Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Heaven Unleashed (PFRPG)

2.50/5 (based on 2 ratings)
Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Heaven Unleashed (PFRPG)
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Angels on Our Shoulders

The celestial beings of Heaven are paragons of virtue and good, standing steadfastly against the creeping threat of evil. Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Heaven Unleashed reveals 13 of these holy champions, from a cassisian angel and a serpentine couatl to an empyreal lord and the herald of a goodly god. Each article includes a unique stat block, an encounter map, details on the site's locations, and guidelines on integrating the agents of Heaven into campaigns of all alignments, allowing for conflicts between both those allied with and those opposed to these servitors of goodness.

Among the exciting characters included in the book are:

  • Dunnoziel, commander of a celestial fortress detached from the great wall defining Heaven's edge and now floating in the chaotic Maelstrom.
  • The Grim White Stag, herald of the god Erastil, and the cervine protectors grown from his shed antlers, now guarding a site of great druidic power in the demon-infested Worldwound.
  • Penshi, the angelic proprietor of the Blessed Cup, an unassuming tavern in one of Absalom's poorest districts, dedicated to providing the needy with food, drink, and shelter.
  • Pilali, an exscinder archon dedicated to collecting artifacts of evil and keeping them from mortal hands.

Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Heaven Unleashed is intended for use with the Pathfinder campaign setting, but can be easily adapted to any fantasy world.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-828-1

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

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Highs and lows

3/5

This is an uneven product. A few of the writes ups are truly excellent and useful, providing good flavor and hooks for using celestial agents in your campaign at a variety of levels. Others, like the stats for the Empyreal Lord Andoletta, suffer from the mediocrity and inconsistency of past efforts, but have some solid stuff in there.

But what prevents this from getting four stars is the two sections that just don't belong. In a book that is not particularly long and supposedly about Heaven, I don't understand why there is not one but two write ups on mundane LG people (one cleric and one paladin) that don't bring anything particularly unique or in line with the overall theme of the book. Surely we could have replaced these with another Archon write up or another Angel? (The lack of a Solar was surprising, and only partially compensated for by the Empyreal Angel.)

If you want a few ideas for celestial campaigns and you're willing to pay a fairly high price for it this book is worth getting. If you're only looking to spend this money for completely rock solid products then give it a pass.


Chained and Muzzled

2/5

The site ate my first draft of this so bear with me but like the star count and title of this review might hint at this book falls tragically short of not only its potential as a supplement to really flesh out the various mundane celestials we already have through interesting writeups but also fails to match the evocative, inventive, and unique works that it seeks to follow up both in Hell Unleashed and Chronicles of the Righteous.

To start, the celestial beings have always had bad hand in tabletop gaming in terms of theme and narrative. Standing beside amazing and enthralling writeups for the various other outsiders like the incredibly detailed Devils as produced by Wes in Princes of Darkness and the volumes of APs and modules that feature them, the new Daemons that create this original group of fiends that are equally horrifying, malicious, and tragic as creatures crafted from the horrible ways they died and the suffering that beset them, or even the Inevitables with their inflexible adherence to law regardless of the morality of it the celestial races have always been stuck falling into one of two camps. The former, a group of outsiders more defined by not being evil than any interesting theme of their own or by being "not as good as they are supposed to be". The former is something that snakes through all of the celestial beings, leaving them for the most part feeling uninteresting and flat, telling me nothing really about them that isn't shared by every other thing statted that doesn't have an E in its alignment. The latter undermines what little we do have to go on when we as GMs sit down to design games around these creatures, with a lot of the other sources we've had to reference about these guys talking more about how all of the interesting ones really just end up falling to evil and tyranny rather than presenting something unique and interesting yet wholly good and caring. It speaks volumes that for the longest time the most interesting celestials we've had in print have been the ones that now rule Hell and when you're talking about beings that are literally forged from the souls of the countless number of paladins, clerics, good wizards, and noble thieves we've all seen cross our tables that seems a bit tragic.

Now, that said Chronicles of the Righteous did an amazing job of pushing back against a lot of this stereotype with it's release and Bestiary 5 gave us our first glimpse of some insanely powerful angels in the form of the Empyrean Angel, but Heaven Unleashed seems to have just devolved back into the pitfalls mentioned above. The bulk of the angelic entries fall into one of the two categories listed above with entries in the former category coming off as little more than "angel that guards a hellgate" or "Planetar who watches over a fort" or entries that fall into the latter category that paint these celestial beings as cause more harm that good at best or coming off as something much closer to a demented demon lord at worst. In the former category I feel particularly bad for the aforementioned "angel that guards a hellgate". A Gate Archon named Ambithas, this angel is described as having studied arcane magic for lifetimes if not eons with some of the greatest arcane minds in existence to such an extent that he can LITERALLY CHOOSE TO MAKE HIS SPELL LIST ARCANE OR DIVINE each morning when he preps spells. He can literally prep wish, timestop, and/or planar binding one day and then miracle, raise dead, and commune the next. He's written like he could have studied under Nex back when he was still on Golarion or Merlin after being summoned from the mounts of heaven 1000 years ago. Unfortunately, all of that interesting character is relegated to a minor paragraph and his special ability on the last page, the rest of his entry preoccupied instead with telling minimally describing the hellgate and the same old story of the diabolist who built his house over it and died opening it.

Meanwhile the latter category of celestials who are more like evil pricks who somehow have a G alignment are all the more infuriating. The flying helmet angel is so rigid and blunt that it sounds more like an inevitable than any angel, constantly berating and instigating conflict in its quest to ferret out "the sins/truths" of others while simultaneously giving it not a single redeeming quality that helps make it come off as if it were good save the fact that it's an angel. The worst offender though has to be Andoletta. The Empyreal Lord of Consolation, respect, and security (a portfolio I looked up in Chronicles of the Righteous because it was better defined their than in the writeup itself) Andoletta comes off less both less interesting than her original writeup in Chronicles of the Righteous or her Infernal Duke counterpart in Hell Unleashed and yet somehow more malicious and disturbing. Her whole schtick at best can be defined as "Old lady who always knows better than those gosh darned kids" at best but once you get into her the description her whole concept seems to take on a tone far more in tune with that of a fiend. Her heavenly realm is initially described as this idyllic little village on a hill but the more you read the more disturbing and out of character it seems to become. A whirlpool swirls at one corner of the the realm and when her petitioners see it they, "are struck by a troubling sense that they’ve forgotten something important" which quickly disappears when the whirlpool disappears back into the fog, a secret groove is cordoned off by stags devoted to erastil who both won't let others onto their tiny island and act nervous and fidgety if anyone asks what they or their site are doing here like some kind of weird blackops site for the stag lord. Finally, he village contains a forest that no one can enter unless they have forgotten their previous mortal life and when said event occurs are shepherded their by Andoletta, never to be seen or heard from again. The whole description paints it less as a heavenly afterlife and more like heavenly slaughterhouse designed by demon lord taking design tips from Temple Branden, Soma pumping through the air to pacify and fog the minds of the chattel souls about to be slaughtered ala Huxley's Brave New World. The whole thing feels like a cosmic oversight and and on top of the copy past errors already in that chapter (her writeup has abilities listed that she doesn't actually have), a list of pretty uninteresting powers already, and again her most interesting facets relegated to a few tiny paragraphs at the end of the chapter. I mean in the last page of her chapter we are introduced to the concept of her clerics solidifying in the dreams of the faithful and fending off Freddy Kreuger like threats in pitched dreamscape battles alongside her SPECIAL ANGELS SPECIFIC TO THIS TASK. But yet again all that cool stuff occupies the tiniest part of that whole chapter, filling out the end and stopping just as you get really interested.

On top of all of this the art inside the book (unlike the amazing cover) is for the most part boring and uninspired. Art for the heavy hitters either looks just like the art for said character's creature type from a different angle or boring and derivative of stuff we've all seen before. Tzyduk and Ambithas just look like your stereotypical white guy with wings & male gate archon, Andoletta looks like the iconic spiritualist crossed with an old varisian woman to make a character that is both less than the former amazing art by Wayne Renolds and like something we've all seen a million times before in both paizo art and the classic old gypsy woman trope any of us could find with a few seconds of google searching, Awigazi (the half celestial coatl) is cool but thanks to the odd perspective makes him look like he's got a disproportionately large head on a tiny body, and Penshi, the choral angel that runs a bar's art just paints him as an Asian bard with a lute that feels so generic it could be replaced with nearly any similar art of an asian bard and you likely wouldn't notice. Hell this is an angel! Give me art of how it looks in its true angelic form, NOT THE DISGUISE HE USES TO BLEND IN WITH PEOPLE SO THEY DON'T THINK HE IS ANYMORE THAN A MUNDANE HUMAN! I can find art like that on google in 5 mins based on the text description, I'll have a much harder time finding art of the unique agendered angel from a class of angels that has art of them singing notes so pure they literally are FRYING BEARDED DEVILS in Chronicles of the Righteous. Worst of all the human characters we get are little more than Iomedean clerics and paladins that we've all seen a dozen times already in everything from Wrath of the Righteous and Inner Sea Gods to the Bestiary in the Numeria campaign book, with both of them (especially the paladin) looking just like all the other attractive girl paladins in not boob plate with a sword that Iomedae has in spades. Shit, if all the mortal worshipers in here must follow Iomedae (and not someone who's church we haven't seen a lot of representation for like say, a Sheyln paladin) could we at least get some body diversity? I would love that paladin to have looked more like Brianne of Tarth, a fat elf woman covered in scars, a trans dwarf woman with a beard styled after the dwarf from Rat Queens or a dozen other options over 2 pics of what is essentially the same holy woman of Iomedea I've already gotten a dozen pictures of but this time with red hair. Ohh and last but not least, we have an Empyrean Angel (the type of angel on the cover) who just looks like Warlord Shen from LoL with some fire wings that could just as easily be banners. All that said there are some standouts that really do look amazing like Pilali the Keeper (an Exscinder Archon with amazing burning wings of this amazing cobalt blue) or the Cassian Angel Cadathiel who's design reminds me of a highly stylized mix of ancient Assyrian helmets and the silver immortal masks from 300, they are but a tiny minority among the other trite offerings they seem to share the pages with.

Finally, the book has a bad habit of overusing their, they, and them exclusively to describe "agendered" characters. Now I understand the want to explore characters who's gender falls outside the human gender binary and I am excited nay thrilled and elated to see more of them going forward but Paizo has to start using different pronouns here. This is a game that not only has capacity for agendered characters and beings to exist within its worlds but also animated objects, legion like hive minds, plant beings, vishnu like multifaceted plural beings, and machine robots that do not reproduce at all or do through a mechanism like say crafting them that would be wholly alien to our understanding of gender. And yet, all of these things can be described using the pronouns they, them, and their and it just leads to confusion. For example, in this book we have 2 minor characters mentioned in the first 2 pages of this book named Henezien the First and The Many Faced Prophet. The former is the first sentient Iron Golem who reads like it could be either the first singular golem of its kind or a whole batch of sentient Celestial Iron Golems who became their own group or could even be a hivemind. Meanwhile the latter is a doppelganger oracle who cycles their disguise and identity with each village/city/culture they pass through to such an extent that I could totally see them having something much closer to a pangender (panperson even?) identity construct akin the the concept of Vishnu where they are both one person, many people, all the same and all different, but because all of these characters use the same freakin' pronouns you can't really tell. On top of all that, it runs into readability problems the minute you start reading anything in which these singular characters start to interact with small groups of undefined characters like the PCs. This leaves you with sentences that can read like,

"Azreal talks to the PCs and pleads for their help exploring the tomb. If they accept their proposal, they nod and head off to explore the west side of the crypt while they sweep the eastern wing."

It's grammatically correct but incredibly confusing and considering how often we are going to see these characters' actions written in response to the group the is the PCs I think it's time we pick pronouns more specific to the character in question than they. I mean right now we have ey, hu, jee, ney, peh, per, e, thon, ve, xe, and yo just for agender singular pronouns alone, why not use them? And hell, once you crack that box and start applying cultural filters on top of it we could maybe even see something really cool, like associations based on cultures the characters inhabit like agendered Garundi out of Thuvia using Peh or agendered numerian technomancers using thon. That gets me far more excited than having to sit here and read these entries multiple times and try to parse out which of the aforementioned genders or more the author could be alluding to by using "they".

Now I could go on (even the chapter on heaven feels boring and uninspired when compared to some of the other realms we've seen like Hell, Abaddon, or the Akashic record) but I feel like I've made my point well enough. For all the hopes one might have for Heaven Unleashed considering the pedigree of books that came before it, all it manages to do is present a lot more of the same.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:
Valantrix1 wrote:
Internal consistency with stat numbers has never really been there in the first place. Especially when your average 1st-level fighter has a higher strength than a gorilla. It would be nice if everything would have some kind of logic to it, but I don't see it anytime soon. I just change it if it doesn't suit me.

A Gorilla actually has a Str of 20 for purposes of Feats of Strength since it's Large. So...that's not super inconsistent, really. Probably still a little lower than it should have, but not an order of magnitude off or anything.

What? I'm not sure I follow that train of thought. Looking in the bestiary, It has a strength of 15, not 20. I don't understand "for the purposes of feats of strength" part of your statement.


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MMCJawa wrote:
So individually intelligence is less important, if you have smarter members of your race you can get help or advice from, or take over other matters.

The problem with this argument is first that Andoletta is supposed to be one of the older and smarter ones. Second, the smartest (statted) Empyreal Lord around is Korada, and he's still only INT 25, on the same level as Kostchtchie.

It's really becoming a noticeable issue.

Liberty's Edge

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MMCJawa wrote:
Mayhaps. However Celestials also exist in a more cooperative environment, even across the races. So individually intelligence is less important, if you have smarter members of your race you can get help or advice from, or take over other matters.

Sure. And that totally explains, say, lower level Archons being not too bright. It doesn't explain literal Gods. Gods are not only rulers of domains, they're also personally active and go out and do things. For example, Cernunnos is CG and a creature of emotion. He goes out and personally kills Balors and the like, basically when he feels like it. If he really only had an Int 6 points lower than said Balors, he would've been moustrapped and killed by now.

Empyreal Lords go out and perform amazing acts personally. Having low Int doesn't make a lot of sense.

MMCJawa wrote:
Kind of imagine it as a situation similar to a president having a cabinet of advisors. For celestials, those advisors can give advice on different things, and the President can say with 100% certainty that he is getting honest appraisals of the situation with no ill will or other agenda, and that it will all work towards some sort of "good"

Yeah...but Empyreal Lords aren't elected. They become deities through merit. Meritocracies put people who are intelligent in charge. Kinda definitionally.

MMCJawa wrote:
in the case of fiends, you have to work on the assumption that your advisors have there own personal interests at heart, may care nothing about your own agenda, and may legitimately mislead you in the interest of gaining power for themselves, either directly or by secretly working with a rival or someone higher up the food chain.

Sure. But that makes you suspicious not suddenly more intelligent. Intellect isn't gained by watching for treachery in every shadow. Experience, maybe, but not intellect. So there are a presumably equal number of smart Celestials to Fiends...and treachery doesn't actually make smart leaders more likely. Indeed, it likely makes easily manipulated ones more likely since smart people don't want the job.

Also, being ready to listen to good advice is a function of Wisdom...and the Celestials are worse at that too.

This is clearly an error, and one that doesn't make a lot of sense.

MMCJawa wrote:
really though I am just not terribly bothered by the stat differential between good and evil outsiders. I think it all evens out when you take in account the advantages good outsiders have, such as cooperation across celestial races and probably solid recruitment numbers.

Firstly, I don't think fiends are having a recruiting problem either.

Secondly, and more importantly, you're misunderstanding the nature of my objection. It's not that having lower Int will make the Celestials lose fights with Fiends, it's far more thematic and realism-based than that.

Cultures that are short on trust don't actually result in personally more competent leaders, and having it work that way in a game is silly and kinda dumb. Plus, thematically, it implies that Good is, y'know, less personally competent than Evil.

Alleran wrote:

The problem with this argument is first that Andoletta is supposed to be one of the older and smarter ones. Second, the smartest (statted) Empyreal Lord around is Korada, and he's still only INT 25, on the same level as Kostchtchie.

It's really becoming a noticeable issue.

Also this. Andoletta's supposed to be pretty smart.

Valantrix1 wrote:
What? I'm not sure I follow that train of thought. Looking in the bestiary, It has a strength of 15, not 20. I don't understand "for the purposes of feats of strength" part of your statement.

Large creatures get +5 Str for purposes of encumbrance...which is to say how much you can lift and carry.

Meaning that the Gorilla can lift and carry as much as a Str 20 human, and the only things it's Str being less than that mean are less damage and lower attack bonus.

So...saying that a Fighter has 'higher Strength than a Gorilla' is true in a game-mechanic sense, but not in an in-world "How much can they both lift?" sense.


MMCJawa wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:


MMCJawa wrote:

Might also be more "natural selection" at work amongst fiends than Empyreal Lords. If your not smart, you are going to get killed, since pretty much all the fiends have some degree of backstabbing inherent to their race.

That's wouldn't be at all a factor at all in the promotion of celestials to demigod status.

Given that Celestials fight Fiends really regularly, and that would have a similar effect, this explanation is really reaching, and IMO doesn't make a lot of sense.

Mayhaps. However Celestials also exist in a more cooperative environment, even across the races. So individually intelligence is less important, if you have smarter members of your race you can get help or advice from, or take over other matters.

Kind of imagine it as a situation similar to a president having a cabinet of advisors. For celestials, those advisors can give advice on different things, and the President can say with 100% certainty that he is getting honest appraisals of the situation with no ill will or other agenda, and that it will all work towards some sort of "good"

in the case of fiends, you have to work on the assumption that your advisors have there own personal interests at heart, may care nothing about your own agenda, and may legitimately mislead you in the interest of gaining power for themselves, either directly or by secretly working with a rival or someone higher up the food chain.

really though I am just not terribly bothered by the stat differential between good and evil outsiders. I think it all evens out when you take in account the advantages good outsiders have, such as cooperation across celestial races and probably solid recruitment numbers.

Thing is, when one of those "Celestial Advisors", specifically one of the wisest ones as per fluff, is less intelligent than a dumb ice warlord, we start to wonder why the Celestials haven't been completely defeated yet.

Which, in turn, brings us to the hypothesis that fiends are just too busy with one another... Which brings to mind the overreaching Blood War metaplot of Planescape memory and... God Almighty, NO.


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Slowly reading through this, initial thoughts:

1. The intro text isn't as fun as the Hell Unleashed intro, but I guess that's the problem with boring good.

2. Having a structure and brief description of the layers of Heaven is nice, but the handful of planar "mayors" who are Joe Archon with Class Levels rather than an empyreal lord is disappointing.

3. The 77th House of Judgement is a cool idea, I particularly like the integration of CG and NG elements here and throughout the book.

4. Ambithas highlights the approach in this book of avoiding just adding class levels to the creatures in this book, instead doing cool variants. Switching the casting from cleric to wizard was a nice touch.

5. Andoletta. I endorse all of the previous discussion that Paizo can't seem to write empyreal lord stats that are consistent with their evil CR 25-30 competitors, and numbers aside nothing about her powers or design struck me as particularly inspired. But I did like the hints of mystery/darkness/danger in her realm when she's not around.

6. Anwigasi. He's an empyreal herald, but he's also been hanging out on Golarion for a century with no repercussions? Is he destined to ascend as the patron god of the USPS?


I do think that this book would have been better as a straight up book on the plane of Heaven, or a revisited volume. There are individual sections I liked, but mostly in the sense that it gave better insight into how different types of outsider worked, or how the planes were laid out.

Paizo Employee Rule and Lore Creative Director

Slithery D wrote:
4. Ambithas highlights the approach in this book of avoiding just adding class levels to the creatures in this book, instead doing cool variants. Switching the casting from cleric to wizard was a nice touch.

Ha, this guy is awesome! I loved coming up with him. He seemed like the kind of crazy prepared archon that would take millenia to not only learn arcane magic, but also memorize every spell. I'm glad you like him!


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7. The Blessed Cup: I loved this section. It's a fantastic way to use a celestial as a low level resource or plot hook, and the variant abilities work perfectly with what Penshi is trying to accomplish.

I do wonder why he's NG, given that this is Heaven Unleashed. Cadathiel (and more understandably two of the judges in the 77th House of Judgement) is the other non-LG in this book. Cadathiel in particular reads like an editing oversight where someone forgot to change the default alignment block, he sure reads like LG.

Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.


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Slithery D wrote:
Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.

My guess is that Paizo feels that "it" is dehumanizing, or depersonizing in this case. I do understand how using "they" can be a bit confusing, but gender-neutral pronouns like "e" aren't yet popularized in colloquial English.

Sovereign Court

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Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
AlgaeNymph wrote:
Slithery D wrote:
Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.
My guess is that Paizo feels that "it" is dehumanizing, or depersonizing in this case. I do understand how using "they" can be a bit confusing, but gender-neutral pronouns like "e" aren't yet popularized in colloquial English.

I assumed it was an editing error, like an accidental find-and-replace. If it's intentional, it's really annoying. I've seen "When someone leaves their light on..." but never "Someone walks into a room. They look around." 3rd-person indefinite, okay; 3rd-person singular, no. Weird, and not weird like saying "she or he," rather than "he or she" (maybe a little jarring at first because it's unusual, but it's still grammatically correct and equivalent) vs. weird because it's wrong.

Project Manager

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Mosaic wrote:
AlgaeNymph wrote:
Slithery D wrote:
Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.
My guess is that Paizo feels that "it" is dehumanizing, or depersonizing in this case. I do understand how using "they" can be a bit confusing, but gender-neutral pronouns like "e" aren't yet popularized in colloquial English.
I assumed it was an editing error, like an accidental find-and-replace. If it's intentional, it's really annoying. I've seen "When someone leaves their light on..." but never "Someone walks into a room. They look around." 3rd-person indefinite, okay; 3rd-person singular, no. Weird, and not weird like saying "she or he," rather than "he or she" (maybe a little jarring at first because it's unusual, but it's still grammatically correct and equivalent) vs. weird because it's wrong.

It is 100% intentional. There was a sidebar that accidentally got cut explaining the decision--what it amounts to is after a considerable amount of research, we settled on the singular "they" as the most recognizable and acceptable pronoun for agender and genderfluid characters.

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I don't find they pronoun confusing at all, but I'm not native speaker so I'm not sure if my opinion counts .-.

Paizo Employee Developer

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Slithery D wrote:

7. The Blessed Cup: I loved this section. It's a fantastic way to use a celestial as a low level resource or plot hook, and the variant abilities work perfectly with what Penshi is trying to accomplish.

The idea for the Blessed Cup came out of a game I ran a few years ago at PaizoCon, in which the PCs were all Red Mantis assassins contracted to kill the iconics. I'm glad we finally made a book where it would fit so that it could become canon, and that folks like it.

Slithery D wrote:
Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.

We had planned to put a sidebar in the book's introduction specifically addressing this, but when it came time to put the book together, I forgot. Instead, we've included the intended sidebar in the bestiary of Pathfinder AP #108, in which there's another genderless angel presented.

We debated back and forth about how best to represent genderless characters in this book, and ultimately "it" was not a pronoun we were comfortable using. As often as possible, we tried to phrase sentences so that there weren't too many "they"s, but we didn't catch them all. As we become more accustomed to using the singular they in future products, this will likely smooth out. But believe me, it was really hard for a building full of English grammar wonks to use the singular they, but I believe we made the right call and did the best we could considering English as a language doesn't provide a widely accepted genderless pronoun to use in place of he or she.


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I saw singular 'they' in another game, and got used to it fast. Maybe it's easier for people who are no native speakers - because at their brains 'they' is not so deeply connected to plural. Given the overly complicated genderized word monsters at my country ('ogre' would become 'ogre_ss' there) I am happy to see some short, intuitive solution.


Jessica Price wrote:
It is 100% intentional. There was a sidebar that accidentally got cut explaining the decision--what it amounts to is after a considerable amount of research, we settled on the singular "they" as the most recognizable and acceptable pronoun for agender and genderfluid characters.
Mark Moreland wrote:
We debated back and forth about how best to represent genderless characters in this book, and ultimately "it" was not a pronoun we were comfortable using. As often as possible, we tried to phrase sentences so that there weren't too many "they"s, but we didn't catch them all. As we become more accustomed to using the singular they in future products, this will likely smooth out. But believe me, it was really hard for a building full of English grammar wonks to use the singular they, but I believe we made the right call and did the best we could considering English as a language doesn't provide a widely accepted genderless pronoun to use in place of he or she.

The ritual worked! We got actual Paizo authorities!

O, great keepers of lore, addressed such non-sarcastically, please tell us why the stats for empyreal lords, particularly mental ability scores, are so damned gimpy?


Kalindlara wrote:
To be fair, it is every bit as legitimate as our posts, feedback-wise. ^_^

For what it's worth, I appreciate both the positive feedback and the negative feedback. I so swear by the both old gods and the new. :-D


Skeld, PDF Prophet wrote:
Marco Massoudi wrote:
Who are the (9 other) creatures, what are their CRs and where are they based?

This is what i found with a quick scan. Some of the places might need fine-tuning.

** spoiler omitted **

-Skeld

Thank you for the information. Are there any other creatures with CRs in excess of 20? Do you know how easy it is to advance these creatures to CRs into the 30s or even 40s?

Project Manager

AlgaeNymph wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
It is 100% intentional. There was a sidebar that accidentally got cut explaining the decision--what it amounts to is after a considerable amount of research, we settled on the singular "they" as the most recognizable and acceptable pronoun for agender and genderfluid characters.
Mark Moreland wrote:
We debated back and forth about how best to represent genderless characters in this book, and ultimately "it" was not a pronoun we were comfortable using. As often as possible, we tried to phrase sentences so that there weren't too many "they"s, but we didn't catch them all. As we become more accustomed to using the singular they in future products, this will likely smooth out. But believe me, it was really hard for a building full of English grammar wonks to use the singular they, but I believe we made the right call and did the best we could considering English as a language doesn't provide a widely accepted genderless pronoun to use in place of he or she.

The ritual worked! We got actual Paizo authorities!

O, great keepers of lore, addressed such non-sarcastically, please tell us why the stats for empyreal lords, particularly mental ability scores, are so damned gimpy?

Don't know. I wrote most of the flavor for Andoletta, but I didn't do the stat block. Sorry. :(

Shadow Lodge

Ohh cool, it's nice to see I'm not the only one having problems with this one! Been stuck in finals work for so long I was worried I would be the only one having problems with this book. Wrote a review, it is... critical to say the least.


doc the grey wrote:
Ohh cool, it's nice to see I'm not the only one having problems with this one! Been stuck in finals work for so long I was worried I would be the only one having problems with this book. Wrote a review, it is... critical to say the least.

Heh, my students are taking their finals next week (at least in two of my classes). Is finals week the best time to write a review? :-D

Do you have a link to your review?

Shadow Lodge

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AlgaeNymph wrote:
Slithery D wrote:
Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.
My guess is that Paizo feels that "it" is dehumanizing, or depersonizing in this case. I do understand how using "they" can be a bit confusing, but gender-neutral pronouns like "e" aren't yet popularized in colloquial English.

I can understand that, but it feels like an odd thing to get uncomfortable about when it's used to refer to a sentient Iron Golem or something that doesn't or hasn't ever identified as human. I said it in my review but I really would like to see Paizo diversify the pool of pronouns they use to better specify what kind of character we are talking about in any given piece and to avoid further confusion once we start describing those characters interacting with the PCs who are often written about using the plural they, their, them.

Can't we have Golems that go by it, humans that use xer, swarming verminous hiveminds that use they, and everything else inbetween? I think that the way that the writers use these pronouns can open up a lot of descriptive depth about how these creatures view themselves and the contexts of the culture they live in.

Shadow Lodge

Uzziel the Angel wrote:
doc the grey wrote:
Ohh cool, it's nice to see I'm not the only one having problems with this one! Been stuck in finals work for so long I was worried I would be the only one having problems with this book. Wrote a review, it is... critical to say the least.

Heh, my students are taking their finals next week (at least in two of my classes). Is finals week the best time to write a review? :-D

Do you have a link to your review?

*edit* Lol not really but this has been kicking around in my head since I got my copy and with my ADD and the bulk of my other work out of the way I figured I might as well get it up now rather than let it rattle around in my head for much longer. Also I wanted to try and get it up before it got out or was on the shelf too long so people could read about what they were getting into.

As for the review, click the reviews tab here, it should be the only one.


Yes, I have ADD too and used to get a great deal of D&D material created back during my finals weeks in college when I was supposed to be studying. :-D

Thanks for the review. So what's the CR of an empyrean angel?


doc the grey wrote:


As for the review, click the reviews tab here, it should be the only one.

Seemed a little short.

Shadow Lodge

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Uzziel the Angel wrote:

Yes, I have ADD too and used to get a great deal of D&D material created back during my finals weeks in college when I was supposed to be studying. :-D

Thanks for the review. So what's the CR of an empyrean angel?

Thank you ^-^.

The angel is a unique, CR 24 empyrean angel that serves Bahamut. Unfortunately that's about all that's really different about him. He's got another 5 HD and uses a quarterstaff and has one new special ability that really isn't anything to write home about that allows him to do 2d6 fire damage per round in a 10 ft radius and turn into a gold dragon 3 times a day. It's really depressing power since 2d6 fire on a CR 24 creature is basically just wasted stat line at that level and 3 transformations feels like too few for a powerful angel crafted by the god of dragons to watch over a chunk of his realm and seems like something he should just be able to do a la change shape. Hell, they could have taken a page out of Princes of Darkness and at least made the fire holy fire and make it half fire half raw good or something.

Shadow Lodge

Slithery D wrote:
doc the grey wrote:


As for the review, click the reviews tab here, it should be the only one.

Seemed a little short.

Lol yeah but it was late and I didn't think I could write anymore. Think I should add another page? ;)


Where was I?

Regarding "they," I understand the choice but don't agree with it. It is a tough problem since genderless sentient creatures are pretty rare. I feel more of the outsiders could have been gendered to limit this, but admit it shouldn't have been taken too far in that direction, either.

8. Cadathiel the Zealot. I liked this one a lot, the annoying preachy angel clearly modeled on several inhabitants of the Paizo forums and/or product masthead.

9. Chapel of the Argent Shield. Boring, and just like Raina Rennold (see 14) it doesn't belong in "Heaven Unleashed." We want angels or archons, not human clerics. Surely you could have thought of something better.

10. Entropic Hold. Very good, I liked the idea of a heavenly outpost in the Maelstrom that can serve as a haven there and a conduit to Heaven for off-alignment parties. My only complaint is that I'm not sure the scale of a few dozen outsiders hanging out semi-isolated from Heaven asking for reinforcements for thousands of years really makes sense. I feel like it should have been evacuated, reinforced, or wiped out by now.

I'm also not sure why they wouldn't have evacuated Olquinhat to Heaven proper for treatment. Heaven's mental health plan must really suck. "I defeated a nascent demon lord's attack on Heaven and all I got was thousands of years locked in a cell adrift in the Maelstrom and this lousy t-shirt rather than some healing from a grateful demigod."

11. The Grim White Stag. An ok concept, it felt underdeveloped and a bit simplistic as a scenario. I think there's room for a one off "go fight this battle, then ignore it for ever after" set piece, but that's what it is, sitting next to much cooler and more complex adventure seeds.

12. Paragon of the Wyrm. The paragon abilities of this empyreal angel are LOL bad compared to those given in Bestiary 5. The Paragon of Dawn can plane shift to Malebolge and go find the the vampire bolgia to kill hundreds or thousands of exposed vampires just by walking around. The other examples are similarly powerful, with abilities that belong in the stat block of a demigod. The Paragon of the Wyrm can...burn you slightly worse than a torch or take a dragon form that is much less dangerous than its regular form. (Well, more powerful if this immortal servant of a dragon with a vast hoard of magical items had managed to acquire a weapon with a higher than +4 bonus equivalent.) No, thanks.

That said his lair and treasures were somewhat cool, and I guess he's a usable information/trading source for very high level PCs.

13. Pilali the Keeper. We're back on track, this was pretty good. I particularly liked the uncaring jerk version of lawful good, nice adaptation of a "kill them all, God will know his own" attitude.

14. Raina Rennold. Bad in the same ways and for the same reasons as 9, it just didn't belong in this book. Paladins are everywhere, they don't belong in a book supposedly about Heaven the plane and its inhabitants. That said, a bit of lower level Geb content was nice, but it suffered from the same limited/underdeveloped structure as the Grim White Stag section. Not everything has to be equal in page count or richness, but this one suffers from two conceptual/category weaknesses.

15. Uaphraet. I liked the idea, but once again I found this to be a bit unrealistic in terms of scale like the Entropic Hold. He's too weak, the problem is too easy to solve, and he's been stuck out there too long for this to be believable. Make him out there decades (at most) rather than millennia and I might buy this.

Overall I liked this book quite a bit. The good parts were very good, but I'm also quite surprised that there were so many parts that seemed phoned in or like they wandered in from an unrelated book. It's not like Paizo has done so much celestial stuff that they can be forgiven for running out of ideas in this area.


Jessica Price wrote:
AlgaeNymph wrote:

The ritual worked! We got actual Paizo authorities!

O, great keepers of lore, addressed such non-sarcastically, please tell us why the stats for empyreal lords, particularly mental ability scores, are so damned gimpy?

Don't know. I wrote most of the flavor for Andoletta, but I didn't do the stat block. Sorry. :(

So...do you know who did?


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.

Project Manager

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AlgaeNymph wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
AlgaeNymph wrote:

The ritual worked! We got actual Paizo authorities!

O, great keepers of lore, addressed such non-sarcastically, please tell us why the stats for empyreal lords, particularly mental ability scores, are so damned gimpy?

Don't know. I wrote most of the flavor for Andoletta, but I didn't do the stat block. Sorry. :(
So...do you know who did?

Yes. But it's their choice to identify themselves.

Project Manager

4 people marked this as a favorite.
Squeakmaan wrote:
Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.

Yeah, and while I care if non-genderfluid/nonbinary people have trouble understanding it because of the pronoun choice, I don't really care if they don't like it, any more than I'd care if a guy didn't like women using "she/her" to identify ourselves.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Squeakmaan wrote:
Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.

Where has "they" been used for centuries to describe genderless definite and singular beings? (Outside of fiction, where do genderless beings exist?) Indefinite singular beings, sure.


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For what it's worth, I tend to use "they" for everyone unless I am told otherwise (or I have a strong reason to believe someone prefers a different pronoun). On the other hand, I periodically trip up and accidentally use "they" when talking about someone who prefers ze/e/something else.

Liberty's Edge

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Slithery D wrote:
Outside of fiction, where do genderless beings exist?

Ummm... here on actual non-fictional planet Earth?

Shadow Lodge

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Jessica Price wrote:
Squeakmaan wrote:
Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.
Yeah, and while I care if non-genderfluid/nonbinary people have trouble understanding it because of the pronoun choice, I don't really care if they don't like it, any more than I'd care if a guy didn't like women using "she/her" to identify ourselves.

So are you saying that you/Paizo will not change or consider changing the pronoun policy even if the grammar is stated to be confusing by customers but not necessarily its content (i.e. yay more agender/nonbinary, please use other pronouns to alleviate confusing sentences), that Paizo will consider a more diverse set of pronouns to help alleviate this confusion, and/or that only non-genderfluid/nonbinary people can be confused by this?

The last point in particular feels REALLY demeaning towards those of us that have voiced concerns about the use of they and as if none of us could be agender/nonbinary or deeply rooted in communities and cultures of agendered/nonbinary people or hell even sympathize. I feel like my thoughts are being patronized on assumptions about who I am rather than the merit of the argument, like I'm some kind of child without a thought worth assessing or that the thought that I could actually be someone who is agender/nonbinary and am talking from my own struggles and discussions or deeply tied to it is inconsequential because of a lens I'm being viewed through. It sounds a lot like I'm being mansplained at.


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Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Slithery D wrote:
Squeakmaan wrote:
Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.
Where has "they" been used for centuries to describe genderless definite and singular beings? (Outside of fiction, where do genderless beings exist?) Indefinite singular beings, sure.

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they would be the best place to start. But I shall copy the first three examples from the page, and would be surprised if you hadn't seen or used it in this form at least once.

"Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?"
"The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay."
"But a journalist should not be forced to reveal their sources."

Shadow Lodge

CBDunkerson wrote:
Slithery D wrote:
Outside of fiction, where do genderless beings exist?
Ummm... here on actual non-fictional planet Earth?

This guy is right but to clarify, when we talk about the concept of gender we are talking about the mental cultural construct of sexual identification rather than the biological concept of sex. Gender is the idea that those who identify as men do certain things (beyond just having male genitals) that make them manly and women do things that we think of as womanly. Gender is why in the states the phrase "You throw like a girl" is an insult because it is built on the gender concept that women can't throw well/shouldn't be able to throw well or are not good at sports while men are.

From that, agendered people are those who don't really identify with any of the 2 (at least in the US usually) common gender options and instead fall somewhere else that could be in the middle, outside the scope, both, or something wholly alien. This in American culture (can't really speak to others too well atm) can be a big change to their assumed norm and at least a little alien to think about. Realize also this doesn't have anything to do with who they are romantically or sexually attracted to which is a whole other topic in and of itself. It also doesn't necessarily have anything to do with transsexuals, who identify biologically with another sex than the one they were born in.

Now, all that said we've had agendered people for a while we just often don't see them in American media and as an already small portion of the population are exposure to them at least in the states can be very minimal to nil but they are here. Adding characters to represent and explore these lives that we rarely see I think is an amazing opportunity for interesting narrative that has for the longest time in western media remained untapped and unexplored. That said, I do agree that we need to diversify our pronoun use to better accommodate the plethora of specific gendered identities that could fall under the use of "they" and to help avoid confusion, especially considering that these individuals will often be written as interacting with a small group of individuals who's pronoun is already "they, them, their" (the PCs). Otherwise I worry we'll start running into a "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" style situation sooner or later and much more often than we might like.

Project Manager

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doc the grey wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
Squeakmaan wrote:
Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.
Yeah, and while I care if non-genderfluid/nonbinary people have trouble understanding it because of the pronoun choice, I don't really care if they don't like it, any more than I'd care if a guy didn't like women using "she/her" to identify ourselves.
So are you saying that you/Paizo will not change or consider changing the pronoun policy even if the grammar is stated to be confusing by customers but not necessarily its content (i.e. yay more agender/nonbinary, please use other pronouns to alleviate confusing sentences), that Paizo will consider a more diverse set of pronouns to help alleviate this confusion, and/or that only non-genderfluid/nonbinary people can be confused by this?

No, I said that if it's actually interfering with usability--if people can't make out what it's saying, I care about that.

doc the grey wrote:
The last point in particular feels REALLY demeaning towards those of us that have voiced concerns about the use of they and as if none of us could be agender/nonbinary

No, I absolutely care what genderfluid/non-binary people/agender people -- that is, people who do not identify as "he" or "she" -- think.

Quote:
I feel like my thoughts are being patronized on assumptions about who I am rather than the merit of the argument

I'm not assuming anything about you. If you're someone who uses pronouns other than he/she, I care very much what you think about this.

If you don't identify as a gender/gender presentation that uses non-binary pronouns, however, I'm not sure why anyone should care whether you approve of "they." (Again, I'm willing to entertain arguments that it's confusing. I just don't care whether you like it if you're able to understand it.) It's not really my place to decide that I don't like men using "he." And it's not really the place of anyone who isn't part of the group in question to decide that people shouldn't be using "they" as a singular pronoun because people who don't identify using it don't like it.

And I actually think you knew all already.

Liberty's Edge

doc the grey wrote:
This guy is right but to clarify, when we talk about the concept of gender we are talking about the mental cultural construct of sexual identification rather than the biological concept of sex.

Actually, 'gender' includes both of those factors... and several others. In each of those dimensions there are more than two (i.e. 'male' or 'female) possibilities.

The idea that humans (to say nothing of other species on this planet) come in just two genders (whether referring to genotype, birth phenotype, current phenotype, sexual orientation, sexual identity, cultural identity, or some other aspect of 'gender') is simply false. It may be true for the vast majority of the race, but there are numerous exceptions.


Squeakmaan wrote:
Slithery D wrote:
Squeakmaan wrote:
Considering the criticism that just using "they" (Which is completely grammatically correct and has been in use for centuries) for beings without gender received, I highly doubt using any other terms would have been well received at all.
Where has "they" been used for centuries to describe genderless definite and singular beings? (Outside of fiction, where do genderless beings exist?) Indefinite singular beings, sure.

Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they would be the best place to start. But I shall copy the first three examples from the page, and would be surprised if you hadn't seen or used it in this form at least once.

"Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Would they please collect it?"
"The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay."
"But a journalist should not be forced to reveal their sources."

Those are all indefinite placeholders, not referring to a specific known individual.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

It never ceases to amaze me how strongly people feel about "Good" in D&D. I mean, you can put pretty much anything in a book about demons/devils - from baby-eating skin-wearing chainsaw-wielding splatter to "vaguely CNish bordering on redemption" and everybody is cool, except that one person who was tricked by their (ha!) friends into watching Martyrs and how as a panic trigger button that goes off every time the topic of flaying somebody's skin alive is brought up.

But put out a book about heavens and you suddenly get folks get up their arms about things such as their ideal vision of what celestials should look like, what their mental stats should be, what 'goodness' exactly is, how Arshea shouldn't be Good because she's really CN or how Ragathiel is really LE (yep, I'm a bit guilty of the last one) and what pronouns should be used in the context of ultimate benevolence.

I mean, folks, take a walk, go to a church, talk to Father Spirit, experience some divine transcendence on the top of the impossible mountain and realise that this is just a game of pretend-elves.


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Get thee away, Gorbacz.


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You know he's right.

Telling him to go away won't change that.

Deal with the truth, and look inward.


Jessica Price wrote:
AlgaeNymph wrote:
Jessica Price wrote:
AlgaeNymph wrote:

The ritual worked! We got actual Paizo authorities!

O, great keepers of lore, addressed such non-sarcastically, please tell us why the stats for empyreal lords, particularly mental ability scores, are so damned gimpy?

Don't know. I wrote most of the flavor for Andoletta, but I didn't do the stat block. Sorry. :(
So...do you know who did?
Yes. But it's their choice to identify themselves.

Understandable, given how personal criticism can unfortunately be.

Still, would you pass this on to them? If Paizo’s going to portray exemplars of the good alignments as cool, they need cool stats to match.


Jessica Price wrote:
Mosaic wrote:
AlgaeNymph wrote:
Slithery D wrote:
Side note: I find the use of "they" rather than "it" as a genderless pronoun horribly jarring and confusing. I couldn't even understand what was happening the first time I encountered it and thought there was some mysterious group entity I had missed a reference to or poor editing.
My guess is that Paizo feels that "it" is dehumanizing, or depersonizing in this case. I do understand how using "they" can be a bit confusing, but gender-neutral pronouns like "e" aren't yet popularized in colloquial English.
I assumed it was an editing error, like an accidental find-and-replace. If it's intentional, it's really annoying. I've seen "When someone leaves their light on..." but never "Someone walks into a room. They look around." 3rd-person indefinite, okay; 3rd-person singular, no. Weird, and not weird like saying "she or he," rather than "he or she" (maybe a little jarring at first because it's unusual, but it's still grammatically correct and equivalent) vs. weird because it's wrong.
It is 100% intentional. There was a sidebar that accidentally got cut explaining the decision--what it amounts to is after a considerable amount of research, we settled on the singular "they" as the most recognizable and acceptable pronoun for agender and genderfluid characters.

If I could make a suggestion, perhaps that sidebar or something like it could make an appearance on the blogs? That way readers who haven't wandered through this thread might be enlightened.

As for the usage, it was only mildly confusing when I scanned the line the first time. After you (or in this case I) acclimate yourself to the style it works out fine and isn't particularly confusing.

I may be in the minority -- and I know that, as indicated in later posts that since I don't use these pronouns my opinion is a little less meaningful -- but at this point I think that "they" reads better than some of the less commonly/widely used. Unless the sidebar made an appearance detailing that "e" is being used as a pronoun and not a misprint in the text, then it would be fine.

In any cases, I enjoyed the book and the effort put into it.


Why is there no artwork for the Preceptor Archon? Can we get one in the near future?


You know you could do this thing called adjust stats for your home game. To quote John Lennon, "It's easy if you try." Especially if you have the Book of Exalted Deeds and look at the demigods in there. It's extremely easy to adjust stats, AND, how many games truly get to mythic/epic status other then adjusted PbP APs or Way of the Righteous?

As for the use of they, oh noze, pronoun confusion! Our little world is coming to an end! Outsiders by their very nature are defined by the gods who create them and the mortals/concepts that shape them. Gender and sex don't really apply to beings that can change shape or are fluid in spirit, unless their particular concept enforces that upon them, such as erinyes, who are the avenging embodiment of scorned women, or incubui, who are the male embodiment of seduction. For good and neutral outsiders it's much the same way. And as for genderless beings, bacteria and asexual reproduction would like to talk to you, as would future AIs and robots....


doc the grey wrote:
Uzziel the Angel wrote:

Yes, I have ADD too and used to get a great deal of D&D material created back during my finals weeks in college when I was supposed to be studying. :-D

Thanks for the review. So what's the CR of an empyrean angel?

Thank you ^-^.

The angel is a unique, CR 24 empyrean angel that serves Bahamut. Unfortunately that's about all that's really different about him. He's got another 5 HD and uses a quarterstaff and has one new special ability that really isn't anything to write home about that allows him to do 2d6 fire damage per round in a 10 ft radius and turn into a gold dragon 3 times a day. It's really depressing power since 2d6 fire on a CR 24 creature is basically just wasted stat line at that level and 3 transformations feels like too few for a powerful angel crafted by the god of dragons to watch over a chunk of his realm and seems like something he should just be able to do a la change shape. Hell, they could have taken a page out of Princes of Darkness and at least made the fire holy fire and make it half fire half raw good or something.

This is also easy enough to fix. Make the angel into the form of an empyrean gold or uniquely scaled (adamantine, platinum, alloyed, etc) dragon with angelic powers. Poof problem fixed. A great gold wyrm with the celestial template would work as well or changing its sorcerer caster levels to clerical or oracle casting, such as a fire or life oracle. My concept for a god's divine servants is shape them to the god. Psychopomps are a good example, or the divine heralds. So a dragon god's divine servants should look and be dragons. Hence why Bahamut in traditional D&D terms has 7 different golden great wyrms serving as his messengers and his lieutenants. And so on.


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stormcrow27 wrote:
You know you could do this thing called adjust stats for your home game.

Part of the point of criticism and reviews is to encourage a well-made product. If the product is not well-made, why am I wasting money on it?

If there is a consistent problem with statblocks, then it should be examined in order to fix the problem at the source.

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