D&D 5E Celestials in 5e

[Perun]

What issue did you have with Archons?

No issue, really. I'm just not into Lawful Good. That's why I said I was indifferent to them. Still, I'm all for the Great Wheel that includes them. I'm a big fan of 2e Planescape, and if it were up to me, few -- if any -- changes should be made to the setting, including the outer planar races

 

[DEFCON 1]

How is Grazzt not chaotic?

To me, his massive amounts of scheming, plotting, diplomacy, and political dealmaking are more of a lawful bent (deals aren't deals if you don't follow through on occasion.) Thus, he is the most Neutral Evil-leaning of the demon lords because that one huge aspect to him brings his placement on the Law/Chaos line more towards the middle.

Now if anyone wants to quibble about how far towards the middle he falls (and if he actually moves out of "chaotic evil"), I'm not going to argue with you. But comparatively, Graz'zt to me is further left towards neutral evil than most of the other demon lords.

And the only reason I brought it up in the first place was because it was pointed out that many archfey (which I had placed in my "chaotic good" quadrant) weren't actually that good (more towards CN or even some CE in the case probably for fey like Maab or the Prince of Frost.) Which, sure... I get that. But by the same token that not every single archfey falls within the predominant alignment category of "chaotic good"... I don't see every single archdevil being equal in "lawful evilness" and every demon lord equalin "chaotic evilness". And likewise... not every single Angel will necessarily be the paragon of "lawful goodness" either. And we already know this because of how Zariel was portrayed having moved from Lawful Good to more Lawful Neutral when she went to the first plane of the Nine Hells to spy (before she went full LE).

Quite frankly I myself don't have much need or desire to fill out all nine "squares" on the alignment grid for entity exemplars because the Neutrals are just wishy-washy enough that it isn't as interesting to me to do so. So if I only care about the four corners... the four most devoted alignments... I'll just taken our Big Four entity sets (devils, demons, angels, fey) and find places for them. And all the minor league groups (Modrons, Yugoloths, Slaad etc.) can probably find spaces in the grid if anyone cares, but I'm personally just not going to focus on them. YMMV.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

When they made succubus/incubus their own thing (separate from demons and devils), I suggested that Graz'zt join them (no reason there can't be a succubus/incubus archfiend).

I figure 1e's Geryon's look is a better fit for the lord of the lamias then Graz'zt's look, so I am often inclined to have Geryon take the "was a devil who became a demon lord" that 4e Graz'zt had.

 

[gyor]

When they made succubus/incubus their own thing (separate from demons and devils), I suggested that Graz'zt join them (no reason there can't be a succubus/incubus archfiend).

I figure 1e's Geryon's look is a better fit for the lord of the lamias then Graz'zt's look, so I am often inclined to have Geryon take the "was a devil who became a demon lord" that 4e Graz'zt had.

Seperating Succubi from Devils and Demons and making them their own things was a huge opportunity to do something amazing with them the way Pathfinder did with Rakshasas and Kytons, ect..., an opportunity that has gone completely to waste. 5e is brilliant in many ways, but its lack of ambition leading to wasted opportunities is one of its greatest failings. So disappointing.

 

[Coroc]

To me, his massive amounts of scheming, plotting, diplomacy, and political dealmaking are more of a lawful bent (deals aren't deals if you don't follow through on occasion.) Thus, he is the most Neutral Evil-leaning of the demon lords because that one huge aspect to him brings his placement on the Law/Chaos line more towards the middle.

Now if anyone wants to quibble about how far towards the middle he falls (and if he actually moves out of "chaotic evil"), I'm not going to argue with you. But comparatively, Graz'zt to me is further left towards neutral evil than most of the other demon lords.

And the only reason I brought it up in the first place was because it was pointed out that many archfey (which I had placed in my "chaotic good" quadrant) weren't actually that good (more towards CN or even some CE in the case probably for fey like Maab or the Prince of Frost.) Which, sure... I get that. But by the same token that not every single archfey falls within the predominant alignment category of "chaotic good"... I don't see every single archdevil being equal in "lawful evilness" and every demon lord equalin "chaotic evilness". And likewise... not every single Angel will necessarily be the paragon of "lawful goodness" either. And we already know this because of how Zariel was portrayed having moved from Lawful Good to more Lawful Neutral when she went to the first plane of the Nine Hells to spy (before she went full LE).

Quite frankly I myself don't have much need or desire to fill out all nine "squares" on the alignment grid for entity exemplars because the Neutrals are just wishy-washy enough that it isn't as interesting to me to do so. So if I only care about the four corners... the four most devoted alignments... I'll just taken our Big Four entity sets (devils, demons, angels, fey) and find places for them. And all the minor league groups (Modrons, Yugoloths, Slaad etc.) can probably find spaces in the grid if anyone cares, but I'm personally just not going to focus on them. YMMV.

Well thats a problem, maybe not in 5e but in former editions it would be. Since a demon by nature is 100 chaotic 100 evil on a scale of 0-100 for each axis. Making a contract with the intent to break or twist it later is chaotic, it does not get neutral due to a contract being a "lawful" construct.
I mean toss a contract or lawbook into a cage with rabbits and watch them chewing the pages, does that make them lawful? Surely not. Does it make them chaotic? Neither, they just follow their basic instinct to stuff themselves whenever "food" is available.
It is the long term goal, chaotic evil can be cunning if combined with superior intellect. A chaotic evil demon does not necessary only have the "intimmidate" or "bluff" feat he also could be diplomatic to backstab at the next opportunity.
Maybe the next opportunity is not short term, until then he will pretend to keep up the contract or diplomatic agreement, whereas a devil will keep up the contract to the letter, but his evilness might be hidden in the small printed paragraphs.
Neutral evil is often described as being selfish, chaotic might or might not share this attribute. Chaotic for me is to not follow a calculable ratio, it is in the case of chaotic evil to be evil for the sake of evil, and to use evil to create chaos, whereas neutral evil is to follow evil for the purpose of ones selfs gain mainly.
But Chaotic evil also means everything goes, and i think that might apply in the case of Grazzt.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

5E has a huge giant problem with Celestials.

There's a reasonable argument to be made that we don't really need a lot of stats for them, nor do we need the same sort of detail on their society that we might with Devils or Modrons or the like. I'm totally okay with that. But we should have SOME sort of idea of what is supposed to be going on, because it's clearly changed dramatically since previous editions!

For example, 5E made a completely boneheaded and bizarre decision to make it so Good-aligned gods, no matter how dodgily Good or how Chaotic or whatever, have utterly dutiful hard-LG Angels/Celestials serving them (never mind that there's potentially a limit to how dutiful any LG being can be compared to an LN one).

And everyone else, all the N and E gods, even the LN gods (which are very common, and have often had angel-adjacent beings serving them in previous editions), have... NOTHING AND NO-ONE.

No, they do not have devils and demons (not as a matter of course - the books actually go out of their way to point out devils/demons serving evil gods are the exception, not the rule). They don't have anyone else either. Modrons etc. don't seem to be serving Neutral gods either.

It's bizarre. And it seems like someone just put this in without examining the consequences, or how this changes things. And this is seems very representative of how 5E has dealt with Celestials in general - carelessly and thoughtlessly.

 

[generic]

5E has a huge giant problem with Celestials.

There's a reasonable argument to be made that we don't really need a lot of stats for them, nor do we need the same sort of detail on their society that we might with Devils or Modrons or the like. I'm totally okay with that. But we should have SOME sort of idea of what is supposed to be going on, because it's clearly changed dramatically since previous editions!

For example, 5E made a completely boneheaded and bizarre decision to make it so Good-aligned gods, no matter how dodgily Good or how Chaotic or whatever, have utterly dutiful hard-LG Angels/Celestials serving them (never mind that there's potentially a limit to how dutiful any LG being can be compared to an LN one).

And everyone else, all the N and E gods, even the LN gods (which are very common, and have often had angel-adjacent beings serving them in previous editions), have... NOTHING AND NO-ONE.

No, they do not have devils and demons (not as a matter of course - the books actually go out of their way to point out devils/demons serving evil gods are the exception, not the rule). They don't have anyone else either. Modrons etc. don't seem to be serving Neutral gods either.

It's bizarre. And it seems like someone just put this in without examining the consequences, or how this changes things. And this is seems very representative of how 5E has dealt with Celestials in general - carelessly and thoughtlessly.

I agree, to an extent.

But, this take was so hot I burnt my fingers while trying type an adequate reply.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Making a contract with the intent to break or twist it later is chaotic, it does not get neutral due to a contract being a "lawful" construct.

I would just point out that twisting contracts are what almost all the devils do all the time to sucker in those poor humans, and they're supposed to be 100% lawful, 100% evil. So we can't have it both ways.

If every single archdevil is about making contracts and deals and they are all lawful evil... and Grazzt is also all about making contracts and deals... I have a hard time justifying in my head that Grazzt is 100% "chaotic"-- just as "chaotic" as Yeenoghu-- the demon all about going absolutely fricking bonkers and destroying everything in his path. So no... I myself do not subscribe to the idea that all the demon lords are 100% chaotic and 100% evil, just like all the archdevils are not 100% lawful and 100% evil (and the angels are not 100% lawful and 100% good.) What the devils, angles, fey and demons do is flexible, fluctuates, and are not all the same as every other. One might be 97%/95%, one maybe 92%/96%, one 99%/84% etc. And if we give Yeenoghu the 100% Madden rating for "chaos"... Grazzt to me is definitely only up around the low to mid 90s.

 

[Chaosmancer]

5E has a huge giant problem with Celestials.

There's a reasonable argument to be made that we don't really need a lot of stats for them, nor do we need the same sort of detail on their society that we might with Devils or Modrons or the like. I'm totally okay with that. But we should have SOME sort of idea of what is supposed to be going on, because it's clearly changed dramatically since previous editions!

For example, 5E made a completely boneheaded and bizarre decision to make it so Good-aligned gods, no matter how dodgily Good or how Chaotic or whatever, have utterly dutiful hard-LG Angels/Celestials serving them (never mind that there's potentially a limit to how dutiful any LG being can be compared to an LN one).

And everyone else, all the N and E gods, even the LN gods (which are very common, and have often had angel-adjacent beings serving them in previous editions), have... NOTHING AND NO-ONE.

No, they do not have devils and demons (not as a matter of course - the books actually go out of their way to point out devils/demons serving evil gods are the exception, not the rule). They don't have anyone else either. Modrons etc. don't seem to be serving Neutral gods either.

It's bizarre. And it seems like someone just put this in without examining the consequences, or how this changes things. And this is seems very representative of how 5E has dealt with Celestials in general - carelessly and thoughtlessly.

I agree completely, and stuff like this drives me up the walls.

I know this might not fly terribly well, but I removed all evil gods from my campaign world. I either shifted them more neutral (I made Bane LN and the "Iron Lord of War" who wants to impose order through might and military structure) or just snuffed them out (yes even X most likely).

And that was in part because I felt like Archdevils and Demon Lords filled that role well enough that I didn't also need "The God of Murder and Poison and Kicking Puppies". And the idea that, if I did have an Evil god, they would be served by devils... which serve the Archdemons... makes no sense. At all.

But, I would argue that the LGness of angels would be less bizarre and seemingly to have a big impact, if WoTC ever cared to focus on the dieties and celestials, because I feel like the moment they did so, NG and CG celestials that are the equivalent to the LG's pop up to fill in the blanks.

 

[gyor]

5E has a huge giant problem with Celestials.

There's a reasonable argument to be made that we don't really need a lot of stats for them, nor do we need the same sort of detail on their society that we might with Devils or Modrons or the like. I'm totally okay with that. But we should have SOME sort of idea of what is supposed to be going on, because it's clearly changed dramatically since previous editions!

For example, 5E made a completely boneheaded and bizarre decision to make it so Good-aligned gods, no matter how dodgily Good or how Chaotic or whatever, have utterly dutiful hard-LG Angels/Celestials serving them (never mind that there's potentially a limit to how dutiful any LG being can be compared to an LN one).

And everyone else, all the N and E gods, even the LN gods (which are very common, and have often had angel-adjacent beings serving them in previous editions), have... NOTHING AND NO-ONE.

No, they do not have devils and demons (not as a matter of course - the books actually go out of their way to point out devils/demons serving evil gods are the exception, not the rule). They don't have anyone else either. Modrons etc. don't seem to be serving Neutral gods either.

It's bizarre. And it seems like someone just put this in without examining the consequences, or how this changes things. And this is seems very representative of how 5E has dealt with Celestials in general - carelessly and thoughtlessly.

Actually there is one race that kind of serve a similar function to Angel's, but for Evil Cosmic powers, including Gods, and that is the Succubi and Incubi. The Bi (as I call the collective Succubi/Incubi race) serve pretty much any evil (and possible a few none evil Gods and powers like Sharess), with arch fiends like Grazzt and Gods like Asmodeus given example.

And they make good servants for evil Gods because they are good shape shifters, they can at will shift in and out of the Ethereal Plane making them excellent spies and messengers and assassins, they can charm at will including while hidden in the Ethereal Plane, and can communicate with someone they have charmed from and any distance and plane (making them argueablely the most powerful Telepaths in the game). They also have flight and Darkvision.

The one thing they don't have is more powerful versions of themselves or Soldiers, but a smart DM can still make them extremely dangerous, more then most monsters of their CR. Or just add a Template to them.

And Asmodeus has regular Devils, Tiamat has Abashi Devils, Lloth has Ylothcols Demons still, in addition to Succubi.

Another advantage is that unlike most fiends Succubi and Incubi can be bred to increase their numbers or bred to produce Cambions.

For Generals of Evil Gods you can just use Empyreans, apparently Evil Gods can give birth to Empyreans as well as none evil Gods (Auril and Thym two evil Gods of Cold had an Evil Empyrean Daughter in 5e). Yes they are Celestials, but they aren't normal Celestials, they are Titans, a type of Quasi God, and they already blur the line between fiend and Celestial as is. Still that leaves rank and file evil outsider soldiers for evil Gods as a blank.