Why don't D&D devils, make deals with kids?

[NecroDancer]

maybe because the souls of children aren't very strong. its like fishing, why bother catching minnows when you could catch salmon or catfish?

Also a demon wouldn't bother trying to corrupt a kid because all little kids are CE.

[superstrijder15]

Contracts with minors are not legally binding, according to most mortal laws and also Infernal Code Chapter 784.864, Article 83, Section 72.38, Subsection A14, Paragraph 903.

I like how the sections are defined to 1/100 of a section, but even then there are subsections.

Relevant to the thread: From a metagaming perspective, most people wouldn't like playing in a world where children regularly accidentally sell their soul.
Also, perhaps the Devils realised that if they got all childrens souls or 'the souls of you and all your descendants' or something, the good aligned dieties would simply write them off as collateral damage now and destroy that world/plane before the devils would get to much power from it. It might even have happened before...

[NichG]

There's no real reason for devils to avoid, in general, messing with kids given the opportunity.

It seems stranger to me though that every mortal would have a devil hanging out near them waiting to hear a misspoken 'I would do anything for...' or 'I'd sell my soul for...'

That is to say, your average devil with access to the mortal realm is, as a scheming, immortal personification of cosmic forces, a more important personage than your average mortal. If they're slumming it on the Prime hunting for souls in time to hear and respond to the request, someone either got very (un)lucky, went through a bit more trouble than usual to get their attention (e.g. via involved ritual magic or at least a mid-level spell), or they have some specific and long-term end in mind.

Kids selling their souls won't be an average childhood experience any more than people selling their souls would be an average adult experience, because being important enough to be the lynchpin in a devil's Machiavellian plan isn't something just anyone can aspire to. A single solitary soul, unless one of particular power seized in living form before Lethe's kiss strips it of it's useful bits, just isn't worth the time in most cases - kid or adult. You could trade a couple of them to a hag for a nice prosthetic limb perhaps.

But, if that devil has a grand plan that grounds out through the corruption of a child, a devil isn't going to think twice. You're just more likely to see that round about the time that everything goes to hell for everyone rather than as a frequent childhood nuisance.

[Segev]

There's no real reason for devils to avoid, in general, messing with kids given the opportunity.

It seems stranger to me though that every mortal would have a devil hanging out near them waiting to hear a misspoken 'I would do anything for...' or 'I'd sell my soul for...'

That is to say, your average devil with access to the mortal realm is, as a scheming, immortal personification of cosmic forces, a more important personage than your average mortal. If they're slumming it on the Prime hunting for souls in time to hear and respond to the request, someone either got very (un)lucky, went through a bit more trouble than usual to get their attention (e.g. via involved ritual magic or at least a mid-level spell), or they have some specific and long-term end in mind.

Kids selling their souls won't be an average childhood experience any more than people selling their souls would be an average adult experience, because being important enough to be the lynchpin in a devil's Machiavellian plan isn't something just anyone can aspire to. A single solitary soul, unless one of particular power seized in living form before Lethe's kiss strips it of it's useful bits, just isn't worth the time in most cases - kid or adult. You could trade a couple of them to a hag for a nice prosthetic limb perhaps.

But, if that devil has a grand plan that grounds out through the corruption of a child, a devil isn't going to think twice. You're just more likely to see that round about the time that everything goes to hell for everyone rather than as a frequent childhood nuisance.

I picture it happening more likely the way it did in an episode of Supernatural: The devil was summoned to make a deal with one guy, and then...didn't leave. While in the area, it just went to a bar and hung out as people got drunk enough to make bargains. Then it visited the apprentice barracks at the various local guilds and played on ambitious, jealous, or fearful apprentices' weaknesses to get more deals. Then, on its way out of town the next morning, it stopped at the orphanage and the various play yards with little kids in them, making whatever deals it could in passing.

I mean, its in town; may as well make the most of it.

[Anonymouswizard]

A single solitary soul, unless one of particular power seized in living form before Lethe's kiss strips it of it's useful bits, just isn't worth the time in most cases - kid or adult. You could trade a couple of them to a hag for a nice prosthetic limb perhaps.

The thing is, the pact might not even be for a soul. I like to think of your stereotypical 'I sold my soul for power' deal the sort of thing that really never happens because thousands of souls are pouring into hell at any rate, one or two more isn't going to make a difference.

No, the real benefit behind a pact is the ability to act indirectly in the mortal world. A Pit Fiend becoming the Vizier is the sort of thing that the Celestials will frown on, but the Pit Fiend offering the Vizier some service in exchange for throwing his weight behind policies that suit the Pit Fiend is much more likely to go unnoticed.

And really, that is why a devil might go after a kid. Because while the lone soul isn't worthwhile you can shape the kid into your agent in the mortal world. Much more easily than as an adult as well.

No, this isn't the concept for the next character I'm going to play (okay, it totally is, but might be going for any of the 5e Warlock Patrons).

[Peelee]

Contracts with minors are not legally binding, according to most mortal laws and also Infernal Code Chapter 784.864, Article 83, Section 72.38, Subsection A14, Paragraph 903.

Which makes sense, because otherwise that would be evil.

Wait a second....

[Scripten]

Which makes sense, because otherwise that would be evil.

Wait a second....

Worse, it would be chaotic.

[Peelee]

Worse, it would be chaotic.

I don't see how that's necessarily the case.

[Braininthejar2]

A kid won't summon one.

As a target of opportunity... perhaps. But it's worth exactly one soul with no extra merits (knowledge etc) so might not be worth the extra attention it would bring.

Then again, if you remember Berserk "lost children" arc...

[Pleh]

The guess is correct. Which is why Dungeons and Dragons is now pathfinder.

5e begs to differ.

The fact that Paizo isn't working on 5e is the reason PF isn't D&D.

You say that like it wouldn't be awesome to have the players run across a city where this is the way things are.

Huh, I wonder if having Drow be a part-faustian, part-Dickensian dystopia would make them more interesting.

I actually got a picture of a society where Drow, Vampires, Illithid, and Devils rule the world/metropolis in factions and mortal humanoids are the prime commodity in the form of livestock. Devils want their souls, Mindflayers want their brains, Vampires want their blood, and Drow want their labor. So humans/core races are born into slavery and traded like currency.

Slap on a victorian style feud of the nobility and layer in some semi ironic faction niches (Illithid are the scientists/scholars, Devils pound the pulpit, Vampires run the brothels and casinos, and Drow manage the industrial block) and you've got a decent dystopia foundation.

[Psyren]

I don't see how that's necessarily the case.

It's a contract that is invalid from the get-go. It wouldn't be worth the infernal ink it was signed in. That's a far bigger problem to a devil than worrying about the children themselves.

[theMycon]

They tried it, but quickly learned the hazards of making a deal with creatures more evil than even they could fathom.

[Peelee]

It's a contract that is invalid from the get-go. It wouldn't be worth the infernal ink it was signed in. That's a far bigger problem to a devil than worrying about the children themselves.

For a baby or a toddler or someone who cannot understand the terms, sure. An eight-year-old certainly has a concept of trade and ownership, it's not the fiend's fault that an eight-year-old may have a crappy concept of value. Perfectly lawful, just evil as all get out.

[Segev]

Devil: And that is how we learned to include a "no-take-backs" clause in every contract.
Kid: Well, I also had my fingers crossed.
Devil: AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGHHH!

[Andor13]

For a baby or a toddler or someone who cannot understand the terms, sure. An eight-year-old certainly has a concept of trade and ownership, it's not the fiend's fault that an eight-year-old may have a crappy concept of value. Perfectly lawful, just evil as all get out.

Well it depends on the GM, but historically kids aren't legally people, they are chattel. They can't sell their souls until they are legally adults, because they don't have the right.

[Lemmy]

Why do Devils make contracts rather than just rip the soul out of whoever they want? And who judges whether the contract is valid or not? If all that matters is the knowledge of the devil and the guy signing off hos soul, then no paper or ink would be necessary. Both parties agreed to the deal and know that they did. If it's only the paper that matters, the devil could simply force the person to sign their name through the use of raw physical force.

So that implies that devils either require or really, really want consent.

Perhaps that means there's some cosmic force that can (and does) check contracts, judge their validity and enforce their decision. This force, whatever it is, may enforce the addition of an "in my full mental capacities and of my own free will" kind of clause. And that means consent from someone fully capable of making their own decisions.

Perhaps so they savor the victim's despair and regret later, which is much more intense when they know it's honestly their fault and that they should have known better.

Perhaps it's because it's embarassing. Tricking a kid is easy. If you're an immortal being of evil-made-flesh specialized in tricking people into signing unfavorable deals, doing it to kids or mentally challenged people could be seem as embarassing... You'd be the laughing stock of Hell! It's like a professional MMA fighter bragging about beating a toddler. Even discounting the morality, it's an embarrassment even if it's technically a victory. After all... If you went after that toddler, it's probably becauze you're too weak to face a real opponent. And devils probably enjoy seeing their rivals pubicly humiliated even more than they enjoy the despair of those who sign their contracts.

[Malphegor]

Personally, I'd allow it if I ever get around to running a game, but have some obscure clause force the deal into being educational for the child should they get free.

So less 'you are doomed, woe is your folly, your hubris has ruined you', more 'Labyrinth knockoff quest hook'.

Depends on the style of the campaign though.

[Nifft]

Well it depends on the GM, but historically kids aren't legally people, they are chattel. They can't sell their souls until they are legally adults, because they don't have the right.

"Hey there Your Majesty, it's your old buddy Lucifer. I need you to do me a favor. Change the legal age of adulthood to seven, justify it with something about apprenticeship contracts for orphans or whatever. If you do that and let it remain for the rest of your reign, I'll give you back your own soul."

Perhaps it's because it's embarassing. Tricking a kid is easy. If you're an immortal being of evil-made-flesh specialized in tricking people into signing unfavorable deals, doing it to kids or mentally challenged people could be seem as embarassing... You'd be the laughing stock of Hell! It's like a professional MMA fighter bragging about beating a toddler. Even discounting the morality, it's an embarrassment even if it's technically a victory. After all... If you went after that toddler, it's probably becauze you're too weak to face a real opponent. And devils probably enjoy seeing their rivals pubicly humiliated even more than they enjoy the despair of those who sign their contracts.

Peer pressure, bane of fiends and teens.

I suppose that's why Dr. Faustus was such a prize -- he was a doctor, after all.

[ross]

It's a great way to get your game pulled off the shelf, which is the only reason that really matters.

And if it does stay up - like maybe at that one game shop no one goes to 'cause the cashier looks like a serial killer and there's always this one guy at the table at all times of the day who never showers - your game will forever be known as "that game where kids make deals with satan", which is pretty much the same thing as getting pulled. Just like FATAL is "that porn game made by a couple of 14-year-old potheads".

Since this does not seem to extend to anything else, I find this explanation to be highly unlikely.

What should "devils don't make deals with kids" extend to, other than devils not making deals with kids?

[NichG]

Mortal laws won't matter. Keep in mind what hell represents - it's the ultimate expression of law as evil. There may be ideas in that legal system about informed consent, ownership, and so on, but they'll be designed to have the highest degree of dystopian, unfair, and unjust interpretations as possible, with as many traps and gotchas as they can manage. Half of it though will be there for devils to screw over each other.

In all likelihood the dog and pony soul of a contract is in most cases just a kind of sick and twisted scorekeeping between devils. Sure if you just kill the warlock who summoned you, hell will probably get that soul. But you want to make sure you can prove that you were the one who delivered it, not that erinyes across the way, not your boss (who you're of course scheming to surpass and dominate all the while trying to ingratiate yourself), etc. And if you physically kidnap still-living mortals back to hell, it's going to be hard to keep those other devils from trying to take custody (and credit). So you have some incentive to get the postage right, as it were.

The exceptions are the cases where the soul actually would normally go somewhere else, in which case the contracts are referents to the Pact Primeval and, in order to work, have to stick to that. Here the importance is less the soul obtained and more about actively contributing to the corruption of the fundamental nature of the Upper Planes - that is to say, by forcing them to be complicit in the damnation of innocents. Since the Pact Primeval is a sort of original sin committed by the heavens, damning a truly good or truly innocent person who is signing themselves away in an act of real self-sacrifice is a way of twisting the dagger. In that sense, I think getting a baby to sign in blood would actually be worth some points (though better would be to get a child to damn themselves to save their parents while simultaneously the parents damn themselves to save the kid).

[Psyren]

An eight-year-old certainly has a concept of trade and ownership,

Of a soul? [Citation Needed]

[Peelee]

Of a soul? [Citation Needed]

They have a concept of a ownership, and a concept of self. The two can certainly be combined easily enough. I see no reason why they wouldn't be able to sell their souls, because I see no reason why it wouldn't be Lawful. Crazy Evil, but Lawful Evil.

[Calthropstu]

Of a soul? [Citation Needed]

Well obviously since they souled it.

[WindStruck]

Something about legality of contracts and holding them up in hell court. You have to knowingly agree to terms of a contract, and it could be that children of a certain age are simply off limits as they are deemed "incapable of making responsible decisions", unless a particular individual proves otherwise.

[Psyren]

They have a concept of a ownership, and a concept of self. The two can certainly be combined easily enough. I see no reason why they wouldn't be able to sell their souls, because I see no reason why it wouldn't be Lawful. Crazy Evil, but Lawful Evil.

I'm not denying that they COULD sell them, just like a pre-teen COULD perform the physical act of signing a contract on a piece of paper in our world. It's keeping the goods that I'm objecting to - i.e. trying to enforce/collect on that contract when the kid later dies. And because of that, devils don't bother, thus neatly answering the question posed in the OP.

Suggesting that devils can get away with this and simply choose not to, suggests that they are either uncharacteristically benevolent or uncharacteristically moronic. Neither explanation is particularly appealing. *points once more at sig*

[Avigor]

There are annis hags in a 5e book (VGtM 159) that specifically attempt to corrupt children, and they removed the RAW age restrictions and penalties from character creation for both 5e and 4e, so logically it might be possible for child warlocks to exist, albeit due to multiple in-universe factors* it is probably not attempted very often.

OTOH, IRL there would be a lot of freakout if there was a faustian child as a major character, I doubt they'll ever attempt to push some 8 year old infernal pact warlock as the next Drizzt in the novels.

As for the question brought up of whether infernal contracts can change where a soul goes upon death, well there is the Mountebank class (Dragon Compendium 42), which does allow neutral characters to be bound to an evil power by their making a pact.

*:potentially unspecified clauses in the pact primeval, issues regarding innocence, probable anticipated reactions from outside parties (forces of good, inevitables, peer response, etc), lack of plane shift or summoning depending on the devil in question, regular exposure to clergy who can atone, wanting to avoid too many people finding the obscure loopholes, and the fact that at least most children don't have enough influence to be worth more than just one more soul larvae have already been pointed out by others.

[Peelee]

I'm not denying that they COULD sell them, just like a pre-teen COULD perform the physical act of signing a contract on a piece of paper in our world. It's keeping the goods that I'm objecting to - i.e. trying to enforce/collect on that contract when the kid later dies. And because of that, devils don't bother, thus neatly answering the question posed in the OP.

Suggesting that devils can get away with this and simply choose not to, suggests that they are either uncharacteristically benevolent or uncharacteristically moronic. Neither explanation is particularly appealing. *points once more at sig*

You're conflating real-world legalities with Lawfulness. Real-world legalities regarding pre-teens and contracts are for protection. You have provided absolutely no reason whatsoever why Lawful fiends, or for that matter why the entire entity of Lawfulness would be concerned with protection. That's a Good/Evil issue, not a Lawful/Chaos issue.

As your "make assumptions that fit what happens," perhaps you missed where I provided a reason for why devils could get away with this and don't? I have no problem quoting myself there if you missed it. tl;dr, I made assumptions that didn't make them uncharacteristically benevolent or uncharacteristically moronic.

ETA: Back to the protection but for Lawfulness, more to the point, you are asserting they are uncharacteristically benevolent by allowing creatures who can understand the basic concept of a deal immunity from said deal because of an arbitrary age restriction. This isn't the real world, this is D&D. Good and Evil explicitly exist. Law and Chaos explicitly exist. Gods explicitly exist. We have a vaguely arbitrary age line because we need a line drawn somewhere, because we have trouble gauging and judging what young people can understand. A D&D world has no such compunctions; the universe absolutely can know. It can know objectively if you are Good, Neutral, or Evil. It can objectively know if you are Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. It can objectively know whether a pre-teen has the requisite understanding to enter into a Faustian deal. Most likely nations in the world may disallow contract negotiations below certain ages, just as most nations may disallow fiendish deals to begin with. But that would have no bearing on the function of the universe.

If a king judges someone to be Good, the universe may disagree, and in that case the universe would be correct. You are asserting in this analogy that because the king judged the person to be Good, then the person is, without regard to whether or not the universe would have a say in it.

[Andor13]

"Hey there Your Majesty, it's your old buddy Lucifer. I need you to do me a favor. Change the legal age of adulthood to seven, justify it with something about apprenticeship contracts for orphans or whatever. If you do that and let it remain for the rest of your reign, I'll give you back your own soul."

Why would mortal law be relevant to the trafficking of souls? And a flat age requirement would run into racial issues anyway. In an elven kingdom a human would go senile before he reached his majority if they went by a single standard.

I mean, really, the problem here is that D&D is using ideas pinched from a monotheistic religion in a polytheistic setting, and therefore nothing makes sense.

[Psyren]

You're conflating real-world legalities with Lawfulness. Real-world legalities regarding pre-teens and contracts are for protection. You have provided absolutely no reason whatsoever why Lawful fiends, or for that matter why the entire entity of Lawfulness would be concerned with protection. That's a Good/Evil issue, not a Lawful/Chaos issue.

But consent and volition do matter for contracts, even the fiendish/metaphysical ones present in D&D. It's the same reason why the devils can't simply corner a mortal and beat the gently caress out of him with subdual damage or torture until he signs his soul away. By your logic, that should be possible, because it's an issue of protection and thus morality rather than the purely objective consideration of whether their signature is on the page or not. So clearly there is an element of "fairness" built into the proceedings.

As your "make assumptions that fit what happens," perhaps you missed where I provided a reason for why devils could get away with this and don't? I have no problem quoting myself there if you missed it. tl;dr, I made assumptions that didn't make them uncharacteristically benevolent or uncharacteristically moronic.

You mean your throwaway assumption that child souls are worth less? Putting aside that you have yet to support that, it makes no sense that fiends would care about that even if it were true. For starters, there are an infinite number of them while there are a finite number of mortals, so if child souls were on the table there would definitely be fiends going for them before too long. And second, child souls have value beyond what the soul itself can do, because you have a good chance of getting a damned (literally) kid's parents of committing all kinds of atrocities or mortaging their own to get it back.

Gods explicitly exist.

I'm glad you're aware of this, because it's usually a god (specifically, whichever one is in charge of death and the afterlife, e.g. Kelemvor, Jergal, Wee Jas, Pharasma etc) that decides whether a soul contract is enforceable or not - not the devils themselves. This is why invalid contracts can be a thing to begin with.

[hamishspence]

I'm glad you're aware of this, because it's usually a god (specifically, whichever one is in charge of death and the afterlife, e.g. Kelemvor, Jergal, Wee Jas, Pharasma etc) that decides whether a soul contract is enforceable or not - not the devils themselves. This is why invalid contracts can be a thing to begin with.

In Fiendish Codex 2, if a mortal wishes to dispute their contract - they may do so - but the court is in the Nine Hells and the judge is a pit fiend.

"Being coerced" is a valid defence. So is "I didn't receive the promised reward".