litphoria

I am not sure if I missed it which is a complete possibility but my suggestion if it doesn't exist is for a demonic species tag. While a demon is able to slip into many other species thanks to the freedom of their appearance. I think having a demonic species would allow a more direct option than picking the closest 'looking' species to go for a demon.

I suppose all that is fair enough, demons are a popular theme.

You should edit this from an interest suggestion to a category selection, with the category's trait set to Species, if you can.

What if I have a demon cat? Or a demon human? Or maybe a demon horse. I've seen all of these drawn. Demon-ness is not related to species, it is a supernatural ability (which is where it lives now).

Let's get back to the real issue here: someone wants to say "I am a demon" for descriptive purposes and to be searchable as one.

Demihuman and whatever else doesn't make you searchable as a demon.

Demonic powers don't make you a demon. (See Warlocks.) I don't buy that demonic power is defined as whatever power a demon has, either: what if I'm a demon with no special demon powers, but I have run of the mill magic (as a mage) or technological powers (as a cyborg)? Neither of those are demonic power just because a demon has it. What if I'm just a demon with no special supernatural powers at all? I'd pick the None option.

I totally agree that being able to leave the way open for cat demons, or demihuman demons, or whatever else would be a good thing, so not having a demon species is useful.

At the moment though that leaves us with no way to make a demon profile searchable as such. Or an elf, or other popular demihuman variants. Not sure what the solution is. Trait-free tagging?

So it's clear: I'm suggesting there's good reasons to have this category (searchable as demons) and good reasons to not relegate demons to exactly one species category (searchable as whatever they take the form of).

The arguments against this were not about need. I think we can agree that demon characters are fairly popular.

It was about proper use of the system. If we have a demonspecies, we then lose the ability to use the species as a species field - since being demonic is irrelevant to your species, you lose the ability to declare that you are, for example, a cat, and will no longer return on any searches for cats. That is not likely what demon cats want - they want to be able to say, and be searchable by, both their felineness and their demonic nature.

In order to capture this, we'd have to create a demon feline, a demon canine, a demon human etc etc. and that just feels wrong and like we're not addressing the root issue. A whole other trait, perhaps race or something else, that allows you to indicate your demonic heritage, would be a better fit solution for the problem of "how do I find demonic characters" and the problem of "how do I find demonic human-like characters".

The range of demihumans I've seen played that immediately comes to mind is: demons, angels, dryads, spirits, robots, elves, undead, kemonomimis, orcs, satyrs/fauns, trolls, faeries, dwarves, etc. The ones that could combine with other species would be: demon, angel, spirit, robot, undead. Maybe a species variant trait, or origin trait?

(That list leaves out: dryad, elf, kemonomimi, orc, satyr/faun, troll, faerie, dwarves.)

In D&D demon, angel, etc are neither species, nor abilities, but 'templates' that can be added to another species. It may be fitting, in this situation, to have a separate trait set, outside the species one. You could call it origin or subspecies, or something akin to that. Anyone who was only a cat could simply fill this out as a none, but all of those demonic, angelic, and werecats out there could have their nature noted while keeping the species clean.

This will be handled by race or descent trait or rename supernatural abilities to supernatural nature (litphoria.com). Both of these will allow "demon style" characters without forcing you to give up your species choice, so it would be possible to find all demon-style cats, demon-style humans, demon-style near humans, etc.

Closed.