So, I was browsing YouTube, as is my wont, and the Richaadeb cover of The Promised Consort showed up. His cover, and of course, the original, really sell the majesty of that boss fight. While my main memory of the fight in-game is beating my head against a wall until I finally just barely managed it on my most overpowered character (I've gotten to the fight on a couple other characters, but haven't beaten it a second time,) if you take a step back and really consider the context of the fight, it's profoundly epic: a fight against both a demigod and a newly-crowned actual god.
Much like our fight against the Elden Beast in the base game, I interpret the music that plays as essentially being an ethereal choir singing the praises of the divine power that we're in the middle of fighting, exhorting them to best us (though I sort of feel like maybe the choir in the Elden Beast fight starts to kind of sing instead of the fulfillment of fate as we gain the upper hand).
Demons (or fiends in general, if we're talking D&D) make for great monsters to fight because they're definitionally evil (well, depending on the setting and game, I suppose). Their capabilities make them terrifying, but there's a moral clarity that slaying demons is an automatically correct thing to do.
It's very rare in D&D that we fight Celestials. Largely, that's because player characters tend to be good guys, and Celestials are often also good guys. This isn't strictly always true - Celestials cover beings of the good-aligned upper planes, yes, but also the neutral planes, like the Rilmani of the Outlands, or Sphinxes (who were monstrosities in 5.0,) who aren't really tied to any specific plane.
In D&D's cosmos, Fiends and Celestials really play quite similar roles, being the denizens of the outer planes, and typically the servants of the gods.
I... sort of like the idea of a different distinction, though:
D&D's alignment system is iconic, of course, and it's also the organizing principle behind the Outer Planes, which I love. But it's also something that's been downplayed in recent years (I don't even remember if the 2024 Player's Handbook even suggests you declare an alignment).
I think it's notable that Devils are the Lawful Evil variety of fiends (ok, sure, Rakshasas are as well - and I do think it's kind of fascinating that they're also from the Nine Hells but exist outside of the diabolic hierarchy). Devils, though, are all kind of linked to one another as a single hierarchy that ultimately answers to Asmodeus. And while Asmodeus is a god, he is also, at least in older Planescape content, considered a lesser god because he's not in the Nine Hells by his own will. In a lot of ways, he's really just the most powerful archdevil, and figures like Mephistopheles or Mammon aren't gods at all, even if they might be extremely powerful.
While not unified like devils, demons are their equal and opposite numbers, inhabiting the Abyss and typically serving one demon lord or another. But similarly, these demon lords, even the mightiest among them, Demogorgon, aren't gods either.
It's almost like fiends sort of occupy this odd environmental niche within the Lower Planes.
Now, in fairness, it's specifically angels, and not Celestials in general, who I believe are described as directly serving gods. I can't recall if Guardinals or Archons are described as playing those roles.
But I do think there's a real opportunity here: that Celestials could be the creature type that serves gods - any gods.
In the 5.5 Monster Manual, they changed Empyreans in the following way: in 5.0, they were always Celestials, whereas in 5.5, they're described as being either Celestials or Fiends, depending on their alignment.
I actually don't love this. I think that a being that is so directly tied to the gods, maybe a minor deity in its own right, should be a Celestial. Again, that's a matter of taste and vibes, not an argument based on the canon lore.
The Celestial servant of an evil god would then make for a potentially epic encounter.
Let me tell you about some of the lore in my homebrew setting:
The broad pantheon is a little complex: the gods are not all the same kind of deity, with some that are ascended mortals, some that are from other settings (I caved and had a few canon deities show up in the world, though I think their worship is pretty rare) and there's one deity that some people consider to be the only true god of the setting while others think that it's just another deity that hasn't been accounted for in most religious traditions (they're both kind of right). One is even secretly a Great Old One (though a friendly one).
But the most commonly worshipped deities are at least depicted by mortals as a classical polytheistic pantheon akin to the Greek gods. And among these, there are gods of light and gods of dark. Generally, light and dark correspond with good and evil, but I really like there to be just a little bit of ambiguity there. Deities can choose which Outer Plane they reside in (or even if they want to live in a different part of the multiverse) so the fact that the goddess of the hunt resides in the Beastlands doesn't necessarily mean she's all that nice - but she does count as a Goddess of Light as a result.
The Gods of Darkness reside in the lower planes, but they have at least one powerful angel that serves them. None of the angels look remotely "normal" in their true forms (Magon, who's the supremely heroic and benevolent servant of Doros, the God of Sunlight and Justice, has a head like a blazing sun around which four floating masks orbit to just barely shield those who see him from his blinding glory - naturally, he takes on a more classically humanoid shape when interacting with mortals) but the Angels of Darkness are quite unnerving.
As an example, Valthatria is the Angel of Pain, and serves Vyssar, the Goddess of Murder, Torture, and Cruelty. Valthatria's most distinguishing feature is that her head is detached from her body, but held to her shoulders by six sculpted, iron hands that appear riveted in place to both her shoulders and her face.
There are a couple reasons I like making these Celestials instead of fiends.
The first is just an aesthetic one: I'll concede that the variety of fiends in the Monster Manual actually gives you a ton of flexibility in how one might look, from the classic fallen angel Erinyes to the weird rotting vulture-thing that is the Vrok, I just kind of think that I like calling these celestials.
The second is a mechanical distinction with lore implications: while it's not super-common, there are things that are more effective against Fiends, probably most famously Divine Smite. As elite servants of evil gods, I like the idea that a Paladin is no longer at any sort of advantage when fighting the Angel of Pain. Righteousness and just "being the good guy" aren't enough to help you against these beings.
I also like that it just kind of muddies the waters a bit: you can't be totally sure where you stand.
I'll note that I think Brennan Lee Mulligan and I are on a similar wavelength here, as the lore of Araman, the setting for Critical Role's fourth campaign, makes a major distinction. We haven't fully plumbed the depths, but with Tyranny, a player character who is explicitly a demon (and not in the way that Draw Steel Devils are basically just people who come from the Seven Cities of Hell, but truly an ancient being of pure concept only recently given flesh - though I suspect she uses Tiefling stats) we get a sense of what fiends are like (and it's actually a bit goofy) while Celestials, in this world where mortals felled the gods (who are way more petty like Greek, or even Norse, gods,) may have once been majestic, but are now basically eldritch horrors (not sure what aberrations are in that setting, or if they'll even use them).
I've never read or seen Berserk, the manga (and anime adaptation) that was a major influence on FromSoft's Soulsborne games, like Elden Ring, but I'm given to understand that "angels" and "gods" in that are truly horrifying things (and that the main villain is a former mortal and ally of the main character who betrayed everyone to achieve apotheosis - likely a major inspiration for Miquella, the ascendant god whose "promised consort" we fight). Indeed, I think a lot of Japanese media depicts angels as horrifying monsters (I know that's a big part of Neon Genesis Evangelion,) the cultural underpinnings of which I'm not super qualified to analyze.
I also think there are some interesting themes you could play with regarding Gnostic ideas: there's a concept in Gnosticism (though I sometimes conflate this with Manicheanism, so bear with me) where the physical world is a falsehood and prison created by the Demiurge, a being who thinks itself to be God, but is not - whether this is out of malice or out of misguided ignorance is open to debate. But the acts of this demiurge and the world created by them are blamed for the suffering and evils of the world. You could imagine that antagonistic Celestials are there to enforce the will of the Demiurge, and thus play an antagonistic role toward the heroic player characters.
The 2025 Monster Manual has 17 Celestials, which is way more than the 2014 one, due in large part to the changes to Sphinxes (and there are more of them) and the re-classification of many Beasts to now be Celestials (screwing over Moon Druids and anyone with the Polymorph spell). But that's compared to 54 Fiends found there - it's clear which type they expect players to fight more often.
But I guess what I'd look for is some really solid high-level Celestials. Angels are actually already there - the least powerful is CR 10. But I'd love to see plenty of CR 20+ Celestials to truly present epic encounters. Radahn from Elden Ring would probably have been a CR 10 Legendary creature in his first fight out in Caelid (where he's lost his mind with the Scarlet Rot) but is, like, maybe CR 30 when we fight him as the Promised Consort (being the hardest boss in all of Elden Ring and essentially the true final boss given that his defeat finishes the DLC).
(This is maybe a whole other post, but we could maybe also get some high-level, legendary humanoids as well. I kind of love that Draw Steel's "biggest, scariest monster" is just the greatest human soldier who has ever lived.)
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