Excerpt: Archons (merged)

[Voss]

Except... no one was saying that. People were saying that they didn't like it, because it didn't match up with their expectation of what an angel would be.

Just as I don't like it because its uninteresting, and fairly indistinguishable from several similar creatures.

 

[ryryguy]

Yes, I'm amused no-one is complaining about that dead cow yet

I'll complain! It's a specialized complaint, though.

I'm running a 3.5 campaign that is heavily involved with the Elemental Planes. There have been elementals. I'd like to be able to convert it to 4e. Already I have to skip the Elemental Chaos business and stick with my cosmology. Having crazy mixed-up melange elementals makes that a little bit harder (at least if there are no pure elementals left).

Considered on its own, I think it may not be a bad idea, though of course like most things I can't say for sure until I actually see the implementation.

 

[Scribble]

Except... no one was saying that. People were saying that they didn't like it, because it didn't match up with their expectation of what an angel would be.

Well, if thats not what was being said, I appologize? I misunderstood.

My comments were in relation to the "any concept of angels that has ever been" statement.

Just as I don't like it because its uninteresting, and fairly indistinguishable from several similar creatures.

Thats fair. What would you like to see instead?

 

[ryryguy]

Ah. Good to know. But you can see why some people might be dissatisfied with
angels= troops who stab people in the face with lightning.

Right. That should be reserved for lightning camels.

 

[Scribble]

Right. That should be reserved for lightning camels.

Lightning camels are awesome...

Their death throes power rocks... When they die, their hump explodes causing an electric burst 10.

 

[Voss]

I'd rather see beings that are more tied to their respective gods.
Near-perfect looking winged humanoids whose voices carry the words of creation on their lips. They change the reality around the with a whisper, and this can lead to various effects on those who hear them, from terrible exaltation to ruinous ecstasy.

The somber harbingers of the god of death would be quite different from the lithe beauties that serve the goddess of love.

 

[rkanodia]

Thats fair. What would you like to see instead?

Can't speak for anyone else, but pretty much I'd say, "Anything but what they are now." Angels could be floating balls of light. They could be 'holy undead'. They could be spirits that animate ordinary objects. They could be cherubs and seraphim. They could be flowing storms of sand and razors, taking shape to strike and then exploding in bursts of divine glory.

Right now, Archons are 'slightly humanoid-shaped elemental soldiers', and Angels are 'mostly humanoid-shaped elemental soldiers'. Yawn.

 

[DandD]

I'd rather see beings that are more tied to their respective gods.
Near-perfect looking winged humanoids whose voices carry the words of creation on their lips. They change the reality around the with a whisper, and this can lead to various effects on those who hear them, from terrible exaltation to ruinous ecstasy.

The somber harbingers of the god of death would be quite different from the lithe beauties that serve the goddess of love.

That's modern christianity-inspired. D&D-angels can be more than that, and are different too. Also, the gods of the implied D&D 4th edition-setting didn't create the world. The Primordials did. The gods just took a liking to it, and wanted to preserve it, instead of letting it get destroyed again and again by the ancient masters of the Elemental Chaos. Of course, imaginative gamemaster might use their own setting, and change the background lore for every monster. After all, Eberron Orcs are different to Forgotten Realm Orcs, which are also different to DandD homebrew campaign Orcs. But they will mostly use the same rules as combat obstacles for the player characters, no matter the setting.
You're paying money for the rules, after all. Setting books are a different purchase.

If I had my way, angels would be celestial robots from the Astral Realm, utterly loyal to their gods. Devils would then be astral sea robots who did a Skynet-Terminator-thing and are now ruling their own Astral Dominion. Everything's fine and dandy in D&D.

 

[Wolv0rine]

Voss and rkanodia are pretty dead-on with my problems with Angels and Archons. These should be Celestial Beings, and Celestial Beings shouldn't be - basically - big Elementals. I don't care if they've changed the meaning of "Elementals" in 4E because if they have then that's boneheaded too. But an Angel shouldn't be a powerful elemental with wings and no legs, and an Archon shouldn't be a powerful elemental in humanoid form. It's unimaginative, it flies in the face of the general concept of Celestial Beings as possessed by the general consensus of society (okay sure, in the U.S., I'm not from somewhere else so I'm not going to speak for them) regardless of religion. Celestial Beings are cosmic powers, not high-end elementals. Angels are generally creatures of light and power (although exact specifications from the Bible, to use one reference once, could be used to make some interesting Angels.. there's a lot of "like onto" in their descriptions which can be taken so many ways).

I'm not even having a problem with Angels not being divine extensions of a diety's will and power, even. Let them have some independance, I don't care. It's the nature of what they ARE are I can't accept. It's like the dev team when through every sort of interesting monster and went "You know, this'd go a lot faster if we just ditch the whole thing and add an elemental descriptor a the beginning of everything's name. Fire Angels, Ice Angels, Lightning Archons, Ice Archons.. it works man, it's all about the Elemental Whatsis, which man.. I'm really glad Joe in accounting suggested just pouring all the elemental places into one pot and stirring them up, so you get one Plane of Elemental Soup. Man that took months of work off the table."

 

[Jer]

I'm running a 3.5 campaign that is heavily involved with the Elemental Planes. There have been elementals. I'd like to be able to convert it to 4e. Already I have to skip the Elemental Chaos business and stick with my cosmology. Having crazy mixed-up melange elementals makes that a little bit harder (at least if there are no pure elementals left).

Actually given what we've seen there ARE pure elementals left. They're called "archons".

On another note - I'm not seeing how angels are "elemental" beings myself. The angels we've seen so far seem to be "energy" beings, not "elemental" beings (at least, not how I think of "elemental" beings at any rate). I know 3e kind of blurred the distinction between "energy" and "element" by tying different energies to elements, and I know that "fire" ends up being both an "energy" and an "element", but I'm still not seeing angels as elemental beings.

And, yeah, I understand the argument about angels not being Biblical Angels. I think there are ways to make the angels more like Biblical angels if that worries you. Change the fluff so that they're created by the gods instead of pledged to them, tie particular types of angels to particular types of gods (the god of vengeance has only Angels of Vengeance, the god of battle has only angels of Valor, etc.) and you're done. I think you have to write off a number of different angels as opponents to the PCs if you do this (at least the servitors of the non-evil gods), or you have to rename them (Angels of Valor become Angels of Fury or something for an evil god), but I don't think the tweaking will actually be all that bad. I can see where the 4e designers are going with this and I'm personally willing to go along for the ride on this one, but I can also see where folks might want a more traditional approach and might see this approach lacking.