Where I Read the 4e Monster Manual: Angels

This article is part of a series! Go here to see the other entries.

In a substantial change from monsters bearing the same name the past, Fourth Edition angels have winged humanoid upper bodies (with “feminine or masculine features”), and their lower bodies trail off into flowing energy. Many believe they were created by the gods, but the truth is they arose from the stuff of the Astral Sea when that plane first came into existence. If this process was started by the gods, it was entirely unconscious.

When the gods went to war against the Primordials, the angels pledged their service to the deities that most closely matched their individual beliefs. You see, Angels are a rather diverse lot, with a listed alignment of “Any”. So yeah, Tiamat and Gruumsh have evil angels on their payroll. You can even find angels working as mercenaries, serving people whose causes they find agreeable and who can meet their price.

Angels are the first MM monster to also show up on the Monster Vault, where the lore was changed to make then mostly mercenaries who only ocasionally join up with specific gods in a more definitive manner. Here they’re Unaligned and make being as generic as possible in looks and personality a point of pride. Personally, I prefer the Monster Manual version with additional embelishments you can see in Final Impressions, below.

Angels are usually paragon-tier, and are more involved in the world (and more likely to meet PCs) than deities or exarchs. They have quite a few signature abilities:

Flight (obviously!)
Immunity to fear
Resist 10 Radiant
Angelic Presence: all attacks against the angel take a -2 penalty while it’s not bloodied.

Below are the four angels we get in the Monster Manual, all of which reappear in the Monster Vault.

Angel of Battle

Angels of Battle are military leaders. They most commonly lead angels of valor (below) into battle, but sometimes also lead mortal forces. When gods send angels of battle to deal with a situation, they’re not interested in dialogue. It looks like it’s made of flowing silver, with metallic wings.

The Angel of Battle is a Level 15 Skirmisher Leader. It has 148 HP, with a slighly weaker Reflex and a slighter stronger Will than what is average for their level. It’s pretty fast, with a ground speed of 8 and a flight speed of 12.

Its basic attack is with a falchion. It’ll mostly use that through Mobile Melee Attack, which allows it to move half its speed (so, up to 6 squares) and attack at any point in the movement without provoking attacks of opportunity for moving away. Hitting with an attack allows it to mark the target as a Chosen Foe, which means it will grant combat advantage to everyone until the end of the angel’s next turn. In an emergency, the angel can forcefully eject the metal feathers of its wings in a Storm of Blades, which does high damage in a Close Burst 3 and cuts its fly speed down to 2 until the end of the fight.

The Monster Vault version is almost identical, with the only difference aside from the fixed damage being that the effect of Chosen Foe was rolled up into the description of the falchion attack.

So here you have an opponent who keeps flying around just outside of melee reach and swooping down to harass the PCs and mark priority targets for its buddies to attack. It pairs well with enemies that exploit from Combat Advantage.

The sample encounter is level 15, an all-angel party with an Angel of Battle leading two Angels of Protection and 8 Angel of Valor minions. I guess they could be part of the guard contingent for an evil god’s temple, or maybe a hit squad sent by an evil god against a level 12 or 13 party the god sees as an obstacle to their plans.

Angel of Protection

These are basically Angelic Knights Templar, serving as bodyguards for important faithful and protecting temples. It has fluffy feathered wings and wears golden plate.

They’re level 14 Soldiers, with 141 HP. Their Reflex and Will are a couple of points below average, and it’s a bit slower than the Angel of Battle with “speed 6, fly 8”. In addition to the standard Angelic Presence, it has the Angelic Shield aura, which makes the 5 squares around it difficult terrain for enemies if the angel’s ward is also inside the aura and Angelic Presence is active.

What’s this about the angel’s ward? Yeah, an Angel of Protection can designate another creature as its ward as a standard action. Wards that remain within 5 squares of the angel get a +2 to AC and take only half damage from all attacks, with the angel taking the other half. The angel itself fights with a greatsword that does added radiant damage.

A given creature can only be the ward of one angel at a time, so encounter groups with more than one of these angels should probably either contain multiple “principals”, or you could set up a sort of “bodyguard chain”, with one angel protecting the principal, the second one protecting the first, and so on. They’d want spread out a bit in this case, to cover more of the battlefield in difficult terrain.

The Monster Vault version is almost identical aside from the fixed math. The damage from its attack is also entirely radiant now.

The sample encounter is level 14 and has two Angels of Protection, an Eidolon and 3 dragonborn raiders. Clearly these people are serving Tiamat.

Angel of Valor

The rank and file of ~~Throne~~ the Astral Sea. Individually they’re the weakest of all the angels, but there are “vast armies” of them. When a powerful cleric needs numbers to get the job done, they summon a bunch of these. One might also be sent to reward the follower of a god for meritorious deeds, either by delivering a magic item or with 10 days of service. Angels of valor are made of fire!

We get several stat blocks for them. The first one is for a Level 8 Soldier, who is likely to be the first angelic opposition the party finds in the campaign. It has 88 HP, and Resist 10 Fire in addition to the usual radiant resistance. They have a flight speed of 9.

It dual-wields a longsword and a dagger, and can attack with both on the same turn. While bloodied, it can light its weapons on fire for a turn, during which they deal fire damage instead of physical and target Reflex instead of AC. This makes me think the angel is dipping its blades in its own blood, which is a lot more Metal than I expected to see in this entry. It can also call lightning from the heavens on its own position once per encounter, hitting everything on a Close Burst 1 with mild lightning damage and dazing them for a turn (the angel itself suffers no damage, of course).

The other stat blocks are Minions of varying levels: 11, 16 and 21, wielding greatswords. Nothing too terribly exciting about them on their own, but it does tell me that angels of valor have a role to play all through an angel-heavy campaign. The Monster Vault has only 16 Minion Soldier version, which I think is a bit of a loss.

There are two suggested encounters here. The first is level 8, with two regular angels of valor in the company of a doppelganger assassin and a pair of shadar-kai. Servants of the Raven Queen, perhaps?

The other is level 11, with 4 angel minions, two basilisks and a bunch of snake cultists. Zehir worshippers, clearly.

Another interesting use for them with late Heroic tier groups would be to flip the script and have a PC’s deity reward them with the temporary services of an Angel of Valor.

Angel of Vengeance

Here’s an interesting factoid about paladins and clerics in Fourth Edition: they no longer lose their powers if they abandon their deity’s service. The gods need a different way to punish these prodigal sons, and that’s where Angels of Vengeance come in. In addition to punishing those who have angered the gods they serve, they’re sometimes sent to test those servants who are in danger of falling (and to immediately punish them when they do).

Towering creatures of cold fire (they’re Large), Angels of Vengeance are Level 19 Elite Brutes. They have 446 HP and Resist 15 Fire, Cold and Radiant. With a speed of “8, fly 12”, you will likely not be able to outrun them. It trades away the usual Angelic Presence for a Cloak of Vengeance, which in addition to the attack penalty causes 1d8 fire and 1d8 cold damage to anyone who attacks the angel. Not a lot at these levels, but it’s automatic and can add up over time.

These angels wield paired longswords that do almost as much damage as they should under the new math, which is remarkable. This damage is a mix of physical, fire and cold. Being an elite, the angel can make two longsword attacks per turn.

The most interesting power here is certainly Sign of Vengenace, a minor action encounter power with a range of “sight”. Once the angel has placed the Sign on a target, it can teleport right next to it as a move action until the end of the encounter. So the first sign you’ve angered an Angel of Vengeance is when it teleports into your back line from atop a mountain several kilometers away. A mobile striker’s worst nightmare.

When the angel is bloodied, it turns into a pillar of cold fire for a turn. The resulting explosion causes fire and cold damage in a Close Burst 2, and makes the angel immune to damage while it lasts.

The Monster Vault version is pretty much identical aside from the fixed damage notation. All of its attack damage is now “cold and fire”, and the Cloak of vengeance causes a flat 10 cold and fire damage instead of 1d8 each. If you

The suggested encounter is level 19 and consistes of two of these bad boys teleporting into your back line while a squad of Angels of Valor rushes forward to engage. That’s how Vecna tells you how he really feels about your party.

Final Impressions

Fourth Edition angels are very different from their Third Edition counterparts, and sparked early skirmishes in the edition wars when they were released as preview material. Them not being universally Good was a major break from tradition, and the new “humanoid silhouette” look was not a hit.

While I’m a fan of the new cosmology myself, I confess 4e angels never sounded very exciting to me until I began this Let’s Read. When I first read these books, “Angels == Good” was still a firmly entrenched notion in my mind due to the traditional Christian depiction of them, so I was hesitant to use them as enemies.

My opinion has been completely turned around these days thanks to reading the marvelous Kill Six Billion Demons webcomic. Its badass kung fu angels give me an excellent frame of reference for the ones in the Monster manual, particularly because they have all sorts of different moral outlooks while still remaining badass kung fu angels. The Angel of Vengeance here is reminds me very strongly of them, since it also has that “barely contained nuclear explosion inside a physical shell” vibe.

So if you want 4e angels to feel less generic, K6BD can be an excellent source of inspiration. Perhaps the servants of each deity organize themselves in knightly orders, each following a different code. Membership in such an order alters the angel’s physical shell in specific ways: maybe an angel of Pelor looks like the luminous silhouettes here, but one serving Bane or Tiamat looks more like a K6BD Thorn Knight. Then you have those unaligned mercenaries, and I can easily imagine “Reach Heaven Through Violence” being one of their central tenets.