Every so often, you will see a note about a "true name" mentioned for a monster or something in 5e. Now I know about true names from other lores and previous editions, but I don't think I have ever seen the concept actually explained in 5e. Is it noted somewhere in the DMG perhaps?
D&D 5E True Names - Are they ever "defined" in 5e?
- Thread starter Stalker0
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MNblockhead
A Title Much Cooler Than Anything on the Old Site
How do you rule on true names when it comes to arch fiends. I mean, if a high-level wizard or cleric can just cast legend lore or wish to learn a demon lord's or arch devil's true name, then other powerful would have used this. It just breaks the lore. Fraz-Urb’luu has "undetectable" but I assume that there must be protections other powerful fiends have if even the gods can't just bind them.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
The way I see it, there's a lot of presumptions that are implied with the use of true names, the relationships between gods and fiends, the level of accessibility that evil Outsiders have to the Material Plane, etc. The problem is that very little of it is expressly stated, and sometimes it's contradicted by what is stated.
For instance, the reason why the gods of goodness don't just use arch-fiends' frue names to bind them all is often because of an implied state of detente between the various powers of the Outer Planes. Overt hostile action between a god and an arch-fiend (which is, in another unspoken implication, presumed to have god-like power of its own, even if only within its own realm) would lead to a "war in the heavens" scenario that nobody really wants, since it would destabilize their own power base and spill over into greater conflicts throughout the planes.
Things like that are often part of an unspoken background regarding how things work, though I'll note that earlier editions often went into more background on this.
aco175
Legend
Sounds like a quest through the Hills of Grindings Sands, past the Eye of the Burning Sun, find the mountain pass known as the Ice Vortex and then enter the Vale of Eternal Shadow. Legend says there may have been a cult that lived there and written on the wall is the true name you seek. But beware, the mere sight of this knowledge will exact a terrible toll on your sanity.
Wish costs you 33% chance to never cast Wish again. And it can be warped; the easiest way to learn the name of a Fiend might be to become a simulacrum of that Fiend. And Wish is nothing if not lazy; pre-existing magical effect it can poach? Seems simple. Congratulations, you are now their slave. But you know what they know!
Legend Lore, similarly, both gives unspecified information, couches it in figurative language, and the information scales with the knowledge you already have. The true name of an archfiend is very, very deep information; so you'd have to know a hell of a lot. And then ... you'd get a riddle or a figurative description of what the true name is. There is no way to test if you have the real true name other than trying to use it... which could end poorly.
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There's probably no worse idea in the multiverse than summoning an archdevil and assuming that since you know its true name that you have the upper hand. An archdevil doesn't care if it spends 100 years as your "servant" because it was spending that whole time corrupting you as it gave you power, to the point that the good powers are forced to sink your whole nation under the waves just to kick that archdevil back to hell where it belongs.
Also, if it is hard enough to get the name, only really powerful fools know it. So...
Right, there's a reason you found it in one-occupant prison buried under a volcano guarded by celestial war automata.
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