

In christian religion it is said that demons are fallen angels.

However, in D&D angels and demons just... exist. Therefore no, it doesn't make any sense for an angel to fall or for a demon to be redeemed.

Not the guy you were responding to btw.

Counterpoint:
Helm of Opposite Alignment.

That's fair, there's plenty of people here who are OK with one but not the other

Counter-Counterpoint:
Helm of Opposite Opposite Alignment

There's a 9th level spell in Book of Exalted Deeds that is just for such a thing.

So it's just a regular helm then?

Sure, they can try. It won't be anything approaching easy, but taking a tiny chance and just fucking doing it is one thing that makes roleplaying fun.

The rules of drama dictate that a 1% chance is as good as a 100% chance if it makes for a good story.

Yes. Yes it is.

Came here for thicc succubus. Was let down.

Evil is easier than Good. If it wasn't, it wouldn't be able to tempt people by providing the easy route.
All it takes to fall down a mountain is a single misstep. To climb up requires much more effort.

I think furies are sometimes implied to be fallen angels, but enrinyes are kind of the exception since they're the only one I can think of

Book of Exalted Deeds is a joke.

Fine, have a thiccubus.

I want to stick my dick in a succubus.

I do not want to stick my dick in a balor.

This means that succubi are redeemable and balors are not.

youtube.com/watch?v=_7vQSPBtwyc

>route never

One of the Lords of Hell was once an angel.

Succubi are extremly good at deceiving others, something which requires a good grasp of others emotions and thought processes. From that point, to turn from evil to good you would "only" need to awaken a sense of empathy in them.
On the other hand, Balors are mostly violent, destructive beasts, that possess intelligence, but don't mind at all about others cognitions. Unlike for Succubi it's not even in their nature to consider these things. So you would need to restructure their whole thinking pattern to something fundamentally different.

So yes, I would consider redeeming a Balor more diddicult than redeeming a Succubus.

You could just as easily reverse that reasoning: succubi are at least tangentially aware of what their victims are feeling, so choosing to harm, decieve and eventually destroy others in spite of this makes them downright psychopathic. A balor, on the other hand, could very well just be acting violently because he doesn't understand what the other is feeling. Teaching someone the Golden Rule is a lot easier than curing a psychopath. You just need to explain that others have feelings and desire just like he does, and teach him about the magic of friendship.

Probably no small task, but it shouldn't be "impossible" though it could very well be so hard that it's practically impossible.

>naturally evil
Can anyone be naturally evil? At that point is it even evil?

I like to view demons and angels as sentient creatures not so terribly unlike humans.

Like humans, they have certain hardwired needs and interests.

Like humans, they can choose to defy their nature.

It may kill them. It may prove too hard, and they might return to their original state. But they can damn well try, in the same way that shakers can abstain from procreating, a priest can starve himself in protest, a pedophile might never lay a hand on a child, or a person might sacrifice their life for a stranger they've never met.

Why don't people play THICC characters more often.

Why? Do you have a particular reason why demons can never be not evil?

But you can still climb up the mountain, it's just not easy. So I agree that it should be leagues harder, I don't think it should be impossible.

If an evil-aligned creature (let's say mostly humanoid) completely changes alignment, whether voluntarily or through a spell of some sort, would a good-aligned deity accept them into their plane of afterlife upon death (assuming said deity does that sort of thing)? Or, would they still get rejected for once being evil?

So you're saying we need mind control.

I would say it depends on the god, Some Good god's are a little more finalistic.

I presume the creature would become an equivalent good-aligned creature. So humanoid demons would become archons, and I guess a balor would become some infinite-eyed wheel within wheels angel.

Now I understand why angels fall more often than the other way around. The prospect of getting arms and legs must be hella sweet.

I think in 5e angels and demons are beings of pure good and evil, respectively. However, they are still sapient and can still make moral choices. If a demon stops being evil, it also stops being a demon.

>Why? Do you have a particular reason why demons can never be not evil?
Because it cheapens them. The whole point of demons is that they're absolutely evil, they're literally made of it. If they're capable of empathy or compassion or any of the things that make people good then they're just another monster.

I'd say yes, at least if the change was voluntary. Being good means forgiving those who honestly repent.

This.

Eh, why not.

Depending on the adventure I am trying to make, Success might not give them a NPC lackey, but it will get them something useful.

>your party paladin wants to redeem a Balor to become his best bro for life

I don't allow 12 year olds in my group.

Personally, since it depends on setting, I look at it like this:
Low-ranking demons are both simple-minded and have heavy natural inclinations to evil, making them basically impossible to convert. They can be -tricked- into doing something "good", but will always intend to spread evil or chaos, and therefore can't be converted.

Higher demons have more reasoning and, instead of inclination, are more "tainted"- the very thing purification can clear up. It's not easy, but higher demons that don't resist conversion can become redeemed.

The important part about that is that higher demons rarely -want- to become redeemed. If they have good reason (and yes, it might work if they -truly- love someone, but that's even more unlikely), they might submit, but otherwise it's a lost cause.

It's a diminishing settings.
Past glories fade, never to return.

>Can anyone be naturally evil? At that point is it even evil?

Magical evil things can.

And yes.

Fucking this.

People want to give emotions and shit to things because they identify with them and shit.

Which is all good and fine if you want to make a setting around that, but I hate it when they try to put that shit in settings where that is not the point at fucking all.

>tfw players love it when this happens, albeit rarely.
>tfw said players don't have that sort of thing happen in their games, calling it 'unrealistic'.
>mfw Dming is suffering.

That being said. . .


>Pit Fiend crosses over into the world, takes over a mortal kingdom.
>Once he's actually in charge, his new kingdom falls into turmoil as the people rebel, refuse to work, run away, and otherwise refuse to serve him.
>He begins making concessions, giving them rights, paying them instead of enslaving them, letting them worship their gods, and so forth.
>One day he wakes up to a peaceful prosperous kingdom, with singing birds and laughing children in a city of marble, and realizes he's not actually much of an Evil Overlord anymore

This this this this this.

There are no evil angles or good demons.

The moment they swap alignments they become the other thing.

What about a demon rising to Neutral instead of Good?

Would need to explain why the Pit Fiend didn't decide to "lol devils" the rebels.

Or just not bring over its hellish army in the first place.

Not much of a kingdom if everything is dead, user. And you could probably only 'lol, devil' a few times before tedium sets in.

Basically, because the devil is pragmatic, user. Throwing power around is a good way to not have any when you really need it.

Depends on a lot of things. Also, not everyone or everything is redeemable. Maybe there was an outlier, a normally evil creature that was redeemed. But that was as individual, and one that was vastly different than the rest of it's kind. Not even all humans can be redeemed.

If it was up to me, it would all depend on the individual that the party wanted to redeem. It may not be capable of it. So it would depend on the personality I had assigned the creature and how far the party is going to go, despite there being no guarantee of success no matter what they do.

>Would you allow this, or are there demons you would deem non-redeemable while others are redeemable?


My home rule is whenever Demons or Angels abandon their sects/loyalties or otherwise become "redeemed" they don't become the opposite of one another: Angels don't become Demons and Demons don't become Angels.

They turn into Fey.

I've always had Nature as an incredibly powerful, amoral, addictive, impulsive force that if underestimated can consume, corrupt, overtake, and assimilate any natural or supernatural force into it's own grand being.

Both Angels and Demons see Nature as an escape; an outlet or alternative where they can abandon the structure, stress and mayhem of their original forms and planes while at the same time still retaining their individual identities only this time with their own free wills.

Demons constantly and desperately attempt to be summoned and brought into the material world as to them the world of mortals is a safe haven: it's relaxed, calm and peaceful realm filled with gentle animals, people with plenty of space, resources and opportunity for the individual. Demons calm right the fuck down when they make the conversion over.

Angels you could say become corrupted; they become beguiled and lose their sense of duty due to the temptation of the various freedoms and liberties within the material world that they themselves would never have in their own divine realm. The Material world for them is a place they can finally be themselves, uncensored; they can do whatever they want and they can be whoever they want to be. Angels tend to become..more "human" I suppose would be the best way to put it.

Fairies, Satyrs, Sprites, Nymphs, Dryads, etc- They were all at one point descendants of Angels and Demons who couldn't resist the natural world.

Does a fiend or celestial keep its original creature type if its alignment changes? (I'd say yes, personally. Leads to more shenanigans)

What's the personality of a risen fiend like? Is a good devil constantly trying to trick people into becoming better?

Maybe he did. Maybe the army of demons policed and brutalized the people. Maybe, in due time, some of them realized the things the overworld has over hell. Maybe they lost their inclination to inflict pain when no one was punishing them for NOT inflicting pain. Maybe they just sort of fell in with the population. In plenty of great empires, conquered populations and their conquerors adopt customs and language from one another, until the empire has incorporated the new population. Maybe it was slow, gradual, and probably cheaper than continued oppression?

>Not much of a kingdom if everything is dead

Yeah, that's why he had devils do all the work.

>tedium sets in

I don't see why devils would experience "tedium."

> Throwing power around is a good way to not have any when you really need it

Is there something that says Pit Fiends lose their power to summon devils over time? Last I checked they get that shit back on the daily and I'm also pretty sure the devils don't magically disappear at the end of the day.

>Maybe the army of demons policed and brutalized the people.

Or just killed them all and replaced them.

>some of them realized the things the overworld has over hell

This doesn't make any sense. Devils are creatures of magical evil. Hell is the most awesome thing to them.

Arueshalae exists in Pathfinder. She's considered a fallen succubus.

>Is there something that says Pit Fiends lose their power to summon devils over time? Last I checked they get that shit back on the daily and I'm also pretty sure the devils don't magically disappear at the end of the day.

Hold on, how many demons can one Pit fiend summon? Clearly there has to be some requisitioning process, unless this guy runs all of hell (which is doubtful). Compromises based on a lack of troops could lead to tensions needing top be eased other ways, before the population rebels again and thrashes what's left of the blackguard.

Eh, it's cool for it to happen every once in a while.

>Clearly there has to be some requisitioning process

Or a fuckton of lesser devils and not a lot of Pit Fiends.

Magical armies of evil from a place of pure evil tend to be comically vast.

Because the thicc meme is disgusting and only degenerate niggers like it unironically?

...

I'd actually consider the thicc meme to be an attempt to "retake" the concept that men like women with curves but not the "wrong" kind of curves.

This of course was forced on us after women insisted men were only interested in sticks, and that women with "meat" (which rapidly turned into rolls) were better and something beyond the average male.

RPGs aren't about telling your players "no", they are about saying "yes, but" in this case the but is that the Balor is playing him to damn his eternal soul.

But user, WoTC actually had a Succubus Paladin a long time ago, back when they wrote articles for 3.5e.

But I DO prefer petite girls. I can take more filled out women too but I don't want giant disgusting fat skanks like all these thicc posters post.
Pic related is fairly close to my max for finding attractive.

There's also a redeemed succubus in Paizo's "Wrath of the Righteous" named Arueshalae.

> women insisted men were only interested in sticks

Ehhhhhh I think it's more complicated then that.

Usually massive culture stuff has a lot of complicated angles that make "whose fault it is" really hard to pin down

I like your setting. It's neat.

how does a succubus become a paladin?
isn't this like a conflict or something?

I'm just putting up logical basses a Dm can use to have this sort of thing happen.

As for summons, maybe it's not in a pitfiend's interest to have other Devil's know his whereabouts. Maybe he's literally settling for a human kingdom. Hell, maybe he was bet he couldn't run a human kingdom by himself; the point is, I'm not supplying an argument so much as introducing story reasons on how this could happen, NOT, indeed, WHY it should.

>Hell is the most awesome thing to Devils.

In most settings, this is explicitly not the case, as hell sucky for literally everyone who isn't doing the commanding. And sometimes even then.

I don't think there is such a thing as naturally evil.
Or naturally good, for that matter.
Either it has free will, in which case it is capable of both good and evil,
or it doesn't, in which case nothing it does is good or evil.

>I don't think there is such a thing as naturally evil.

What about when it's made out of raw evil?

>succubi are at least tangentially aware of what their victims are feeling, so choosing to harm, decieve and eventually destroy others in spite of this makes them downright psychopathic. A balor, on the other hand, could very well just be acting violently because he doesn't understand what the other is feeling.

I haven't followed D&D lore since second edition; do balors not have to progress through most of the other demon forms before they reach balor status? In Planescape, all the balors in existence used to be succubi (and before that, lesser forms of chaotic evil).

I hope I don't get banned for what I assume is cropped porn

>Believes morality is subjective in what is likely d&d.
>Believes that d&d's morality makes the slightest bit of sense.

Elegan/tg/entlemen, I may have, through your noble sacrifice, found the root of most of tg's alignment woes.

It's d&d. It has always been d&d. It shall always BE d&d.

>If they're capable of empathy or compassion or any of the things that make people good then they're just another monster.
Most of the time people don't even give a shit whether or not Goblins or whatever are even capable of empathy or compassion, they only see them as fleshy bags of EXP.

In a lot of settings good and evil can be objective, instead of subjective like IRL. Because in a lot of religions/myths/legends ect. evil is objective. Like a measurable force of nature.

Like how in a lot of settings elements are fire, wind, water and earth. Instead of being the periodic table.

but raw evil is never found on it's own in nature. It's always bonded to politics or power. Extracting any sort of Raw evil requires an intense industrial output equal to roughly 3.45 millinazis per hour

For how many units of Raw Evil?

>Maybe he's literally settling for a human kingdom.

This wouldn't make much sense either.

> as introducing story reasons on how this could happen

I respect that, but I'm just personally really tired of people putting human elements in things that would completely remove the point of those things existing in the first place.

Like, the point of devils is that they are inhuman monsters. So anything to get rid of that makes no sense.

that will give you 1 kg of Raw Evil, before backstabbing decay sets in

Evil isn't natural. It's a product of a shitty system collapsing in on itself and people desperately trying to cling to it out of fear.

You are the trash that made star wars about who could be the best imperial agent who is totes secret against the empire.

Nah, evil is pretty objective.

Just because people like to throw it around a lot without thinking doesn't make it subjective, it makes people eager to try and pretend to be good.

What is the BD of raw evil anyways? Is it 1 Regime like industrial grade evil, or is it on the less stable Banna Republic scale?

It is indeed cropped porn. Fanart of the demon succubus character of Unteralterbach

>Most of the time people don't even give a shit whether or not Goblins or whatever are even capable of empathy or compassion

Ok?

I don't see what the problem is unless you are trying to tell a story where goblins are the good guys.

So if a succubus can be redeemed, why not Nazis?

>evil isn't innate
>literally a system with incarnated Platonic evil

I've heard of being able to extract evil through means less harmful to our environment with all-natural murdermills.

Demons can't be "redeemed" any more than you can "redeem" a carnivore from loving freshly slaughtered raw meat.

If succubi can be "redeemed", you have a shitty setting and they exist only to be fap bait rather than an non-human intelligence with different priorities and needs.
This goes for every fictional race. You might as well be using humans.

>evil isn't innate

That ain't what I said, now is it homie?

>WOTC D&D
>"canon"

>Paizo's D&D rip-off
>"canon"

> You might as well be using humans.

God this. I'm totally down with having non-playable races or things be playable but at least have it make sense from their perspective.

It's not that hard at all, just throw in a magic ritual and then BOOM succubus that isn't evil.

>all these plebs with no grasp of mythology stating that demons can't be redeemed

It is quite literally the stance of the church - basically every church, if they are not filthy heretics who disregard their own scripture - that Satan himself can be redeemed, if only he seeks redemption. In fact, there have been multiple religious authorities who have professed to have prayed for Satan.

The idea of demons being literally made of tangible evil is a retarded D&D invention, ironically supported by those that profess to want authenticity and see the demon redemption idea as some kind of grave insult against real mythology that they have never even bothered to study. Do you fuckers even Solomon? His conversation with Ashmedai makes it very clear that the demon king possesses a number of respectable, even 'good' traits.

'Demon' doesn't even mean the same thing everywhere. The term is derived from a blanket word referring to an assortment of genius loci, household spirits, and anthropomorphic personifications if extremely varying alignment. It's still a blanket word today, because we use it to refer to beings of lots of non-Abrahamic mythologies that can be destructive at times.

Basically, if you think a demon can't be redeemed because that's not authentic enough and is totally wish fulfillment, think again. Fucking MERLIN is in many iterations the child of a penitent succubus.