And they have a lot, their bevy of spell slots meaning they can afford to Quicken most of them to save time.Įven unbuffed, Empyreans are nasty. They have Mass Charm Monster 3/day and Overwhelming Presence 1/day as spell-likes which, if they don’t quell the hostilities entirely, give them enough time to do as 20th level Clerics do, and absolutely load themselves down with whatever buff they have. The book even notes that Empyreans rarely, if ever, begin any fight, only drawing their weapons and using their buff spells on themselves when battle becomes inevitable… and even then, they offer second chances. Whereas the more powerful Solars are used to take the fight directly to the forces of evil, Empyreans work behind the scenes, keeping relatively low profiles as they steadily loosen Evil’s grip on the universe by providing fair health, divine boons, and other forms of subtle or magical assistance to the mortals under their god’s care. Using their shapeshifting power and their vast array of spells and spell-likes, they’re used more as spies. In a supreme case of irony, Empyreans aren’t created to be fighters. While it may seem like a waste of actions for the Empyrean to just spend its turns removing whatever you do to it… it is. If you can’t kill or disable them in one round, all your efforts are a single standard action from being undone. If that isn’t enough, they have Heal as a spell-like ability 3/day and Heal AGAIN as an actual true spell on their list, Mass Heal as a spell, MIRACLE as a spell… and, because Miracle on its own isn’t enough, Wish as a spell-like 1/day just for the extra icing on the cake.Īnd did I mention Lesser Restoration at will, Greater Restoration 1/day, and both Death Ward and Freedom of Movement available as spells? Empyreans don’t truly need a long list of immunities because they already have them, they’re just hidden in their spells instead of being freely available. While they’re vulnerable to many unfortunate maladies, anyone hoping to inconvenience an Empyrean for more than a round had better not give it a single inch of breathing room, because they have every curative spell ( Neutralize Poison, Break Enchantment, Dispel Magic, Remove Curse, etc) available to them as a spell-like ability at will. These holy warriors are packing some serious magic in their pockets, and I don’t just mean their spell-likes! IN ADDITION to all their spell-likes, they have the casting power of a 20th level Cleric in the body of a 20th level heavy armor Fighter that can fly. Even the Solars don’t have health insurance that good! For the forces of Evil, this more or less means Empyreans need to be imprisoned rather than killed… but they’d be doing much better for themselves if they just avoided the divine servants altogether. Why? Because they have a modest Regeneration 15… that is only suppressed if they’re damaged by an Evil-aligned Artifact. While they’re vulnerable to death effects and ability score damage/drain, those are more or less the only ways the forces of Evil have to slay them. They’re outright unaffected by ANY hostile spell of 3rd level or lower thanks to their Protective Aura, which also prevents summoned Evil Outsiders from coming within 20ft of them or touching them with their natural attacks (as if it were a Circle of Protection From Evil). Thus, the number of Empyreans is directly tied to the number of Good-aligned deities in existence–the more powerful the god, the more of these angels they can sustain–and cannot rise higher than this threshold… and, to the endless frustration fiends and villains, it’s incredibly hard to lower it below this threshold, and KEEPING it low is another challenge in and of itself, as Empyreans will split like cells undergoing mitosis to refresh their numbers should one of them be permanently slain.Īnd let’s get something out of the way first: It’s hard to permanently slay an Empyrean. Rather than being created from the soul of an ascended mortal (as is the case with other celestials, including the actual highest tier of angel, the Solar), the Empyreans are born directly from divine might and the pure Good essence of a deity, fully formed and ready to serve their creators until time itself comes to an end. Happy New Year! I hope you all have enjoyed the look back at the various Good deities we’ve featured over the years on this blog! And now, looking forward into the light, why don’t we start off right?Īmong the most powerful of the angels in existence, the number of Empyreans in creation is believed to be incredibly small in comparison to the countless lesser angels.
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