Ok, seriously, I know good ol' Azzie (Asmodeus) has been around since 1e as a devil, but lately he's joining the ranks of the gods ala Pathfinder and Forgotten Realms.
What's driving the new popularity? (cheap shot) Is Bill O'Reilly not letting Paizo or WotC use his name?
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Ok, seriously, I know good ol' Azzie (Asmodeus) has been around since 1e as a devil, but lately he's joining the ranks of the gods ala Pathfinder and Forgotten Realms.
What's driving the new popularity? (cheap shot) Is Bill O'Reilly not letting Paizo or WotC use his name?
The bottom-left of the alignment chart has long been a bit overcrowded with tyrants, and the line between archdevils (esp Asmodeus) and LE deities has seemed increasingly strained -- certainly far more so than it is in the CE corner.
I'm happy for the LE boss of tyrants to also be the chief devil as it saves us having to come up with yet another name for essentially the same villain (Hextor, Bane, ...).
Other deities vary a bit more, and wander around in alignment a bit, but the LE big-bad often seems a bit samey; reusing the name Asmodeous adds (to my mind) a bit more flavour.
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I also think Azzie, as you call him, is much more likely to be a Diety than say most Demons.
I like the idea of Orcus almost-but-not-quite becoming a god and being constantly pissed off about it; whereas Asmodeous would have had his timetable for achieving apotheosis planned out in MS Project for centuries and it wouldn't have gone 1 copper piece over budget.
I think it's the goatee. That always adds a few god points in my book.
I miss Bhaal. He was always so straightforward. Just the concept of having a god of "murder" I thought was pretty unique.
I've alerted the local Hellknights garrison and pointed them in the direction of this post, Veector. You'll pay for your blasphemy.
Seriously, I don't see this as anything new. I ran a homebrew campaign for years where Asmodeus was the primary LE diety, and the patron diety of an expansive empire modeled on the Romans. It just seemed to be a natural fit.
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My impression of Asmodeus in Planescape (2ed), was he was beyond godhood, depicted in some of the final supplements as being a "force of nature", the original source of evil and corruption of the innocent. Doesn't seem to be that odd to make him a deity in his own right.
Must be James Jacobs' influence. He did such a good job of his work in the Fiendish Codex 2 that everyone wanted a piece of Asmodeus' action. First Cheliax, then on to the rest of the world...
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My impression of Asmodeus in Planescape (2ed), was he was beyond godhood, depicted in some of the final supplements as being a "force of nature", the original source of evil and corruption of the innocent. Doesn't seem to be that odd to make him a deity in his own right.
That's kind of what Dicefreaks did in their "the Gates of Hell" material (which I thought was great stuff). They made him equivalent to an overgod in power, and all of the Lords of the Nine have "cosmic ranks" as opposed to "divine ranks", since they were considered to be "cosmic entities".
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The only problem I have with making extraplanars into deities is that it bumps everyone up the power chain. Look at it from the LG perspective - what happens to Zaphkiel? If they are deities, now we need creatures to take their place as the pinnacles of extra-planar powers, and so on. Plus it certainly rules out some groups having the chance to face such creatures directly, depending on their treatments of deities.
I prefer deities to be free-form and statless (unless deities are in-fighting) but I want my arch-fiends to be super-monsters.
I prefer deities to be free-form and statless (unless deities are in-fighting) but I want my arch-fiends to be super-monsters.
I agree that archfiends/demon lords/slaad lords should just be oversized outsiders, although I have no problem with giving them Divine Rank 0 and allowing clerics (cultists) to worship them (say).
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I agree that archfiends/demon lords/slaad lords should just be oversized outsiders, although I have no problem with giving them Divine Rank 0 and allowing clerics (cultists) to worship them (say).
I prefer deities to be free-form and statless (unless deities are in-fighting) but I want my arch-fiends to be super-monsters.
That is a fair solution, as the only major advantage is nigh-immortality, which is fine since it provides the DM with a reason to have a "destroy their soul" quest. Didn't one of the splatbooks advocate this for DMs who wanted more challenging arch-fiends?
If people worship them, I give 'em divine ranks. There's intentionally a very long ladder of ranks; if people's PCs (Murlynd, Heward, Keoghtom, et al.) can have Divine Rank 0, I have no problem at all with Graz'zt having Divine Rank 3 or whatever, and Asmodeus having a higher one, and somebody like Istus (in Greyhawk terms) having a MUCH higher one. I find it goofy and arbitrary to declare that only "good" outsiders can have one above 0.
P.S. Love the Dicefreaks devils! Not so much their archdevils, but their regular devils revisited were brilliant.
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I have a question along these lines, which why so many demons and devils? Yeah I know we need "good" bad guys to drive the good guys further, and Yeah Ocrus and Azzie sure fit the bill. But it seems almost too much lately. I Blame James Jacobs :P because of his fondness of the subject and I am thinking it might also have something to do with Second darkness, but still it seems a little overboard if you ask me.Does anyone else feel the same or am I alone in this?
I have a question along these lines, which why so many demons and devils? Yeah I know we need "good" bad guys to drive the good guys further, and Yeah Ocrus and Azzie sure fit the bill. But it seems almost too much lately. I Blame James Jacobs :P because of his fondness of the subject and I am thinking it might also have something to do with Second darkness, but still it seems a little overboard if you ask me.Does anyone else feel the same or am I alone in this?
If the Abyss is infinite, why not have a potentially limitless number of demons, and even types of demons, in it?
If people worship them, I give 'em divine ranks.
So if I worship my ancestors, all of my ancestors become gods? Sweet!
;-)
(Personally, I like the Eberron approach to deities: you could worship a potato and get cleric spells, and nobody -- not even the solars and pit fiends who serve them -- knows if gods really exist or not.)
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I think there needs to be a distinction made here. The Pathfinder Asmodeus, while sharing the same name and "rank" isn't necessarily the same as the "other" 4th edition counterpart. By that I mean I consider what Pathfinder is doing as honoring the past while at the same time bringing it closer to the future. Forgotten Realms, especially now in 4th edition, just lumps gods together, with out much care or consideration. It's all just a wham blam thank you ma'am about "hey this might be cool!" without any actual though process behind it. That's how I read the current state of the realms and indeed its pantheon. Glorian(sp)/Pathfinder is more of an achieved balance in my mind about what works and what doesn't. What works is having Asmodeus, an established figure, as your almost chief LE tyrant. True Zon Kuthon is LE, but his is more about an established element (pain and darkness mostly), than what Asmodeus covers. Bane was and should have stayed the chief figure for the LE side of things. Bringing in Asmodeus there is more than confusing, it's completely unnecessary.
So that's my two cents.
So if I worship my ancestors, all of my ancestors become gods?
If someplace had an established tradition of ancestor worship, then, yes, I'd make their collective ancestors the equivalent of a single god. That would actually be pretty cool, come to think of it.
I agree with you about the Eberron approach, but that's a big break from Greyhawk (and, by extension, from Golarion).
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If people worship them, I give 'em divine ranks.So if I worship my ancestors, all of my ancestors become gods? Sweet!
;-)
(Personally, I like the Eberron approach to deities: you could worship a potato and get cleric spells, and nobody -- not even the solars and pit fiends who serve them -- knows if gods really exist or not.)
My group took a similar approach as Eberron. basically, as long as the player can create a god out of the constraints of what the god is the gos of, then it works. not only that, but then the new godling exists and grows as he gets more worshippers. one of my players (a big fan of OOTS) did something similar as Elan and he made a god out of his Hat, calling his, and every other, hat the avater of the hat god. it was interesting.
In terms of how this applies to Asmodeus, i'd say the same still works. if he has people believing him to be a god, then he is. truely believing, however, and not just owing their soul to him. fear=/=belief in my books. and if you're using the same stats as I am, then Asmodeus is CR somewhere in the 60s or 70s or something, which is almost godlike anyways.
(incidently, I am also in the camp of people that believe hunmans invented religion as a power base and to not only create, but then fill a void in people in order to better manage them and to wrest power away from the state. whether or not there actually are gods becomes irrelevent at that point since either they're there, or we created simulcrums to do the exact same job. not looking to start an argument, but it gives context to my statement.)
I've always liked the arch-devils, Asmodeus in particular. I'm happy to have him listed among the Galorion gods.
Asmodai or Asmodeus (see below for other variations) is a demon mostly known from the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit. The demon is also mentioned in some Talmudic legends, for instance, in the story of the construction of the Temple of Solomon. He is supposed to be the King of the Nine Hells.
Interesting...
I've always approved of the Planescape concept of some of the "primals" still existing. For the most part, only the Lady of Pain and Asmodeus were actually listed anywhere near officially, but I found the idea terribly interesting, if only because it gave a tantalising answer to the question "what was before the gods?"
I spun a homebrew Greyhawk derivation that had the PCs find definitve proof that some of the "dieties" were actually the fragments of a "primal". And they found the means to repeat the proceedure. But with the Lady of Pain and Asmodeus being the only two primals still known to be around.... it made an interesting choice. My group was more frightened of the Lady of Pain, but felt they had less odds of wining against Azzie. Schedules killed the campaign before it came to an even remote conclusion, but they were cautiously advancing towards fracturing Asmodeus, figuring "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts so reduce it to parts".
My own preference on the topic is that archfiends/celestial paragons/planar lords represent a more primal, transcendent form of alignment and platonic ideas. They're Good and Evil and Law and Xaos divorced from mortal conceptions. Gods are the embodiments of mortal views and beliefs on the same topics.
Neither is necessarily more powerful, it depends entirely on venue, and their goals and methods are often very different. I personally loathe the 3e demotion of archfiends to big monster status while putting gods on some sort of pedestal above them. Much prefer a version of the Planescape setup.
However, Pathfinder isn't my home campaign. ;) The exact interplay and relationship between gods and fiends remains to be fully established and I suspect that I may go whining to James over the issue quite a bit before all the nitpicky issues are ironed out. I have preferences in direction obviously, but it's ultimately their call.
Some of the relationship/distinction depends on the history of the planes and gods. In the Great Wheel, gods were younger than the planes by a vast amount for instance. In Golarion... we shall see about origins. But we do know a few things, like daemons being the youngest fiends and having a rather warped relationship to/with mortal souls. Not the primordial architects of the lower planes like the 'loths. Yet at least one deity ascended with the patron support of a (now dead?) Archdaemon of Famine. This will be fun to play with. And that's just the daemons, with other examples of god/planar relationships there with the devils and Asmo, the celestial lords of Elysium and the gods of that plane, etc etc
My own preference on the topic is that archfiends/celestial paragons/planar lords represent a more primal, transcendent form of alignment and platonic ideas. They're Good and Evil and Law and Xaos divorced from mortal conceptions. Gods are the embodiments of mortal views and beliefs on the same topics.
This question probobly could be definitively answered by Todd Stewart or James Jacobs; in Golarion, can singular fiends [demond lords, deamon overlords, arch dukes of perdition] grant cleric spells ? Can Elemental lords grant spells ?
Do npcs or pcs need the thrall feat to be able to receive spells from them ?
Do these same fiends have aspects the same way they did in 3.5 ? What happens if said aspect is destroyed ? Would the capture of an aspect in any way compromise the original entity ?
Thanks in advance.
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Well I was one of the idiots who bought the Wizards presents books, the one about classes, and the other about worlds and monsters. I seem to remember in the worlds and monsters book, one of the designers mentioned that they thought that Amadeus was not getting enough attention. So they thought that by making him divine people might use him as the arch villain in campaigns more often. I could be wrong about this, but that is what I remember.
I don't remember which designer said this nor where it is in the book.
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This question probobly could be definitively answered by Todd Stewart or James Jacobs; in Golarion, can singular fiends [demond lords, deamon overlords, arch dukes of perdition] grant cleric spells ? Can Elemental lords grant spells ?
Do npcs or pcs need the thrall feat to be able to receive spells from them ?
In the Pathfinder Campaign Setting, the 'full gods' (including Asmodeus and Lamashtu, a devil and a demon, respectively, who've graduated to the 'big leagues') give five domains while the Demon Lords, Archdevils and Daemon Horsemen give four domains (and, for the demons and devils, two of them are Chaos and Evil or Law and Evil, so they've got very limited selections). The Demon Lords, Dukes of Hell and Daemon rulers also have Favored Weapons listed. They've definitely got full-fledged Clerics in Golarion!
No Thrall feats required, although I could see some being introduced anyway, as the Demon/Devil/etc. version of Initiate feats.
There are also some Celestials (Empyreal Lords) given that treatment as well, with Favored Weapons and four Domain choices.
Do these same fiends have aspects the same way they did in 3.5 ? What happens if said aspect is destroyed ? Would the capture of an aspect in any way compromise the original entity ?
That's not, to my knowledge, stated one way or the other in the PFCS.
This question probobly could be definitively answered by Todd Stewart or James Jacobs; in Golarion, can singular fiends [demond lords, deamon overlords, arch dukes of perdition] grant cleric spells ? Can Elemental lords grant spells ?Do npcs or pcs need the thrall feat to be able to receive spells from them ?
Do these same fiends have aspects the same way they did in 3.5 ? What happens if said aspect is destroyed ? Would the capture of an aspect in any way compromise the original entity ?
Thanks in advance.
I can offer some ideas here, but don't assume it's true unless James or one of the other Paizo guys confirms it. I would assume that there's not a gigantic amount of difference between a worshipper of Asmodeus and a worshipper of Szuriel in terms of spells they receive. The difference between true deity and archfiend/empyrial/elemental lord in this case is probably academic so far as spells to their worshippers or cultists are concerned. All of those listed in the PCCS have domains listed.
The ultimate source of that clerical magic is another thing entirely. Asmodeus might be granting spells out of his own power, while a non-deific archfiend might be serving as a proxy of sorts for their native plane as the source of those spells. This is especially interesting with planar lords like the archdaemons who don't particularly desire worship, even if they would benefit by attaining divinity. Are they granting spells unknowingly, are the faithful granting it to themselves by force of conviction, or would Szuriel for instance just be a focus for Abbadon itself (or maybe the Oinodaemon, whatever its nature truly is) granting it.
I would assume that no feat (ie Thrall of X) is needed to gain clerical spells from non-deific planar lords. That notion (it began in an FR book yes?) always struck me as really shafting the worshippers of anything other than a true, full-blown deity. If settings like FR that might be important given some of the other ramifications of not paying your deific protection money so to speak, but anywhere else it seems to set up an awkward double standard. Not my decision however in this case, and I don't know how this will be handled for Golarion.
I believe that only full-blown gods have avatars, while demigods including planar lords in that tier, only have a single true form. That said, I don't see why they couldn't manifest aspects as effectively mini-avatars even if they can't produce true avatars like deities. I have some thoughts on this actually, but that's for another time.
Thank you Todd and set ! My DM borrowed my PCCS 2 days after I got it and I eagerly await its return ! Grrrrr, I may just get another copy.
The difference between true deity and archfiend/empyrial/elemental lord in this case is probably academic so far as spells to their worshippers or cultists are concerned. All of those listed in the PCCS have domains listed.The ultimate source of that clerical magic is another thing entirely. Asmodeus might be granting spells out of his own power, while a non-deific archfiend might be serving as a proxy of sorts for their native plane as the source of those spells.
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED TO KNOW !! Thanks
I would assume that no feat (ie Thrall of X) is needed to gain clerical spells from non-deific planar lords. That notion (it began in an FR book yes?) always struck me as really shafting the worshippers of anything other than a true, full-blown deity. If settings like FR that might be important given some of the other ramifications of not paying your deific protection money so to speak, but anywhere else it seems to set up an awkward double standard.
That's a funny but quite fitting analogy, and I agree completely, I just wanted something official [okie, okie semi official Todd : )]
I believe that only full-blown gods have avatars, while demigods including planar lords in that tier, only have a single true form. That said, I don't see why they couldn't manifest aspects as effectively mini-avatars even if they can't produce true avatars like deities. I have some thoughts on this actually, but that's for another time.
Perfect, again I had similar thought but wanted a ruling of sorts, thanks.
I would of course love to hear those thoughts Todd !