Dealing with Demons

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Shadekeep

Other actions were pertinent to the demon in question. Some could be made more agreeable by being given specific offerings while summoned. Others responded favourably to flattery, music, dancers, or more lascivious displays.

The boons they could grant were in areas relevant to their interests?

[RobW]

Originally Posted by Shadekeep

In my campaign where I used demons from the grimoires I mentioned earlier, the player characters had to know the corresponding sigil needed to summon a specific (greater) demon. Otherwise they could only summon one of the lower nameless (lesser) demons. They could obtain the sigil by finding/buying one of the books in-game, or learning it from a diabolist.

I really like that and the "true name" idea. The recurring demon becomes an NPC with their own personality, and reactions and counter-measures to being repeatedly summoned.

[Shadekeep]

Just found this amazing resource on historical demons:

https://www.deliriumsrealm.com/demons/magick-demons/

It lists not just the demons by name, but also their sigils, aspects, and special abilities. So players and NPCs could, say, summon Andras if they wish to foment conflict, Furfur if they want to work a love charm, or Gremory to find hidden treasure. All these individualist details makes demon summoning a far more interesting thing in the game, I feel.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by Shadekeep

JAll these individualist details makes demon summoning a far more interesting thing in the game, I feel.

Demon's specialties can also over lap, a little or a lot, and finding info about the existence (and/or summoning details) of a particular demon can be an adventure itself.

[Skarg]

Replacing the demons with specific demons with very varied abilities is a nice context for quietly sweeping the wishes under the rug (and/or assigning them to only certain demons).

Different demons can also require very different summoning requirements, offerings / spell ingredients, and different spells or other means for summoning them and controlling them.

With specific demons, the questions come up about whether they're always available or not, what happens when someone summons Bubblesbub when someone else already has Bubblesbub working for them, and what effect it has if Bubblesbub gets heavily injured, dismembered, and/or killed on this plane (no longer exists? takes some significant amount of time to be available again? nothing?)

If you get attacked by a demon summoned by someone else (one of the more powerful uses of a RAW TFT demon, since they can teleport anywhere at no cost), and you learn its name and can summon it yourself, can you do so and then ask it who sent it after you, and to go bring them a lit petard?

[hcobb]

Unless we're just talking House Rules, I suppose that somebody is working on a Demons book for ITL?

[TippetsTX]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Unless we're just talking House Rules, I suppose that somebody is working on a Demons book for ITL?

Sounds like Shadekeep certainly has something in the works.

[malchidael]

The old SPI game "DragonQuest" had a school of magic dedicated to summoning demons, and the list of demons was pulled from the Goetia/Lesser Keys of Solomon.

They had specific rules on interactions with these demons as individual (although there is significant overlap between them in the original source material).

This of course was in the 1st and 2nd printing of the game, not the 3rd printing that TSR released after they purchased SPI.

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Unless we're just talking House Rules, I suppose that somebody is working on a Demons book for ITL?

Originally Posted by TippetsTX

Sounds like Shadekeep certainly has something in the works.

I'm very tempted, since it overlaps a lot with my own interests, and this discussion has nudged me in this direction, is spite of having two other guidebooks I want to do. I would probably mostly use demons from the Key of Solomon, plus add lesser demon types from sources like Dante's Inferno (malebranche, chelydras, amphisboena, etc). I need to see if anyone from my illustrator pool would be interested in such a project.

How about folks here? Is The Book of Demonology (provisional title) something you'd want to see?

Originally Posted by malchidael

The old SPI game "DragonQuest" had a school of magic dedicated to summoning demons, and the list of demons was pulled from the Goetia/Lesser Keys of Solomon.

SPI also made a solo/multiplayer game simply called Demons, which also uses demons from this source. I still have an unpunched copy of that. ^_^

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Shadekeep

I need to see if anyone from my illustrator pool would be interested in such a project.

No artists from the Mid-evil period strike your fancy?