Monsters: Demon vs. Dæmon and Daimôn

In many RPGs the words "demon" and "dæmon" often lumped together into the same group or groups of creatures.  This reflects a Judeo-Christian bias in popular thought that a "demon" has to be an evil, malign creature.  This was not always the case with dæmon.  in the ancient Greek tradition these creatures were something more along the lines of creative, benevolent spirits.

The dæmon is most famous to AD&D players as being the Neutral Evil race found between the Abyss, home of the Demons and Hell, home of the devils from Monster Manual II.  I liked the idea of more variety to the fiends but thought about these guys in terms of what a normal human would think of them.  That is how does one say "demon" vs. "dæmon"?  That was the start of my disappointment in them as a D&D monster type.  They would later change the name Yugoloth, the only time I felt the 2nd ed name changes were an improvement.

Other games have taken the concept the other direction and made the "demon" more like the classical "dæmon" and had the name mean anything that came from somewhere else.  Also not preferable really.

I had forgotten about all of this until recently when I started working on demons for Eldritch Witchery.

Dæmons seem to be much creative, if chaotic types.  Somewhat like what Deborah Harkness has in her books, A Discovery of Witches.  But in truth her Dæmons feel more like Fae or Changelings to me.  Moving mine more to the "outsider" type I get a race that is very chaotic, but not really evil.  In a sense what Jim Butcher has done with the Fae  in the Dresden Files and maybe a little of what Kim Harrison has done (or is doing) with Demons (the ancient enemy of the fae) in her Rachel Morgan books.
More to the point I have a race I can swap with Slaadi.

Slaad began their life in the pages of the Fiend Folio as inhabitants of the Chaotic Limbo.  Trouble with the Slaad were that know one played them Chaotic Neutral. They always ended up as Chaotic Evil.  Plus Slaad are not open and are not found in the SRD.  Dæmon's though are chaotic, can be good or evil and somehow in my mind fit the idea of a creature living between the Chaotic Good fae (and planes of Olympus in the old D&D cosmology) and the chaotic evil demons living in the Abyss.

I have not detailed many dæmons yet except for a Personal Dæmon, which is a bit like a familiar dialed up to 11.  Given that they need more conceptual work I am not expecting dæmons to appear in Eldritch Witchery.  But do expect the monsters-formerly-known-as-daemons-or-yugoloths to appear as a demon type.  Too bad I can't use Slaad, but hey.

And just to make matters more confusing I think the ruling class of dæmons are known as daimôns.

Enjoy? Please check out the other monster posts today!

Old School Week at DriveThruRPG

DriveThruRPG is celebrating the best of the OSR this week.

For a limited time you can grab their selected 10 best OSR products for a special price.
You can use promotional code OSRF711F2 to get 15% off on these select titles till Sunday, May 19.

Personally I can't recommend these titles enough.  We have the immortal D&D Basic Book in new, clean PDF format, the awesome Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea and two of my favorite "what if" games, Spellcraft & Swordplay and Adventures Dark & Deep.  Plus three very different kinds of games with a great old-school feel, HackMaster, Dungeon Crawl Classics and one of my personal favorites Castles & Crusades.

Lots of great stuff here.

Monster Post later today.

Second Edition Reprints

Wizards of the Coast has released the Limited Editions of the 2nd Edition of AD&D in some markets. I picked my copies on Friday.

These are the reprints of the second printing of the Second Edition rules.  Not the ones with the blue borders, but the ones with the red borders. So consequently the books these are the reprints of I don't actually own.  I do have the Monstrous Manual, my Monstrous Compendium long since gone.

Monstrous Manual
Dungeon Master Guide
Player's Handbook

AD&D 2nd Ed feels like the forgotten edition of D&D.  Sure there might be others, but between OSRIC and Pathfinder 2nd ed usually gets ignored, especially by me.  2nd ed was the game I ran in college but it is also the game that almost put me off of D&D for a while.

These books are not cheap, $50 each, but they are nice and like I said, they are still somewhat new to me.
I am going to enjoy going through these to be honest, the books look really nice and frankly I like sending the message to Wizards that these types of product are welcome.   I also like supporting my Favorite Local Game Store.

Plus they look nice with my special edition 3.5 and the 1st ed AD

Though unlike the above editions, the 2nd eds do not have a ribbon.  A little disappointing, but I didn't want to pay $75 each for them.  Might have to play some 2nd ed some time.

Moms are Gamers too!

Bunch of sales coming up at DriveThru RPG.

Here is one of the first.


Tabletop Adventures, LLC is running their "Moms are Gamers too" sale for Mother's Day.
Get 20% off selected products between now and Wednesday.

Zatanna: Hellish Elementals

A couple of weeks back I put up a post about Zatanna vs Demons.

I wanted to come back to these monsters for the May Monster Madness.

In truth Zee doesn't fight a lot of monsters.  Bad guys, demons and arch fiends sure, but not your garden variety monsters.

The closest were a trio of demonic elementals that she fights in issues #4 and #5 of the recent Paul Dini run of Zatanna.

These creatures took the shape of old women, but underneath were hellish fire elementals in the shape of young women.

Zatanna wa able to defeat them by redirecting a swimming pool that had been blessed into holy water into her hotel room.

Hellions
Basic Era D&D / The Witch (because I can)

Armor Class:  3 [16]
Hit Dice: 6d8+4* (30 hp)
No. of Attacks: 2 claws /  breath weapon
Damage: 1d4+2 / 1d4+2 / 1d8 (fire)
Special: fear, flame body, ignite. Double Damage from Holy Water
Movement: 90’
No. Appearing: 1-3
Saves As: Fighter 6
Morale: 8
Treasure: None
Alignment: Evil
XP: 300

Hellions cause fear as per the spell (Save vs. Paralysis to negate).  They also breathe out a lick of flame while attacking, save vs Breath Weapon for half-damge.
Their bodies are made of flame, but they are not fire elementals in the strictest since. They are demonic spirits and thus unlike elemental they are intelligent and have individuality.  They can disguise themselves as human by finding a human and burning them from the inside out.  They then can crawl into their skin and use that as a suit.


Hellion
Ghosts of Albion, Unisystem

Creature Type: Demon
Life Points: 30
Drama Points: 1

Attributes
Str: 3
Dex: 3
Con: 4
Int: 3
Per: 4
Will: 5

Ability Scores
Muscle: 12, Combat: 12, Brains: 10
Special Abilities: Demon, Fear, Hard to Kill, Lesser Sensing, Water Vulnerability, Breathe Fire, Resistance (Fire).

Anyone seeing a Hellion for the first time must make a Fear check (Willpower x2).
Hellions do not take damage from fire but take double damage from water based attacks (treat water splash as acid).

Manoeuvres
Name Score Damage Notes
Claw x2 +12 6 bash + fire*
Fire Breath +12 12 fire* (extra fire damage based on SL)
Deflect +11 - Magic defence action; deflects spell 45˚

Blogfest: Ray Harryhausen Aprreciation

Today is a celebration of the work of Ray Harryhausen and is hosted by +R.J. Thompson at Gamers & Grognards.  Like many gamers my age I saw Clash of the Titans and IMMEDIATELY grabbed everything in it for D&D (yes. even that owl).  But that is not what I want to talk about today.

No, my favorite Ray Harryhausen movie is "The First Men in the Moon".

I am not sure exactly when I first saw this movie, but I am sure it was on WGN's Family Classics movies on Saturday Afternoon. (or was is Sunday) and it was the same time I was really into gaming. Anyway, the movie was a great distillation of all my interests at the time; sci-fi, horror, fantasy, Victorian England.  It was a heady brew to be sure.

Plus those aliens.  The stop motion was glorious for the time and those monsters were just so creepy.

I remember spending sometime trying to figure out how to get these creatures into my games, or at least some of these ideas.  There is though some obvious homages to this movie to be found in Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

The most obvious "child" though of this movie (and the H.G. Wells book) is Space: 1899. The game even features Selenites and an adventure on the moon.

For the longest time I wanted bugs on the moon because of this film.

Selenite
Selenites are a race native to Earth's Moon.  They are named after the Greek Goddess of the Moon, Selene.
They are smaller than humans, 4'6" to 5'3" tall, they are of a slight build and not very strong.  They appear to be some form of humanoid insect. They are hairless and large compound eyes.  They do require oxygen to breathe, but not as much as a human.  Most Selenites are members of a working caste.  They work on the Selenite cities and help harvest the great moon cows that they use for food. The Selenites psychology and behavior was very much like that of ants or other social insects. (creatures in the book had wings and could fly, I don't remember if they flew in the movie) When not needed a Selenite can go into a self-imposed coma-like suspended animation.
Selenite cities and machines are all solar powered. They were able to keep their cities lit and oxygenated, but during solar-earth eclipses all non essential machines shut down.  The Selenites would also use  this time to enter a rest phase of their own.
The leader of the Selenites is the Grand Lunar.  This being is smaller in size but commands a keen intellect.

Selenite (Ghosts of Albion)
Motivation: Serve the Colony
Critter Type: Alien
Attributes: Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Constitution 1, Intelligence 3, Perception 4, Willpower 3
Ability Scores: Muscle 8, Combat 7, Brains 9
Life Points: 30
Drama Points: 1
Qualities: Acute Senses (sight)
Drawbacks: Attractiveness -2
Skills: Armed Mayhem 1

Combat Maneuvers
Name Score Damage Notes
claw(x2) 7 4 bash
stun gun 7 6 +Con check stun

Selenite (OSR/Basic/S&W/D&D)
Hit Dice: 2
Armor Class: 8 [11]
Attacks: 2 claws (1d4) or solar gun (1d6 + stun, save vs. Paralysis)
Move: 18'
Save: F2
Alignment: Neutral
Challenge/XP: 2/200

The Grand Lunar has no move, lesser strength (1 and 5) but very high intelligence (7 and 20).
If you game uses psionics then there is a chance "he" has them.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else does!

I am also participating in the May Monster Madness.  So today is my first post for that.
http://www.anniewalls.com/2013/04/may-monster-madness-sign-up-linky-list.html

WIP it Good!

Ok so sue me.  I am participating in another blogfest.


The WIP It Good Blogfest
http://dlcruisingaltitude.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-wip-it-good-blogfest.html

I am going to be talking about Eldritch Witchery!

I know, I have been talking about EW since before The Witch came out.
But on May 31st I am also going to do my new cover reveal! I got a new cover that I am just dying to share.

May is another busy month here.