How do you play your celestial beings?

[Wizard_Lizard]

There are a lot of ways that angels and whatever have been interpreted in literature and dnd. Some see ultimate good as being the prime objective and the lives of mortals as inconsequential. I think the main reason for this is an explaination of why they haven’t wiped out evil yet?
I tend to play mine as embodiments of good. And that means that they are nice too. They go out of their way to help others, etc. my reason for why they don’t act so often is tied to this. If they acted, it would heavily impact the free will of the cite sins of the material plane.
What are some interesting tales on celestials?

[Anonymouswizard]

I'm moving towards a simplified cosmology and somewhat a simplified alignment system. So I tend to have angels and their ilk tend towards Law, with a tendency towards being Good because Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil are the most easy to grasp extreme alignments.

Basically, a more Shin Megami Tensei view of Paradise/Heaven/what have you. Not to the point where the people at the top are outright Lawful Evil, but Law, structure, and obedience are the most important thing to them. Follow their laws, fulfil their demands, and they'll probably seem reasonable, but from the outside their more totalitarian tendencies become clear.

Conversely, unless there's meant to be an actual open war between the two sides (e.g. In Nomine), Demons be all about that Chaos and freedom, and tend to have the better salespeople. The downsides are massive, but the demons don't care because they like that sort of world.

[Millstone85]

I see the Material as a no-man's land between the Upper and Lower Planes.

Any celestial expedition to feed the poor, remove unjust rulers, etc., would immediately be met by fiendish forces who liked it that way, with mortals being caught in the crossfire.

Now, would that be celestials being unwilling to gamble the safety of the many for the sake of the few, or on the contrary choosing to put the great cosmic war on hold to spare mortal lives? Hard to say.

As for sending armies into the Lower Planes themselves, that would be a fool's errand. The Abyss in particular constantly spawns demons by the thousands, each one then proceeding to attack all the others. The presence of celestials would just give them a shiny target to swarm onto.

[aglondier]

I tend to have celestials operate in absolutes. If I have no agenda prepared for a particular angel, I roll a randon personality trait and take it to the extreme, filtered through a lens of "good". 'Arrogant', 'joyful', 'tolerant', 'aggressive', 'kind', 'obstinate'...the trait defines their interactions...I think my view of angels may have been coloured by In Nomine. (Great game, try it sometime).

[Vahnavoi]

Celestials are almost never player characters in my games. As a GM, when I use them, it's to send a message to the players. Said message usually is "you dun goofed in the eyes of God and you're going to pay dearly for it".

You see... they don't have any taboo against acting on Earth. They just have no need to, because they've already rigged the game in their favor. Every good deed is already rewarded, every bad deed punished and every injustice mended... across multiple life times and in the afterlife. A celestial can already do all the good it wants by taking souls of the dead to their rightful resting places. It's only when someone threatens the entire system that they directly intervene... and they don't care about the collateral, because there actually is a God who can sort them all out.

[NorthernPhoenix]

I definitely play them as actually Good people, rather "G on character sheet demons". Even if they're being aloof and/or an *******, it's probably to help you specifically with your life in the long run (no one likes being told not to smoke!). They don't belive in sacrificing the innocent for a "greater good". They live to balance the rules and circumstances of their cosmic war with a genuine love for helping the needy and the weak.

[OldTrees1]

I play them as people, that are moral agents, that happen to be towards the extreme of virtue. They have not achieved moral perfection, but they are generally very very good role models. However, they are people and thus their behavior can change. Also they are moral agents, and thus have the capacity for immorality.

Basically I treat celestials as people with the privilege of being born in a moral utopia and thus generally became paragons of morality. Meanwhile I treat fiends as people with the misfortune (possibly earned in a past life) of being born in an immoral dystopia and thus generally become paragons of immorality. However both are people and inherent all the consequences therein.

Why haven't outsiders wiped out evil? Well, why haven't we? On the whole it is easier for mortals to wipe out evil than it is for outsiders to do so, but it has not happened IRL yet.



This also gives me the freedom to have stories about "The mistaken angel" and "The redeemed fiend".

[Whyrocknodie]

Doggedly focused on the current objective, with a very strong interest in avoiding collateral damage to anything considered an asset or resource for the Celestials. Utterly above mortal concerns such as conversation beyond issuing understandable orders or receiving reports (or the reverse if summoned).

Utterly without any cultural context for anything, and almost incapable of expressing interest in a human over the objectives of the Celestial power it serves. Less comforting than a Fiend, which at least gives a damn about you (sic), this is a machine for a vast and complex Celestial nation which considers your entire planet a minor footnote. They don't commit atrocities or harm the innocent so much as maintain total indifference to them unless they are specifically part of some objective of consequence. If you forced it to make a decision about these pointless humans, then it would trot out the stock answer in the manual "spare the innocent". It's just that - everything is a stock answer from the manual as far as pointless humans are concerned - imagine if someone asked you if they should intervene in a battle between a termite and an ant in a forest. In theory, you are happy for the termite and ant to reach a peaceful conclusion - but you absolutely do not care.

In short, something to invoke revulsion and antagonism. It considers you fuel.

[Lord Raziere]

A good trick I once came up with is to change up the situation by simply getting rid of heaven existing and changing the angel's role from people who look down upon mortals help from on high, to beings that are trying to create Heaven/Utopia for all mortals. Thus the angels have an actual purpose in that they're trying to build the perfect world but its harder than it seems, especially with demons and such dogging your every step, everyone makes the mistake of putting good and evil at too even a playing field when drama, sympathy and stakes are created from it being uneven, from Good struggling against evil. make the Angels the underdogs in their goals just like everyone else and suddenly they become a lot more workable and sensible.

[Esprit15]

The workforce of the heavenly gods - performing tasks, speaking to mortals when a dream or vision would not suffice or be proper, etc. They also do keep the forces of Hell and the Abyss in check, but more from running out of control than stopping every single devil from setting foot on the mortal plane.

[Ignimortis]

In my last game with celestial beings (D&D 3.5 campaign), there were basically four kinds of celestials: Prime Gods (three gods who have created the universe after destroying their own), gods (comparatively minor divine entities who came about from human belief), servants (from solars to archons) and uncorrupted Archfiends (technically other Prime Gods who had their concepts shattered after fighting it out with their brethren).

Prime Gods only ever talked to one party PC member, the druid. They were pretty indifferent to everything, and I tried to show their apathy towards everything, even the quest they were giving out to the PC. Imagine living for thousands of years, when you know everything that exists will obey your decree? You'd probably get very bored too. An Archfiend is trying to reassert their position in the world and destroy the heavens? That's important, but also not really important, because they won't succeed - because such is Fate. When the Archfiend in question actually broke the Wheel of Fate, the Prime Gods did get worried, but at this point it was too late, and there was no dialogue after that.

Minor divines were basically humans with their aspects highlighted, since most of them are "only" a few hundred years old, and they tend to come and go as belief wanes and waxes. In particular, there was Lugh, god of the sun, one of dozens of sun gods that existed at some point, and he was a PC cleric's patron. He was well-meaning but pretty ineffectual, despite technically serving as the source of cleric's powers he didn't do much and couldn't do much, either. So he was mainly there to shrug and tell the cleric stuff that he knew, then say "but alas, I can't see the precise location, and since the sun shines not underground, I can't guide you through the tunnels".

Servants were pretty single-minded and have specific goals if they're talking to mortals. Doesn't matter if they're technically good, they have things to do and you're probably in the way or at least not cooperating as readily as you should. In short, servants were one step above golems - sentient, but not really putting that sentience to much use outside of solving problems as best they can. They certainly aren't nice or anything, unless they think they need to be.

Uncorrupted Archfiends were, well...somewhat erratic and still deeply human (as they once were). Since they are outcasts and tend to hide in the Material, where gods can't readily reach and their own powers are rather diminished, they're basically people who have a lot of experience and some divine insight, but they're not unknowable. Some were pretty cynical and arrogant, some tried so hard to hide that they forgot who they were (Mammon in particular was just a travelling merchant with inexplicably good (though expensive) wares), some (including the main antagonist) sincerely tried to reason with the party and get them to join their side.

[Alcore]

There are a lot of ways that (2)angels and whatever have been interpreted in (1)literature and dnd. first off...

(1) these two are vary different. Mainly in how gods and the afterlife are handled. Due to site rules i will only cover D&D. When you die one of three things happen; you feel such peace and oneness with the plane that you have entered that you literally dissolve into the fabric of that reality. Two; that when a god needs a snack for work it will consume you. Three; you wander around that plane till one or two happens. A fourth (and vary rare) option is to become an outsider. Usually you merge with a great many other souls to do this and cease to be you (someone like Roy might be strong enough to form a latern archon on his own. Some gods who need a champion now will get creative).

You are food.

You are power.

You are currency.

That is your value to a lawful good god.


With all this in mind;

(2) i play angels as incredibly patient and tolerant of mortals. The evil will be redeemed to the best of their ability (and with 100% commitment). Every redemption furthers the cause of good, adds more more soul to the tally and proves to the masses that evil can be defeated in the heart without bloodshed. They will only smite evil to save the innocent.

Their god needs food; angels are farmers on earth.


Some see ultimate good as being the prime objective and the lives of mortals as inconsequential. I think the main reason for this is an explaination of why they haven’t wiped out evil yet?

The mortal world is a giant farm. A cash cow. Each god contributes 100 to the pot at creation and each birth increases the pot and each death lowers the pot. As long as the people multiply faster the value goes up and up with net gains slowly increasing just behind it. Gods try to avoid directly fighting on the mortal world as the damage might take a lot of time to heal. Some try to take the whole pot for themselves and others rise up to prevent that.

Remember; the standard in settings is loose pantheons (each god has a separate color/quiditty) with the comic's tight/close pantheons being the exception. Each god (especially those of a similar alignment) are competition.


Some settings deviate but this is often the standard

This is horrifying.

Angels are just better behaved demons...

[Wizard_Lizard]

first off...

(1) these two are vary different. Mainly in how gods and the afterlife are handled. Due to site rules i will only cover D&D. When you die one of three things happen; you feel such peace and oneness with the plane that you have entered that you literally dissolve into the fabric of that reality. Two; that when a god needs a snack for work it will consume you. Three; you wander around that plane till one or two happens. A fourth (and vary rare) option is to become an outsider. Usually you merge with a great many other souls to do this and cease to be you (someone like Roy might be strong enough to form a latern archon on his own. Some gods who need a champion now will get creative).

You are food.

You are power.

You are currency.

That is your value to a lawful good god.


With all this in mind;

(2) i play angels as incredibly patient and tolerant of mortals. The evil will be redeemed to the best of their ability (and with 100% commitment). Every redemption furthers the cause of good, adds more more soul to the tally and proves to the masses that evil can be defeated in the heart without bloodshed. They will only smite evil to save the innocent.

Their god needs food; angels are farmers on earth.



The mortal world is a giant farm. A cash cow. Each god contributes 100 to the pot at creation and each birth increases the pot and each death lowers the pot. As long as the people multiply faster the value goes up and up with net gains slowly increasing just behind it. Gods try to avoid directly fighting on the mortal world as the damage might take a lot of time to heal. Some try to take the whole pot for themselves and others rise up to prevent that.

Remember; the standard in settings is loose pantheons (each god has a separate color/quiditty) with the comic's tight/close pantheons being the exception. Each god (especially those of a similar alignment) are competition.


Some settings deviate but this is often the standard

This is horrifying.

Angels are just better behaved demons...

See I don't like playing it like that cause that's a bit morbid. Also I feel like angels treating mortals like food because oo edgy dark grey morality look! is overdone.

[Lord Raziere]

See I don't like playing it like that cause that's a bit morbid. Also I feel like angels treating mortals like food because oo edgy dark grey morality look! is overdone.

Yeah any conclusion where lawful good means treating people like food/currency/sources of power, isn't really lawful good. at that point, you might as well say morality is meaningless, because if the behavior isn't meaningfully different, it basically is. Therefore its best to reject such conclusions.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Yeah any conclusion where lawful good means treating people like food/currency/sources of power, isn't really lawful good. at that point, you might as well say morality is meaningless, because if the behavior isn't meaningfully different, it basically is. Therefore its best to reject such conclusions.

It's gotten to the point where when I play legitamite lawful good pcs, who aren't complete bigots, it's edgy and counter-culture.:smallbiggrin:

[Lord Raziere]

It's gotten to the point where when I play legitamite lawful good pcs, who aren't complete bigots, it's edgy and counter-culture.:smallbiggrin:

Its not about whether its not edge or not. its about morality meaning something and thus worth following so it has a good impact upon the world. its isn't a popularity or hipster contest.

But I get the sentiment even if I don't personally see the Edginess Background Radiation that people similar to you have expressed.

Anyways another good way of doing angels might be to make them a metaphor for some good all-spanning institution that medieval societies don't normally have- like child/social services. I bet angels if they are truly good would be setting up orphanages everywhere, trying to set up things like hospitals, directing healers to where they are needed, trying to manage charities and so on. direct fighting is for adventurers, angels are all about that institutional wide-spanning change implemented through proper infrastructure and collective social action.

[Wizard_Lizard]

Its not about whether its not edge or not. its about morality meaning something and thus worth following so it has a good impact upon the world. its isn't a popularity or hipster contest.

But I get the sentiment even if I don't personally see the Edginess Background Radiation that people similar to you have expressed.

Anyways another good way of doing angels might be to make them a metaphor for some good all-spanning institution that medieval societies don't normally have- like child/social services. I bet angels if they are truly good would be setting up orphanages everywhere, trying to set up things like hospitals, directing healers to where they are needed, trying to manage charities and so on. direct fighting is for adventurers, angels are all about that institutional wide-spanning change implemented through proper infrastructure and collective social action.

Yeah that's kinda what I tend to go for. Just kinda came up with my lawful good celestial pact warlock, who actually doesn't have patron angst.

[Alcore]

See I don't like playing it like that cause that's a bit morbid. Also I feel like angels treating mortals like food because oo edgy dark grey morality look! is overdone.Which is why 99% of DMs i know don't touch that topic. But that topic helps shape how all outsiders think, for me at least. Overdone is a good word for this...


Though it is true that Lawful Good beings will rephrase it all with PR campaigns and lawful good souls will buy into it.


This also shapes my settings. Did you know that the Abyss (Chaotic Evil realm) spawns demons? No, not the succubus and balrogs; those are multitudes of evil mortals merged through insanity inducing means. I mean the ancient ones that are still spawning even without godly help or mortal souls. A 3.5 book dealt with the Abyss and there are more evil, often more powerful, creatures that existed before mortals. They lost their place when the mortals started coming enmass.

Go deeper. You'll find them.


So angels have another vested interest in nurturing lawfulness and goodness and redeeming the evil and chaotic; to stem a literal tide of evil that threatens not only the mortal world but the realms of the gods.

I also forgo chaotic evil gods; i feel it's overkill.

[Anonymouswizard]

I can't go into my favourite treatment of Celestials in s published game (In Nomine) due to it being significantly more based on real world beliefs than D&D. But to trim it down to what I can talk about:

By default Angels are good. But they're stuck in a feudal system of masters and vassals, alongside a bureaucracy that can limit their ability to act. They generally want to help people and stop demons, but regulations and conflicting ideologies mean that the war isn't going as well as it could be. But don't worry, for all their talk about freedom Hell is almost exactly like Heaven, just with worse punishments.

As a side note In Nomine lumps both Angels and Demons under the Celestial banner, as compared to Corporeals (humans and other animals) or Ethereals (everybody else). It also goes back to more classical depictions of Angels for most Choirs, only two look like winged humanoids, your character's true form could be a wheel of fire or a many winged serpent.

[Millstone85]

I think that many stories are built on the premise that:

Celestials are, or serve, the Powers That Be of the cosmos.
Fiends are the main rebellion against said Powers That Be.

This could be tied to law versus chaos, or to the current order versus the new order, or to the feud between the Creator and his once-favored son, or to something else. In any case, it leaves room for reveals such as the PTB having declared themselves "good" and flagged fiends as "evil" when it is actually the other way around. Or, we mortals are stuck between awful entities, and must rage against Heaven and Hell both. Or, more rarely, celestials and fiends just misunderstand each other, and we must help them resolve their differences peacefully.

Now, I don't think any of this works well in the context of D&D.

Firstly, just because the celestial planes are usually put at the top of the map, and called the Upper Planes, doesn't mean they are in a dominant position. On the contrary, it appears that Baator and the Abyss are the true juggernauts among the planes, and that celestials observe the Blood War shifting in favor of either one as we would read the Doomsday Clock. Also, yes, "the Gods" live on all the Outer Planes, not just the upper ones.

Secondly, for all the crap the system gets, I believe that many players do wish to align themselves with the forces of law, chaos, good and evil. If those are frauds, or so alien as to be utterly divorced from human concepts of authority, freedom, compassion and cruelty, then it all goes down the drain.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I think that many stories are built on the premise that:

Celestials are, or serve, the Powers That Be of the cosmos.
Fiends are the main rebellion against said Powers That Be.

This could be tied to law versus chaos, or to the current order versus the new order, or to the feud between the Creator and his once-favored son, or to something else. In any case, it leaves room for reveals such as the PTB having declared themselves "good" and flagged fiends as "evil" when it is actually the other way around. Or, we mortals are stuck between awful entities, and must rage against Heaven and Hell both. Or, more rarely, celestials and fiends just misunderstand each other, and we must help them resolve their differences peacefully.

Now, I don't think any of this works well in the context of D&D.

Firstly, just because the celestial planes are usually put at the top of the map, and called the Upper Planes, doesn't mean they are in a dominant position. On the contrary, it appears that Baator and the Abyss are the true juggernauts among the planes, and that celestials observe the Blood War shifting in favor of either one as we would read the Doomsday Clock. Also, yes, "the Gods" live on all the Outer Planes, not just the upper ones.

Secondly, for all the crap the system gets, I believe that many players do wish to align themselves with the forces of law, chaos, good and evil. If those are frauds, or so alien as to be utterly divorced from human concepts of authority, freedom, compassion and cruelty, then it all goes down the drain.

Precisely. Call me basic but I prefer good things to be Good, as in benevolent, and not treat mortal beings as cosmic pawns and food.

[False God]

Celestials want to help, badly, but they fundamentally don't understand mortals, or what it means to be a mortal. Even the longer-lived races, which they have something of a better grasp on, are confusing to them. They come from a world where there is no strife (save the ever-lasting war against evil), no hunger, no suffering, no physical decay, where every creature is rational, good-natured and god-revering (because to them the gods are very real, as much as a human king). There's no scarcity, there's trust and kindness and nary a cut or bruise. Their immortal nature means even death holds little meaning to them, since when destroyed they just "respawn" some time later. Their biggest worry is corruption by evil, but the whole general good-ness of their being and their fellows and where they live often makes short work of that.

But they also have a very firm grasp of their power. They understand the impact they can make on an individual, a town, or an entire civilization, and they also understand that where they go, evil tends to follow. If they help a child, a demon may see that child as a target, if they help a town, a great evil may decide to take out their frustrations against the people, if they help a civilization, an evil army may be raised against them.

But unlike their adversaries who corrupt things around them, celestials are likely to be corrupted by the imperfections of mortalkind. So they can't kick around for long, even in disguise, which only cements their inability to really understand the mortal races.

So celestials tend to be "hit and run" sorts, showing up for brief moments, in disguise, helping indirectly. Only really whipping out their big celestial guns when actively faced with demonic threats on the mortal plane, and even then, leaving shortly thereafter, not even spending much time helping heal or rebuild, sometimes leaving artifacts that will do that in their stead.

[Porcupinata]

There are a lot of ways that angels and whatever have been interpreted in literature and dnd. Some see ultimate good as being the prime objective and the lives of mortals as inconsequential. I think the main reason for this is an explaination of why they haven’t wiped out evil yet?

In the metaphysics I run with, it's impossible for the forces of good to wipe out the forces of evil.

The souls of evil people are sent to the lower planes after death to become demons/devils. So if the angels/archons try to wipe out the demons/devils all that will happen is that the souls of those demons/devils become new demons/devils. There's no way to wipe them out militarily.

Similarly, if they tried to wipe out all the evil mortals in the world, the result is lots more souls going to the lower planes and a total strengthening of the forces of evil.

That's why the forces of good try to influence and redeem. They try to make more mortals good, thus meaning that the lower planes get fewer souls and the upper planes get more. Similarly, while the forces of evil might enjoy killing people, wiping out entire good populations achieves nothing for them because the souls of the people they wipe out will go to the upper planes. They are better off corrupting people and tempting them to evil rather than just killing them.

Obviously it's not just an arbitrary fight of two sides against each other. The angels/archons from the upper planes don't just want the best for people because it strengthens their side - they genuinely want to help people and make the world a nicer place.

[Hellpyre]

I take a somewhat different tack than a lot of the other responses I have here (mostly informed by what my personal playgroups have responded positively to in the past).

In general, what a celestial tends to sum down to in my games is something of an overworked but idealistic bureaucrat. My players tend to like celestials that can be interacted with, and that they can feel sympathetic towards. I don't paint them as far beyond mortal ken; rather they are simply examples of flawed beings working towards a state of greater good. I've found, in my games, that it tends to help the group choose organically to side with the 'good' side when that's what the players want to do from a metagame perspective, and it also lets me run the 'fallen angel' trope in a way that stays strictly distinct from how the denizens of the darker side of existance are bad. I can say that I've tried it many other ways before, some of which were successful and others which were less so.

But ultimately, I ended up with the general depiction I tend to use because I asked my various groups what engaged them the most, and tailored my response towards making playing an RPG fun for those people I play for. That would be my takeaway here. Play with the different versions already sprinkled in this thread, ask your group how they enjoyed it, and try variations. Settle on something that makes you and your group feel like sessions including celestials are fun or memorable, because darn it, what else is there in this hobby of ours if not that.