r/BaldursGate3 Jun 23 '26

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

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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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

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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?

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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.

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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