Fiend (Dungeons & Dragons)

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the fictional characters controlled by the players often come into conflict with a variety of monsters from folklore and mythology. One of the game's more prominent monsters are the various races of demons, devils and other malicious otherworldly creatures, collectively referred to as fiends and hailing from the Lower Planes.

The most widespread race of fiends are the demons, a chaotic evil race native to the Abyss; they are rapacious, cruel and arbitrary. The dominant race of demons is the tanar'ri. The Abyss and its population are both theoretically infinite in size. "True" tanar'ri such as the balors (originally called Balrogs) and the six-armed serpentine mariliths push other weaker tanar'ri around and organise them into makeshift armies for battle. Demon Lords and Princes such as Orcus and Graz'zt rule over the demons of their layer of the Abyss, as much as the chaotic demons can be ruled over.

The devils, of which the ruling type are called baatezu, are lawful evil natives of the Nine Hells of Baator; they subjugate the weak and rule tyrannically over their domains. Pit fiends are the most powerful baatezu, though even the strongest pit fiends are surpassed by the Lords of the Nine, or Archdevils, whose ranks include Baalzebub, Mephistopheles, and Asmodeus.

The tanar'ri and the baatezu hold an eternal enmity for one another and wage the "Blood War" against one another.

Lastly, the yugoloths (called daemons in previous editions of the game) are neutral evil natives of the Gray Waste; they are neutral to the affairs of the other fiendish races, interfering only when they see a situation that may be profitable or a potential for the advancement of their own schemes. The yugoloths are manipulative, secretive, and mercenary by nature.

Other, more minor fiends also exist, such as a number of varieties of imps (associated with the devils). Most fiendish species are divided into a number of variants, usually in a hierarchy of increasing power and cunning.

In First Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the fiends were not given species names other than "demon", "devil", and "daemon"; they were assigned numeric "Types".

Satanism and Dungeons & Dragons

A number of critics of Dungeons & Dragons (mostly fundamentalist Christians) have accused the game of promoting Satanism and occultism, most vociferously in the mid-1980s, but like Heavy Metal music, this is no longer as visible a target as it once was. Some products, particularly the First Edition Dungeon Master's Guide, have shown actual symbols classically used by witches and magicians for summoning, abjuration and protection.

TSR eliminated most references to occult symbols, demons and devils from the second edition of the game under great pressure from anti-D&D negative publicity (the terms Baatezu and Tanar'ri were introduced at this time), but Wizards of the Coast reinserted many of these excised references in the third edition of the game, on the basis that most D&D players are mature adults (most surveys on the matter show that the average D&D player is in their early- to mid-twenties). Although characters in the game are capable of casting spells to summon such creatures, these spells are restricted to evil characters, most of whom are non-player characters. Also, a group of good celestials consisting of astral devas, solars and planetars was identified as Angels in the Revised (3.5) Monster Manual.

See also

• List of species in fantasy fiction