Excerpt: Archons (merged)

[Wolv0rine]

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.

And Christianity stole the concept lock-stock-and-barrel from Gnosticism (and no, that's not a "religious topic", it's a historically accurate throw-away line, not meant to be responded to, just thrown in there because of what it's responding to, mods), then filtered it through the art of the dark & middle ages. Yes I agree that Angels can and should come if different types and forms (although for the sake of using the word Angel, I think wings and at least a semi-humanoid appearance is warranted). I do NOT get why they don't have legs.. did the artist hired not like drawing legs? It doesn't help that I find the art very, very badly done in any technical form. It looks like they gave the artist 1 day to do the art, and he just pumped out hat he could manage. Having been in that situation, that's about the quality that I'd expect from a HUGE rush job. If the artist had more than 2 days to do the illustration, he wasn't good enough to have gotten the job in my opinion.

Now the trolls, the trolls are turning out to look rather interesting. Have they not shown the new look for ogres yet or have I missed it or forgotten it? Be very interested to see what they're doing.

 

[DandD]

Why shouldn't an Archon for the D&D game be powerful elemental in humanoid form?
Also, angels use flame swords in the bible. Furthermore, in older stories, some angels were described as big coiled snakes sheated in fire (the Seraphim, who today are lovely singing genderless dude(ttes). Of course, a little back further, they were multi-winged freaks with several faces on their head).

If anything at all, the real world shows that an angel can be anything what your imagination wants it to be. Be it a perfect human with wings, an aberration that shoots deadly laser beams from its many faces, or an elemental snake flying in the sky.

Also, 4th edition angels simply use some elemental powers for some specific attacks. I doubt that a human wizard using Ray of Frost would be considered to be an elemental, right? And flame-breathing Dragonborn aren't elementals either.

 

[Wolfwood2]

A divine manifestation of a god's will isn't some faceless mook with wings that stabs you with lightning. Its more a matter of raining down brimstone on all your family, friends, and, in fact, your entire home town because you muttered a blasphemy under your breath in the temple.

Giving a monster a "rain brimstone on entire town" ability might end up being a little unbalanced. Though I guess as long as PCs can still hack it to death with swords, it's all good.

Really, that conception of angel sounds closer to a demigod (or whatever they're calling those things in 4E; I forget).

 

[Mirtek]

If anything at all, the real world shows that an angel can be anything what your imagination wants it to be.

So why chose the most boring way and make them mirror images of the archons? If elemental stuff is the game of the primordials, why not give the deities their own thing?

A&A -> if deities and primevals hadn't enough to war over, they could add copyright violation to their list

 

[TwinBahamut]

In D&D, there are only so many things that can be elemental before it starts getting really redundant. A good list would include classically elemental beings like the old elementals, genies, and things like Salamanders and such (fusing all of these into the same category would have been a good idea), giants (since Fire and Frost giants are classics and giants have mostly been elemental even in 3E), and dragons (of course). If you add too many elemental things beyond that point, the different creature categories start stepping on each others' toes and cease to be very distinct.

This is particularly true for things like Angels which don't really need the elemental aspects in order to be distinct, and Archons that are not even really all that different from things like salamanders or genies in basic concept.

4E has done many great things, but Archons and Angels have really been disappointing.

 

[Wolv0rine]

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.

See, my problem isn' with the fluff. I'm actually okay with the fluff. Okay maybe not the basic boiled down to "They hire themselves out to the gods" instead of "Pledged to serve the gods", but still. The fluff's fine by me. It's what they've made Angels INTO.
Wings>check.
No face the speak of>Umm.. huh? Okay kinda, but it's done REALLY badly.
No legs, just a trail-off like Genie from Disney's Alladin> WTF?!?
And really, you don't see the overtly Elemental nature of these 2 pics?:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_4E_angel2th.jpg
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_4E_angel3.jpg

Sure, the 'pillar of fire' thing is cool and all, but these are glorified elementals only slightly less than Archons turned out to be.

 

[Blackeagle]

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.

I'm not seeing it either. The words "element" or "elemental" don't even show up in the Angels excerpt. Only one out of the four classical elements even shows up as a damage type, and since fire is paired with lighting and cold, it seems like they're using it as an energy type, rather than an element.

 

[Blackeagle]

See, my problem isn' with the fluff. I'm actually okay with the fluff. Okay maybe not the basic boiled down to "They hire themselves out to the gods" instead of "Pledged to serve the gods", but still. The fluff's fine by me. It's what they've made Angels INTO.
Wings>check.
No face the speak of>Umm.. huh? Okay kinda, but it's done REALLY badly.
No legs, just a trail-off like Genie from Disney's Alladin> WTF?!?
And really, you don't see the overtly Elemental nature of these 2 pics?:
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_4E_angel2th.jpg
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/excerpt_4E_angel3.jpg

Isn't the picture fluff just as much as the description is?

 

[Wolv0rine]

Why shouldn't an Archon for the D&D game be powerful elemental in humanoid form?
Also, angels use flame swords in the bible. Furthermore, in older stories, some angels were described as big coiled snakes sheated in fire (the Seraphim, who today are lovely singing genderless dude(ttes). Of course, a little back further, they were multi-winged freaks with several faces on their head).

If anything at all, the real world shows that an angel can be anything what your imagination wants it to be. Be it a perfect human with wings, an aberration that shoots deadly laser beams from its many faces, or an elemental snake flying in the sky.

Also, 4th edition angels simply use some elemental powers for some specific attacks. I doubt that a human wizard using Ray of Frost would be considered to be an elemental, right? And flame-breathing Dragonborn aren't elementals either.

But on the flip side, why should Archons be powerful elementals? We HAD powerful elementals before, they were... powerful elementals. What reason was there to completely redefine the meaning of what an Archon is in D&D in such a radical way? The fluff? If you're re-designing classic D&D monsters from the ground up to justify your fluff, you're doing your job backwards.

No, of course using an elemental attack doesn't make you an elemental. Being made of fire makes you an elemental creature, being made of ice makes you an elemental creature. Take another look at those angel pics, those are friggin winged elementals. And yes, "angels" can (and as I said, should) take many forms depending on the diety they serve. Quetzaquatl (sp) I would expect to have some kind of "big coiled snakes wreathed in fire" as angels, makes perfect sense. Multi-winged angels with multiple faces, hey I can deal with that. Fire elementals with wings... no, just no.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

For those who don't like the element-bent to Angels it is quite easy to change. Just change any element damage into Radiant or Necrotic and your good to go.

For instance:

Cloak of Vengeance (until bloodied) Cold, Fire
Attacks against the angel of vengeance take a –2 penalty until the angel is bloodied. While cloak of vengeance is in effect, a creature that makes a successful melee attack against the angel takes 1d8 fire damage and 1d8 cold damage

Becomes:

Cloak of Vengeance (until bloodied) Radiant
Attacks against the angel of vengeance take a –2 penalty until the angel is bloodied. While cloak of vengeance is in effect, a creature that makes a successful melee attack against the angel takes 2d8 radiant damage.