Excerpts: Angels

[Blue Monk]

I wouldn't doubt it if Angels still have grudge against devils and possibly Demons even if Angels are naturally unaligned. I have a feeling that Angels serving Evil Deities will not get along with the hired demons very well. That could be interesting.

 

[Quickleaf]

During the great war between the gods and the primordials, angels offered themselves as warriors to the gods that best encompassed their callings, and today they continue to act as mercenary forces for anyone willing to meet their price—be it wealth, or power, or a cause worthy of their attention.

Mercenary angels? Huh?

Angel (mal'ach) = "messenger", and they are also referred to as "watchers", "holy ones", and "host of heaven". Their driving purpose is service to the gods, performing miracles during times of trouble, giving prophecies to the pious, exacting the deity's revenge, etc. They have no need for wealth or power.

About their appearance...

I think angels need a different appearance to distinguish them from archons and genie.

Though their faces are human, they are always silhouetted by a bright light behind them or washed out with light pouring from their eyes, nose, and mouth. An angel is surrounded by light, and this illumination should be reflected in the art. Instead of a "genie tail", give angels all enveloping robes, leaving unanswered the question do they have feet? Wings come in many colors, and some appear to have multiple wings, even multiple eyes and hands. They have powerful auras which are visually magnificent. Of course, an angel can choose to diminish its aura when in the presence of mortals so as not to overwhelm them.

Again, I'd go back to the source material...

"clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz: his body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude" (Daniel 10:5-6).

 

[AverageCitizen]

There you go again, shoving your idiosyncratic "should"s into a game for all of us.

Hello. Do I know you?

Point: Core should reflect the concepts most commonly associated with fantasy.

Reason: Because the majority of players are going to want to use those concepts. If they want to mix things up for some reason, thats fine. But using the core setting to experiment sends a whole bunch of us right back to the drawing board. Which is irritating.

I enjoy the Good vs Evil as much as the next guy. But part of my enjoyment of that trope is "there's no backup." There's no immortal, unstoppable army of celestial do-gooders that you can give a ring to when you screw up. It's just you. Fewer allies, more threats: just the way I like it.

I agree. Still, there are ways to do this in just about any setting. Look at Diablo. Tyreal basically just said "I can't help cause I'm not allowed" and it still worked out a pretty good story. I mean, I can't help cause I'm not allowed? Thats pretty weak. We could do better, and it would be cool.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I enjoy the Good vs Evil as much as the next guy. But part of my enjoyment of that trope is "there's no backup." There's no immortal, unstoppable army of celestial do-gooders that you can give a ring to when you screw up. It's just you. Fewer allies, more threats: just the way I like it.

That's not incompatible with Angels-as-written though; because what really matters to you isn't the Universe as a whole, but rather your little corner of it. And while hosts of Angels may exist out in the Astral, they aren't coming unless you find a way to get them there. Sometimes the only way to solve a problem is to call in the cavalry, but let the skalds recite that you were the one who made the trumpet sound.

 

[Darth Cyric]

5. The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordon

I hated The Wheel of Time, actually.

The new system allows for one new story: x betrays y because of z. I can see some good potential there, to be sure. But wiping all allegiances and the flavor associated with the has left us with only one trick. And its not good enough to last another 2000 years.

I was thinking more of gods being flawed entities and opening themselves up to eternal damnation, just as mortals do. That's only one possibility out of many others that aren't "x betrays y because of z."

 

[Fieari]

Okay, I'll admit that the phrase "Angels are mercenaries" is a bad choice of wording, and not at all how I -actually- imagine the situation to be. In my mind, as clearly reflected in the minds of others around here, it's more that angels have their own minds and willingly serve a god as it suits their own purposes. Which isn't the same as working for a reward. The concept is that they are free-willed beings and not mindless slaves, not so much that there's some astral hiring agency parceling out angels by fee.

So I'll agree that I hate using the word "mercenary", but I like the actual fluff that's behind the poor choice of wording, assuming my (and others') interpretation is correct.

 

[Andor]

Hello. Do I know you?

Point: Core should reflect the concepts most commonly associated with fantasy.

I'm trying to recall angels showing up in fantasy novels I've read. All I can come up with was the Cherub from A wind in the Door who was described as looking like "A drive of Dragons".

Oh wait, there were the angels from the "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Whom the protagonists fought against.

Gods show up in person more often than angels in the fantasy I've read.

 

[evildmguy]

I agree that this is how religions work, meaning, the cult to a god. Gods themselves however shouldn't need a specific number of followers. That wasn't so in the real world. Quite contrarily. After a conquering civilization overthrew another one, they assimilated their gods into their own pantheon, or said that such and such god is their own god with just another name. And then, the older gods were relegated to the status of house spirits, or spirits partaining to such and such places, or somehow made into servants of their new god. It's a really funny amalgamation.

Well, yes and no.

The reason many cultures did this is to make their religion more palatable to the conquered. When the Romans conquered the Greeks and said, "Well, that's like us, except it's Jupiter not Zeus" it was so the conquered would feel at home using the Roman gods. What the Romans did very well was make everyone want to be Roman, for the priveledges and status that came with it. Part of that was due to them making it easy on others to accept the Roman religion.

Other ancient religions have done it as well.

It's only the religions that don't have the "easy to compare them to other gods" gods that weren't conquered or we don't know all of their myths. Also, it's not like Greek and Rome were that far apart. The fact that they had similar gods shouldn't be surprising. It's when you look at Egyptian or Babylonian and Roman gods that there are bigger differences.

edg

 

[Shemeska]

They are meant to be powers unto themselves, and 4e is finally making that a reality.

Which is true except for it being a concept new to 4e. 4e's treatment of the planes has tended to come with a lot of selective amnesia (or manufactured problems, or questionable sourcing, take your pick).

The finds have never been beholden to gods in D&D's history. The fiends have always been doing their own thing alongside and separate from evil gods. Some gods had fiendish servitors, but it was because the fiends were getting something out of it, not because deity>archfiend and the fiends were beholden to them. 1e didn't much talk about it in terms of flavor text, 2e ultimately had the gods afraid of glancing at the fiends the wrong way for fear of getting killed or kicked into another plane, and 3e tended to not address the topic in much depth (with the exception of FC:I and FC:II which did their homework very well). None of this empowerment of fiends is new to 4e in the least.

Honestly, 4e's creation of a monolithic evil angel servitor race for evil gods seems to be more of the same "needless symmetry" that 4e has openly mocked as being present in prior planar material. I much prefer unique servitors for individual evil gods peppered in with some fallen celestials and willing or purchased fiendish agents.

 

[Shemeska]

It was just assumed that evil gods had devil/demon servants because they were evil and could probably wipe out the Nine Hells/Abyss with a thought if the devils/demons didn't cooperate.

Quite the opposite. There was a reason that gods did not take an active part in the Blood War. They initially did, and ultimately something happened that led to the death of one deity and the weakening and near death of many others taking part. The precise reason was never explained, but planetary scale genocide of their worshippers was one possibility. Another specific but later example of deicide had the yugoloths slowly starving a god to death by corrupting and ultimately extinguishing its worshippers' faith over several generations (and heck, they carved a tower from the spine of another god they killed).

Asmodeus killed at least god and built a fortress on top of its petrified corpse. Either Bel, Zariel, or Asmodeus forcibly ejected both Gruumsh and Maglubiyet from the 9 Hells when their warring became an unwanted distraction to the fiends. Levistus was capable of shrinking Set's deific domain over time by sheer force of will over his layer of Stygia, and he did this while imprisoned in a glacier and also at war with Sekolah.

I have more examples too, from 3e as well as 2e.