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So... I've been looking at the Book of the Dead Rulebook for PF2e and had a few ideas pop into my head, one of the ideas that flashed into my mind happened while reading the Summoner class with an anime in the background.
My first major fluff question; would it be possible for a Skeleton PC and an Undead Ghost originate from the same corpse? The idea that's been scratching the back of my head was a fully armored Plate Mail Summoner + Champion Archetype that uses the As in Life, So in Death feat. His Eidolon being an Undead Eidolon and a ghost of himself.
The second question; I understand that this might come with a lot of self loathing, but is it possible for an undead to worship Pharasma? I like the idea of an undead not knowing how they died, only having glimpses of their past life, and seeking Pharasma for answers of why they returned? I know it feels weird, but it seems like an idea to mull over.
Third question; what non-evil deity other than Pharasma would work with an undead? Any ideas how that would work in play? I am curious actually.
Final Question; Is it possible to be a Duskwalker Skeleton? I understand "Neither your body nor your spirit can ever become undead", but I'm just curious if/how the heritage would work with this ancestry.
Hopefully my questions and ideas aren't too obvious. xD
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1: Knock yourself out! I think that’s a fun concept, though I think the Phantom Eidolons are a better fit than the Undead one.
2: Pharasma is pretty militant about undead, and would likely tell an undead follower of hers to relinquish their undeath to face her judgment. Other Pharasmins would likely see you as a problem to solve, not a fellow in the faith.
3: Arazni is Neutral Evil, but grants spells to Lawful Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Neutral, and Chaotic Good followers, as well as being the patron deity of unwilling undead. She’s a very good fit for a character like this.
4: You have a pretty conclusive answer there in your post, but it’s ultimately up to your table!
@Keftiu - Hm... I could maybe see the Phantom Eidolons working if they were less about emotional connection and more focused on the spirit/ghost aspect of things. Main reason I was thinking of Undead was to have both the Eidolon and Player being Negative Energy based. I can definitely see the appeals of being both Negative and Positive Energy through. Devotion Phantom seems like the best option. That being said, the Phantom Eidolons feel very reaction heavy - maybe if there was a way that both the player and eidolon could get actions? Would be cool.
It's a shame that Pharasma is so dogmatic about killing undead though. Like, a skeleton awakening in the middle of a battlefield with little-to-no recollection of his past life, with the symbol of Pharasma marked on his bones. I could even see them having a Psychopomp Eidolon and partially being a pact made with Pharasma to stop an undead plot - albeit his body was already rotten away with only bones remaining by the time Pharasma agreed <kind of like the Duskwalker thing but no flesh xD>. I definitely like the idea of him trying to keep his undead self a secret by hiding in a massive suit of full body armor, lol.
@Perpdepog - "Don't ---- with me, I have the power of God and Anime on my side! Ahhhhhh!" - Random Youtube Short
Though looking at the tenants, Tsukiyo seems like the best. I'll have to dig more into this build. Hopefully Skeletons don't cost too much for PFS. Lol
Book of the Dead isn't available on the Additional Resources list yet, but so far all races have been made available through boon purchases (basically, play enough society games and you can buy boons for new character slots). I'm guessing it'll end up being 160 Points, if available at all, because that is how much the rare ancestries cost. Then again, Book of the Dead hasn't been added to Additional Resources yet so no way to tell.
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Book of the Dead isn't available on the Additional Resources list yet, but so far all races have been made available through boon purchases (basically, play enough society games and you can buy boons for new character slots). I'm guessing it'll end up being 160 Points, if available at all, because that is how much the rare ancestries cost. Then again, Book of the Dead hasn't been added to Additional Resources yet so no way to tell.
Ancestries, not races - they made the change for a reason!
I believe one of the more recent Organized Play updates mentioned somewhat-distant plans to get Skeletons playable, and to not expect the other undead archetypes to make it in.
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Isn't androids the first? You know on account of being contructs.
Androids generally have 1 progenitor and, if they end their lifetime in nonviolent manner, 1 progeny.
I would point out Poppet, Automaton, Conrasu, and perhaps Leshy.
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Why would snyome need to ne either an admin or the thought police to provide a helpful terminology correction? It is ancestry and they did change it for a reason, whether we think that was a good reason or not. Harping on correct terminology may eventually become tiresome, but reminding new players of differences between a game and others that have gone before is both useful and helpful at least once. It doesn't seem worth such venom when you can take the same advice; flag and move on.
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Meanwhile, I think I play Pharasma as rather softer on undead than she is in canon lore, but aside from that I feel like the undead worshipper of Pharasma is a very compelling character concept which has captured many players' imagination so it seems like a worthy possibility in my mind, GM providing. Of course, if that doesn't work the deities suggested above are also great choices
Leshies definitely have predecessors. Okay those predecessors were probably unintelligent plants, but they were there and donated genetic material. Automatons are usually built by someone, not sure if that technically counts or not, and some could possibly build more Automatons. Poppets... depends on the type of poppet, and IDEK with Conrasu.
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Skeleton ancestries haven't been announced for PFS, even as other Book of the Dead stuff has been. This is just speculation, but if Skeletons do enter Org Play then as Rare Ancestries they may cost 160 Achievement Points, same as other Rare ancestries.
Since Summoners can be tricky for first-time players, I recommend starting PFS play with a different PC and building up Achievement Points with that.
One of these days, we need to be able to build a character who can kill foes with his fluff. Then we can point to that character as a counterexample to anyone who belittles fluff.
One of these days, we need to be able to build a character who can kill foes with his fluff. Then we can point to that character as a counterexample to anyone who belittles fluff.
Poppet monk?
That seems second-best, really. Ideally, we'd have a poppet caster of some sort who specialized in those terrible body-horror spells where you attack people with your internal organs, but I don't actually know enough about the spell lists to put one of those together.
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In a mixed group of adventurers most characters are going to have had parents in the traditional sense (possibly in multiple ones). So your poppet character will understand the idea of "parents" and will probably see "the kid who loved them so much they came alive" as their parent. The Leshy will probably see the plant they inhabited as their parent or the plant whose seeds grew into that plant as their parent.
Your parent absolutely doesn't need to be the same kind of thing as you since adopting parents are parents too.
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Book of the Dead isn't available on the Additional Resources list yet, but so far all races have been made available through boon purchases (basically, play enough society games and you can buy boons for new character slots). I'm guessing it'll end up being 160 Points, if available at all, because that is how much the rare ancestries cost. Then again, Book of the Dead hasn't been added to Additional Resources yet so no way to tell.Ancestries, not races - they made the change for a reason!Don't start that nonsense again. You are neither admin nor thought police.
If something someone says bothers you, either flag it and move on, or PM the author about it.
Umm.
You do see the logical inconsistency here, don't you?
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-sigh- I swear... Can't go a single day on the internet without a topic getting completely derailed by something completely unrelated about politics. Remind me again why I even bother with the internet anymore...?
Anyway, thanks for the discussion guys. I don't think I'll play 2e anymore, it's clear that accidentally saying one wrong word in a full paragraph is enough to fill a thread full of anger. Have fun all. <3
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Anyway, thanks for the discussion guys. I don't think I'll play 2e anymore, it's clear that accidentally saying one wrong word in a full paragraph is enough to fill a thread full of anger. Have fun all. <3So sorry you feel that way.
You're not the only one though. Some of my close friends have been considering jumping ship as well. Have been ever since Paizo decided to start politicizing everything and polarizing the player base rather than just keeping their focus on making a fun game.
This, in my opinion, is the only real crutch of Second Edition, and is what is chiefly keeping it from becoming truly great.
We're here to roleplay, to escape all of the nonsense, not to get dragged through the mud any time someone (inevitably) gets offended over the smallest turn of phrase.
Paizo isn't politicizing everything - their politics are more noticeably different than yours. That isn't me trying to be snarky - there's just this general assumption that the status quo somehow isn't political. Having racial intelligence penalties and always-evil sapient creatures is political; having a focus on slavery in your setting is political; having sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, or ageism in your setting is political. Changing your setting to reduce the prevalence of these in the setting, or to change or remove them in other ways, is political too, as you've said - but it's no more political than having them in there in the first place, it's just that the change draws attention to the political aspects of a piece of media. When the change is moving away from your personal politics, it's going to feel like it's politicizing a work that wasn't previously political - but in reality, it's more that one notices when politics noticeably differs from their status quo. I don't think these changes are excessively polarizing the fan base either - there's been a general polarization of politics in the anglosphere over the last decade, and media analysis is increasingly common as a part of one's politics. Not going through with these changes would've likely led to similar polarization - just the people feeling left out by the setting would be those in favour of these changes.
That being said, this wasn't going to be dragged through the mud until you posted in a way that obviously was going to engender this discussion - keftiu posted a quick correction of an incorrect use of a game term, no different than someone pointing out that they're now called Web Lurkers, not Ettercaps. I don't think that counts as anyone getting offended - the use of ancestry is just the written term for this in PF2.
Other than that, I would encourage both TheMonkeyFish and your friends to continue playing PF2 if this is their only major complaint with it - one doesn't need to interact with the online fan community to enjoy a game, and if you truly feel strongly that ancestry is not an appropriate term, no-one is going to stop you changing that at your own table. It seems a little bit of an overreaction to change systems entirely from one you enjoy because the Paizo forums community chooses to encourage the use of the term ancestry.
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Anyway, thanks for the discussion guys. I don't think I'll play 2e anymore, it's clear that accidentally saying one wrong word in a full paragraph is enough to fill a thread full of anger. Have fun all. <3
Sorry, it's hard to believe that people are this bitter that the game term "ancestry" replaced "race", or that you're dropping the game because of it. What's this really about?
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...
Anyway, thanks for the discussion guys. I don't think I'll play 2e anymore, it's clear that accidentally saying one wrong word in a full paragraph is enough to fill a thread full of anger. Have fun all. <3
One person corrected your use of an out of date term. How is that "filling a thread full of anger?"
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-sigh- I swear... Can't go a single day on the internet without a topic getting completely derailed by something completely unrelated about politics. Remind me again why I even bother with the internet anymore...?
Anyway, thanks for the discussion guys. I don't think I'll play 2e anymore, it's clear that accidentally saying one wrong word in a full paragraph is enough to fill a thread full of anger. Have fun all. <3
Don't worry. There is no such thing as Thought Police. And you can do completely as you wish in the sanctity of your home.
But here, you are not in your home. You are in Paizo's home, as are we all. It is better IMO to follow the wishes of the owners of the home when we are there.
And people clarifying said wishes mean well, not bad.
In Paizo, let's do as Paizonians do.
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I love how it's the people who are quoting me to "attack" or "defend" the ONE person I WASN'T referring to about in my last post, are the people I was originally referring to... If you think "Filling a thread with anger" is about one post, you might want to re-read the thread and view your own posts and see how much bitter resentment you used in the words chosen.
Just so we're clear, this has nothing to do with keftiu or their post, and this has everything to do with people going on people sending me harassing DMs, posting unrelated political opinions on a thread about skeleton fluff, and all around dog pilling and dog whistling.
(Edit) Re-reading the replies, I'm also specifically exempting Arcaian (in addition to Keftiu as previously stated) from my blanket statement. It appears they're the only ones who even attempted to resolve the issue with as little resentment as possible.
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Perhaps not thought police, but certainly "speech police", and for little benefit. In-game "race" and "ancestry" represent *exactly the same concept*. Using one vs the other is not a point of substance. It does not matter in the least which is used.
This is not Paizo's House. This is Paizo's House Party. They've invited everyone who wants to play Pathfinder to come hang out.
All this trivial picking at language is pointless and exclusionary. Save the corrections for someone who is being intentionally aggro.
I mean, why be Mr. or Ms. Whingeytoff with all that "it's Vaahz, not Vayce" crap? Just be good-guy Greg and roll on. Save the callouts for the person that throws up on the couch.
/gentle suggestion
On-topic >>
IMO the backstory to be a good-aligned undead champion is pretty convoluted, but if your GM will go for it, then why not?
OTOH, Duskwalkers are explicitly NOT undead. So no.IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, etc.
Once again I feel the need to point out that there is a logical inconsistency in telling people what they shouldn't post while simultaneously complaining that they are policing speech.
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I'm going to flag this thread, it's been derailed far enough and I'd rather see it removed than have this continued...
-sigh- I swear... Can't go a single day on the internet without a topic getting completely derailed by something completely unrelated about politics. Remind me again why I even bother with the internet anymore...?
Anyway, thanks for the discussion guys. I don't think I'll play 2e anymore, it's clear that accidentally saying one wrong word in a full paragraph is enough to fill a thread full of anger. Have fun all. <3
Is your only issue with PF2 the forums? Because if so, you can just airgap yourself from the community and keep playing with your table, only using bought books/AoN. One of my tables does that because no one honestly cares about discussion, just goofing around playing the game with the subjectively best engine to support how we want to play.
And an undead goodguy sounds like a wonderful idea, and I hope you get to play it regardless of what system you use!
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I think the undead pharasman works best as a ghost. Since the church would say "hey you, you're an affront to reality, terminate your existence" where the ghost's response is "honestly, there's nothing I want more. It just doesn't seem to take until I resolve [unfinished business] so I'm working on that."
I note the existence of https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43l24?What-are-your-Book-of-the-Dead-character
While we're on the topic of Book of the Dead characters, and good-aligned undead in particular, it seemed pertinent. A number of the suggested character concepts could easily be good-aligned.
An undead pharasmite would be a pretty cool.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone come up with that cool, clever, totally original idea, I could afford a tank of gas.
Still, it'd be a good suggestion for this thread.
