Well if a soul recognizes itself as a specific quality whatever forms it takes would probably be something it can recognize itself as. So I assume that, unless an outside force acts, that a female soul would have a female form in it's next incarnation.
My understanding is no. If we are specifically talking about eventually becoming an outsider, there are a few inherently gendered options, and what sort you end up as is generally related to how they lived and/or died. I know there's some splatbook (or set of splatbooks) that goes into more detail on how daemons are personifications of certain kinds of deaths, and exhibiting a certain sin leads you to become a certain kind of demon (i.e. really wrathful people becoming vrocks, lustful people succubi, etc.), although I don't quite recall how it works for devils. I want to say Demons Revisited etc. but I can't say for sure, and the 3rd party source I picked that tidbit up from seems to have pulled those sidebars since I last looked.
There's a lot of other outsider types where you end up looking like you did in life for the most part, so presumably there's no arbitrary flips unless the specific new species requires it, and if you're undead, which is about the only time this is even really an issue what with outsiders losing all memory of their former life, obviously you're going to look about the same as ever.
I suppose it also comes up with reincarnation, either via spell or the weird way things work for a samsaran. There it's never specifically spelled out anywhere that I recall, presumably for the sake of leaving it to people to decide for themselves how they want to work it, but every group I've ever played with flips a coin on reincarnation spells because, the real world religious concept is very clear on souls not having an inherent sex, and that's a much less weird change to have to deal with than suddenly being a bugbear.
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Ok who else read this as "do souls have sex". To which i say, i hope so.
While perusing the Demons Revisited Book I noticed unless the "Species" of Outsider says "All outsiders of this type are Male/Female" many times a gender is given to the example creature when you wouldn't expect one at all.
So if there are Male Herzous, there can be Female Solars.
In the case of Devils, I'd just keep it consistent with how the ranks of Hell view women. If you want to have a female Barbed Devil vex the heroes, then perhaps she's doing so because she keeps getting skipped for promotion and killing the heroes is a sure-fire way to break the glass ceiling and move up the ranks.
One of the most fun things about the reincarnate spell, going back all the way to 1st Ed, was that you could be reincarnated as either sex (as well as any playable race). So strictly going by that, no souls do not have a sex, per se.
This does not stop a reincarnated soul from remembering its former life and still "feeling" male or female. The soul could still identify with its previous form (the player probably will, at any rate). But the point is, the soul itself is gender neutral. (I suppose if you want to go for more realism, the hormones and genes of the new form ought to determine their sexuality to some extent.)
As to becoming an outsider, as has been pointed out, some outsiders come in only one gender, or their gender counterpart is maybe not well known enough or useful enough to have been adapted to the game. I suppose there is a certain irony in a character of one gender being punished for its sins by being forced into a form of the opposite gender, provided those sins centered around treating the opposite sex poorly.
As to those outsiders that are not gender specific, I suppose it is just a part of our culture to default them to males (especially when such iconic female demons and devils exist to compare them with), but it doesn't have to be that way.
I suppose there is a certain irony in a character of one gender being punished for its sins by being forced into a form of the opposite gender, provided those sins centered around treating the opposite sex poorly.
There's a bit in an AP somewhere that seems to very strongly imply that all alu-demons come from originally male souls if I'm not reading entirely too much into it-
Presumably though, like the random sex bit from older editions' versions of reincarnate, (or the heavily implied sex in the other sense found in various modules), that's about as strongly as the matter is ever likely to be touched on out of respect for people who get really creeped out by such things for whatever odd reason, so they don't have to actively alter anything published to keep the notion out of their games.
IIRC, there is more than that. From 2nd edition, I think, there was a clear description that male mortal meant alu-demon, female mortal meant cambion. I may be wrong. Check the Expedition to the Demonweb Pits description of Cambions and Alu-fiends.
From what I gathered...
"Souls" when they first get where they need to get are called Petitioners. They are like soul/ghost versions of the life they just exited. Now as they are "elevated" (good planes) or "broken down" (evil planes) that is when they start to lose their "imagined sex". Let's take Hell as an example.
You get there as a gaunt and dark eyes man with something akin to your last face. After too long on a plane they break you down more and more through Tyranny and torture. Fast forward and you are a crazed and instinctive pile of goo (Lemure). It's implied that they have all kinds of pods and limbs they form including an implication of sex organs. It's driven by the madness of what it went through, in time it can focus on it's Sin, say wrath and in time become a Erinyes. "Females" every one.
I suppose there is a certain irony in a character of one gender being punished for its sins by being forced into a form of the opposite gender, provided those sins centered around treating the opposite sex poorly.There's a bit in an AP somewhere that seems to very strongly imply that all alu-demons come from originally male souls if I'm not reading entirely too much into it-
** spoiler omitted **
Presumably though, like the random sex bit from older editions' versions of reincarnate, (or the heavily implied sex in the other sense found in various modules), that's about as strongly as the matter is ever likely to be touched on out of respect for people who get really creeped out by such things for whatever odd reason, so they don't have to actively alter anything published to keep the notion out of their games.
You are reading entirely too much into it. The quote in question refers more to the fact that any male coupling with a Succubus will be subjected to very-likely fatal amounts of 'level-drain', since terms like 'level-drain' are meta-game concepts which are counter-immersive.
If the Ying and Yang represent different fundamental driving forces of the universe, and souls are expressions of those driving forces, then it seems that a soul can be more ying or more yang. In Hindu marriage ceremonies, for example, there's a vow to remain married for seven generations. Because there are strong gender-roles associated with marriage, and because many Hindu deities are also distinctly male or female, I think this assumes that the gender-roles will also remain the same through the cycles of birth and rebirth.
TL;DR: yes. There's precedent of applying gender-consistency to souls if you want. (Though I wouldn't, personally)
And there're a lot of traditions which thinks that virtues and vices follow souls, even after death. So this might apply to forms of lust as well. (I don't know how the succubus thing works, but I assume it's supposed to feed on the weakness of man, and not their virtues.)
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If the Ying and Yang represent different fundamental driving forces of the universe, and souls are expressions of those driving forces, then it seems that a soul can be more ying or more yang. In Hindu marriage ceremonies, for example, there's a vow to remain married for seven generations. Because there are strong gender-roles associated with marriage, and because many Hindu deities are also distinctly male or female, I think this assumes that the gender-roles will also remain the same through the cycles of birth and rebirth.
TL;DR: yes. There's precedent of applying gender-consistency to souls if you want. (Though I wouldn't, personally)
And there're a lot of traditions which thinks that virtues and vices follow souls, even after death. So this might apply to forms of lust as well. (I don't know how the succubus thing works, but I assume it's supposed to feed on the weakness of man, and not their virtues.)
On the other hand, souls also persist through changes of gender in Buddhist (cf. Rupavati, see this article) and Hindu mythology. Nothing is fixed. Whether one is a human or an animal is also changeable.
Although I don't think we've ever come out and said it, I think we've implied pretty strongly that souls don't have inherent gender. Angels aren't inherently gendered (we pretty carefully avoided putting gender in the stat blocks for any of the angel Empyreal Lords in Chronicle of the Righteous), although they may choose to appear consistently in forms of one gender or another, and are described using pronouns that reflect that. And it specifically states that mariliths, for example, who are always female, arise from the souls of "despotic kings" and "sadistic queens," for example. I have vague memories of the succubus article from Demons Revisited mentioning that some succubi were male as mortals, although given that that book was part of our Gen Con crunch, it's completely possible that I hallucinated that memory. Even though some types of outsider are all of one gender or another, you don't have to be of that gender to become that sort of outsider -- you just need to match what they're about. Given that some outsiders are formed from an amalgamation of souls, it seems logical that those souls are ungendered as well as having their specific memories worn away.
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Ok who else read this as "do souls have sex". To which i say, i hope so.
I, too, am seeing "do souls have sex". You are not alone.
You guys have have a dirty mind. ;pOk who else read this as "do souls have sex". To which i say, i hope so.I, too, am seeing "do souls have sex". You are not alone.
And dirty spirits.
And dirty spirits.You guys have have a dirty mind. ;pOk who else read this as "do souls have sex". To which i say, i hope so.I, too, am seeing "do souls have sex". You are not alone.
Dirty, Genderless Spirits!
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May Pharasma have mercy on their souls.Dirty, Genderless Spirits!And dirty spirits.You guys have have a dirty mind. ;pOk who else read this as "do souls have sex". To which i say, i hope so.I, too, am seeing "do souls have sex". You are not alone.
Forget Pharasma; I'd let Calistria have "mercy" on my soul any day. ;D
More on topic, I find it interesting that people seem to perceive gender as being somehow a more fundamental category than species. The reincarnate spell can cause a human to be reborn as a kobold. One would imagine that the physiological and psychological differences between those two species, one a medium-sized diurnal placental mammal and the other a small, darkness-loving reptile, would be far greater than those between a human man and woman.