Should non-evil planar beings get more coverage?

[Hammerhead]

I agree and what I think is needed is a resource which justifies 'The killing of good monsters without guilt'.
A book which listed the Angels of Vegeance and Celestial Reavers that are there to hurt innocent peasants for not observing the sabbath would be valuable and show that a hero can infact slay an NG celestial and still be one of the good guys mmm

And why would creatures who kill and wound people for a slight violation in religious doctrine be considered Good? Because you call them "angels"? These Celestial Reavers have far more in common with the devils of Baator than the guardinals of Elysium.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

Yes.

The celestials should get much more coverage.

 

[Turjan]

I see the gaming potential for "good" outsiders and "good" planes as relatively low. What is your adventuring group going to do there? If you bring shades of grey into the good planes, this will bring some plot hooks to those places, but it will violate the basic principle of the planes as pure expression of an alignment. As it is now, the good planes and their inhabitants will stay what they always were: boring.

 

[Pants]

I wanna see more slaadi coverage.

The good-aligned planes were never that interesting to me. Face it, evil is more interesting than good.

 

[Grover Cleaveland]

The good-aligned planes were never that interesting to me. Face it, evil is more interesting than good.

That's because good doesn't get much coverage! It's a vicious circle.

There are plenty of interesting things to do on the upper planes, with a bit of imagination, and they don't require using celestials as villains, either. Not all adventures have to involve hacking and slashing!

But yes, more slaadi would be nice.

 

[Shemeska]

I wanna see more slaadi coverage.

The good-aligned planes were never that interesting to me. Face it, evil is more interesting than good.

Indeed. I'd seriously enjoy some in depth coverage of the Slaadi. They and the Modrons have gotten the short end of the stick in the current edition, it'd be grand to see some love for them.

And yes, evil is much more interesting than good. *flutters 'lothy eyelashes*

 

[Li Shenron]

Well, more coverage cannot be bad. But evil monsters are still the reason for 90%+ of the adventures played in D&D, so it's quite natural that the books are biased towards them.

Good outsiders are not as useful, except sometimes as friendly support or for the occasional evil campaign, but they definitely still have appeal to be put on a D&D book IMO!

The thing gets more complicated with Law and Chaos outsiders... Not just because Law vs Chaos does not usually inspire gamers as much as Good vs Evil, but also because the D&D Lawful or Chaotic groups (slaadi, modrons, inevitables) are very much D&D-only AFAIK, while the Good/Evil guys have counterpart in world legends and religions, which makes them much more evocative.

Neutral guys are possibly even less evocative.

Overall why not covering these groups as well? (Beside the fact that if they aren't covering them, it means that their market research says that not enough customers are going to buy them) The only risk I see could be that of flattening the outer planes a lot... it works fine in Planescape to have all those planes being "about the same importance", but this is also one reason why (some) gamers strongly hated Planescape, and perhaps they don't want to turn the standard D&D too close to that?

 

[JoeGKushner]

well, most players are going to be fighting against the evil powers, so they get most of the treatment.

 

[Psion]

Well, if you are a "core only player", probably. IMHO, BoED does not get the job done.

But I can already say that even if I was playing in a campaign aside the warriors of heaven, Avatar's Handbook, Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary, and Anger of Angels is more material on the topic that I would likely ever use.

 

[Azul]

I would love to see more info about the non-evil outsiders. I've got oodles of demons and devils already.

I'd like more info about celestials and more types of celestials to give my good characters a better selection of possible allies and my morally challenged characters some interesting foes.

I'd love more info about the "neutral" part of the good-evil axis. The slaad, rilmani, modrons/formians/inevitables are very poorly detailed compared to the good or evil outsiders. Worse, since these beings are not drawn from existing myth there is precious little 3rd party literature to inspire players or DMs in their regard. I would love to run a campaign focused on the clash between Law and Chaos (Elric-style clashes rather than the usual Good-Evil dichotomy). However, D&D isn't too helpful in helping prep for such a game (imagine the archons and devils as hesitant allies? weird picture).