> From my memories, a devil would be interpreted as a demon so they might be able to give you limited abilities if they happened to be particularly powerful. Bu

> From my memories, a devil would be interpreted as a demon so they might be able to give you limited abilities if they happened to be particularly powerful. But not the full abilities a god could provide. That's how I understood it as well. In the base AD&D 1st Edition, you had a cleric and no other backstory. There wasn't a backstory to go with the game, it was just the base rules to be applied to any world. Then there were different worlds which came later in expansion sets. In Forgotten Realms, I believe your cleric could get certain unique powers based on which god your priest followed. For example, if you followed the god of magic, you would gain the ability to cast minor spells as you gained levels. I also seem to recall the same info about following a devil. I believe you could follow certain major devils (probably had to control their own "circle" of Hell) but that you actually took a hit to your powers. Because these beings were less powerful than gods, you got less powerful abilities. I imagine this was much the same no matter what expansion you went with. You needed the expansions to get a backstory and fill-in for the "lore." It's was a bit of a strange situation. There were specific gods for each setting, but each setting had access to the same "planes" with Hell being one of those. The way I remember this being setup is that each setting had a different world but they all literally shared the same planes. A Dragonlance player might actually be able to meet a Forgotten Realms if they bumped into each other in the planes. I think this was all intentionally left a bit blurry because it wasn't fully fleshed out.