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Rhoederak
2016-01-28, 05:37 PM
Okay, so we know angels are divine servants of gods and goddesses. Any deity can have angels, whether they're a good deity or an evil deity. Bane as the evil god of tyranny and war must have dark warlords of sorts for angels that serve him. But they're considered angels.

On the other hand we have Asmodeus, the god of the Nine Hells, and devils themselves. Devils must serve Asmodeus. But does he also have angels? Are the angels like devils?

Where did devils come from? They seem to be some sort of fallen, evil version of angels (if I'm correct), but in the D&D world divines are both good and evil, so would evil angels ever fall? If being good and evil has nothing to do with the transformation from angels to devils, would angels turn into devils when they simply rebel against their deity? For example if angels were to rebel against the evil god, Bane, would they turn into devils? It wouldn't exactly make sense for the angels that rebel against evil to turn into something that is evil by nature, a devil.

Can you see how I'm confused? Can anyone shed any light?

Keltest
2016-01-28, 05:50 PM
In standard D&D cosmology, Angels, Devils, demons, etc... are all considered Outsiders. There are several sub-types for each, but the general organization is by alignment. Demons are Chaotic Evil, Devils are Lawful Evil, Daemons are neutral evil. I don't remember the names and corresponding alignments for good and neutral off the top of my head.

These outsiders exist independently of the various gods, but will often serve them, to a greater or lesser degree, if for no other reason than theyre the most powerful being around. They are formed from the literal essence of their plane of existence, so a Demon is a physical manifestation of the Chaotic Evil alignment. They are capable of changing alignment, but it is almost unheard of.

Kish
2016-01-28, 05:55 PM
Any deity can have angels, whether they're a good deity or an evil deity.
There's where you're going wrong.

Also, this shouldn't be in the OotS-specific forum.

Giggling Ghast
2016-01-28, 05:57 PM
Well, in 4E, devils —*including Asmodeus —*were all angels at one point, who rebelled against and killed their deity. That god's final curse stripped them of their angelic forms and transformed their realm into the Nine Hells.

Rhoederak
2016-01-28, 06:04 PM
There's where you're going wrong.

Also, this shouldn't be in the OotS-specific forum.

I'm new to the forum, and just registered to ask this question. I thought I posted it in the Order of the Stick.

But how am I wrong about that? In 4e descriptions of angels it just says that they are servants of deities. It even says in 4e that angels can be of any alignment.

mouser9169
2016-01-28, 06:13 PM
I'm new to the forum, and just registered to ask this question. I thought I posted it in the Order of the Stick.

But how am I wrong about that? In 4e descriptions of angels it just says that they are servants of deities. It even says in 4e that angels can be of any alignment.

OotS is based (more and more loosely as time goes on) on the 3.5 edition of the rules.

See: Strip #1.

monomer
2016-01-28, 06:14 PM
The Order of the Stick forum is to discuss things directly related to the order of the Stick. This type of question about general role-playing should probably be in the Roleplaying Games forum, especially considering you are now explicitly asking about 4e rules while OOTs generally follows 3.5e. In 3.5e Angels can only be Good (though they can be Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic).

factotum
2016-01-29, 03:38 AM
They are capable of changing alignment, but it is almost unheard of.

Well, technically they never actually change alignment, because of the whole literally made of the stuff of said alignment, but they can act as if they were another alignment. A devil who acts in all ways as Lawful Good will still ping as evil to a Detect Evil check, for instance.

Keltest
2016-01-29, 06:08 AM
Well, technically they never actually change alignment, because of the whole literally made of the stuff of said alignment, but they can act as if they were another alignment. A devil who acts in all ways as Lawful Good will still ping as evil to a Detect Evil check, for instance.

And they will also ping to Detect Good. Their alignment does change, but their subtypes do not.

Jasdoif
2016-01-29, 02:29 PM
And they will also ping to Detect Good. Their alignment does change, but their subtypes do not.Indeed.

Evil Subtype

A subtype usually applied only to outsiders native to the evil-aligned Outer Planes. Evil outsiders are also called fiends. Most creatures that have this subtype also have evil alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype. Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is. The creature also suffers effects according to its actual alignment. A creature with the evil subtype overcomes damage reduction as if its natural weapons and any weapons it wields were evil-aligned (see Damage Reduction, above). Italic emphasis mine.

So for example....the classic(?) succubus paladin (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20050824a) will take full damage from holy smite (Evil subtype), order's wrath (Chaotic subtype), unholy blight (Good alignment), and chaos hammer (Lawful alignment). Similarly, she'll get a negative level from wielding any axiomatic, anarchic, holy or unholy weapon.

That playing against (sub)type results in new vulnerabilities, without removing old vulnerabilities as is the case with most creatures, is presumably a mechanical way to disincentivize such choices, possibly explaining why it's so rare in-universe.

Kish
2016-01-29, 03:54 PM
But the important thing is, regardless of what spells they are affected by (this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0202.html) did not happen because Roy "was technically evil"), they absolutely do change alignment, technically and otherwise. If someone asks you, "What alignment is a Lawful Good glabrezu?" and your answer is anything but "Lawful Good," you're wrong.

Jasdoif
2016-01-29, 04:37 PM
But the important thing is, regardless of what spells they are affected by (this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0202.html) did not happen because Roy "was technically evil"), they absolutely do change alignment, technically and otherwise. If someone asks you, "What alignment is a Lawful Good glabrezu?" and your answer is anything but "Lawful Good," you're wrong.Yes, exactly. It can be harder for others to tell since "yes-or-no" type effects (like detect evil) can be misled by alignment subtypes, but they most certainly are of their alignment. An LG glabrezu is Lawful Good, not pretending to be Lawful Good.

Imperii
2016-01-30, 10:27 PM
But the important thing is, regardless of what spells they are affected by (this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0202.html) did not happen because Roy "was technically evil"), they absolutely do change alignment, technically and otherwise. If someone asks you, "What alignment is a Lawful Good glabrezu?" and your answer is anything but "Lawful Good," you're wrong.

Uh no, that's preposterous. It is exactly like asking, "What shape is a square circle?"

Jasdoif
2016-01-31, 12:32 AM
Uh no, that's preposterous. It is exactly like asking, "What shape is a square circle?"If one is misusing the word "circle", perhaps :smalltongue:

Kish
2016-01-31, 03:35 PM
Uh no, that's preposterous. It is exactly like asking, "What shape is a square circle?"
Your flat assertion, however strongly you believe in it, is completely unconnected to reality and unsupported by anything but itself.

Grey_Wolf_c
2016-01-31, 03:45 PM
Your flat assertion, however strongly you believe in it, is completely unconnected to reality and unsupported by anything but itself.

So, what I'm hearing is that his circular statement is a square-shaped post?

GW

veti
2016-02-02, 02:49 AM
Uh no, that's preposterous. It is exactly like asking, "What shape is a square circle?"

Cylindrical, of course.

Which, if you think about it, is also the answer to the question about the glabrezu. It quite literally depends on how you look at it.

littlebum2002
2016-02-02, 12:44 PM
Uh no, that's preposterous. It is exactly like asking, "What shape is a square circle?"

This would be a perfectly acceptable analogy, if of course the creators of the circle happened to have given us the definition of what a square circle was.

Because the creators of D&D did, in fact, tell us exactly how and when planar beings can change their alignment. It's extraordinarily rare, but saying it's impossible is just saying you haven't read that particular sourcebook yet.

That's not just true about this instance, either. Unless you've read and remember every singe sourcebook and dragon magazine article from D&D, you can never be certain something is "impossible" or not. All you know is that it's not possible given the sources you have read. It's entirely possible that some obscure prestige class gives that exact ability and you just don't know about it.

Darth Ultron
2016-02-03, 01:03 AM
You seem to be asking only about 4E D&D. And if you are there are no answers for you.

See, 4E ignored the decades of lore and fluff D&D had and just randomly cherry picked a couple of cool buzz words like ''angle'' and ''devil''. Then 4E made tons of pages of endless combat stuff, and a tiny, tiny little fluff foot note of ''um, angles are here, um, for your character to fight! Wahaaz!"

So in 4E, angles, devils, orcs, trolls or whatever are just combat encounters. There is no fluff, and so, no answers to your questions.

veti
2016-02-03, 01:39 AM
This would be a perfectly acceptable analogy, if of course the creators of the circle happened to have given us the definition of what a square circle was.

Because the creators of D&D did, in fact, tell us exactly how and when planar beings can change their alignment. It's extraordinarily rare, but saying it's impossible is just saying you haven't read that particular sourcebook yet.

Well, not exactly.

Nobody - no DM or group of players - is under any obligation to accept any sourcebook as "canon". You might have started playing your campaign and established the cosmology of your setting before that sourcebook was even published, and your game doesn't stop being "D&D" just because it doesn't match the sourcebook.

A statement like "planar beings cannot, by nature, change alignment" may be correct in a given setting. All you can say with confidence is that "there exist settings where this is not true". But neither of these settings is "more valid" than the other, because y'know? - they're both imaginary. And nobody, not even WotC, has a monopoly on imagination.

Millennium
2016-02-03, 09:16 AM
Okay, so we know angels are divine servants of gods and goddesses. Any deity can have angels, whether they're a good deity or an evil deity. Bane as the evil god of tyranny and war must have dark warlords of sorts for angels that serve him. But they're considered angels.
This is mostly a 4e thing. Personally, I thought it was one of the more interesting things 4e did with the cosmology.

Before this, angels were servants of Good, full stop: they would serve LG or CG deities as readily as NG. The powers of Evil simply had no equivalent: demons and devils could the equivalent of eladrin (which meant something very different pre-4e) and archons, but all of these are bound to both Good/Evil and to Law/Chaos. There was no overarching "servitor of Evil deities" creature in the way that angels were an overarching "servitor of Good deities" creature. This was one of the few outright advantages that the powers of Good had on their side. It is possible for angels to fall, severing their tie to the powers of Good, but they don't become demons or devils (except possibly in name): they remain a very different sort of creature from these beings.

4e took a very different spin on it, and one with fewer ties to the Judeo-Christian concept of angels (which makes sense when assuming a Judeo-Christian cosmology, but D&D doesn't). The beings that 4e calls angels are simply beings that serve gods. They cannot "fall" the way Judeo-Christian-style angels can, because they have nowhere to fall from: they are not on that pedestal in the first place. However, they are still taken to be an entirely different sort of being from fiends.

I am, I admit, not up on my 5e cosmology, so I don't know if this has changed again, or what, if anything, it has changed to.

On the other hand we have Asmodeus, the god of the Nine Hells, and devils themselves. Devils must serve Asmodeus. But does he also have angels? Are the angels like devils?
Since we're going with 4e, it needs to be kept in mind that even in 4e, Asmodeus was not always a deity. He prefers to use devils for most things requiring servitors, but it is explicitly stated somewhere (I forget the source) that he keeps a few angels around. Their main service to him is in the realm of public relations: his command of them is a palpable and undeniable reminder to any who would still dare to question his divinity that yes, he is, in fact, a god now, thank you very much.

littlebum2002
2016-02-03, 09:59 AM
Well, not exactly.

Nobody - no DM or group of players - is under any obligation to accept any sourcebook as "canon". You might have started playing your campaign and established the cosmology of your setting before that sourcebook was even published, and your game doesn't stop being "D&D" just because it doesn't match the sourcebook.

A statement like "planar beings cannot, by nature, change alignment" may be correct in a given setting. All you can say with confidence is that "there exist settings where this is not true". But neither of these settings is "more valid" than the other, because y'know? - they're both imaginary. And nobody, not even WotC, has a monopoly on imagination.

In that case this entire thread is pointless, because the answer to all of the OP's questions are "whatever you say they are in your particular D&D campaign". Since this is presumably not the answer OP wanted, I assumed he means he wants the answers that the established D&D settings already have given, in which case it is, in fact, possible but rare for planar beings to change their alignment.

goto124
2016-02-03, 10:16 AM
I've always taken angels to be servants of a Good god, and devils to be servants of an Evil god. Angels fall when they're fired by whatever boss god they're serving.

nedz
2016-02-03, 08:22 PM
Uh no, that's preposterous. It is exactly like asking, "What shape is a square circle?"

Well a 10' Circle is a 10' Square - in the ruleset being discussed anyway.

Preposterous ? No, well Yes but, it's a feature of the spell being used.

FocusWolf413
2016-02-03, 11:34 PM
I'm going to plug this here.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?444139-The-History-of-the-Lower-Planes-revised-Saved-from-WotC-Forums

KillianHawkeye
2016-02-04, 03:27 PM
You seem to be asking only about 4E D&D. And if you are there are no answers for you.

See, 4E ignored the decades of lore and fluff D&D had and just randomly cherry picked a couple of cool buzz words like ''angle'' and ''devil''. Then 4E made tons of pages of endless combat stuff, and a tiny, tiny little fluff foot note of ''um, angles are here, um, for your character to fight! Wahaaz!"

So in 4E, angles, devils, orcs, trolls or whatever are just combat encounters. There is no fluff, and so, no answers to your questions.

While it's true that 4E "ignored decades of lore" from past editions of D&D in order to create a new cosmology and even re-brand a ton of classic D&D creatures, you can't say that they didn't also write a bunch of new fluff including histories of the planes and backstories for all their new or drastically changed monsters. That is either ignorance or an outright lie.

quinron
2016-02-05, 03:03 AM
In my games at least, the first angels were free-willed, until Asmodeus rebelled and got himself and his compatriots kicked out of heaven. After that, the gods rewired the angels' brains so that they were incapable of evil. They didn't take any joy in being praised by beings that had no choice, though, which is why they created mortal life.

Eldan
2016-02-05, 05:14 AM
If you want the stance from editions 2 and 3:

Angels are the servants of the gods. The gods make them from the souls of their followers.
Devils, however, are one of the nine exemplar races, of which there is one per alignment. Archons for lawful good, guardinals for neutral good, eladrin for chaotic good, modrons for lawful neutral, rilmani for true neutral, slaad for chaotic neutral, devils for lawful evil, yugoloth for neutral evil and demons for chaotic evil.
These exemplars are not strictly speaking bound to anyone like angels are. On the whole, they arise more or less naturally from the souls of a plane and serve the plane and alignment as an abstract concept. They have their own rulers, like Asmodeus, but Asmodeus isn't a god, he's the lord of a plane. He does not take worship, he does not grant spells, he has no divine domain.

TheCountAlucard
2016-02-07, 01:42 PM
Asmodeus isn't a god, he's the lord of a plane.These two aren't mutually-exclusive.

He does not take worship, he does not grant spells, he has no divine domain.Except in 3e, in which he totally does, both in the BoVD and in the FCII.