I'm almost done with Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore- a quirky, funny, quick read.

The Demon is a bastard thing named Catch- a full-bore-monster-from-hell kinda demon.

Catch likes to destroy things and bring ruin.

His normal form is a 3-foot invisible imp (well, invisible to anyone who isn't his bound keeper), though anyone can see his huge 'eating form'- a giant reptilian monster. Catch like to eat people.

He's virtually indestructible, nigh unstoppable, and petty, nasty, mean, and untrustworthy. He combines the worst characteristics of a petulant child and a scheming bitter old man. Catch is good at destroying things.

The pact with him (read- the binding) renders his Keeper virtually ageless, & pretty close to invulnerable.

And the keeper can- when his will is strong- tell Catch what to do.

In Sorcerer terms, I'd put his Power in the 10 to 15 point range (with all his other scores up there as well). Between his huge Stamina, Special Damage, Armor (for self and sorcerer), Protection (for self and sorcerer), Vitality (for self and sorcerer) and Big, he's a really awful sort of thing to try and keep control over.

In the games I have run, the biggest demon I have seen a player go for was a Power 10 tricked out demon-car, and it sent the game teetering on the brink several times- both when it worked as intended, and when it got out of control. As GM it is much harder to deal with than a little Power 5 imp (though the trouble you can generate for players with either one still amazes me sometimes).

But here is the meat of the question- what are the biggest nastiest demons you have seen come into play, and how have you dealt with them (as GM or as players)?

-Ben

Hiya,

I'd put Catch down more at the Power 8 level, Ben. People are forever overestimating demons in the literature; I once came up with a very passable Stormbringer at Power 7 or 8. I strongly recommend not defining demons' scores based on Champions-style "how much can it lift" or "how much damage can it take" thinking - certain abilities alter these features dramatically.

I've GM'd players with demons up to Power 12, specifically Manu (a big horrible dream-demon inky thing), especially since the sorcerer was high Lore and crazy. Such a thing is a very central feature of play, as it rapidly becomes personally and actively relevant to nearly every player-character and NPC. That's not a bad thing at all, just a notable one. The same thing goes for a well-constructed demon at Power 8, as with Veniamin in my necromancy game. You can check out how whacky that one got in the threads I posted here.

In many cases, what would be "out of control" in many other role-playing experiences is merely where Sorcerer needs to go in this particular instance.

Also, in my experience, when a player says "I want my demon to have Power 20!" I merely ask them to describe it and what it can do ... they poop out at about six or seven abilities, and we just write it up from there at Power 7 or 8.

Best,
Ron

In my recently concluded Bibliophage game, I had two demons with Power in the double digits. One was the "Moth Queen", who was presented as the sort of demon who often would rebel after some time spent acclimating, break the Sorcerous bond, and become Immanent. With it, I was looking for something along the lines of the Queen in Aliens -- she had quite a laundry list of Abilities, including the ability to Spawn creatures that would eventually become independent demons in their own right ("Moth men"), allowing her to Spawn again. The Queen had been summoned by an ignorant and power-hungry neophyte NPC during the game, and was eventually banished in a big showdown by the PCs.

The other high-power demon in the game was the (immanent) ghost of the father of one of the PC's (and a Sorcerer before he died). I believe he was something like Power 11, and had all sorts of nasty things going on, notably Taint and Hint, linked together or used seperately... several kinds of perception, that sort of thing. He fed on the blood of his descendants to stay strong and could not be bound, only Pacted.

What Ron says I've found to be entirely true, however -- in most cases a strong concept for even a powerful demon can be well-expressed with a Power of 7 or 8, which can be quite potent and quite dangerous -- one character in my Grimm Therapy sessions has a dragon as his demon, and at Power 8 the thing certainly feels exactly like a dragon to me -- deadly breath attack, claws like knives, flight, impenetrable scales, and you should never look a dragon square in the eye, you know.

It's much less common in my experience thus far to see someone with a demon with a Power around 4 or 5 -- while you run out of things to add eventually, the urge to add 'just one more thing' to what you'd originally envisioned as a one-trick pony always seems to push those totals up.

Biggest demons, by measure of Power, were Ripper Bear and Vanth. Ripper Bear was . . . well, a bear, but with snaking entrails that hung from his belly. And he had a snout like Alf. He was a vicious, uncontrollable brute. His sorcerer (an NPC) kept him in a cell in a torture chamber and fed him kidnapped orphans. I think his Power was 11; not by ability count; I pushed it up by setting his Will high. Ripper quickly dominated every scene after he was released from his cell. There was really only one sorcerer among my players who could go head-to-head with it, and his parasite had about a Power of 8.

Vanth was a combat pawn that one of my players created to "get more into the game." He set her Power at 12 with a laundry list of abilities plus high Will. She was like an amazonian, vampiric succubus. Ripper incapacitated her in two rounds.

By other measures, demons of lesser Power featured more highly than the above mentioned heavy weights. Freddy the Freak had a knack for ambush and escape; everyone hated that sorcerer.

Everyone was scared shitless of the Spider Butler (Power 6) because of his tactics, concept and reputation. When faced with three FBI agents bearing shotguns, he tore off the door he'd just come out of and swatted them like flys. Then he stomped through the chest cavity of a player character's best friend and mentor, killing him instantly. He was a tall, broad black man in a Men In Black suit, complete with shades. His head was clean-shaven, and he had silver, tear drop earrings. When his cover dropped, his ribs would distend and transform into terrifying spider legs. When he walked through the door in the scene I describe, players said things like "Watch out for this guy. He kicked ass at the mansion."

Another demon that kicked off an arms race was Winston, a Power 6 posessor who conferred Special Attack: Lethal (jets of flames). He inspired fear mainly by the style in which the player's sorcerer commanded him. He killed innocents with joy and caused his master to quickly advance through the ranks of the Order of Force.

In the Dictionary of Mu's initial run I made a ton of mistakes as a GM but the one shining element of the game was one of the PC's Demon. In the setting, Demons are the spirits of dead things be they ideas, people or places.

The player's Demon was the ghost of the dead world upon which they lived.

Woof. Its power was somewhere in the lower double digits but I don't exactly recall.

He basically worshipped it and treated it like a revered God. I reckoned my job was to allow him to enjoy his first game with a God in his pocket until it slowly began asking him to do things that he didn't want to and a rift became evident. My job was to drive towards that rift.

The game never came about, I had set it up on shaky stilts.

In the past, I have convinced players that a given NPC controlled Demon was waaaaaaaay more badass than it actually was, simply by playing him smart and ruthless. I had them terrified of TV sets for a while, as they tended to manifest an enemy demon's Travel/Perception Spawn (which took the form of the TV character on screen when the demon came through). After seriously maiming one player with Joey from Friends, they moved all the TV sets out of any room they were in. The demon itself was only PL5, but it gave them tons of trouble.

I think my main hangup with really really powerful demons (power 10+) is how they can (in one roll of the dice) totally blow a game out of the water. It can get into TPK territory pretty fast... the Demon house from the 'Training Run' is hellish powerful- its Special Damage can pretty much kill any character in one round.

Does it come down just playing the Demons in such a way that it doesn't come down to this kind of direct insta-death confrontation unless the PC's go looking for it?

-B

Hello,

This is all giving me flashbacks to an essay I wrote in The Clobberin' Times, a Champions APA, about sixteen years ago. It was about villains.

Those of you who played Champs in the mid-late 1980s will recall, I am sure, that one great pleasure of the game lay in making up supervillains and playing them almost as player-characters - protagonists in their own minds, to be sure. Given the wide range of role models from the comics, the free hand at plagiarizing or simply lifting them, and the desire to "do [fill-in-name] right for once," the Champions GM who liked playing villains was in hog heaven.

My essay concerned the difference between piling on points and elegant construction based on theme. (One might say "psychology" or "motivation" rather than "theme," but I think both of those terms land us in dangerous territory when talking about decisions during role-playing.)

For those Champions-heads among us, I am emphatically not talking about the degraded skill of packing a million Active Points into a deceptively low total of Real Points. I am talking instead about every point, every Framework, every Limitation, every last little Psychological Disadvantage fitting into the villain's mode of operation and interactions with others. It's even better when some of these features are contradictory or problematic for the villain.

The effect is to bring a character into play who simply terrifies and fascinates the players, who in turn start playing their heroes very differently toward this villain. They scatter in combat rather than face him, they feverishly investigate anything that seems to have him involved, and most importantly they try to earn his respect.

The analogy to demons in Sorcerer isn't quite perfect, because (like Paul Dini of Batman: the Animated Series) I think comics villains need to be painfully human no matter how whacked-out, and human is the one thing that demons are not. But what does match is that demons are better elements in play not because they have high Lore and a laundry list of "powers," but when their parts interconnect in ways that explode during play.

Demon components
Type (and secondary Type if you're using the Sword rules)
Desire + Need (understanding the difference is crucial)
Scores
Abilities (most especially the synergistic ones; think "Link" if you know the Champions rules)
Appearance and customization of all of the above
Entire history: original Summoning? Binding? Current Binding and strength thereof? Current agenda? Potential better plans, if offered?
Current potential crisis: need a host? need a master? need its Need?

I never fear a combat-monster demon in Sorcerer. They're just piles of goop and highly vulnerable to coordinated sorcery. What I fear is an demon who combines Taint, Perception, and Special Damage into a single exchange, played smart - e.g. setting up combats in its own time and on its own terms, rolling Lore to earn bonuses against demons (who said a demon can't do this? not me). And "smart" for what? Why, for whatever confluence or contradiction is embodied at the moment in its Desire, its Need, and its relationship with its master.

Even if its Power is only 4 or 5, this demon can rip up nearly anyone; give it Armor or some degree of Protection, and it can go toe-to-toe with a badly-constructed and mindlessly-played demon twice its size.

Perception, Travel, Hint, Hold, Daze, Confuse, and Shadow ... customize each and every one of them to this demon's particular spin on Desire and Need, and then your Armor, Protection, and Special Damage actually mean something besides X-dice-attack, Y-dice-defense, over and over.

Brian, I suggest that you might have set yourself and the rest of the group up for some dissatisfaction by choosing to set Ripper's Will so high; I suggest that you might have done better to set it from Lore (i.e. X + 1). Did you decide to set the Will so high as "Banish defense," or to keep player-character sorcerers from ordering the demon around? In which case I further suggest that this sort of protective thinking be abandoned - this is Sorcerer, and there's no reason why a player-character can't take over the most powerful demon in the game.

I may be off-base with these comments, but I do know that such behavior is very common among first-time or near-first-time Sorcerer GMs who are coming from long role-playing histories. They are used to thinking of their bad-ass NPCs as their "hands" in the game, much as the players are often used to thinking of their player-characters as their "hands." Keeping others' hands off one's hands is a big deal from this perspective, but it's a poisonous perspective to bring to Sorcerer and the demons in play.

Best,
Ron

Hello,

Ben, you wrote,

I think my main hangup with really really powerful demons (power 10+) is how they can (in one roll of the dice) totally blow a game out of the water. It can get into TPK territory pretty fast... the Demon house from the 'Training Run' is hellish powerful- its Special Damage can pretty much kill any character in one round.

Does it come down just playing the Demons in such a way that it doesn't come down to this kind of direct insta-death confrontation unless the PC's go looking for it?

When I've GM'd the 'Training Run' game, it never came down to combat with Yzor... but I dreaded it. If one of the players (well, if THE player in the one-on-one game I ran to test the "power only" idea) had decided to try and actually kill the demon house... well, I was dreading the gnarly beatdown that would amount to (special damage with that many dice is... man... pretty nasty).

'Protecting the PC's' is one of those things I do habitually on the sly... and I suppse I should abandon it for Sorcerer, but old habbits die hard. I've never liked killed player characters.

Ah well- in Sorcerer I suppose what you do is hand that choice entirely to the players most of the time. Want to go for the big power? Well, would you risk your life?

Hmmm....

Thanks Ron.

-Ben

Yup.

I have also protected player-characters in Sorcerer out of habit. It has always always always turned out to be a very negative play-experience. When I stopped, everything about the game got better.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: Brian, I suggest that you might have set yourself and the rest of the group up for some dissatisfaction by choosing to set Ripper's Will so high; I suggest that you might have done better to set it from Lore (i.e. X + 1). Did you decide to set the Will so high as "Banish defense," or to keep player-character sorcerers from ordering the demon around? In which case I further suggest that this sort of protective thinking be abandoned - this is Sorcerer, and there's no reason why a player-character can't take over the most powerful demon in the game.

I may be off-base with these comments, but I do know that such behavior is very common among first-time or near-first-time Sorcerer GMs who are coming from long role-playing histories. They are used to thinking of their bad-ass NPCs as their "hands" in the game, much as the players are often used to thinking of their player-characters as their "hands." Keeping others' hands off one's hands is a big deal from this perspective, but it's a poisonous perspective to bring to Sorcerer and the demons in play.

Ron Edwards wrote: Desire + Need (understanding the difference is crucial)
Scores
Abilities (most especially the synergistic ones; think "Link" if you know the Champions rules)
Appearance and customization of all of the above
Entire history: original Summoning? Binding? Current Binding and strength thereof? Current agenda? Potential better plans, if offered?
Current potential crisis: need a host? need a master? need its Need?

I never fear a combat-monster demon in Sorcerer. They're just piles of goop and highly vulnerable to coordinated sorcery. What I fear is an demon who combines Taint, Perception, and Special Damage into a single exchange, played smart - e.g. setting up combats in its own time and on its own terms, rolling Lore to earn bonuses against demons (who said a demon can't do this? not me). And "smart" for what? Why, for whatever confluence or contradiction is embodied at the moment in its Desire, its Need, and its relationship with its master.

Hi Bill,

That is an amazing story about the Lore 2 demon. I really like that.

As for the "hands" issue, it might not apply to you, so no need to get into that in detail here - it's a big deal for a lot of folks, though, so maybe later.

Let me clarify Desire and Need. I've done this a number of times, but it's always worth it.

A demon's Desire is not associated with any specific thing, place, or action. Instead, it tries to bring about its Desire with whatever it encounters. Whether it does the Desire itself, influences others to do it, or simply wants to be around that particular Desire in action, is up to the demon at the moment - any of these are fine.

It does not crave its Desire in a drug-sense. It likes its Desire and thinks the whole world ought to tend that way, and might need a little help to get there. If the demon is a conversational type, then it will always bring a dialogue around to its Desire somehow.

The demon's Binder is not responsible for satisfying its Desire and Binding strength is not affected by how much the demon is getting its Desire stroked. Doing things in accord with the Desire might give a bonus die to interactions, but again, that's not a matter of Binding strength. Failing to satisfy a Desire does not incur penalties to interaction or ritual rolls, nor will it lead a demon down the path of rebellion. A demon will not lose Power by missing out on its Desire as it will with its Need.

A Need, by contrast, is for a specific thing or an action. There is no ambiguity, ever, about whether the demon received its Need and when the last time was. The demon may like its Need, hate it, or regard it as a physiological necessity. What matters is that it's literally addicted to it.

Binding by definition makes the Binder responsible for providing the demon with its Need. Both participants understand this in full, for any and every instance of Binding, even if the sorcerer is Naive. Failure to receive its Need makes the demon lose Power, just as a Parasite or Possessor loses Power when outside a host. Under-supplying or frequently-supplying the Need does affect Binding strength and the demon's tendency to rebel or not to rebel.

Desire is ideology, personality, taste, and preference. Need is addiction, payment, and power.

Best,
Ron

The demon in the book, Catch, seems to have a Need to eat people, but a Desire for mayhem, to kill and terrorize. So in the book, the demonkeeper Travis reluctantly allows Catch to eat people, usually "bad" people if possible. However, what Catch would really like to do is run amok.

Ron, you mentioned that Desires can give a bonus to interaction rolls. Does that mean that Travis (if the book were a game) would get a bonus in dealing with Catch if he fulfilled Catch's desire more often? What if another sorcerer wanted to lure Catch away from Travis? Would that sorcerer get bonus dice for promising to let Catch have more fun?

The demon's Binder is not responsible for satisfying its Desire and Binding strength is not affected by how much the demon is getting its Desire stroked. Doing things in accord with the Desire might give a bonus die to interactions, but again, that's not a matter of Binding strength. Failing to satisfy a Desire does not incur penalties to interaction or ritual rolls, nor will it lead a demon down the path of rebellion. A demon will not lose Power by missing out on its Desire as it will with its Need.

Hiya,

Danny and Ralph, all of that is correct. A demon whose master contributes toward it being able to enjoy (perform, witness, influence, etc) its Desire will be a happier demon. Such happiness will certainly influence any number of rolls in any number of ways.

However, what I'm trying to make as clear as possible is that neither of the following is directly affected by the demon's master's actions toward its Desire:

a) Binding strength

b) formally proceeding down the path of rebellion

... whereas both of these things are directly affected by the master failing to provide the demon with its Need, or by going to great pains to provide it with its Need.

Can I get a confirm from someone, anyone, that this point is now clear?

Best,
Ron

b) formally proceeding down the path of rebellion

Much clearer. Thx.

(Cross-posted.)

Hi Ralph,

The difference is not immediately apparent just by seeing the demon's behavior in one instance.

"Fragg, go hit that ninja!"

"Ah, fuck you."

"Fragg, dammit!!"

[Fragg clocks ninja]

Let's assume that all of the above is Color, in that Fragg isn't really balking at the action (giving up a combat action, e.g.) - just expressing himself. (As in Office Space: "This is me, expressing myself.")

The event is consistent either with Fragg entering the Brat stage of rebellion due to not getting its Need, or just honking off because its Desire isn't getting met or hasn't been lately.

But the GM ought to know which, even if the player can't tell, and the player should be able to say, if he or she thinks about it, whether the player-character is currently in the red or in the black regarding the Need.

So yeah, the difference is interpretable when you back up and think over the last few instances/opportunities regarding the Need.

Desire-based fractiousness is really mainly a matter of fun Color for role-playing, occasionally relevant to bonus dice on one or another side of an interaction. Much along the same lines as a quip.

Best,
Ron

OK, that really clears it up. That's evil, man. :)

Ah! Back to the issue of mondo-powerful demons, check out Stat scaling in Sorcerer.

Best,
Ron

Ron and all -- just wanted to say that there was a lot in this thread that has helped me.

First Sorcerer game is schedule for Sept 10 -- can't wait.

"Never protect the player-characters in Sorcerer."

This surprised me at first, but I get it. I think the urge to protect is left over from D&D -- if you don't protect the players from the game system (or at least the combat system) then they die quickly -- game over. But one of the things I've learned from Sorcerer and in the discussions about Heroquest is that failure in combat does not equal death (necessarily, anyway).

Coupling that with the comments about Yzor needing a new master --- hmmm, I'm getting some evil ideas here. :-)

Surprisingly, my players have opted for very low power demons. I didn't mention any of the mechanics when I asked for their demons -- I just said "tell me what your demons can do". One demon I got back literally said "No combat ability". Another is just two abilities.

Man -- every time I read one of these threads I get excited about the game again. We've been trying to play for almost 3 months and Real Life keeps interfering.

Hiya,

Glad to hear this is helping you!

Here's a suggestion: ask the players how willful they envision their demons to be, relative to their player-characters. If someone with a little demon says "oh, he's kind of just a schlubby imp," then leave the demon as is. But if someone says, "actually, pretty hard-core, a real handful," then raise Will and Power (and possibly Stamina), leaving Lore low.

Best,
Ron

Great idea, Ron -- here's my first response:

"I'll have to think about it, but right away I think she
would be sneaky - often disappearing on her own agendas, up to no good."

You should see the big grin on my face as I type this!

Oh, yes, yessss, we putssss the Will up on that one.

(The story behind this demon is that she is a tatoo in red ink of a little hot demoness with horns and pitchfork. The character is ex-Army, served in Vietnam as a "Thumper God" -- a grenadier. Character accidentally kills family in hut, father has the tat. Character passes out upon viewing the carnage he has wrought and when he wakes up the tat has transferred to him.)

Oh that's beautiful. The demon, the response, and the concept.

But don't forget that Binding the demon must have been voluntary - just because he woke up with the tattoo doesn't mean he Bound it "accidentally." Make sure the player says why the character entered into the Binding.

You may have done this already, but I'm always on the lookout for "whoops, guess I got bonked on the head, guess I have a demon" bad superhero origins for Sorcerer characters.

Best,
Ron

You're right, thanks -- we're still working on the characters via email before the game so I have time to correct this.

Ron, to your mind, can a voluntary Binding be as simple as not rejecting the Demon? If the example character had the option of (say) lasering the tattoo off or excising the flesh but chose not to, could that be a kind of acceptance?

Or how about, the guy wakes up, bleary-eyed, sees the little devil crawling off the dead man and onto him, knows he could (with supreme effort) hit it with a rock or yell "piss off" or something, but chooses to just pass out again. Would that qualify as 'voluntary Binding?'

Hiya,

All of those could be part of the character's back-story, as events in the interaction between him and the demon. I'm not saying "Don't do that" in terms of the descriptions.

But the answer to your question is No. Even if it were months or years later (which is OK in the case of this example, being back in 'Nam and all), the character one day had to say "Yes, I will feed you, indefinitely," to the demon. Usually a person would only say such a thing under duress.

The problem with characters like this one is that they were under duress prior to getting the demon, but that we don't have any idea of their duress when they Bound it, and now they're not under any either. Christopher Kubasik put it very nicely one time, that Sorcerer characters have three origins:

the person and his passions
the [person + passions] and his demon(s)
the [person + passions + demons] and the Kicker

If all you provide are the demons and a half-ass Kicker, you're forcing the GM to "make a story" that fills in your character's passions. That is wimpy-ass Sorcerer play and literally hobbles everyone else at the table.

I did not make this clear in the Armand DeVito example in the book, which was a mistake. The problem is that I was thinking in Armand's voice at the time, and the character always hides his commitments although when he makes them he's ruthlessly sincere.

Best,
Ron

The simple fact is that if the sorcerer doesn't have a desire, or need of his own, to have a demon, then he simply banishes it, and ceases to be a sorcerer. Game over. To make play work, the Sorcerer has to have a reason to have the demons he has. Period.

This is what drives play - it's not about the cool powers, but why the sorcerer needs them. This sets up the dysfunctional relationship between the demons and sorcerer, all in relation to the humanity mechanic. Without the sorcerer's need, there's never any choices for him to make relative to humanity, and the game falls down.

Pretty simple, really. Just not what most RPGs require from a character. Not giving a sorcerer a need for demons in sorcerer is like not giving a D&D character a class.

The power of a demon is actually irrelevant in many ways. It's not about "can the demon kill you?" it's about "have you provoked your demon to kill you?" From that POV, demon power just makes the results of the chosen answer more or less variable.

Mike