New Dragon Article: Ecology of the Fire Archon

[Lord Zack]

It's not easy to change if flavor if the flavor requires monsters that are no longer in the game. But I'm not as upset as I used to be, after all I like making monsters. The fact is, since there are people who like both possibilities, either way some one's disappointed, so I'm not going to throw a hissy fit if I don't get my way. It'd be nice to see the Great Wheel rather than the new cosmology in my opinion, but not essential, since with just a bit of work I'll have my 4e Planescape.

 

[Klaus]

Archons, however, they are not. Archons are crusading celestials from the Mountain of Heaven, and they haven't given me a real reason to buy into their name change. The animal-headed spirits are evocative of Egyptian deities and the like, they just need a bit more commitment to the archetype (hound archons who serve loyally beside mortal princes, for instance).

I like you.

 

[JohnSnow]

Archons, however, they are not. Archons are crusading celestials from the Mountain of Heaven, and they haven't given me a real reason to buy into their name change. The animal-headed spirits are evocative of Egyptian deities and the like, they just need a bit more commitment to the archetype (hound archons who serve loyally beside mortal princes, for instance).

Meh. IMO, Planescape and the Great Wheel are both severely overrated. As a matter of fact, I never liked them, and I'm happy to see them bite the dust.

Current archons have precious little "traction," to borrow a term from the designers. With three "good" alignments, you need generic angels ("angels"), lawful good angel-types ("archons"), neutral good angel-types ("guardinals"), and chaotic good angel-types ("eladrin"). If you do away with the alignment system and the Great Wheel, you can cover your generic "good outsider" by just grouping them all under "angels."

Both Archons and Guardinals partially involve the concept of "furry warriors for good." I don't think all the animal headed spirits are evocative of the Egyptian deities except by way of being "animal-headed." So it doesn't work for me in the slightest. Yes, there's more to archons than that, but some of the concepts are pretty absurd. Critters with swords for arms? Little glowing balls of light?

Given all the different types, archon is a word without much meaning in D&D (other than "warrior outsider"). On the other hand, "Archon" is a much cooler word than the critter(s) it currently represents.

By comparison, this new creature they're calling a "Fire Archon" seems to have a solid concept and is visually appealing. It's only vaguely related to the previous version, and I can see how the alignment change might bother some. On the other hand, how many different categories of "good outsider" do we really need?

Or to make them more generic, we could call them the "Suri" or the "Sorkhi" or the "Agnites" or the "Chvarog" (going to some Indo-Iranian fire references, though Chvarog is close to Svarog, which is Slavic). Or the "Kolovrati" (from the Slavic word for the Swastika, which is associated with the sun and fire). Or the "Belenids" (from Belenus in Celtic folklore). "Flamekin" or "Cinderkin" sound pretty good, too.

Some of those names sound SERIOUSLY AWESOME, more so than "Archon," in fact. Chvarog especially....good name for a warlike race of flaming people, methinks.

Just goes to show that different people have different tastes. To me, those names don't sound "seriously awesome" in the slightest. Most of them sound like good names for second or third rate monsters. By contrast, this looks like a first rate monster, so it should have a first rate name. And archon fits the bill just fine.

How do you pronounce "Chvarog?" I think it's a little absurd to constantly include unpronounceable monsters in the game. Ixitxachitl, anyone?

Let's stick to names that are easily pronounceable in English, please.

I wish Planescape fans would stop trying to insist their setting flavor is the be-all and end-all of D&D. Archon is a cool name that may have joined the game as part of Planescape, but it has now been repurposed. And that's fine. Or do you want everything that's imported into Core D&D from elsewhere to remain true to that source?

'Cuz I rarely hear people saying treants should go back to Tolkien's version.

 

[BASHMAN]

At first I was really quite thrilled with the concept-- elemental Angels. This goes back to mythology, and I am always alright with the game making changes to become more in tune with real mythology. (E.g. if they said Gorgons were no longer metalic bulls, and were instead a race from which medusa was but a single member, I'd be totally ok with that).

So I was really excited about this-- a flavor change I actually liked!-- and then I got the bitter aftertaste. Fire Archons are conquerers who either work for the Efreet or self replicate to conquer like the Borg or something. So now angels are no longer good, but apparently also either "unaligned" or even possibly evil. I am all for having "unalligned" as an option-- but not for ANGELS! Similarly I don't want to see vast arrays of demons who are not evil. If they allow Paladins to be unaligned, they just broke D&D! Hopefully, they won't go that far, but yeesh!

They could have kept the militaristic aspect and still had the Fire Archons be a force for good-- they are the soldiers in the armies of heaven, or the gatekeepers who hold the unworthy out of paradise. Those would have been fine. As is, it seems like they are trying to make some sort of statement, for the sake of making a statement, and this gamer doesn't like it.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Ha! As soon as I read that, I thought the same thing. Oh that's why, he threw an evil and potentially devastating object into the Elemental Chaos! I do appreciate how the story team's work has been coming together so far. It's one of the unique aspects to this edition that I really look forward to learning about.

Yeah, I've never been so interested in learning about the "lore" of the setting before. I'm also interested in how they're mixing together the old and the new.

Right now, I'm wondering what Tharizdun's "seed of evil" actually is and how it got there ...

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Can't say I'm happy about that, I'm sure they could've found a great name for the elemental archons (and I'd argue from the flavor that archon is a misnomer).

I have to agree that it's a very poor choice of nomenclature, IMO. Not only are these things not what are remotely traditionally associated with Archons (in D&D terms), but they don't even really connect with the etymology of the RW term "archon" in any fashion. They're more like... Fiery Spartans, or something.

 

[JohnSnow]

They could have kept the militaristic aspect and still had the Fire Archons be a force for good-- they are the soldiers in the armies of heaven, or the gatekeepers who hold the unworthy out of paradise. Those would have been fine. As is, it seems like they are trying to make some sort of statement, for the sake of making a statement, and this gamer doesn't like it.

Why do we need multiple classifications for the "armies of heaven?" What's wrong with all of them being "angels?"

To me, that's the core of this. Archon's a decent word that, once you toss out the 9 alignments, is duplicative of "angel." It's just like "Eladrin" - a decent word that's without meaningful purpose once you toss the Great Wheel. So instead, they've decided to retain the militaristic and crusading nature of archons rather than just retain their "place" on a Wheel that isn't a default part of the game anymore.

The armies of heaven have "angels," so they don't NEED archons too. As concepted in 3e, they're redundant. I think you'll still see more elemental angels. But that's not the point here.

 

[helium3]

Once again, overuse of the word 'cool' and inherent contradictions built into the article.

Good catch on the contradiction, I'm not sure I would've caught it on my read through. That being said, the article does underscore the importance of an Archon's armor, so crafting fancy armor would sort of be like getting a new look from an "image consultant" right after a scoring a big promotion.

Here's another contradiction for you. The text states that Archons neither need nor have Darkvision, yet the stat blocks give them Darkvision? Maybe this is just because the Elemental creature type confers Darkvision?

Personally, I don't get why beings of elemental chaos insist on organizing themselves in groups of five. It's very modron'ish. I know they're downplaying the alignment aspects and are generally doing away with the whole law vs. chaos distinction, but it just seems weird and tacked on.

Only six usages of the word "cool" and they were all near the bottom. At least they aren't using cool for the main portion of the flavor text. It makes me wonder if the stuff at the bottom was an addendum by another author or something he was directed to write by marketing.

I was actually quite surprised at how long the article was. Lot's of extra detail I'm not really used to seeing. That being said, I wish the writing weren't so damned clunky. A good 75% of the time it reads like the narrative voice over at the beginning of a bad 80's fantasy movie. Don't just tell me what an Elemental Foundry is, describe it!! Most of the flavor reads like someone outlined all of the relevant parts in bullet points and then stitched it together with connecting words.

Anyhow, the 4E-like mechanics are interesting and I think I'll be using the Blazesteel Archon in the inaugural game of my new setting on Sunday. We'll see how it goes.

 

[The Little Raven]

So now angels are no longer good

Some might argue that angels were never truly indicative of good, since they spent time engaging in widescale genocidal activities (destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah), murdering innocent children because of the actions of the king (slaying of the firstborn of Egypt), and turning a woman who cared about the fate of those she left behind into a pillar of salt (Lot's wife). Now, some will argue that these were good acts because they were God's will, but there are plenty of others that would argue otherwise.

And archons aren't all angels, y'know. They were servants of the Demiurge, and took on the role of both angels and demons. Being unaligned beings makes more sense.

 

[frankthedm]

So apparently they like making arms and armor but not building towns and cities. Seems perfectly in flavor for them. Maybe worthy of a mild editing change but certainly not worth wringing your hands over. There will always be things to nitpick.

The article seemed clear enough for me. They don't like making structures, they want to be marching off to war. If it has to be done they would rather have slaves do it. The only place they hav any knack in making things happens to be the armor and weapons, which comes more as instinct than skill.