Kaspyr2077's page

A single element focused (fire) blaster that I won't feel awful playing! <3

To do this, I feels like there's two things that need to happen. First, there needs to be spells available at every level and to cover a wide variety of needs. Single target, AoE, damage+debuff, etc. Second, there needs to be a way to deal with resistances and immunities. Not to invalidate them entirely, make them useless, but give the character the toolkit to overcome enough to continue to be useful. Perhaps give progressive weaknesses that counteract the resistances, perhaps treat immunity as a high resistance number instead, etc.

In this scenario, are weapons rules still meant to evoke images of real physical things, with real physical forms, the differences in which give rise to different effects in use? Or are "weapons" meant to be constructs of rules abstractions? Because this is how you get the latter.

I think we might be talking past each other here: Kaspyr2077, you're thinking of the term "pantheon" in a more holistic, real-world sense, and it is very insightful. What I was more asking for help with was setting up the kind of Pantheons the game rules use, like the Demon Bringers or Hearth and Harvest, to best reflect this character and so I can determine which domains I can pick for things like Divine Access.

Okay, I didn't know about those, and apparently I was mistaken in the context of the system... but wow, that's... awkward. I can only conclude that there was a need for a system to worship of actual pantheons as a whole, and from there, simply expanded those to cover more vague cultural constructs, but... those aren't pantheons, they're cultures. The rules construct is fit for purpose, but the name for it is just inappropriate for the use it's being put to here.

What if the dragon was badly injured and caught when still quite young. She was waiting to die, when adventurers found her. She waited to die, but instead, she ended up silently... listening, while the adventurers argued amongst themselves what the right thing to do was. Eventually, they decided to cautiously free her, even treat her wounds.

She would immediately have killed the fools when free, of course, but they stood ready to defend one another, even as they cared for her. So she quietly accepted their aid, and while waiting for her chance, she had nothing to do but examine their moral arguments between each other, observe how convenient it was to have someone take care of her when she needed it, and witness how the bonds between these people made them much more formidable and accomplished than any of them would be alone.

She went on to visit them regularly for further conversation after this, as she wrestled with the ideas. Eventually, she hired them to resolve some problem for her. Then, they began exchanging gifts. She saw them retire, raise families, grow old, and was introduced to the next generation of adventurers. She had enjoyed the previous relationships, so she had to learn to befriend these new people for further conversation. Eventually, she learned to protect and enrich herself by becoming a patron of a fairly large town, where she owns several successful businesses. Bandits never remain a problem for long, she has all the support she likes if a challenger comes along, and her horde is growing quite a bit faster than any rival she's heard of.

Maybe she's considering founding an institute for wizards, so that they will gather there, and they'll happily gather knowledge to teach her, giving her a shortcut to power that most of her kind would never dream. Yes, this "mutually beneficial cooperation" business is an approach to life is just so... useful.

That's not what the pantheon rules say about the setting and fails to explain one of the most notable pantheons in the setting, the Godclaw.

Although the God Claw venerates aspects of Abadar, Asmodeus, Iomedae, Irori, and Torag, it is unclear from which of these gods it draws its power; indeed, it is possible that its own convictions grant it divine strength. Clerical signifers and other religious members of the order have access to the Glory, Law, Protection, Strength, and War domains.

The Godclaw doesn't worship a pantheon. It worships several gods, and it's not entirely evident who grants them power, but it probably isn't all of them as a pantheon, since that's not what that word means.

Quote:

A pantheon is a group of related gods worshipped either individually or together. Most pantheons are associated with a specific ancestry or geopolitical region, but rarely, a pantheon consists of deities with overlapping areas of concern. Followers work to advance the shared interests of their pantheon, directing prayers to whichever god presides over their current activity or circumstance.

Pantheons don't form because of the gods telling their followers to worship them as a group. Pantheons form because people worship those gods as a group for whatever reason.

... You know, it never really occurred to me that someone could read that section proscriptively, instead of descriptively. If you read it proscriptively, and allow some generous leeway, I guess it could mean what you think it means. If you read it descriptively, it means what I'm telling you it means. For clues which might be more accurate, you might want to consider what the word "pantheon" actually means in a real-world cultural context.

Yes, the Olympian pantheon was associated with a culture and geopolitical region, but all its members also had a common origin, and were all governed by a central authority. The Norse pantheon(s) had more diverse origins, but were allied to each other, led by Odin, etc. A pantheon is a family, community, or political entity among the gods. Telling Zeus he's in some kind of union with Loki, just because your mortal community prefers it that way, seems like a great way to catch a lightning bolt to the face. All polytheistic pantheons I can think of has this sort of relationship described among their own gods. Assuming a setting where the gods are real and have their own identities, why would they abandon their original ties and start new associations with gods they don't care about, just because mortals got it into their heads? It doesn't make sense. It makes the gods highly unstable and subjective to the point of uselessness. A god, in a setting where gods have their own individual identities, don't develop new identities just because some faction of believers develops a heresy.

On the other hand, mixed worship of Dwarven and Elven gods could easily arise in and society of elves and dwarves that lived together long enough to produce a dwarf-blooded half-elf.

Say a group of Ilverani started building a shelter from Earthfall and ran into some dwarves that were well ahead of most of their kin. They work together to build a secret citadel that's utterly indistinguishable from a natural mountain and welcome a bunch of humans/halflings/orcs/whatever ancestry fits the location of the citadel into their walls when Earthfall actually happens.

A few centuries later they're preparing to emerge and an earthquake drops the citadel into a sinkhole, trapping them underground for a few centuries until they rejoin the world above having formed a unique society.

This is an anthropological view of how a belief system might emerge in a world like ours. In a world where gods are real and distinct things with wills of their own, two pantheons don't merge just because some people were cohabitating, and worship of this group as a pantheon probably wouldn't provide any special benefits unless those gods formally made that alliance for that express purpose.

The idea was to show this character as a product of his upbringing, honoring both his dwarven and elven heritage, giving both pantheons equal respect and blending their philosophies into something new. He has terrible nightmares of fire and destruction that started to become very real fires in the waking world, and things like smithing, herbalism and gemworking were ways to use that fire for constructive instead of destructive purposes, as well as actual spellcasting training obviously. He decides to take up the adventuring life because his visions have gotten increasingly specific, showing the destruction of a specific town, and he wants to stop them from coming true (he's written with the Age of Ashes AP in mind, specifically with the Haunting Vision background).

That's all pretty cool, for sure. Which deities from those two pantheons speak most to you in relationship to these things? My primary point was that you were using a word incorrectly, and that was needlessly sending the discussion off into the weeds - a "pantheon" is a distinct concept from who you choose to worship personally, and what personal philosophy emerges as a result.

Question. Is your character a class that requires a patron deity IE, champion or cleric]? If not, you can just worship multiple gods without having to make a pantheon.

You can still do that either way. Just focus on one, then give the others their due.

That's not what a pantheon is. Gods exist outside the will of any mortal, and a pantheon is a relationship between those gods, well outside a mortal's opinion. A "personal pantheon" makes no sense.

What you're describing is a collection of gods that the character offers prayers and possibly sacrifices to, which is much more sensible. The approach you could take here is to examine the character's background, figure out their dreams, aspirations, hardships, stresses, and cultural background, compare those to the list of known gods, and find five or six who are relevant. Which gods do they naturally gravitate toward, by personality or trade? Who would you be terrified of and seek to appease? Who could really take some worry out of your life? Figure out how offering worship of these gods intersects with your life - how often do you do that? What does it look like?

There's no need to try to consolidate them into a "pantheon," unless your GM is willing to give you custom rules for it, which would be... oddly accommodating.

They are trying to be hinging on the word 'Authorized'.

However, I am pretty sure that word Authorized is there to say... hey, I just wrote a OGL 1.0b and it says that people can use their IP and everyone has to pay Me (not them) 10% royalties. And in the license it says everyone can immediately begin using the new license.

The "Authorized" argument is pretty sketchy, because there's no language in the agreement about de-authorization, and I'm not aware of any legal framework that could be referencing. That whole part of the OGL is set up in such a way that it strongly suggests that the intent is to allow the licensees choose the iteration of the agreement that is most favorable to themselves as the basis for any legal dispute - and the people who wrote the thing are publicly supporting this interpretation. There is no process for what Hasbro is trying to do, which is to just unilaterally disqualify all previous iterations of the agreement from use in that clause, unless that's a legal structure in the specific jurisdiction where they agreed to settle disputes.

If such a structure does exist, it needs to be legislated out, because the entire concept is just anathema to contract law.

Let me start by saying, I am not a lawyer. However I have read several things about this whole debacle and more than one lawyer has stated that "perpetual" does not mean irrevocable and so there is at least ground to litigate this in court. It is not as simple and easy (based on what I've read) as many people seem to think/hope it is.

Again, not a legal expert, and I agree with you about the principle but the actuality of things may not line up with that.

I'm not sure where, exactly, this case would be adjudicated, but the principles behind it are pretty uniform everywhere, as far as I know, so I'll help you out.

Say you're homesteading. You have the land, and you want to start building. Your nearest neighbor, Watts, agrees to lend you the hammer. He signs an agreement with you, for some reason, about this hammer - he remains the owner, but he grants you its use, and rights to the things you produce with the hammer, in perpetuity. You spend the next twenty years building things. Houses, sheds, barns, etc, you have the place pretty well outfitted and looking good.

At this point, twenty or so years into it, Watts shows up, announcing that he's changing the deal, and he has ownership rights of anything produced by the hammer, past, present, and future. You think he's stupid, tell him you're not using the hammer any more anyway. You go to court over who is entitled to what.

You don't want to abide by the terms of the new deal, so, the judge will take the hammer away from you and give it to Watts. You don't get to use it any more. He has canceled your original agreement, as you say, despite the "in perpetuity" clause in there. However, you built several buildings with that hammer on the understanding that those were your buildings, Watts would never have a claim to them, and if you knew Watts would come along and alter the deal, maybe you wouldn't have used that hammer in the first place. Since you made decisions and took action on what to create based on the initial agreement, and you would have made different decisions under different circumstances, the rights to those creations will be based on the initial agreement - Watts doesn't have a claim at all, and NEVER WILL, guaranteed by that "in perpetuity" clause.

Kaspyr2077 wrote:

graystone wrote:

Going by the 1.1 leak, Wotc/Hasbro could sell PF1e themselves... It requires everyone using it to give them a copy of everything made using it and gives them the right to use it as they wish.

Irrelevant, since Paizo has not signed the 1.1 OGL. Everything Paizo published under the OGL was published under the good OGL. 1.1 - or now, OGL 2.0, as I hear they've renamed it - is not what Paizo ever agreed to, and Hasbro cannot unilaterally "update" the OGL and claim Paizo did agree. Hasbro could march ten thousand lawyers in solid gold suits to the courtroom to argue the point, but if their argument is "We replaced a good contract with a bad contract, so the person who signed the good contract is bound by the bad contract," there does not exist a bribe large enough to convince a sane judge to even hear the case.

What you're saying here is a point of contention. I agree with you in principal, but with what WotC is trying to do, they also seem inclined to attempt to litigate this, at least in certain cases.

The issue being that OGL 1.0a doesn't say it irrevocable and so it's at least arguable about whether WotC can rescind it. If it's rescinded, while they cannot (probably) do anything about past sells WotC could make it impossible for a publisher to sell things that were published under 1.0a.

It's true that having agreed to OGL 1.0a will not bind them to OGL 2.0, but having your body of work barred from being sold is a problem for most publishers.

If it is not signed, the leaked version of the OGL will not apply, which means that the original version of the OGL - the one agreed to by publishers - will be the only agreement to apply. As it grants rights "in perpetuity," it would be absolutely ridiculous to argue that an update to the agreement could revoke those rights.

The only ways to lose rights granted in perpetuity is to 1) formally surrender them in a new agreement, or 2) not contest their encroachment, until you not having them is considered the new norm. Neither applies here.

Going by the 1.1 leak, Wotc/Hasbro could sell PF1e themselves... It requires everyone using it to give them a copy of everything made using it and gives them the right to use it as they wish.

Irrelevant, since Paizo has not signed the 1.1 OGL. Everything Paizo published under the OGL was published under the good OGL. 1.1 - or now, OGL 2.0, as I hear they've renamed it - is not what Paizo ever agreed to, and Hasbro cannot unilaterally "update" the OGL and claim Paizo did agree. Hasbro could march ten thousand lawyers in solid gold suits to the courtroom to argue the point, but if their argument is "We replaced a good contract with a bad contract, so the person who signed the good contract is bound by the bad contract," there does not exist a bribe large enough to convince a sane judge to even hear the case.

What you're saying is entirely true, if someone is dumb enough to try to work with Hasbro to create third party content under the new OGL, but as it currently stands, as long as creators don't sign (and presumably don't start new projects after it goes into effect), the changes to the OGL don't apply. Mind you, Hasbro and WotC would be absolute fools to bring this thing out in any form even slightly resembling the leak, and they know that, considering how quiet they've been lately, so it remains to be seen if they are bold and dumb enough to make it official at all.

TriOmegaZero wrote:

graystone wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

So I can't even fix them to be compatible with the new updates.

What needs fixing?

Old PC's that used the old voluntary rule are illegal as the new version is different.

Illegal for what?

Illegal for any GM who wants to abide by the current rules.

Also, people generally expect my character gallery characters to be rules compliant.

Pretty sure PFS is the most strict authority you'll find on the legality of such matters, and they're okay with any of the rules sets, I think, so... it should be okay?

Uh loads of People played elves before the change. It wasn't foolish.

Lowest HP an ancestry could have, paired with a Constitution flaw, in a system where numbers are tight and combat is challenging. Elves were at a serious "staying alive" disadvantage before. It was a serious deterrent to playing an Elf. It's one thing to be okay with a character dying, but most players want to give themselves a fighting chance.

I have some thoughts on this matter.

I'll start with the example of Elves. Elves are a staple of this style of fantasy, but with the lowest racial HP AND a Constitution penalty, it was foolish to try to play one. This seems to be a design failure. Many settings have Elves as extremely long-lived, perhaps even immortal, but that seems a joke when the system makes them the most fragile characters possible. If anything, I could see them being less physically strong than Humans, because they don't have the mass, but then, they don't have so little mass that they're basically Halflings, either. I think a no-flaw set is perfect for them, with perhaps a choice of Dexterity or Intelligence and one free - a Variable Fixed/Free model.

Dwarves are similar, if not so thoroughly affected. The existing fixed boosts are to Constitution and Wisdom, reflecting toughness and patience, but the penalty is Charisma. Why? Because they're gruff and not particularly charming, is the explanation we're given... okay. Is that what Charisma is, though? It does affect Diplomacy checks, sure, but also Intimidation, and then some affect on your magical ability as a Sorcerer, Divine Font as a Cleric, etc. Charisma, in this system, is supposed to be a matter of force of personality, and I've never seen a dwarf portrayed as lacking that. I can't think of an attribute that I would describe them as lacking, so yeah, I think they should have an attribute option without a flaw.

Gnomes and Halflings, though, are at a serious mass disadvantage when compared to Humans, to the point where it's asking a lot of the suspension of disbelief to have one of these equal the strongest Human in strength. It's part of the fantasy of playing a small Ancestry, in my opinion. If you want Halfling Barbarians in your game that hit has hard as an Orc built similarly, that's fine for your table, but for me, it's a bit too cartoonish. Flaws should still be a Thing, I believe the original model works best in this situation, and I like Voluntary Flaw or the newer model as optional rules for those whose preferences are not my own.

Goblins are an interesting case, because their flaw is to a mental attribute, but the explanation is of an impulsive, inattentive nature, which, to me, seems to fit the definition of a Wisdom penalty quite well, and also reflect the fantasy of playing a Goblin as I see it. I think that flaw is perfectly justified, and the original model works fine. On the other hand, if you view your character as an exceptional Goblin that doesn't match this concept, the idea of switching to a Fixed/Free or a Variable Fixed/Free model could work.

So yeah, just using the examples of the core ancestries, I think, in some cases, a Fixed/Free or Variable Fixed/Free option is preferable, in some cases viable, and in some cases odd. Having some options in the future would be the best choice, in my opinion.

Also, if you hover your house over the symbol, it'll say in the alt text that it's a Free Action.

Witches should be wary of flying houses.

The Devs have literally said that they couldn't make certain changes they had planned for fear of alienating a vocal segment of their audience. The entire way shields work and the rune system weren't what the devs wanted to do. The Witch's development was stunted by another dev leaving and never really got finished which leads to an odd class. The Alchemist had to get a large amount of errata before it was on the same lap as the rest of the classes.

If you think the game we got is the game the devs wanted to make, I'm not sure what I can say to you. I also admit that the game they wanted to make wasn't that much closer to the game I want, but I would have respected the choice to stick to their intent and release what they wanted to.

Here, you're talking about individual rules that the devs weren't satisfied with or had to compromise on. That's just how such things work. "Perfect" doesn't happen. This is not the same thing as you were saying before, here or elsewhere, which is making an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT KIND OF GAME. Paizo wanted to create a heroic fantasy game, and they did that. You want a more gritty, grounded kind of game. Paizo "taking risks" would not do what you continually suggest it would - inevitably move the game more in the direction of your preferences.

I prefer a more gritty lethal game than many people here and often wish that Paizo had taken more risks in game design with PF2,

You have used this argument in more than one thread. We have very different understandings of the words being used. See, the way you're saying it, "I wish they had taken more risks" seems to suggest "I wish they had made the specific product I want, that isn't very much like the product they made at all. I will imply that they wanted to make the game I wanted, but chickened out and played it safe."

Game design is not a linear progression toward the game you imagine, and failure to evolve in that direction is not cowardice. They made the game they wanted to make. You can like it or dislike it, but insisting that the game would be specifically what you would like, if only Paizo were bold enough, is just... weird and disrespectful.

Is that really true, though? Forgotten Realms' cosmology is based on that setting's pantheon with each of the major gods having their own plane that lesser gods aligned with or subservient to them also occupy, without actual Alignment having anything to do with it.

Uhhh... false. Search "forgotten realm wiki planes" and the first thing you'll see is a chart showing the planes as a Great Wheel, with the topmost level of organization being direction indicating Alignment. Good at the top, Chaos to the right, Evil at the bottom, Law to the left. So...

While it wasn't met with universal acclaim, 4e's world axis cosmology was also largely divorced from the Alignment system. Had a bit of "astral sea is law, elemental chaos is...chaos" to it but but it wasn't a clean divide & was more bast on the theogeny of that edition than alignment.

4E's "Points of Light" isn't a setting, so much as a prompt in homebrewing one. It is an example of D&D tossing aside tradition and the quality material provided by the past, yes, but they replaced it with... not much of anything.

So it *can* be done, even ignoring how many preexisting settings got ogl books during the 3.5 years & threw it out all together.

... You are presenting this as an argument, even though you're agreeing with me.

I would like to say that in spite of the point I'm making here, in general I don't think that we *need* to rely on precedent to justify change, and I don't find arguments of "we have it because we've always had it", "it's that way because it's always been that way", or "it's self perpetuating" to be compelling or valid.

If I were to go out & publish a new setting tomorrow using a ruleset of the d20 lineage, I'm under no obligation to incorporate a cosmology based or reliant on the alignment chart, even if no one had ever done it before. Might take some minor to moderate modification to the rules, but it's achieable, viable, & valid.

Now it's trickier when talking in terms of pf2e specifically because the system is wholly invested in the Lost Omens setting which did base its cosmology on that model & we may never escape the long term ramifications of paizo initially selling itself as the safe place security blanket doubling down on the familiar for everyone who was afraid of all the change WotC where forcing on them with 4e.

But that doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't reexamine all the sacred cows every few years.

Sounds quite like any of several homebrew settings I've run, actually, but once again, those aren't official products. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that I'm pro-Alignment, and arguing that it's mandatory for using the system. I'm not. It's essential for running existing official settings, and while D&D and Pathfinder rely on those settings to sell materials, they'll be entirely supported by the mechanics. I have nothing at all against running different settings that don't operate the same way, and prefer to do so at my table. Don't think I've ever personally done anything with the interplanar wars and such.

What bothers me is the kludges people are trying to use to extract Alignment from established settings without understanding the role of Alignment to begin with. You're all welcome to use them at home, obviously, but they probably won't be used to change anything officially, because they're obviously clunky hacks, and I thought we were resenting clumsy retcons here.

"we may never escape the long term ramifications of paizo initially selling itself as the safe place security blanket doubling down on the familiar for everyone who was afraid of all the change WotC where forcing on them with 4e." Wow, are you okay? You seem to be taking this awful personally. I don't know how to tell you this, but Paizo, as a company, liked D&D and helped shape a lot of it, with the magazines. They weren't forced into a lack of creativity by a need to grab market share - Paizo, as a company, loved D&D and were unceremoniously booted out of the creative process, like a parent who lost custody. I don't know of any indication that they yearned to be free of the yoke of Alignment.

I feel like that's a circular argument; we need the alignment system because the cosmology depends on it, but it assumes every cosmology is or has to be built on the foundation of the alignment chart.

Now, the fact that assumption isn't true aside, it is true that Golarion's cosmology is built on it & its a little late to wholesale pull it out.

But you could probably work towards a functional version of "alignment as a fundamental force exists in the outer sphere of planes but is too muddled in the prime material to have a real effect."

If the game were designed today, it probably wouldn't be so Eternal Champions influenced, and the system and any settings designed for play using that system probably wouldn't have Alignment as a feature. However, at this point, there are several decades of existing tradition. It's self-perpetuating. A D&D or spin-off system is going to have Alignment, because the existing settings require it. A new official setting will probably have Alignment, to honor that tradition and take advantage of all the stuff written for it.

Nothing prevents a new setting from taking a different direction entirely. For a homebrew, feel free. A new official setting... probably won't, but easily could. There's just too much weight of tradition, at this point.

Nobody disagrees that "fighters get expert martial weapon prof at first level". There's no single piece of the game that has so many incompatible takes as to why it should be a permanent, unchanging feature of two different games for decades than alignment. It is less sensible than saying 'PF2E should have AC go the other way b/c that's how D&D was decades", because that's at least a mechanic that does things rather...

The specifics of how the math of AC work aren't reflected in the game setting. 3.0 removed THAC0 and created a much simpler, more intuitive way of resolving the math of combat, and there was no need to justify that specific thing in-character, should you port your AD&D2 campaign over. The Forgotten Realms underwent another world-shaking event to change it to reflect the new rules content, but none of that really addressed the way swords and armor intersected.

Alignment isn't really a mechanic in the same way. It's a setting element upon which some rules hang. All official settings have been created with Alignment in mind, and it's baked into the setting at a fundamental level. The cosmology as established requires Alignment to function as they are.

Removing Alignment involves destroying the cosmology of any official setting. You could scratch out that part of your character sheet and not do that, I suppose, but that's not removing Alignment. That's papering it over.

I don't see how it can this immutable, unchanging, cosmic rule when the highest embodiments of it can have incompatible frameworks within the same 'side' of the chart. You can be Lawful Good and follow the Laws of Mortality, be damned to fade out because you're not the 'right' Lawful Good to get sorted at the boneyard. In that regard, deity matters cosmically as much if not more than alignment in your cosmic role. Without a deity, regardless of alignment the same thing happens.

That's all top of a Paladin pile-up of effectively incompatible nominally Lawful Good ideologies from either LG or LG-adjacent gods. All of that is without getting into the other alignment/deity mismatch conflicts. It just makes the whole thing messy, up to varying interpretation, and tied to player power.

As a GM, I've gotten more play out of telling players of characters with required deities to call their own balls and strikes. It puts playing their character back in their hands instead of leaving it...

... It's not focused on your character or their deity. You're focused on alignment as some kind of stand-in for religious doctrine, and it's not intended to be that at all. The idea of the fundamental, axiomatic forces of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos in the setting takes place above and beyond your character, their god, or their afterlife. We're talking about grander scale concepts in the setting that make the entire cosmology and its history work the way they do, and that's why it's not a trivial thing to just toss them out - the setting wouldn't survive as-is.

This is why I don't like alignment. We've got some folks like you saying its broad and lacks strict definitions. Then there's others saying its something akin to a cosmic constant. With 2E, the rules have a strong alternative framework with the classes tied closest to it that it can be removed. Why not just...remove it? Clerics have their god's edicts. Champions have that plus cause.

Better than reading 'demon-blooded sorcs should be evil b/c evil blood'.

You don't like alignment because some say it is a thing, and others describe that thing in a way that... supports that definition? Each alignment is a cosmic constant with a broad enough definition that there are many different ways to approach it. My post - the one you're referring to with the "cosmic constant" descriptor - says as much on its own.

You could indeed remove alignment, but doing so would uproot the premise behind several important setting elements, in Golarion or in any official D&D setting. If you play a homebrew without those, or you never engage with them, feel free to ignore them at your table. But this is why alignment isn't going away.

On a better note, I agree with you on the idea that it's not great to force characters to be Evil based on their blood, even should they draw power from it, and I think most other posters disliked it as well.

Creating a sapient being and then designing it so that if it ever begins to sincerely doubt you will spontaneously and inextricably be reduced to a mindless husk strikes me as profoundly evil.

So that should reasonably heavily limit what deities even have them, which makes them a bit problematic to turn into an ancestry as written. "Devoted servant of Asmodeus" automatically limits the number of campaigns you could even join pretty heavily.

If they could legitimately have a crisis of faith that would make them more flexible and create more interesting stories that could be told, so I'm not sure it'd be all that bad to change how they work (and as far as I can tell, they don't really have much of a presence anyways so it wouldn't be a massive shift in the grand scheme).

I would consider creating before designing to be an act of incredible stupidity, more than anything.

Celedons are divine tools and guardians that lose their purpose and become a liability of they lose their faith. When a god can't trust anything else, this is a sensible choice, and assuming it lacks a soul - which it appears to - then there's no harm done, from the divine standpoint. It's a high-level automaton.

If you can't join a campaign as an inherently devoted servant of Asmodeus, maybe don't try to play one. If you want a character with the potential for a crisis of faith that they survive, maybe play something else.

I mean, I'm not convinced that celedons should be a PC race, because they have inherent purpose, but if they must be, then they should be Rare, and the circumstances under which it might or might not be appropriate to play one should be laid out.

Catching up on this thread has been wild. I think the discourse on Paladins and Lawful Good makes a strong case for why alignment doesn't work. Whose definition of 'Law'? Whose definition of 'Good'? Are those different than the definitions of 'law' or 'good'? Whose definition of Lawful Good? That's not even getting in setting where different Lawful Good gods have different takes on what those are.

For example, Erastil and Ragathiel probably have different takes on what that entails. A god of community is less likely to see every criminal as a place to sheathe your sword in the same way the god of killing evil beings is. A Paladin of Abadar (LN) is going to have a different take on the above conflict than a Paladin of Sheyln (NG). So if I'm a GM using this world, whose version of Lawful, Good, and/or Lawful Good am I supposed to use to mediate the game? It becomes easiest to ignore it, stick to cause and tenants, and get on with life.

The fact that the nine-point Alignment system encompasses many different individual sets of values is... kind of the point, though.

It's not supposed to be a shorthand for your character's beliefs and personality. There are billions of possibilities for that, not nine. Alignment represents your ALIGNMENT with the planar axes representing fundamental forces. It's not that hard to see that a character who is marked Neutral or Evil is tending oddly toward being giving and benevolent, and tell the player to correct their sheet. It's not hard to observe that a character who is allegedly Lawful is playing fast and loose with the rules of organizations they're not even opposing, and tell the player to correct their sheet.

The point is that those pairs of letters on your sheet represent ACTUAL SUPERNATURAL FORCES in the setting. You can have real problems with the philosophy of, say, Ragathiel, and still be Lawful Good, and various spells, weapons, and entities will all recognize you as such.

The issue there is that you have multiple approaches to what it means. For example a lawful neutral character could:

1. Seek balance of good and evil doing it in a lawful manner.
2. Seek to make lawful the predominant alignment.
3. Seek to protect order and law in all its forms.
Etc.

These are all kind of ridiculous, to be honest. Most people aren't going to be conscious of and aware of the alignment chart in their daily lives. A "Neutral" character is almost never going to be ideologically committed to balance - they're going to favor Good neighbors over Evil ones, as life is just better when people aren't actively trying to screw you over. Alignment is a descriptor you apply to a character that's probably not exactly aware of it, not a team you play for, unless they're one of the extraplanar beings that exist for the purpose of advancing their cause.

A Lawful Neutral character is one that values laws, traditions, and structures, and isn't particularly charitable with their own resources.

Also neutral is not the most passive, it seems passive because its the default alignment of everyone. So its hard to notice how much is actually done by neutral characters. Its why it seems like neutral is going with the flow, but notice that redemption (neutral good according to champion) requires a lot of work and initiative on the part of the person seeking to change. While chaotic tends to be the most active because they tend to be a lot more willing to explore and try new things. Good vs Evil is a bit more complicated, but evil tend to require more active participation: For most cases its hard to be evil without actively choosing to do that.

Why are you so keen on ascribing passivity as an alignment trait? It's just not that. A person in any of the nine boxes could be just as exceedingly motivated as anyone else, depending on their motivations, needs, goals, etc.

1) I was not saying that Paladins are passive, but that lawful good tends to be more passive then other alignments. Because they follow the rules and tend to do good its rare for them to go out of their way to do something bold. Which pair nicely with CE tending to be extremely bold and active.

2) I was not stating that my table doesn't play lawful good. I was stating that people in general seem to look at lawful good more for what powers it gives than for what RP the alignment offers. Although to be fair my opinion is based on a relatively small data size of what I have read/seen, so who knows.

Lawful Good can look more passive than other alignments, because most of the people who are passive are trying to present themselves as law-abiding and charitable, in order to maintain goodwill in their communities. Even if you're Chaotic Evil, if you don't have the means to enact bloody revolution, it's probably best to keep your mouth shut, fake a smile when dealing with people and institutions, and go seethe about it later, until some psycho warlord comes recruiting. Lawful Good people don't have the same motivations of murder and mayhem that Chaotic Evil people might, but they can actively protect and preserve the people and institutions they value, and that's pretty great.

Squiggit, agreed I wish alignment wasn't just put it as a ribbon for 2e. It feels like there is even less connection to it than before. Specially with the fact that they obfuscated the whole "must be evil" thing for the undead archetypes (specially lich).

Wait, they did? That's weird. I thought that the creation of undead was supposed to be universally evil in this setting? I'm getting mixed messages about that.

I maintain that alignment doesn't need to be dropped completely- but it is in dire need of a face-lift due to modern sensibilities and to distance it from memes and gygax both.

Don't like alignment mechanics, or in the setting at your table? Houserule them out or ignore them. I've run whole homebrew campaigns where it just never came up.

Want to distance yourself from memes? Don't play with players who can't separate memes from actual play.

Want to distance yourself from Gygax? Don't invite him over to play.

The mechanical limitations of PF2's alignment system kinda suck.

I agree, and tend to ignore them. Benefits of not playing in any kind of organized and official game.

The thematic ones are generally fine though. Again, I feel like a lot of the arguments against it start with distorting the system into the worst and most absurdly caricatured possible version of itself, which is just kind of whatever.

Again, I agree, but this is mostly a problem with obtuse and argumentative players. Let them wave their red flags proudly, and then bounce them.

Kaspyr2077 wrote:

I don't expect a character to start resembling my concept of their eventual capabilities until level 8-10 or so, which seems to be what Victor is mostly asking about.

Spending dozens of hours playing a character that doesn't even resemble what you want to play sounds pretty miserable to me, personally.

Then maybe don't start with a high-level concept for your character, or play a game that starts at level 10? I start my process by envisioning what the character is going to be like at a high level, and then figure out how to make it work with a 20-level build. It's got to be viable all the way through, but of course the character isn't going to play the same at level 1 as they will at level 20.

SuperBidi said a lot of good things.

I don't expect a character to start resembling my concept of their eventual capabilities until level 8-10 or so, which seems to be what Victor is mostly asking about.

I do expect my character to contribute meaningfully from the start of the game, as well as provide a foundation that I will gradually build on, tell the story of their growth and maturation, etc.

@S.L.Acker - There is a concept known as "verisimilitude." It's the quality of a work of fiction where it might operate under very, very different rules from our own world, but it's internally consistent enough to allow for suspension of disbelief and immersion. Your argument that alignment is invalid because it's different from our world is... odd. Plus, it only seems different because we're getting a metaphysical look at Golarion that's impossible for our own. Atheists would say it doesn't exist, religious folk will say you're looking in the wrong way, agnostics with a scientific vocabulary will say it's "unfalsifiable." The rules of our world and the rules of Golarion are, presumably, different, but not so different that it invalidates values. Here, let me break it down.

1. In Golarion, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are real, fundamental forces. They're SUPER simple. Good = general benevolence, willing to expend time, effort, or other resources to benefit others more than the self. Evil = general selfishness, willing (possibly even happy) to hurt others to benefit the self. Law = a tendency to value traditions, routines, and other social norms and expectations. Chaos = valuing freedom and fluidity over structures. Neutrality is a point between either pair where you couldn't be said to be decidedly one or the other. That's it.

2. There are hundreds of gods with their own values that exist within the nine-point grid the above system creates. You could choose to follow any one of these dozens of belief sets, or you could choose to follow some other set of values, and that's an entirely valid way to live your life.

3. Other people will judge your values based on THEIR values, but it's understood that you're not generally expected to share values 100%, because there are so many different extant sets of values. Just try to follow the norms of the society you live in well enough to not cause disruption, or you won't live there any more. Unless, by your value system, you judge that society's values as intolerable, and then you can try to change it.

4. The average person probably doesn't interact with the underlying concepts too much. They believe what they believe, they go about their lives appropriately, they die, and then they go to whatever fate awaits them after. It's only a very rare few that interact with the planes, extraplanar beings, alignment damage, etc.

In short, on the ground level, it's not too dissimilar to our world in many ways. If you can't suspend your disbelief this far, what are you looking for in a fantasy TTRPG?

@Temperans - It sounds like people at your table don't like playing Lawful Good, which is fine, or don't understand what it represents, which is unfortunate, but puts you in a poor situation to try to discuss it online. Being generally benevolent and in favor of beneficial social structures doesn't make one inherently passive, stupid, or any other failing. Your group might or might not be made up of revolutionary-minded people who think burning down the existing order is an inherent good, so they have trouble understanding the viewpoint that social stability is beneficial, aspects of the existing order emerged out of necessity for the community, and that institutions, communities, and culture are worth preserving for the sake of the people within them.

When playing a Lawful Good character, consider that they are trying to achieve Good through the mechanism of Law. They generally value ordered systems as a method to achieve beneficial things for people. If a system fails to achieve that, it needs to be adjusted or scrapped and replaced, but there's a way to do that. That's how governments are supposed to work. That's basically it. Any "Lawful Stupid" or "Stupid Good" stuff that emerges after that is reflective of your group in some way.

Apart from those two arguments - the consequentialist morality argument makes me rage and cringe beyond the ability to meaningfully contribute.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

So being a demon-bloodline sorcerer shouldn't make you evil any more than being a Tiefling makes you evil.

The difference, as I see it there, is that "tiefling" isn't a character class. A tiefling is not inherently required to do anything with their life that relates to or engages with their fiendish origin. A demon-blooded sorcerer, by definition, is using powers directly deriving from Chaotic Evil as a cosmic polarity. A purely human sorcerer who leans into using the powers of Chaotic Evil is in any games of mine also going to become Chaotic Evil in short order if they are not already there.

This would, I think, work better if Good and Evil were referred to as Celestial and Fiendish as polarities go, because I think the game becomes a lot more interesting if alignments are cosmic forces that shape their users and all have a bunch of adherents embodying and more or less aggressively proselytising, but the game itself does not cede them any specific moral authority; that nothing requires either a character, or (even better for avoiding arguments) a player, to regard Evil as having to match their personal conception of evil, or Good good. Infernal healing, to pick a fictitious and therefore hopefully non-controversial example, is much more interesting to me as a concept if it can at the same time do something a player could plausibly deem good (heal someone) while still being objectively, in the setting, Evil, with the consequences that entails.

A Good character drawing on and subverting inherently Evil powers is a huge trope in fiction because it's a pretty great story. Your interpretation of the morality of it shuts it down and makes it instantly far less compelling. I can't think of a story that's improved by tying a character's alignment to the nature of the power they use. The idea of writing a kind, law-abiding character's alignment as Chaotic Evil because of the class they're playing shocks and upsets me.

In the setting, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos are all observable, measurable forces that exist and influence the material realm. The idea of relative morality is absurd in that context. It's fine to have values that don't align perfectly with one of them, but it's hard to say a thing is "good" when it isn't "Good," in the context of morality being empirical and fundamental, rather than a vague sense of a set of social expectations that shift at varying speeds.

I think the primary reason alignment survives intact is for setting continuity. Most D&D settings arose in days where aligned planes, the war between demons and devils, etc, were assumed setting elements, and to keep them going forward, Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos as axiomatic forces had to continue to exist. After that, any new setting would probably do something similar, because stories about such things are fun, and easy to use across settings. Plus, the mechanics are already there, so the game designers have a choice of utilizing them or not in a given setting, and "yes" is the obvious answer.

Obviously, when Pathfinder first came out, they weren't going to entirely throw out any huge concepts. They kept alignment because they were out to revise and upgrade D&D into their own thing, not apply the chainsaw. Now, it's hard to back out of, because Good and Evil, Law and Chaos are established to be important in the setting.

Alignments and classes:

Cultures that produce the iconic "Barbarians" tend to have lots of laws and taboos. It never made sense to me to have them inherently eschew law. Entering an altered mental state for battle doesn't seem like it should have anything to do with it.

I like kung fu movies, and they're just absolutely full of hermits and rebellious, contrarian students, basically all kinds of characters willing to spit at law, tradition, and hierarchy, and they seem perfectly able to learn kung fu. Again, not sure why Monks would have to be Lawful. Maybe they tend to be, as 95+% of them would be required to be in a very structured environment to learn martial arts, but the PCs can be the weird renegade ones.

Druids are... similar to what I just said about Monks, and also Wizards, too, I guess. (They put alignment restrictions on the Druid but never the Wizard? Weird.) Their need for focused, structured, hierarchical study is going to lend itself better to Lawful than Chaotic characters. Again, though, PCs are clearly more likely to be the gifted but eccentric hermit type than usual.

Clerics and Champions should be the people who align morally and philosophically most closely to their diety, or why is the diety entrusting them with divine power? It's very odd that some dieties can't have Champions because their beliefs fall outside a certain range.

The way I always saw it was like Lawful druids felt Good druids kind of anthropomorphize animals too much, ignoring that natural laws and processes are often brutal and uncaring. Like, yes, animals do cooperate and raise their young and stuff, but then they think Good druids read too much into that and will intervene when they shouldn't. While on the other hand, Good druids feel Lawful druids are callous and care more about enforcing the cycles and laws of nature than about the suffering of living things.

Seems a bit iffy, to me. I mean, your character's alignment is only a part of their personality, after all. I'm not sure how one could be a Druid without being aware of the greater cycles and their importance, and the need to sacrifice for their continuation. A Good Druid would go out of their way to minimize harm and suffering, I think, while a Neutral Druid would go about things in the most expedient way, while an Evil Druid would be all about finding ways to subvert the cycles for their own ends. A Lawful Druid might be entirely committed to their traditional methods as the only correct way to practice, a Neutral Druid might be more open to finding more convenient ways in the moment, and a Chaotic Druid might think the traditional methods are stupid and limiting, seeking to create their own method from first principles and constantly improvising.

Video games are single player experiences that can handle the full world changing godlike power well.

Sequential APs that are not just about 1 really powerful character, but around 4 become more challenging with the lore when the end result is gaining power to the level of taking on domains and granting powers. Pretty much their entire story, including what happens to these god-beings after the AP needs to be pretty well contained in the adventure or with a couple paragraphs post script.

Yes every AP has this to a minor extent, but killing gods and replacing them in the lore is a very big deal. In parts of the setting left very open ended it is certainly possible, but probably at the cost of not going back to those settings again afterwards, at least not anytime soon.

Sure being bloodlords of Geb feels like a big deal in the campaign, but the campaign ends and Geb is till there with various blood lords and factions of blood lords that are very powerful. When APs return near the river kingdoms for example, THE kingmaker kingdom is pretty much a never return site. There is just too many open ended questions for that to be satisfying. They can go close, but not into the heart of it again. When Age of Ashes does it with Kintargo, for example, it works because the heroes are gone and they were more of a shadowy group to begin with, not making big fundamental choices about the future direction of the city.

Mythic campaigns in a setting are either completely destroy the foundation of that setting and have the characters disappear, or never go back adventures. Maybe the island of Iblydos works for that, but I’d rather not see that happen to any large part of Vudra or Arcadia, not before we really get to spend some time there.

TTRPGs are vastly more flexible than any kind of scripted video game. If the players tell me they want to build a castle, or tear one down, and they put in the work, I can describe the consequences, make a note of it, and move on, easily referring back to those notes should the need arise. This is true even if the group is five or six players. If the change is bigger than that - say, achieving divinity - then the only way a video game could handle that is to tell a story, which is also a thing we can do here.

The only way to interpret your objections that kind of makes sense is to assume that any APs put out are assumed canon, that some group of PCs has done the thing, and as a result, any release of a mythic AP would completely upend the setting. That may well be true, I don't know, but you're Not Even Wrong. You're conflating Mythic APs and Mythic rules for players to use in their home games. If it's not even true, then... what does it matter how much my group at my table changes the setting? Actually, do existing APs that end at level 20 not conclusively deal with existing threats, make a real difference in the setting, or otherwise change the status quo? Because that would be kind of upsetting, if true.

My personal issue with “mythic” = assent to divinity as an adventure narrative is that it is just not multi-player and it doesn’t work well with creating a stable lore for the setting. I can understand the appeal of writing such stories for yourself, but playing them out in an existing RPG with out essentially turning the whole game into a story about the rise of 4 new gods in the setting, and how much that breaks that game from really ever re-entering the Golarion Universe.

Maybe eventual it exists as a supplement for people to homebrew their very own campaigns, but even Wrath of the Righteous has to canonically end with these heroes completely disappearing from the setting. So the campaign is you get to be a new group of gods who exist maybe for a month to a year of two, maybe, and disappear forever from the setting? It is really hard to see that as a fun collaborative adventure and not just an individual exercise in world building.

I can understand folks looking for it as a post script send off, past the end of another AP, but that feels way more like something that fits in the “Beyond the campaign” section of an AP to me. Maybe someone could write post script, level 20+ send offs for existing APs that give players world shaping endings to their stories, but I don’t think that could ever really work into official cannon. It would be here’s your spin off ending for a “what if” universe.

Except that this mentality means that PCs can never accomplish anything meaningful in your games, because future books won't mention them, and that's an awful way to play a heroic fantasy RPG of any kind, let alone a "mythic" one.

Whatever setting you're playing in, the one at your table is a unique instance. Unless the people at your table have PhDs in, say, Golarion history, for example, it probably won't start perfectly lore accurate anyway, and the impact of any future canon releases is even more optional than the details of existing lore. If your PCs had a memorable experience changing the setting, that's awesome, and in no way invalidated by the existence of a canon. You're building a cooperative roleplaying adventure experience, not an officially licensed diorama of an existing story.

After that campaign is over, you can wipe the board and start over, or you can continue on in your cooperatively developed customized setting, and that's a feature, not a bug.

I can boot up my copy of Skyrim right now, start a new game, and despite millions of people already having completed the story, I will play through the same story they did, not some apocalyptic waste left by millions of Dragonborn before me, and when I turn it off, other people's story won't be changed by my progress.

More on the topic of "level tiers/expectations and how the system needs to emphasize that, because as it is right now, there is still nothing official really to differentiate that.

And this is a very pertinent problem. I mean, if you were to tell me a bunch of medieval people with swords and bows could take on troops worth of WW1 era modernized armies (empowered with magic and undead no less), I would have laughed. Yet that's exactly what happens in Reign of Winter 5. Ditto for medieval people taking on organized high-tech resistance that greatly outnumbers them-- but that's exactly what happens in the Numeria AP.

What I am saying is, the need for improvement starts way before "mythic".

Of course. Because before we can introduce improbable feats of fantastic heroism into the system, we need to eradicate improbable feats of fantastic heroism from the system.

As much as I hate to defend 4e, at least 4e made it clear that certain "tiers" had different expectations.

4E was an odd, transitional, experimental kind of game, and while it made a lot of missteps, it had a lot of interesting, useful, and fun ideas that I feel should have been further examined. Minions, for example - great little tool - but also, and more relevant to this discussion, the tiers. Every ten levels, you reached a milestone where you gained a template of abilities representing a level of excellence that you had achieved, and the threats and challenges you faced would increase accordingly. Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies could feel awesome and significant, if (as always) handled correctly.

Meanwhile, PF and I would argue current D&D is locked in this bizarre situation where the game can't make up its mind whether its supposed to be a gritty medieval game or a high sci-fantasy game, and the expectations and system as a whole suffer for it.

Agreed. If you look at the fundamental assumptions of the system, it's clearly supposed to be high fantasy, but some settings and rules constructs try to drag it back toward grit. I think a major turning point in the underlying assumptions in the wider gaming community was when they decided to make Greyhawk the core setting for 3.0 - a decidedly more gritty setting than the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or anything else going on in the game at the time. I don't think the assumptions about the game have really recovered. These games are about small groups of adventurers battling dragons, demigods, primordial psychic horrors from under the sea, psychic brain-eating-octopi from the end of time, and magic floating megalomaniacal eye-monsters, using steel, spell, song, and the blessings of the gods to both attack and to avoid/undo consequences - with possibly some sci-fi thrown in. As high fantasy as can be. Trying to also make allowances for grittiness seems to be working at cross purposes.

I think "mythic" is a setting and storytelling concept, more than it is a rules adjustment. If there could be an adjustment we could make to the rules to encourage a more fantastical feeling, that would be great, but I'm unconvinced that it would be practical to do that and still be playing the same game. If it was a suite of storytelling tools at lower levels, and then a purpose-built extension of the system for beyond level 20... that could work, I think.

And what type of armor does this 18 Dex wrestler wear to start?

Leather to start, and then switch to an Explorer's Outfit once your Dex reaches 20.

To me, the base power level of the drow is the most obnoxious, least appealing aspect of the race. Losing that element and getting a balanced ancestry for playing them would be great.

I'm wondering if they need to be a full ancestry, or if it could be some variation on a heritage that you could keep even if you added a versatile heritage on top. Unless... how about a general feat that let you pick a second heritage and a racial feat for it? Too much?

To me, Mythic should exist to keep a feeling of progression past 20, to prevent the game from feeling "over" while you enjoy playing a level 20 character. The rewards should feel worthwhile, desired by someone at level 20, without throwing balance out the window. Growth might tend toward the broad, rather than deep. Interesting and powerful combos should be available, but higher numbers for the sake of higher numbers would be boring, and toppling the action economy should absolutely be avoided.

Basically, you want something to keep playing for an adventure or two at level 20, but not something so iconic and character defining that you have to keep playing even more to experience the joy of THAT.

There's an old joke in Math that economics is the science of applying mathematical models in those situations where they do not apply. It's basically a systematized way to ignore contradictory evidence.

Which is funny, because there is another old joke about governments controlling economies without understanding them.

Someone who uses the law as a means to an end is indeed probably Lawful. An LE villain would still gladly murder someone he doesn't like despite murder being illegal, he would just be able to use some stupid law as a shield.

Further, exploiting loopholes to harm people is very lawful evil. If they actually followed all the rules, they would probably not be evil given that most rules stop bad stuff from happening (ideally). Saying "you didn't follow the rules in the specific way you were supposed to" and then punishing you for it is absolutely a function of using the law as a means to harm and exploit others.

Dnd4e was correct to just make LE and NE one alignment. Ultimately the evil alignments are very similar, because their main goal is "do bad things to others for whatever reason".

I do appreciate that we're just mostly completely ignoring the OP though since his posts are nonsense.

Honestly, if not for it being an artifact of classic D&D for decades, "Law vs Chaos" would be really hard to justify as a concept applying to individuals. The functional difference is "Are you aware of your own personal moral beliefs and priorities, or are you making it up from scratch every time you have to make a decision?" Most people grew up being taught some kind of values and mores, and if they differ from those, they usually have an alternative belief they can articulate. It only becomes relevant at the Evil side, where people start considering burning down the system for their own gain as a lifestyle choice. Even your average wild-eyed revolutionary typically has a higher ideal in mind. "Barbarians" generally have societies with very strict taboos. Organized crime is VERY organized - being Lawful isn't necessarily about following the local laws, because those can shift over time and place, but about adhering to a code of conduct - and almost everyone has one.

Law vs Chaos only makes sense on the level of planes and axiomatic forces.

snipped - relevant part not easily quoted on mobile

... Your response to me is entirely unrelated to anything I said. There are lots of ways to take advantage of a legal system that do not involve posturing and virtue signaling. I'm not actually sure how that interacts significantly or directly with the legal system.

Kaspyr2077 wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I think the basic issue is that there's two extremely distinct kinds of lawful evil. There's "I believe the only desirable end is maximal law, and I don't care if I have to use evil means to get it" and then there's "using the law to oppress people will allow me to promote the most evil."

These are people who should be on the same side, but they absolutely should not trust each other.

You left out "The law is a game. I play to win." It's not about maximization of Evil as an ideology or a faction, but maximizing personal short-term advantage.

I still think it is best to keep them separate.

Lawful means that I think society has to have significant body of law to function effectively. Or perhaps society is best when it has laws.

Evil means I am out for me and mine, I'm more than happy to exploit others to do that. The degree of evil being how far along this spectrum I am willing to go.

Yes Evil is quite happy with laws that it can take advantage of. But it is also happy with no laws.

The intersection of these ideas can be a somewhat useful description of society or person, but they stand alone too.

Team Evil can thrive in anarchy or a very lawful society, sure, but Evil is packaged in individual units, and each evil entity will have inclinations or interests best suited to one or the other. Lawful Evil uses the law to the best advantage of the individual, whether through loopholes, graft, or being part of a tyrannical hierarchy. Chaotic Evil attacks the hierarchy to disable opposition and to loot the ruins.

I think the basic issue is that there's two extremely distinct kinds of lawful evil. There's "I believe the only desirable end is maximal law, and I don't care if I have to use evil means to get it" and then there's "using the law to oppress people will allow me to promote the most evil."

These are people who should be on the same side, but they absolutely should not trust each other.

You left out "The law is a game. I play to win." It's not about maximization of Evil as an ideology or a faction, but maximizing personal short-term advantage.

Errenor wrote:

Yes, but I believe finding loopholes is a very chaotic concept in itself.

Yeah it's one of the ironies of Pathfinder that the bastion of Lawful Evil is, in fact, not particularly Lawful at all.

Hard disagree. I'm all for the "spirit of the law," myself, but unfortunately, law, as created and practiced for centuries, very much involves the gamification, exploitation, and weaponization of the letter of the law. It's hard to even condemn, because you can't legislate how people will read and understand the laws, so things that are "technically" within the law are within the law. Don't like it? Fix the law.

We laypeople say "democracy" to mean any government where a significant portion of the population, such as male landowners, votes on policy or to elect representatives. Thus, we count republics as democracies. I do not remember any large-scale democracies that lack constitutional checks and balances. I have participated in tiny-scale democratic control in hobby-based clubs. All members vote to direct the club. In those, members know that if they vote for indulgence then the club will collapse and we will lose its benefits, so they vote for practicality. On a less tiny scale, churches and clubs run like businesses have bylaws in a charter to limit what the members can decide.

In most Pathfinder campaigns, the PCs don't interact with the government enough to tell a republic from an aristocracy. They might know that...

Yes, obviously, laypeople having a casual conversation tend to get lax on details, even very important ones. That's unfortunate, though, because it creates an environment where you forget to draw important distinctions even when you're attempting a high-level theoretical discussion, like OP.

A republic is NOT a democracy. It has democratic elements, but it is not a democracy in the same sense that a house is not a pile of bricks. They have completely different qualities. Completely different philosophies, completely different merits and flaws, completely different vulnerabilities.

As a Poli Sci guy, I love the examination of how fantasy tropes in a setting interact with real world political models, and I like the chance to learn more about Golarion... but at this point, I'm mostly distressed that the word "republic" appears only once in this thread so far, and that is as a reference to the Roman one and doesn't acknowledge a difference between the concepts.

Democracy is a terrible system. It is mob rule by the largest majority, leaving minorities of any kind as victims. It's insular in the extreme, hypertraditionalist (deviating from local traditions and mores is a great way to ensure you never win a vote, appeals to traditionalism and nationalism have an extreme advantage in any popular vote in a democratic society), incredibly slow to respond to changing conditions, scales beyond the local level terribly without advanced technology... really, true democracy has only one advantage, and that's the lack of true aristocracy... which melts when the de facto aristocracy inevitably arises through faction-building.

The OP loses some points because they appear to be reaching for the idea of the constitutional republic, but never gets there.