I'm tired of aasimar getting shafted as afterthoughts over and over. Tieflings have always been primary races in the PHB since the beginning, and there are tons of artworks scattered all throughout the books depicting them. Meanwhile, aasimar have one vague picture on their race page in Volo's Guide that makes them look evil (maybe it's a Fallen one?) and a picture as a lowly sidekick in Tasha's Cauldron.
Why all the hate for the celestial equivalent of tieflings? And now ardlings are being created with very similar characteristics and "legacies" as tieflings? If tieflings can now look abyssal, cthonic, or infernal, instead of just infernal like before, why can't there just be aasimar who can look like angels, archons with animal heads, or birdlike beings based on the celestials in the game? Why push them even further back into obscurity by making a new race when they've been the good counterpart to the evil tieflings all along?
If the goal is to grant them a new appearance, fine. Describe them as being more diverse in appearance than they were before (not that there were that many depictions to begin with), just like the new tieflings are. Otherwise, why reinvent the wheel? Ardlings' abilities would fit perfectly with aasimar, including the variety of degrees of lawful vs. chaotic in the Upper Planes they represent. Am I wrong? Am I missing something obvious? To me this feels like making a brand new race called "catfolk" which are the same as tabaxi but described differently.
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Check out my blog for homebrew D&D stuff and other projects!
Honestly, I don't think Wizards has ever felt satisfied with Aasimar. I remember them vaguely back in 3rd edtion... actually, if I'm honest I remember being able to make an aasimar character in Icewind Dale II. Come 4th Edition they were gone. Instead we got Deva's in Player's Handbook 2, but they had a different origin IIRC. We have Aasimar's in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse which has race listings for almost anything........ and we're going to be getting Ardlings. Wizards have not yet come up with something they like for a celestial race. We'll see if Ardlings fit the bill or not.
Ardlings don't particularly appeal to me, but neither did Aasimar or Devas. My son seems quite excited for ardlings however, and that's good enough for me.
I'm going to be frank. Aasimar are kinda boring. Celestials in general are kinda boring. I mean, look through the Monster Manual for celestials. You've got big humans, big humans with wings, and animals. Visually, the animals are the most interesting of the bunch, giving you unicorns, pegasi, and couatl. The only other celestial I've found after a short and not super thorough search are ki-rin in Volos. Even with the animals it's mostly magic horses.
The fact of the matter is that there aren't very many celestials, and the ones that exist tend to be either really high level or fancy mounts. They also usually aren't presented as actively being threats to player characters. Tiefling get the benefit of riding the coattails of demons/devils and as such get to be associated with a diverse cast of creatures that, even when not immediately malicious towards the party, often still have that interestingly dangerous edge to them. So Aasimar don't get to be cool by association because their associates aren't very cool, but their lore also isn't doing them any favors. They're generally more directly connected to their celestial parent than tiefling are to their fiendish roots, and that would be great if celestials themselves were presented as being more interesting. But they're not. They're meant to invoke imagery of angelic beings, and that can also be interesting. Except they don't even get their own permanent set of wings and a fly speed to go with it, so they don't really even fulfill that fantasy well.
I pretty much do agree with you that Aasimar and Ardling should probably be folded into the same race (since it seems like they come about the exact same way?), but I can understand why WotC might be interested in trying to make a playable type of celestial connected race that they can try to make interesting without pissing off the old guard that like Aasimar the way they are.
Just me thinking out loud, but why not just have a "Celestial" race with a number of sub-races (Assimar, Diva, Ardling, whatever) the same way we have Elves with a number of sub-races (High, Wood, Drow). While we're at it, I would favor making Halfling a main race with a number of sub-races (Kender, Gnomes, etc.). Dragonborn and Lizard Man and maybe Kobold could be brought together under one Lizard racial option.
I mention this because we have historical precedent. All the way back to OD&D we had the "Fighting Man" class with Ranger and Paladin falling in as sub-classes. Druid was a sub-class of Cleric. Illusionist was a sub-class of Magic-User. Essentially the rules were set up so that a Ranger (for example) would follow guidelines of a fighter and then have a few Ranger-specific abilities. Doing it that way would seem to make the rules simpler because we would start with fewer classes (Fighter, Magic-user, Rogue, Cleric) and then branch off from there.
Applying this back to races, it makes sense to me to start with a minimal number of options with lots of sub-options so that general rules would be more brief. Having a dozen races to pick from seems inefficient but starting with a few templates seems organizationally solid and would allow for a lot of expansion, particularly when it looks like most of the mechanical benefits of race are being shifted over to backgrounds.
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Player * Game Master * Started with OD&D in 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" -- Dave Arneson
I'm going to be frank. Aasimar are kinda boring. Celestials in general are kinda boring. I mean, look through the Monster Manual for celestials. You've got big humans, big humans with wings, and animals. Visually, the animals are the most interesting of the bunch, giving you unicorns, pegasi, and couatl. The only other celestial I've found after a short and not super thorough search are ki-rin in Volos. Even with the animals it's mostly magic horses.
The fact of the matter is that there aren't very many celestials, and the ones that exist tend to be either really high level or fancy mounts. They also usually aren't presented as actively being threats to player characters. Tiefling get the benefit of riding the coattails of demons/devils and as such get to be associated with a diverse cast of creatures that, even when not immediately malicious towards the party, often still have that interestingly dangerous edge to them. So Aasimar don't get to be cool by association because their associates aren't very cool, but their lore also isn't doing them any favors. They're generally more directly connected to their celestial parent than tiefling are to their fiendish roots, and that would be great if celestials themselves were presented as being more interesting. But they're not. They're meant to invoke imagery of angelic beings, and that can also be interesting. Except they don't even get their own permanent set of wings and a fly speed to go with it, so they don't really even fulfill that fantasy well.
I pretty much do agree with you that Aasimar and Ardling should probably be folded into the same race (since it seems like they come about the exact same way?), but I can understand why WotC might be interested in trying to make a playable type of celestial connected race that they can try to make interesting without pissing off the old guard that like Aasimar the way they are.
4e Devas had this cool thing going as an opposite to rakshasas.
Both were functionally different manifestations of the same type of immortal creature.
I'm tired of aasimar getting shafted as afterthoughts over and over. Tieflings have always been primary races in the PHB since the beginning, and there are tons of artworks scattered all throughout the books depicting them. Meanwhile, aasimar have one vague picture on their race page in Volo's Guide that makes them look evil (maybe it's a Fallen one?) and a picture as a lowly sidekick in Tasha's Cauldron.
Why all the hate for the celestial equivalent of tieflings? And now ardlings are being created with very similar characteristics and "legacies" as tieflings? If tieflings can now look abyssal, cthonic, or infernal, instead of just infernal like before, why can't there just be aasimar who can look like angels, archons with animal heads, or birdlike beings based on the celestials in the game? Why push them even further back into obscurity by making a new race when they've been the good counterpart to the evil tieflings all along?
If the goal is to grant them a new appearance, fine. Describe them as being more diverse in appearance than they were before (not that there were that many depictions to begin with), just like the new tieflings are. Otherwise, why reinvent the wheel? Ardlings' abilities would fit perfectly with aasimar, including the variety of degrees of lawful vs. chaotic in the Upper Planes they represent. Am I wrong? Am I missing something obvious? To me this feels like making a brand new race called "catfolk" which are the same as tabaxi but described differently.
Check out my blog for homebrew D&D stuff and other projects!
Honestly, I don't think Wizards has ever felt satisfied with Aasimar. I remember them vaguely back in 3rd edtion... actually, if I'm honest I remember being able to make an aasimar character in Icewind Dale II. Come 4th Edition they were gone. Instead we got Deva's in Player's Handbook 2, but they had a different origin IIRC. We have Aasimar's in Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse which has race listings for almost anything........ and we're going to be getting Ardlings. Wizards have not yet come up with something they like for a celestial race. We'll see if Ardlings fit the bill or not.
Ardlings don't particularly appeal to me, but neither did Aasimar or Devas. My son seems quite excited for ardlings however, and that's good enough for me.
I'm going to be frank. Aasimar are kinda boring. Celestials in general are kinda boring. I mean, look through the Monster Manual for celestials. You've got big humans, big humans with wings, and animals. Visually, the animals are the most interesting of the bunch, giving you unicorns, pegasi, and couatl. The only other celestial I've found after a short and not super thorough search are ki-rin in Volos. Even with the animals it's mostly magic horses.
The fact of the matter is that there aren't very many celestials, and the ones that exist tend to be either really high level or fancy mounts. They also usually aren't presented as actively being threats to player characters. Tiefling get the benefit of riding the coattails of demons/devils and as such get to be associated with a diverse cast of creatures that, even when not immediately malicious towards the party, often still have that interestingly dangerous edge to them. So Aasimar don't get to be cool by association because their associates aren't very cool, but their lore also isn't doing them any favors. They're generally more directly connected to their celestial parent than tiefling are to their fiendish roots, and that would be great if celestials themselves were presented as being more interesting. But they're not. They're meant to invoke imagery of angelic beings, and that can also be interesting. Except they don't even get their own permanent set of wings and a fly speed to go with it, so they don't really even fulfill that fantasy well.
I pretty much do agree with you that Aasimar and Ardling should probably be folded into the same race (since it seems like they come about the exact same way?), but I can understand why WotC might be interested in trying to make a playable type of celestial connected race that they can try to make interesting without pissing off the old guard that like Aasimar the way they are.
Just me thinking out loud, but why not just have a "Celestial" race with a number of sub-races (Assimar, Diva, Ardling, whatever) the same way we have Elves with a number of sub-races (High, Wood, Drow). While we're at it, I would favor making Halfling a main race with a number of sub-races (Kender, Gnomes, etc.). Dragonborn and Lizard Man and maybe Kobold could be brought together under one Lizard racial option.
I mention this because we have historical precedent. All the way back to OD&D we had the "Fighting Man" class with Ranger and Paladin falling in as sub-classes. Druid was a sub-class of Cleric. Illusionist was a sub-class of Magic-User. Essentially the rules were set up so that a Ranger (for example) would follow guidelines of a fighter and then have a few Ranger-specific abilities. Doing it that way would seem to make the rules simpler because we would start with fewer classes (Fighter, Magic-user, Rogue, Cleric) and then branch off from there.
Applying this back to races, it makes sense to me to start with a minimal number of options with lots of sub-options so that general rules would be more brief. Having a dozen races to pick from seems inefficient but starting with a few templates seems organizationally solid and would allow for a lot of expansion, particularly when it looks like most of the mechanical benefits of race are being shifted over to backgrounds.
Player * Game Master * Started with OD&D in 1975
"Don't ask me what you need to hit. Just roll the die and I will let you know!" -- Dave Arneson
From the way I see it:
Planetars or solars are to aasimar, what the animal archons are to Ardlings…your Warden Archons, Moon Dogs, Hound Archons, etc…
Different “big” celestials for the two race types.
4e Devas had this cool thing going as an opposite to rakshasas.
Both were functionally different manifestations of the same type of immortal creature.
Guardinals too. Probably especially Guardinals.
Heavenly - descended from animalistic archons
Idyllic - descended from Guardinals
less sure on Exalted.