The planetar – Heaven’s own General McClellan

Continuing with the review of the monsters from the Pathfinder Bestiary.

ANGEL, PLANETAR

Appropriate to being the “middle child” of the angels, the planetar has the least development. It receives only a single paragraph of expository text, which talks about how planetars are the generals of the angelic armies, focusing on destroying fiends.

Right…let’s recap the major effects of planetar-led armies attacking the planes of evil:

• The Abyss: The realm of the demons is infinite, and contains an infinite number of demons in turn. The best that the forces of good have ever done here was to overthrow a weakened hegemony of demons, which accomplished absolutely nothing since all that happened was that another one rose up to take its place (and even this was done by the eladrin; Pathfinder’s azata. See WotC’s Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss). So yeah, any planetar general who wants to take his army here is pretty clearly stupid, suicidal, or one some sort of “death and glory” bender and as such should be mutinied against at the first available opportunity.
• Hell: Asmodeus is the only being in the cosmos who rules over an entire plane of existence, and there’s absolutely no indication that anything about that is going to change any time soon. The other players in Hell may go through an upheaval every so often, but that seems to be more due to Asmodeus’ whims than anything else. So yeah, I fail to see what a few companies of angels attacking Hell  has accomplished.

• Fiendish Incursions: And this is the biggest reason of all why I personally can’t help but roll my eyes at the idea of an army of angels: because they seem to do absolutely nothing to stave off the worst disasters. Where were they when the forces of Orcus invaded? What about when Demogorgon tried to unleash a savage tide across the world? How about when Asmodeus’ servants dragged a good god’s temple into Hell? It was a freakin’ holy place – going in to rescue it was all but required, and yet there’s not one celestial in the entire adventure! Clearly, the angels must have had trouble getting the pearly gates open or something.

So yeah, it’s hard to respect the generals of the angelic armies when they seem to have accomplished jack and squat, and yet still want to go back out there for more. Personally, I think that they’re overcompensating for something.