Dissecting the 5E D&D Celestial Creature Type

November 8, 2021

Salutations, nerds! It’s time for a look at celestials in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, by which I mean angels. Sort of. You’ll see what I mean when we start cracking into them but suffice it to say, another day another 5E D&D creature type.

Celestial creatures in 5E D&D

A celestial is a creature from the upper planes. If a fiend is from one of the hells and a fey is from the Feywild then a celestial is defined as being from, well, heaven. Or one of them rather, which is why the word angel comes to mind so easily. In 5E D&D celestials are usually good aligned but not always. Orzhov’s Deathpact Angel from Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica is lawful evil for example. Celestials often serve deities and some of those are evil after all.

Not all celestials appear humanoid either. For instances the couatl and the unicorn are both celestials and certainly not humanoid in appearance, though a couatl can change it’s shape to a beast or humanoid form. The biblical idea of what an angel isn’t always what guides a celestial. Sometimes they are simply mythical beings with a certain holy presence to them, if this makes sense.

It is also worth noting how few celestials there are in the actual game. If you start scrolling them on D&D Beyond, there are only 22 different entries and several of those are specific celestials rather than a species of them. If I had to take a guess I’d say this is because you don’t run into a celestial every day. When you do it should have an impact and feel special.

“Celestials are creatures native to the Upper Planes. Many of them are the servants of deities, employed as messengers or agents in the mortal realm and throughout the planes. Celestials are good by nature, so the exceptional celestial who strays from a good alignment is a horrifying rarity. Celestials include angels, couatls, and pegasi.” — from the 5E D&D Monster Manual

Things Celestials Do

Typically celestials boast excellent defensive capabilities. Most of celestials have resistance to a lot of different damage types, which makes sense considering they’re bringing that holy power with them. They are by definition backed by divinities and this gives them the ability to survive quite a bit.

A lot of celestials also deal radiant damage. Again, that’s pretty par for the course. Even outside of the context of 5E D&D you see a lot of songs and poems referring to things like holy light so if you’re brewing a celestial one of the very on brand things you can do for it is give it an attack that deals radiant damage.

The vast majority of them have wings and fly speeds, which is pretty classic for angels of all kinds in most lore. Often the ones who don’t can teleport, and the higher up the challenge rating is the more likely it’s going to be able to do both.

It’s also worth mentioning a good chunk of celestial creatures have the ability to heal, which makes them very useful as ally NPCs. If you want to run a combat with an angel backing up the adventuring party and don’t want the angel to outshine the party (Ha!), overrun them with a lot of enemies, keep them low on hit points the entire time and have the celestial keep using its action to heal them back up. This makes the NPC useful to the party but still leaves the players doing most of the work themselves.

Five Celestials of Note

Couatl. A flying serpent with strong magical abilities for a CR 4 and the ability to Change Shape. This thing could turn into a human and sit and have a conversation with you and you’d never know you were actually talking to a couatl. One of the most interesting things about it is their immunity to scrying and to any effect that would sense its emotions, read its thoughts or detect its location. You can try but they just flat out aren’t gonna work.
Deathpact Angel. This celestial makes the list because it hits different from the rest of them. Most of the time celestials come across mythical feeling but the Deathpact Angel from Ravnica really feels like it has a good reason to be fighting the party and hits like one of the bad guys. Deathpact Angels have the Flyby trait and the ability to charm people, an effect leaving you vulnerable to a couple of other powers they possess that are just bad news for any adventurer, including being chained and having your hit points siphoned to heal the angel. I love this one in particular because it feels like what happens if one of these other heavenly beings goes awry.
Deva. Your average, every day angel and it’s CR 10. The Basic Rules make it very clear even small potatoes celestials are nothing to sneeze at. The deva can Change Shape, heal you, hits like a truck and is telepathic. Just one of these things could easily turn the tide on a normal battlefield.
Empyrean. This is not an angel — it’s a freaking titan and it’s CR 23. Straight out of the Monster Manual and there has yet to be released a celestial with a higher CR than this one. (Aurelia from Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica is tied for this top spot.) When they say titan, boy does this stat block deliver. Not a single attribute under 20, legendary actions, damage immunities, truesight, big flashy spells…the empyrean is a raid boss.
Unicorn. There are not a lot of CR 5 creatures with legendary actions but the unicorn is one. It’s also standard fantasy fare. Even if you’ve never played 5E D&D you’ve heard of unicorns. They’re absolutely iconic. This one is able to stab things with its horn, cannot be poisoned, has some fairly high attribute scores and the ability to heal people and create shields. The idea of riding a unicorn into battle sounds totally hokey until you actually look at this thing.

Celestials in 5E D&D certainly exhibit a very clear flavor nothing else really comes close to displaying. They’re strong. I’d even go as far as to say generally strong for their CR and that’s kind of the point. There’s a certain awe that comes with them and they have to be at least a little bit over the top to inspire such wonderment.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with 5E D&D celestials in the comments, or if you feel like tweeting @Nerdarchy or me @Pyrosythesis or connecting with us on Facebook that’s always appreciated as well. And as always, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — A selection of celestials of note from 5E D&D — the deathpact angel, couatl, empyrean, unicorn and deva. Perhaps one of these celestials acts as an Angelic Guide for an aasimar character! [Composite images courtesy Wizards of the Coast]