Let's Play Hell's Rebels: Devils and other Fiends
My recent adaptation efforts for that Hell’s Rebels campaign had me going on a spelunking expedition about fiend stats in D&D. Here’s what I found out, and what I intend to do about it on this GURPS adaptation.
For our purposes here, “fiend” refers to all of the monsters that originate from the “evil planes” of the D&D universe: demons, devils, daemons, and others. “Fiend” was the only general term left, so we’re using it in this post.
Fiends in D&D
D&D’s fiend situation is one of the most egregious examples of its tendency towards overly-complicated taxonomies1. Every synonym becomes the name of a distinct type of monster with stats that differ from those of the rest.
The real purpose of the divide here seems to be mechanical: in most editions each type has a different lengthy list of weaknesses and resistances that seems calculated to confuse players. Things that are good against devils are bad against demons and vice-versa - if the PCs guess wrong, they’re in trouble. The specifics here change from edition to edition.
Lore-wise, early editions made a big deal out of the fact that devils were Lawful Evil and demons Chaotic Evil. Later ones tried to elaborate on it and find more ways to explain that the two alignments were different at a fundamental cosmic level. Pathfinder really doubles down on that, trying to find additional themes for every fiend type it presents.
Pathfinder 1e, which is what we’re interested in, has this configuration for the mechanical bits:
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Demons are immune to lightning; Devils take normal damage from it.
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Devils are immune to fire; Most demons are merely resistant to it.
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They’re equally resistant to acid and cold.
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They’re both immune to poison.
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They’re resistant to weapon attacks unless the weapon is Good-aligned or made from a special material. For demons, that’s cold iron; for devils, silver. Powerful specimens have resistance that can only be bypassed by weapons fulfilling both the alignment and material requirements.
This is about as complex to describe as it was in previous editions, but it’s actually much easier to completely bypass due to the combinatorial explosion in spells and magical effects available to players compared to AD&D.
After the first couple of levels you can forget about the materials requirement entirely, because you’ll have access to Align Weapon or the Holy enchantment. By the time you’re fighting those stronger fiends, you’ll probably have a +3 weapon in hand, which also bypasses both material requirements. And as for elemental damage types, this is the edition that introduces sonic damage, which damages both demons and devils normally. It also makes it quite easy for a character to swap all of their spells’ damage to sonic2.
Fiends In Dungeon Fantasy
Dungeon Fantasy is a lot simpler. Demon is one of the big monster categories in the game, and all demons come from the area colloquially known as Hell. The specifics are left as an exercise to the GM.
Belonging to the Demon category makes them immune to magic that affects the minds of natural creatures and susceptible to magic that affects spirits in general or demons in particular. They don’t count as “alive” for spells that strictly require living targets but always count as “evil” for spells and abilities that affect evil creatures.
Most notably, they do not have any universal resistances to elemental damage or mundane weapons. Each demon “species”, other than the very weakest ones, does have additional defenses. Most take damage as normal but can only die if a specific condition is met. They also often lack some or all of the weak points of natural creatures, such as blood and vital organs.
Gaming Ballistic’s Nordlond Bestiary does include some demons that are direct adaptations of D&D fiends, but only the most powerful of them (the Balor and Pit Fiend equivalents) have resistances that resemble Pathfinder’s to any degree.
What Will I Do in Hell’s Rebels?
If I was starting this project way back in 2017, I’d probably be gearing up to convert every devil that appeared in Hell’s Rebels to GURPS. But since this is 2023, I don’t have to!
I have plenty of first- and third-party Dungeon Fantasy books now, and between them I have more than enough stat blocks available that I can just pick whatever looks closer to the original monster and use that.
This does mean that I’m going to end up ignoring a lot of the default D&D cosmology and lore when picking my monsters. “Demon” and “devil” are once again synonyms - there is no fundamental cosmic difference between them. They all come from the same place. Any differences, if they ever become relevant, are political rather than taxonomical.
We’re also ignoring the difference between Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil because 1) there is no alignment in GURPS DF and 2) it’s a bit nonsensical anyway. In fact, Pathfinder itself is going to get rid of alignment in its upcoming revised second edition, which was motivated by an attempt to rid itself of all remaining ties to the OGL after this January’s brouhaha.
The game’s existing rules should suffice to determine whether something counts as “holy”/”good” or “unholy”/”evil” for game purposes. This is a similar approach to what I hear PF 2.5 is going to take.