Excerpts: Angels

[Evilhalfling]

First person to stat up an Angel of Snuggles wins a virtual cookie.

Its just the sort of thing I need for my game.

 

[beverson]

My take on it:

O-----------------------------O
When the Astral Plane, the realm of thought and concept, condensed, individual concepts, ideas, abstractions, ideologies, paradigms, and memes filled the silver void. Some of these were all-powerful, mighty and sufficiently self-aware to grow, expand, and form an active agenda - these are the deities living in the Astral Plane.

However, the deities are not encompassing all of these entities, many are too abstract, too minor, or too narrow to coalesce into a self-aware materialized being. Myriads of these motes are floating through the Astral Sea.

However, these motes are attracted to similar concepts, broader ideas, and encompassing thought constructs - just like individual ideas fit into a thought paradigm. Due to this, the motes wandered towards to like-minded gods, who were in tune with their own nature.

During the Primordial Wars, the gods quickly saw the need for soldiers and helpers. In their need, they took motes similar to their own being and endowed them with a tiny bit of their own, more powerful essence, enough to coalesce into existence - and created the angels.

The angels are usually aligned with their gods, but since they are only ideas close to their divine ruler's nature, they are not mere extensions of their divine will, but independent beings, acting out of their own volition, serving the gods, because they are so close to their gods' ideology, hence fulfilling their own desire to embody their ideal.

The power and rank of angels is normally determined by the match of the godly spark and the basic nature of the mote - the better they are in sync, the more powerful the bond between the metaphysical entities is - hence the less energy is wasted in to bond and the more powerful the angel becomes - which is also the reason, why higher ranking angels are often knowing their god's will much better than angels of lower ranks.

However, since they are now self-aware beings, they can - just as gods - subtly shift their own nature - which is basically the gift of being a sapient entity. When gods undergo paradigm shifts, some of the angels are often no longer compatible to their god's portfolio - in such cases, two things can happen:

The angel dissolves itself, splitting into a spark of the godly soul (which is re-absorbed by the god) and the original mote (which often gravitates towards another, more kindred god) - or the angel wrests the divine spark free, which is the concept of falling.

In such cases, the mote and the divine spark are fused together brutally, despite the fact that they're incompatible - hence such fallen angels are often marked by a violated appearance, reflecting their contradicting nature.

Normally, gods (and also angels themselves) only undergo very slow paradigm shifts, hence such angels do not fall, but decrease and rank and often dissolve willingly, before the fall happens (as they are still close enough to the god to respect him and his will). In fact, gods actively try to keep the paradigm shift in reign, after the spectacular Fall of Asmodeus:

He was an Angel of the highest rank, but when his god underwent a sudden shift, he went below the lowest rank - no longer close enough to his superior, he wrested the essence free, which such a force, that the deity suffered a large metaphysical wound. Since he was not the only angel suffering such a fall, he became the leader of the rebels, trying to kill the deity.

They, of course, knew what would happen - they would either fall even more or their divine essence would vanish with their dying god, dissolving them into mere motes. Unwilling to suffer that fate, Asmodeus reached into his deity's soul and tried to overtake it, to fuse with it. And he succeeded, becoming a self-contradicting and hence wholly corrupted being.
O-----------------------------O

Cheers, LT.

THIS! - Yoink!

 

[JohnSnow]

Here's another, unrelated concern, then. When I ran a 3.0 campaign, I introduced a character (an Orc beggar) who was really a polymorphed Planetar. He was sort of the PC's "guardian angel" (since, despite hostility with orcs, they treated him kindly). I was able to do that because Planetars could polymorph. But I'm not seeing powers such as those in these or any statblocks lately. Will such a twist still be possible (I mean, aside from just DM fiat)?

Well, one would assume that an individual angel might know the polymorph ritual and be able to assume a humanoid form. Alternatively, a god might change on of his angels or exarchs (one with a guardian or messenger interest, most likely) into a humanoid form (like that of an orc beggar or even an old man) and send him to the world to aid, guide, or assist those in it with their struggle.

This is a pretty traditional trope in fantasy. In Dragonlance, the god himself played the part. In The Lord of the Rings, some of the "angels" were sent to deal with the corrupted and fallen servant. In Middle-Earth, these servants took the form of "old men skilled with magic" - like Gandalf.

Something similar should work in any campaign.

 

[AZRogue]

Oh. I stand corrected!

Here's another, unrelated concern, then. When I ran a 3.0 campaign, I introduced a character (an Orc beggar) who was really a polymorphed Planetar. He was sort of the PC's "guardian angel" (since, despite hostility with orcs, they treated him kindly). I was able to do that because Planetars could polymorph. But I'm not seeing powers such as those in these or any statblocks lately. Will such a twist still be possible (I mean, aside from just DM fiat)?

I'm not sure that they will. Maybe, I don't know. I'm of the opinion that we ARE supposed to use DM fiat for that sort of thing, which is fantastic. Honestly, the PCs aren't peeking behind our screens and they don't know what we fiat in or not. If our adventures need angels to have the ability to polymorph, we give it to 'em. 99.9% of the time no one will ever know, and even fewer will ever care.

 

[Korgoth]

Well, one would assume that an individual angel might know the polymorph ritual and be able to assume a humanoid form. Alternatively, a god might change on of his angels or exarchs (one with a guardian or messenger interest, most likely) into a humanoid form (like that of an orc beggar or even an old man) and send him to the world to aid, guide, or assist those in it with their struggle.

Fair enough. So Polymorph Self is a ritual, then? From what I've heard about rituals, it seems like their employment will be pretty flexible (from a story point of view).

 

[Just Another User]

Didn't the excerpt from the devils article explicitly mention that the other gods cursed them and gave them those forms?

Exactly, they cursed them with a ritual.
In 4e rituals do EVERYTHING!!!

I wonder, what would it mena in a 4e setting if you call someone an angel. Certainly isn't a nickname you want to use with your girlfriend.

 

[StarFyre]

hey

Personally, I do not like the art at all. the 3.5E stuff was much nicer (ie. the Solar, Deva)...

for the person who wanted nice miniatures instead of the WotC angel ones.

Reaper has a great female deva...awesome.

And Andrea has Leogante i think it is...an angel that they make a 32 mm and 60 mm resin version.

Sanjay

 

[NebtheNever]

Here's another, unrelated concern, then. When I ran a 3.0 campaign, I introduced a character (an Orc beggar) who was really a polymorphed Planetar. He was sort of the PC's "guardian angel" (since, despite hostility with orcs, they treated him kindly). I was able to do that because Planetars could polymorph. But I'm not seeing powers such as those in these or any statblocks lately. Will such a twist still be possible (I mean, aside from just DM fiat)?

Angels can still polymorph... into a pillar of fire!

 

[jaldaen]

Here's another, unrelated concern, then. When I ran a 3.0 campaign, I introduced a character (an Orc beggar) who was really a polymorphed Planetar. He was sort of the PC's "guardian angel" (since, despite hostility with orcs, they treated him kindly). I was able to do that because Planetars could polymorph. But I'm not seeing powers such as those in these or any statblocks lately. Will such a twist still be possible (I mean, aside from just DM fiat)?

I'm guessing there is a "polymorph" ritual, which would help in this regard. It seems that the MM only concerns itself with the "combat traits" and leave all the "story traits" up to the DM via rituals.

Although perhaps we are missing a few things from the MM (they have shown in other excerpts the ability to hold certain pieces of information back for release)... it would not take much space to have a Angelic Rituals section listing all the rituals angels usually have.

I don't mind the loss of ritual-like powers from monster stats in general, but it would be nice to have a few suggestions tossed into the entries for particular iconic creatures.

 

[Gundark]

now we can fight angels! but more importantly... only 2 days till we learn the basics of multiclassing!

Definetly interested in that one