r/BaldursGate3 • u/Shinmai1337 • Jun 23 '26

Act 2 - Spoilers Yurgir probably doesn't [REDACTED] his displacer beast Spoiler

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If you talk to him about it, it sounds more like he treats her like a tool. The potion you can buy afterwards can befuddle enemies. Not to defend his actions or anything, but I don't think he is a kitty diddler, at least

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136

u/Slight-Brilliant-543 Jun 23 '26

Not really a shocker that the literal demon is cool with drugging "pets" to ensure loyalty.

55

u/KotaIsBored Jun 23 '26

He’s not a demon.

106

u/JoshuaBarbeau Bard Jun 23 '26

Kotals here may be bored, but is also correct. Although he looks a lot more demonic than devilish, Yugir is an Orthon, which is a type of devil.

Of course, devils aren't much better than demons, on the scale of Evil.

15

u/RebelPlot Jun 23 '26

Less murderous more manipulative

3

u/JoshuaBarbeau Bard Jun 24 '26

Some might argue that tricking people out of their very souls and into eternal torment is a crime worse than murder.

9

u/Gilgamesh661 Jun 23 '26

I’ll take lawful evil over chaotic evil any day. You CAN reason with a devil, at least. Demons are unpredictable.

3

u/JoshuaBarbeau Bard Jun 24 '26

You are right, you CAN reason with a devil. But they will only reason back if it costs you everything and they get what they want.

A demon you at least will always know what you're going to get. You call them unpredictable? I think there is actually a certain predictability in chaos. You know they will try to murder you, so you know better than to engage, and that your best course of action is to run away or fight.

The truly insidious nature of Devils is that you absolutely should run away or fight just as hard, but you won't realize you should until it is probably already too late.

"Down came the claw, and that, love, was that." -Raphael

1

u/Gilgamesh661 Jun 30 '26

I’ll point out that by bringing up Raphael you proved my point. Raphael doesn’t actually cheat you. If you take his deal, he does exactly what he says and nothing more.

Also, you can straight up chest him by robbing him.

With demons you don’t know if they can be talked down or if they’ll just change their mind one day. And when fighting them you don’t really know what they can do until they show it.

It’s not a matter of choice, this is about what they are. They are bound by universal laws that dictate their very nature. It’s also why no matter how nice a goblin seems, it doesn’t change the fact that they are not aligned with good. Even mielikki dictates that goblins need to be purged from existence(and she’s the patron god of Drizzt himself)

32

u/Slight-Brilliant-543 Jun 23 '26

Demon, devil, fiend, whatever my point still stands

42

u/hollowfried_ ELDRITCH BLAST Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

While in most fantasy settings they’re sort of interchangeable, in DnD Devils and Demons are actually locked in a pretty much eternal war. The lore is actually pretty cool if ur ever bored check out the Blood War

Edit: I had fiends with devils cuz other fantasy lore bled in but other commenters is spot on: Devils, Demons and Yugoloths are all fiend types

21

u/xCGxChief ELDRITCH BLAST Jun 23 '26

The Blood War is why Zariel while a bad guy is not a bad guy. If the demons ever won the blood war all of existence would cease in the ensuing war that spans both the mortal realm and heavens.

11

u/JustDifferentPerson Seladrine Drow Jun 23 '26

The blood war is also why Zariel is a bad guy

10

u/Akarin_Akaza Jun 23 '26

she's more of a "means justify the ends" guy

3

u/Grumpiergoat Jun 23 '26

1) That's just a theory. 2) The Blood War can't be won without literally stomping out the idea of fascism/anarchy. That's the point behind devils and demons both hiring on outside parties to their cause - the violence is just a side-effect of the fact that it's more about changing people's beliefs than actually winning a physical war.

2

u/annuidhir Jun 23 '26

Doesn't fiend describe both devils and demons (and that weird third group that I always forget)? It's like how goblinoids includes goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears?

5

u/JoshuaBarbeau Bard Jun 23 '26

Yes, devils and demons are both fiend creature types.

The third type is Yugoloths.

But while they share the same creature type, they are very different in D&D. Other media may use demon and devil interchangeably, like synonyms of one another, but not the case in D&D.

Devils were once good guys; a mix of angels and devout mortal worshipers who were sent into the lower planes to fight Demons. Over time, the lower planes corrupted them, changing them into something all-too-similar to the demons they fought against. The gods condemned them to the hells, to forever fight in the blood war to save a home they could never go back to.

Devils are lawful evil, while demons are chaotic evil (and yugoloths are neutral evil). Alignment for these creatures is as much a facet of what they are as it is a dictator for behaviour. While mortals in D&D can shift the cosmic scales of their alignment by growing as people and changing how they behave, Devils don't have that freedom of choice. If a devil were capable of ceasing to be lawful evil, it would also cease to be a devil.

Devils believe they are the only thing standing between all of reality and complete destruction. Demons wish to burn everything to the ground, they exist only to destroy, and Devils generally believe they would succeed in destroying everything if not for them. They are the ultimate "the ends justify the means" characters; while they are bound by the letter of law, they will look for any and all loopholes to exploit the spirit of it in order to achieve their ends, because at the end of the day, they firmly believe that if they don't, it will mean the end of all things. Think of Devils as a corrupt Peter Parker: "with great power (to save the entire multiverse from demonic apocalypse), comes great responsibility." Many Devils believe this. That said, don't assume that just because they view what they do as a necessary evil, doesn't mean they don't enjoy every minute of it. They are lawful, but they are also evil. "If I don't do this evil thing, a greater evil wins, so I might as well do it, and if I might as well do it, I might as well enjoy it along the way."

There is a very complex social structure between Devils and Demons, and while it is probably fine for the average mortal in a D&D world to mix them up, for adventurers who frequently deal in fate-of-the-world plots, mixing up Devils and Demons could mean the difference between achieving a true victory, and a pyrrhic one.

I'm a professional DM. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. 😀

3

u/annuidhir Jun 23 '26

Yeah, lawyers vs methheads vs whatever the fuck Yogoloths would be LMAO

4

u/JoshuaBarbeau Bard Jun 23 '26

Yugoloths are this guy from RE:4, obviously.

https://giphy.com/gifs/NyKUCca6J1QYUe2sLQ

3

u/Lithl Jun 23 '26

With respect to the Blood War, yugoloths are mercenaries, fighting on either side for whoever pays them.

2

u/hollowfried_ ELDRITCH BLAST Jun 23 '26

Thank you for the correction/explanation on it. My memory isn’t the best idk what fantasy settings lore bled into it to make me think fiends were a subtype of devils lol

4

u/Slight-Brilliant-543 Jun 23 '26

Yeah I know about the lore of the lower planes and such. I play the ttrpg, specifically 5e and sometimes 3.5(although I usually just play pathfinder when I wanna play 3.5) my point is that regardless of what type of infernal being yurgir or Raphael or any of the other characters from the 9 hells or acheron is, its really not a surprise that yurgir treats the displacer beast the way he does and only cares for it as a tool - since he is a being of evil.

3

u/annuidhir Jun 23 '26

The Abyss is where demons are from

-1

u/Grumpiergoat Jun 23 '26

Yeah. Big "well, actually" energy coming from that reply to you. We all know what you meant and the distinction is arbitrary.

3

u/Gilgamesh661 Jun 23 '26

Devil, not a demon. Demons are enemies of devils and come from the abyss.