The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Let me get my bias out right away: I am a huge fan of angels and angel lore. I own a copy of 'The Dictionary of Angels'. I was one of the half a dozen or so people who actually bought Heresy in any quantity, not because I liked the game, but because I liked the idea of cyberpunk angels. I bought In Nomine and about half a dozen supplements before realizing, hey, I didn't actually like the game all that much. If it deals with or prominently features angels, I'll buy it. Moreover, I am also a fan of AD&D, although I prefer the 'original' version my brother taught me to play when I was eight to the later, corrupted, Unearthed Arcana-tainted abomination that the game would become in the mid-eighties. What? Second edition? Smile when you use that phrase, heathen.

Therefore, it will probably come as no surprise to any of you that, confronted with Warriors of Heaven, an AD&D supplment dealing with how to play 'celestial' characters, I exhibited all the good taste and restraint of a personal injury lawyer at a meeting of the Automobile Accident Survivors Association of America -- that is, none whatsoever. I bought it on sight, cracked it open as soon as the opportunity presented itself, and dived in. In retrospect, it probably should not be surprising that I was disappointed, although I was -- and still am -- surprised by how much I was disappointed. Warriors of Heaven is a neat idea, but when it comes right down to it, it's just not all that great a product.

Which isn't to say it's not a nice book. Like most latter-day TSR/WotC products, it's nicely turned out and attractive at a glance. The cover painting is good, although it took me a little while before I realized that I was looking at something by Brom -- it looks very little like either his Dark Sun art or his Heresy art. The interior is, frankly, rather sparsely illustrated, although what illustrations there are are generally okay and at least fit the theme. It doesn't really appeal to me on a personal level, but repeated exposure to Planescape supplements has spoiled me for anything planar and AD&D related that isn't illustrated by DiTerlizzi throughout, so take this bias into account. More seriously, the interior art is also printed entirely in browns, greys, and blacks, giving the whole book a somewhat washed-out look that doesn't really give a feel for what the Upper Planes ought to be.

Then again, hardly anyone buys AD&D products for the art, right? They buy them for the content, and that content starts right on page 2, after the first-page table of contents, without so much as an introduction or outline or even so much as a by-your-leave. My first time through I actually thought that the book had been misprinted and I was missing a vitally important first couple of pages. Would that it were so.

The book starts off with a brief summary of what celestials are, what races are considered celestial, and how celestial games differ from a vanilla AD&D game. This occupies about two-thirds of a column and is approximately as meaty and satisfying as a one-course dinner at Big Stu's Discount House of Tofu. Sure, celestial PCs don't start out as full-fledged agathinons (or whatever) at first level, and sure, they have to face different and more powerful threats on the Outer Planes. None of this can come as much of a surprise to anyone who's considered the issue for more than a few seconds, but that's pretty much it as far as campaign advice goes.

We then segue into a discussion of what it's like to be a celestial, with some basic advice on their role in the multiverse (the good guys), how they deal with moral quandries (sometimes they have to make sacrifices for the greater good), and whether or not they have free will (they do). There's a brief section on general alignment tendencies and how the individual alignment planes differ in terms of social order and structure. And, of course, there is also a lengthy (relatively speaking) section on celestial politics and how the various planar races interact with one another. None of the content is especially surprising or insightful, although the Blood War conspiracy theory that it's really the celestials behind it all is a nice little touch. This is a point I would have liked to see left unresolved, but, considering how frequently I complain about White Wolf leaving dangling teasers lying around, I suppose I can't really object when a gaming company does promptly answer one of those Difficult Questions.

Perhaps the element I most object to in this book is the presence of the Celestial Concordance, an alliance among the Upper Planes for mutual defense in case of attack by evil. While I may be in the minority, I can't help but feel that this inescapably undermines the potential for Law vs. Chaos (rather than Good vs. Evil) as a significant campaign theme. The impression I get from reading Warriors of Heaven is that the Law/Chaos dispute is just a sideshow, something to be taken care of after Good has mopped the floor with Evil or vice versa, rather than an equally severe and fundamental conflict. Does Mount Celestia have a similar agreement with Mechanus and Baator in case of attack by Limbo, Ysgard, and the Abyss? Would they work together if such a situation did arise, agreement or not? Does the presence of the Concordance suggest that Lawful Good and Chaotic Good are not as far apart as Lawful Good and Lawful Evil? Such questions are vital for fitting together the AD&D multiverse into a coherent cosmology, but Warriors of Heaven offers no answers or even suggestions.

I did enjoy the point that celestials, being pretty powerful to start with, place value heavily on doing 'ordinary' things, but it does betray a certain humanocentricity on either their part or that of the author. /Why/ is it more satisfying to an aasimon to make a horseshoe than doing something useful with his powers? Are their powers not 'natural' to them in the way that use of their hands and eyes is? Is it merely an expression of individualism? It's not hard to see how some such would be needed, considering the way celestial PCs are set up (more on that later), but the explanation offered feels like the kind of reasoning that would lead us to believe that birds consider walking somewhere more satisfying than flying there.

There's a good deal more, including special rules for celestial Oaths (WotC's capital, not mine), details on where exactly celestials come from, how aasimon ascend from rank to rank, how and why they can lose rank or even fall from the hierarchy entirely, and sketchy descriptions of a few sites of interest in the Upper Planes. Some of these are fairly interesting, like the basalt fortress of the aasimon servitor-race, the quesar (there are swamps in Elysium? Who knew?) or the great tower that stands guard over a gate from Ysgard to the Abyss. And, of course, there are sections on what it's like to serve a god, how to pick one to serve, how to become a proxy (a very powerful celestial who's effectively a mouthpiece for his deity) and what it's like to be one, and what happens if your deity dies.

This is all fairly standard, if perfectly serviceable, material; if you want to run a celestial campaign it's fine, but it's not likely to offer any new insights. The last 'background' section, before plunging headlong into rules, deals with celestial interactions with the Prime Material, and is about what any AD&D player would expect, although it does make one wonder, again, why good-aligned gods get to act in ways few DMs would allow good-aligned characters to act toward people who aren't impressed or awed by them.

Deep breath; we're only 16 1/2 pages into the book, and the rules section is just beginning. Go get a glass of water; I'll be here when you get back.

(As an aside, the entire book lacks chapter dividers or headers of any sort. It just all kind of collides together in a sort of massive run-on sentence. Memo to WotC: keep a close eye on whoever laid this out if/when you give them another project.)

Okay, well, the celestials have both priest and wizard spells of their own, there are a fair number of them, and the average DM would be well-advised not to let mortal characters get hold of a couple. They vary pretty widely from pedestrian planar adaptations of standard spells to oddly underpowered spells that have nice special effects to your typical high-powered death machines. I suppose they're nice enough, and most of them do have the right tone (mysterious, awe-inspiring, majestic), but it's a little hard to be too impressed by them when you consider what mortal spellcasters can already do. Angels keep their mystique a lot better in settings where magic is significantly less powerful or less available or more limited; vanilla AD&D is none of these, particularly if set in the Forgotten Realms. Oh, a few magic items get detailed, too, but they're no more inspired than the spells, and most of them leave me wondering why your average high-level wizard or priest couldn't duplicate them.

There are then a number of sections detailing the powers of each individual celestial race, their ability score limits, class/level limits, what order they get their powers in, what their role on the planes is, and how they get along with other celestials. Most of the races are really more like completely new character classes, and the ascension scheme of archons (who never gain levels, just move up to a new form) is particularly wacky. More seriously, it's hard to see how some of these folk could work together in a campaign -- it might get dull to have everyone playing an agathinon, or an archon, or an asuras, but it might also be necessary (especially since aasimon and asuras really don't get along). An all-eladrin campaign seems the most promising, since there's enough subtypes and character creation options with them to keep most players happy, and also because they seem to enjoy the most freedom of action. Even in this case, though, a DM will have to be very careful to keep all the characters well-balanced against one another.

And that, really, touches on the most serious problem with this supplement. There's a lot of rules and a little background, but none of this tells me what I really wanted to know: what kind of campaign do I run with this? How do I balance all these character types? Am I supposed to do a campaign with one type or all types? What do I do with my players once they get their characters rolled up? Where do I go from here? You will search in vain through this book for any kind of useful advice on DMing a celestial adventure, much less a complete campaign, or how to interlock with existing AD&D products. Did nobody playtest these rules? Or did the author or editor just feel that readers wouldn't be interested in how they were actually used in practice?

Sure, given a little time to think about it I can answer the vital questions myself. But that begs the question of what I needed Warriors of Heaven for in the first place; a bunch of new races that, given a copy of the Planescape Monstrous Compendiums, I probably could have derived rules for myself? Do-it-yourselfers don't need the book, and non-DIYers are going to be left completely at sea once they finish wading through, if you'll pardon the semi-mixed metaphor, the morass of new rules it dumps on them.

Hoping against hope that 'Web Enhanced' meant 'we took out the DM advice and campaign suggestions and made them available over the net because there wasn't room in the book', I looked up the associated links on the TSR web site. I need not have bothered; all there is are rules for quesar (a created servitor race) PCs and a short adventure.

This could have been a fantastic product; even the exotic settings like Planescape or Dark Sun are really only different places to play the same AD&D. Warriors of Heaven could have offered up a whole new perspective, a completely different spin on the traditional AD&D multiverse and attitude. It doesn't do that, though, and what we're left with is pretty much the same old thing with a slightly different gloss. Buy it if you're an AD&D completist or an angel fanatic; you will anyway, whatever I tell you. If you're neither, save your money -- there isn't anything here you need.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)

Warriors of Heaven
Author: Christopher Perkins Category: game Company/Publisher: Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Line: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Cost: $18.95 Page count: 96 pages, perfect-bound ISBN: 0-7869-1361-4 Capsule Review by Christopher Page on 09/17/99. Genre tags: Fantasy	Let me get my bias out right away: I am a huge fan of angels and angel lore. I own a copy of 'The Dictionary of Angels'. I was one of the half a dozen or so people who actually bought Heresy in any quantity, not because I liked the game, but because I liked the idea of cyberpunk angels. I bought In Nomine and about half a dozen supplements before realizing, hey, I didn't actually like the game all that much. If it deals with or prominently features angels, I'll buy it. Moreover, I am also a fan of AD&D, although I prefer the 'original' version my brother taught me to play when I was eight to the later, corrupted, Unearthed Arcana-tainted abomination that the game would become in the mid-eighties. What? Second edition? Smile when you use that phrase, heathen. Therefore, it will probably come as no surprise to any of you that, confronted with Warriors of Heaven, an AD&D supplment dealing with how to play 'celestial' characters, I exhibited all the good taste and restraint of a personal injury lawyer at a meeting of the Automobile Accident Survivors Association of America -- that is, none whatsoever. I bought it on sight, cracked it open as soon as the opportunity presented itself, and dived in. In retrospect, it probably should not be surprising that I was disappointed, although I was -- and still am -- surprised by how much I was disappointed. Warriors of Heaven is a neat idea, but when it comes right down to it, it's just not all that great a product. Which isn't to say it's not a nice book. Like most latter-day TSR/WotC products, it's nicely turned out and attractive at a glance. The cover painting is good, although it took me a little while before I realized that I was looking at something by Brom -- it looks very little like either his Dark Sun art or his Heresy art. The interior is, frankly, rather sparsely illustrated, although what illustrations there are are generally okay and at least fit the theme. It doesn't really appeal to me on a personal level, but repeated exposure to Planescape supplements has spoiled me for anything planar and AD&D related that isn't illustrated by DiTerlizzi throughout, so take this bias into account. More seriously, the interior art is also printed entirely in browns, greys, and blacks, giving the whole book a somewhat washed-out look that doesn't really give a feel for what the Upper Planes ought to be. Then again, hardly anyone buys AD&D products for the art, right? They buy them for the content, and that content starts right on page 2, after the first-page table of contents, without so much as an introduction or outline or even so much as a by-your-leave. My first time through I actually thought that the book had been misprinted and I was missing a vitally important first couple of pages. Would that it were so. The book starts off with a brief summary of what celestials are, what races are considered celestial, and how celestial games differ from a vanilla AD&D game. This occupies about two-thirds of a column and is approximately as meaty and satisfying as a one-course dinner at Big Stu's Discount House of Tofu. Sure, celestial PCs don't start out as full-fledged agathinons (or whatever) at first level, and sure, they have to face different and more powerful threats on the Outer Planes. None of this can come as much of a surprise to anyone who's considered the issue for more than a few seconds, but that's pretty much it as far as campaign advice goes. We then segue into a discussion of what it's like to be a celestial, with some basic advice on their role in the multiverse (the good guys), how they deal with moral quandries (sometimes they have to make sacrifices for the greater good), and whether or not they have free will (they do). There's a brief section on general alignment tendencies and how the individual alignment planes differ in terms of social order and structure. And, of course, there is also a lengthy (relatively speaking) section on celestial politics and how the various planar races interact with one another. None of the content is especially surprising or insightful, although the Blood War conspiracy theory that it's really the celestials behind it all is a nice little touch. This is a point I would have liked to see left unresolved, but, considering how frequently I complain about White Wolf leaving dangling teasers lying around, I suppose I can't really object when a gaming company does promptly answer one of those Difficult Questions. Perhaps the element I most object to in this book is the presence of the Celestial Concordance, an alliance among the Upper Planes for mutual defense in case of attack by evil. While I may be in the minority, I can't help but feel that this inescapably undermines the potential for Law vs. Chaos (rather than Good vs. Evil) as a significant campaign theme. The impression I get from reading Warriors of Heaven is that the Law/Chaos dispute is just a sideshow, something to be taken care of after Good has mopped the floor with Evil or vice versa, rather than an equally severe and fundamental conflict. Does Mount Celestia have a similar agreement with Mechanus and Baator in case of attack by Limbo, Ysgard, and the Abyss? Would they work together if such a situation did arise, agreement or not? Does the presence of the Concordance suggest that Lawful Good and Chaotic Good are not as far apart as Lawful Good and Lawful Evil? Such questions are vital for fitting together the AD&D multiverse into a coherent cosmology, but Warriors of Heaven offers no answers or even suggestions. I did enjoy the point that celestials, being pretty powerful to start with, place value heavily on doing 'ordinary' things, but it does betray a certain humanocentricity on either their part or that of the author. /Why/ is it more satisfying to an aasimon to make a horseshoe than doing something useful with his powers? Are their powers not 'natural' to them in the way that use of their hands and eyes is? Is it merely an expression of individualism? It's not hard to see how some such would be needed, considering the way celestial PCs are set up (more on that later), but the explanation offered feels like the kind of reasoning that would lead us to believe that birds consider walking somewhere more satisfying than flying there. There's a good deal more, including special rules for celestial Oaths (WotC's capital, not mine), details on where exactly celestials come from, how aasimon ascend from rank to rank, how and why they can lose rank or even fall from the hierarchy entirely, and sketchy descriptions of a few sites of interest in the Upper Planes. Some of these are fairly interesting, like the basalt fortress of the aasimon servitor-race, the quesar (there are swamps in Elysium? Who knew?) or the great tower that stands guard over a gate from Ysgard to the Abyss. And, of course, there are sections on what it's like to serve a god, how to pick one to serve, how to become a proxy (a very powerful celestial who's effectively a mouthpiece for his deity) and what it's like to be one, and what happens if your deity dies. This is all fairly standard, if perfectly serviceable, material; if you want to run a celestial campaign it's fine, but it's not likely to offer any new insights. The last 'background' section, before plunging headlong into rules, deals with celestial interactions with the Prime Material, and is about what any AD&D player would expect, although it does make one wonder, again, why good-aligned gods get to act in ways few DMs would allow good-aligned characters to act toward people who aren't impressed or awed by them. Deep breath; we're only 16 1/2 pages into the book, and the rules section is just beginning. Go get a glass of water; I'll be here when you get back. (As an aside, the entire book lacks chapter dividers or headers of any sort. It just all kind of collides together in a sort of massive run-on sentence. Memo to WotC: keep a close eye on whoever laid this out if/when you give them another project.) Okay, well, the celestials have both priest and wizard spells of their own, there are a fair number of them, and the average DM would be well-advised not to let mortal characters get hold of a couple. They vary pretty widely from pedestrian planar adaptations of standard spells to oddly underpowered spells that have nice special effects to your typical high-powered death machines. I suppose they're nice enough, and most of them do have the right tone (mysterious, awe-inspiring, majestic), but it's a little hard to be too impressed by them when you consider what mortal spellcasters can already do. Angels keep their mystique a lot better in settings where magic is significantly less powerful or less available or more limited; vanilla AD&D is none of these, particularly if set in the Forgotten Realms. Oh, a few magic items get detailed, too, but they're no more inspired than the spells, and most of them leave me wondering why your average high-level wizard or priest couldn't duplicate them. There are then a number of sections detailing the powers of each individual celestial race, their ability score limits, class/level limits, what order they get their powers in, what their role on the planes is, and how they get along with other celestials. Most of the races are really more like completely new character classes, and the ascension scheme of archons (who never gain levels, just move up to a new form) is particularly wacky. More seriously, it's hard to see how some of these folk could work together in a campaign -- it might get dull to have everyone playing an agathinon, or an archon, or an asuras, but it might also be necessary (especially since aasimon and asuras really don't get along). An all-eladrin campaign seems the most promising, since there's enough subtypes and character creation options with them to keep most players happy, and also because they seem to enjoy the most freedom of action. Even in this case, though, a DM will have to be very careful to keep all the characters well-balanced against one another. And that, really, touches on the most serious problem with this supplement. There's a lot of rules and a little background, but none of this tells me what I really wanted to know: what kind of campaign do I run with this? How do I balance all these character types? Am I supposed to do a campaign with one type or all types? What do I do with my players once they get their characters rolled up? Where do I go from here? You will search in vain through this book for any kind of useful advice on DMing a celestial adventure, much less a complete campaign, or how to interlock with existing AD&D products. Did nobody playtest these rules? Or did the author or editor just feel that readers wouldn't be interested in how they were actually used in practice? Sure, given a little time to think about it I can answer the vital questions myself. But that begs the question of what I needed Warriors of Heaven for in the first place; a bunch of new races that, given a copy of the Planescape Monstrous Compendiums, I probably could have derived rules for myself? Do-it-yourselfers don't need the book, and non-DIYers are going to be left completely at sea once they finish wading through, if you'll pardon the semi-mixed metaphor, the morass of new rules it dumps on them. Hoping against hope that 'Web Enhanced' meant 'we took out the DM advice and campaign suggestions and made them available over the net because there wasn't room in the book', I looked up the associated links on the TSR web site. I need not have bothered; all there is are rules for quesar (a created servitor race) PCs and a short adventure. This could have been a fantastic product; even the exotic settings like Planescape or Dark Sun are really only different places to play the same AD&D. Warriors of Heaven could have offered up a whole new perspective, a completely different spin on the traditional AD&D multiverse and attitude. It doesn't do that, though, and what we're left with is pretty much the same old thing with a slightly different gloss. Buy it if you're an AD&D completist or an angel fanatic; you will anyway, whatever I tell you. If you're neither, save your money -- there isn't anything here you need. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 2 (Sparse)