So if my outsider-fu is correct: If you encounter a demon on the material plane, and slay it, it disappears, rematerializing back in the abyss, pissed off and howling for your blood.
The exception to this, is when an outsider is called, because a calling effect, in some way, connects the creature to the plane it was called to, meaning if it dies while it is called, it dies permanently.
So that means that whenever you come upon an outsider, and it disappears after battle, it has come to the material plane by some other means than a magic calling effect. Over the course of my RP years, I have encountered alot of different outsiders, most of whom do the vanishing act, while the party celebrates having not died. Are all these outsiders Planeshifting in?
Far from an expert on all the different outsiders, but I seem to recall that the amounts of demons and devils who can planeshift are at least fairly limited. Certain other planes and types of outsiders have easier access to it, but all in all, I remember seeing it fairly sparsely. How do outsiders cross over? Do they ask for favors from their buddies who CAN planeshift? Are they making deals with mortal spellcasters, offering them stuff in exchange for passage to the material plane?
How do outsiders come the material plane? discuss :)
-Nearyn
It's probably not an official Golarion answer, but I have outsiders here for many reasons:
1. Previously called and they stuck around.
2. Summoned, but those guys are usually very temporary, here for only seconds, minutes at most.
3. Shifted/gated here on their own power or on the power of other outsiders.
4. Wandered here on their own.
5. Magic items, either owned by the outsider or owned by someone else who brought it here.
6. Born here (this might or might not earn them the "native" subtype, depending on whether this plane is now their home or if they still 'feel' like they belong on the home plane of their type.
For option 4, I ascribe to theories I've gotten from other game systems about how all the planes intersect in odd ways, often creating permanent portals that creatures can use to pass through. While there may not be a direct intersection between the Abyss and the plane on which Golarion resides, there may be pocket planes, demiplanes, etc., that have intersections to both, and enterprising outsiders can often just walk from one plane to the next, using these multiplane gateways. Enterprising planar travelers might even create such minor planes to serve as bridges, if they have enough power, and that could literally admit hordes of outsiders through.
Once outsiders get here and become fairly permanent, by whatever means, they can breed, resulting in option 6 above.
But mostly, I don't worry about it too much. Random outsider fodder is just that, fodder. Special super-outsiders are often BBEGs for an entire campaign or story arc, and they almost always have their own means of getting around. Either way, this questions is almost moot for me.
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It's only those who have been summoned who vanish when they're slayed.
Those who have travelled the planes to get to wherever they are now (by plane shift, portals, or other means), will actually die when they're killed.
The core theme started in The Crystal Shard, and abused two storylines later, is that no full outsider resides in this plane, be it elemental, angel, or demon. Dissolution of the material form here only banishes them back to their home plane. The specifics are likely mutable, since the original banishment was for 100 years, and that was in production during second edition dnd.
The second time was early in 3.0 and the last was just recently in The Last Threshold, and they spend so much of that storyline hinting at a 'big change' for forgotten realms, that I came away from the book feeling that R.A. Salvatore is now writing to the tune of hasbro, no longer in control of the Drizzt property.
but back to the question, the banished have to either wait out the 100 years, or get the banisher to rescind the banishment, even if the banisher is unaware of the deed.
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This is actually one of the main reasons why outsiders demand payment for those planar binding spells. They're risking their butts for you, and for an "immortal" being thats a huge deal.
Planescape used to have creatures travelling planes though and unless they died on their /home/ plan, they'd just reconstitute (not reform) back at home, but reconstitution wasn't a pleasant thing and didn't really make for long term villains.
The Baatezu/Devil higher ups used to make complex plans on how to locate them if someone got lucky and knocked them back to lemure. Plans which, these being fiends, frequently got "lost" or "misinterpretted. "
The tricky thing is that what constitutes the being in question tends to shift, elementals tend to not have personalities they tend to be their element personified for example.
Its one of the reasons I prefer the old cosmology, it made a lot more sense. PF's core cosmology seems to exist just so fiends can exist in some sort of outer darkness and so we don't get compartmentalized alignment specific outsiders (Slaadi (CN), rilmani (N), modrons (LN), eladrin (CG), guardinals (NG), archons (LG), demons (CE), daemons (NE), devils (LE)) or planes that have to try to exemplify Neutral Lawful Evil.