Discussion: Celestials

gyor · Mar 17, 2018

5e has done some weird things with Celestials.

Like instead of going with traditional Celestial Races, aside from Angels, like pre 4e Eldarin, Guardinals, Asurus, and Archrons, they they turned several none Celestial creatures into Celestials, like Unicorns and Pegusus which were Fey/Magical Beasts in previous editions, and turning the Couatl which had been Magical Beasts/Native Psionic Outsiders into Celestials (and the main type of Celestial Conjured as Angels are too powerful to Conjure). Even Empyreans (Titans) weren't Celestials originally, although I think that was the influence of Pathfinder on 5e. They are now, even the Evil Empyreans are Celestials and the most powerful Celestials being the first none deity Celestials to outshine Solar's.

As for Angels no mention of the name Aasimon. And they kind of created an upgraded version of 4e's Angels creation story. The Angels aren't simply the Servants of the Gods, a good God creates them from their Essence, Angels aren't created from petititioners, they don't arise from the Astral Plane itself like in 4e, a God makes them from his\her own Essence, making them effectively extensions of the God, like weaker (or not so weak) Avatars, but with greater autonomy. Which makes Fallen Angels more horrifying in a sense because it's not just a servant of a God who falls, but a piece of that God themselves. So Malkzid, a former Solar of Corellon, would be a part of Corellon who turned into a Devil and Yugoloth.

Also the line between Angels and Empyreans seems blurred since both are effectly the Children of the Gods.

Also there only seems to be one kind of Deva.

Also it seems like Celestial Eldarin (along with Fey Eldarin and the first humanoid Eldarin) will be coming back in MTOFs. By the way the 5e back story for Elves makes them sound like a race of Fallen Devas.

FlyingChihuahua · Mar 17, 2018

Yeah, the lack of Celestials is kinda weird, especially with the Conjure Celestial spell.

More related to the angels, I don't really like how the Monster Manual frames them as the ultimate paragons of Good, although that might just be my biases coming into play. I've always thought of Angels as thinking about Law before Good.

gyor · Mar 17, 2018

FlyingChihuahua said:
Yeah, the lack of Celestials is kinda weird, especially with the Conjure Celestial spell.

More related to the angels, I don't really like how the Monster Manual frames them as the ultimate paragons of Good, although that might just be my biases coming into play. I've always thought of Angels as thinking about Law before Good.

I think this is the first edition to require they be Lawful. Before only Good was required, with the exception of Fallen Angels.

It's not really a lack of Celestials, no edition has every really had a lot of them, it's more that instead of publishing traditional Celestials beyond Angels, they turned a bunch of none Celestials into Celestials. Examples include Coautls, Unicorns, Pegasi, Empyreans (Titans in previous edition aside from 4e), Ki-Rin, none where Celestials in previous editions. This has major effects on Settings.

Okay techniquely Find Familiar, Find Steed, Find Greater Steed can summon other types of Celestials, dogs, cats, frogs, bats, rats, and etc..., along with Horses, Camels, Elk, and so on, Dire Wolves, Peytrons, Sabre Tooth Tigers, Rhinos, and so on, but those are really just Celestial Spirits forced into into a Material Template. Same with Conjure Celestial I believe.

gyor · Mar 17, 2018

Another weird thing, you'd think the most powerful Celestial would be a Solar (CR 21) or Empyrean (CR23), but the most powerful Celestial Spell Caster is the Ki-Rin (CR12), almost half that of the Empyrean's CR.

The Ki-Rin gets prepared Cleric spells up to 9th level, 4 at will innate spells including at will Major Illusion, the 6th version, which is permanent. That the Ki-Rin prepares Cleric Spells means it can prepare any Cleric Spell, including Conjure Celestial, Planar Ally, Temple of the Gods, Gate, and so on, if it so chooses (not the default spell selection). This really shouldn't be CR 12, it's at least the equal of a Solar in practice, maybe an Empyrean too.

MechaTarrasque · Mar 17, 2018

It is a bit odd that they renamed elemental archons as elemental myrmidons in PotA but haven't made any celestial archons (except in a Planeshift article). If nothing else, they could have kept the elemental archons and pulled an eladrin (said there are LG celestial archons that basically elemental archons with a different type).

I think their goal for celestials is to keep as many utility monsters in this type as possible: in short, if you can heal the party, you aren't available for conjure fey, conjure elemental, summon demon, or infernal calling, but only for conjure celestial (and planar ally). This is why the unicorn went celestial (the Pegasus is probably because they watched Clash of the Titans). You give up a lot of combat CR to get this utility, so they don't have a lot of incentive to make a bunch of low level celestials that are more combat than utility, since it would be a comparatively bad deal to conjure them (although celestials tend to have attacks that count as magic for purposes of overcoming damage resistance/immunities, which is nice, although by the time you can conjure celestials or use planar ally, you probably don't need celestials to fight enemies with that type of resistance/immunity).

There isn't as much need to limit higher level utility types to celestials, but it seems like they went with that too. I suspect the solar and the titan...I mean empyrean keep their impressive damage dealing from force of habit and the need for the occasional living McGuffin to solve the problem. With bounded accuracy, PC's could actually help a solar thump a demon lord without having to be level 20 (although getting on the demon lord's list will bring its own problems).

I would certainly like some more celestials, whether updates of previous editions or new ones. But without some new summoning spells, a planes-hopping AP, or some kind of renewed interest in mass battles (lead the armies of Mt. Celestia against the demon hordes), I don't see it happening any time soon.

gyor · Mar 17, 2018

I could see us getting Celestial Archons in a Deity book in a simular vein as MTOF and VGTM.

You make an interesting point about why they made unicorns Celestials, but it still does weird things with traditional Unicorn lore in FR.

Demetrios1453 · Mar 17, 2018

MechaTarrasque said:
It is a bit odd that they renamed elemental archons as elemental myrmidons in PotA but haven't made any celestial archons (except in a Planeshift article). If nothing else, they could have kept the elemental archons and pulled an eladrin (said there are LG celestial archons that basically elemental archons with a different type).

I think their goal for celestials is to keep as many utility monsters in this type as possible: in short, if you can heal the party, you aren't available for conjure fey, conjure elemental, summon demon, or infernal calling, but only for conjure celestial (and planar ally). This is why the unicorn went celestial (the Pegasus is probably because they watched Clash of the Titans). You give up a lot of combat CR to get this utility, so they don't have a lot of incentive to make a bunch of low level celestials that are more combat than utility, since it would be a comparatively bad deal to conjure them (although celestials tend to have attacks that count as magic for purposes of overcoming damage resistance/immunities, which is nice, although by the time you can conjure celestials or use planar ally, you probably don't need celestials to fight enemies with that type of resistance/immunity).

There isn't as much need to limit higher level utility types to celestials, but it seems like they went with that too. I suspect the solar and the titan...I mean empyrean keep their impressive damage dealing from force of habit and the need for the occasional living McGuffin to solve the problem. With bounded accuracy, PC's could actually help a solar thump a demon lord without having to be level 20 (although getting on the demon lord's list will bring its own problems).

I would certainly like some more celestials, whether updates of previous editions or new ones. But without some new summoning spells, a planes-hopping AP, or some kind of renewed interest in mass battles (lead the armies of Mt. Celestia against the demon hordes), I don't see it happening any time soon.

I'm actually in the opposite boat here - I feel that we'll see either the (traditional) archons or the guardinals (or both) in MToF. We know that that book will have the traditional eladrin (though there's a good chance they will be categorized as get now - granted, that's hardly a major leap), so it would seem to be a reasonable time to bring in some of the other older celestial groups. From the two sample pages we've seen, where the book is still only in Chapter 3 by page 84, and knowing that the Blood War will be (a therefore lengthy) Chapter 1, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a section in Chapter 1 concerning celestial involvement in the Blood War.

(And that just made me realize that both the celestials and yugoloths are heavily invested in keeping the Blood War going, making them a weird sort of allies in the conflict...)

gyor · Mar 18, 2018

Demetrios1453 said:
I'm actually in the opposite boat here - I feel that we'll see either the (traditional) archons or the guardinals (or both) in MToF. We know that that book will have the traditional eladrin (though there's a good chance they will be categorized as get now - granted, that's hardly a major leap), so it would seem to be a reasonable time to bring in some of the other older celestial groups. From the two sample pages we've seen, where the book is still only in Chapter 3 by page 84, and knowing that the Blood War will be (a therefore lengthy) Chapter 1, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a section in Chapter 1 concerning celestial involvement in the Blood War.

(And that just made me realize that both the celestials and yugoloths are heavily invested in keeping the Blood War going, making them a weird sort of allies in the conflict...)

Doing the math, a 256 page book, with 130 pages of new monsters, leaves 25 pages per none monster chapter. Now a few pages will likely go to intro, contents, but I expect the Halfing/Gnome chapter to be smaller, so that makes up for that.

Actually I expect the Elves Chapter to be the biggest honestly, they have a crap load of subraces to explore, two Pantheons, different settings, the Elf origin story and the major conflicts they face, and some random tables.

The Blood War has two major sides with a variety of groups like Yugoloths, Tieflings, Succubi, Night Hags, Hordlings, and others caught between them, with most getting only a minor mention. Sigil will likely get discussed in the Blood War chapyer or with the Gith Chapter. They also will have the Tiefling subraces. Cults will likely be in this chapter, maybe the cambion variants too.

So I think that its the Elves that will be a long chapter, followed by the Blood War, with Gith and Dwarves being smaller, and Halflings/Gnomes being the smallest.

So think that Celestials will only get minor mention in the book, but although a few beyond Eldarin might make it into the Monster Section.

Pure speculation on my part, I could be wrong.

MechaTarrasque · Mar 18, 2018

Demetrios1453 said:
I'm actually in the opposite boat here - I feel that we'll see either the (traditional) archons or the guardinals (or both) in MToF. We know that that book will have the traditional eladrin (though there's a good chance they will be categorized as get now - granted, that's hardly a major leap), so it would seem to be a reasonable time to bring in some of the other older celestial groups. From the two sample pages we've seen, where the book is still only in Chapter 3 by page 84, and knowing that the Blood War will be (a therefore lengthy) Chapter 1, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a section in Chapter 1 concerning celestial involvement in the Blood War.

(And that just made me realize that both the celestials and yugoloths are heavily invested in keeping the Blood War going, making them a weird sort of allies in the conflict...)

I hope you are right.

There is a lot of potential to add lore about one of the traditional celestial races being agitators in the Blood War (I can even see it semi-Planescape style: so you bought into that story that archons just hang around Mt. Celestia protecting it from fiends. Can't say I blame you, they tell it to everyone, but here's the thing, Mt. Celestia is surrounded by an ocean (an ocean I say) of holy water. It is pretty much fiend proof. No, the dark of it is that they spend a lot of time keeping the Blood War hot. The Guardinals are too nice and the eladrin are too hot-blooded, they would make a mess of it, but the archons? They are cold and thorough, the kind of guys that have policies and procedures about what they can and can't do under the banner of Greater Good).

MechaTarrasque · Mar 18, 2018

gyor said:
I could see us getting Celestial Archons in a Deity book in a simular vein as MTOF and VGTM.

You make an interesting point about why they made unicorns Celestials, but it still does weird things with traditional Unicorn lore in FR.

That is true. They might have been better giving the unicorns a power up and making them CR 8 or 9's and keeping them fey. I am not sure how often conjure fey gets upcast....

Discussion: Celestials

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