Neurophage's page

I just have to finish moving all of Sieghart's stuff from MythWeavers onto the alias, so I should be done tomorrow.

Sieghart's been finalized, I think. He uses standard Gunbreaker gestalted with the Gunstriker Archetype, and combines the Transporter Chocobo Knight with the Tactician Archetype. If anything's wrong with the sheet, be sure to let me know.

There are probably a few more numbers to hammer out in terms of trait bonuses, but here's Sieghart as he is for the time being. I used all the optional systems that applied to him: Hero Points, Moogle in the Room, Revengeance Limits, and Static HP.

Sebecloki wrote:

Sounds like more people want to do gestalt archetypes so we'll do that.

Ok. Do we get a gestalt archetype for each side of the gestalt, or just one per character period? or something else entirely?

I'm wondering the same thing. I'll have to allocate resources differently depending on the answer.

I'm nearly done with chargen (I really just need to buy gear before the sheet's almost ready to be finalized), and this is some of the basic non-mechanics stuff I'm working with.

reroll 1s

This probably won't change much, given how many sixes were in the original set. At most, it'll bump maybe the lowest numbers up a bit.

EDIT: Yeah, the 12th set is still the best one, and I don't see it getting usurped by rerolling any of the rerolled 1s in the other sets. Here's how the final numbers shook out.

6, 6, 6 = 18
6, 6, 5 = 17
6, 5, 5 = 16
6, 4, 4 = 14
6, 4, 4 = 14
6, 3, 3 = 12

There actually is a precedent for something either in the form of magitek armor or smaller personal vehicles or even personal sidearms, but it's vague and would be heavily-dependent on GM approval. A throwaway line in one of the books that Zilargo spent most of the Last War developing elemental weapons through alchemy and elemental binding, and by the end, had sold a bunch of elemental weapons to Breland. What exactly elemental weapons even are was not given any detail, in that book or any. An elemental bound to a weapon could cover anything from a cylinder launching motes of fire to a weaponized elemental vessel. Plus, Eberron often changes rapidly right from its start-date, and there is a largely-unexplored region of the world where the casting of magic is unstable and that a large number of people have a vested interest in exploring, which would eventually necessitate something distinct from Aundairian wands.

This is covered more exactly in Kieth Baker's article on firearms in Eberron, but could probably cover magitek armor.

I think my Gunbreaker's sub job will be either a Rook Gunner or a Transporter Chocobo Knight (he'd have a motorcycle instead of a Chocobo). I imagine him as a Cyran refugee who, at one point, made runs into the Mournlands as part of a team. I'm on the fence of whether or not to make him a bastard of Cannith sporting a Mark of Making.

Chosen Set: Set 12
6, 6, 6 = 18
6, 6, 4 = 16
6, 6, 3 = 15
6, 5, 3 = 14
6, 5, 2 = 13
4, 4, 2 = 10

This guy's going to be a Hume Gunbreaker. Pretty basic, but I like the idea that the aether used in gunblade rounds is distilled from soil, water and minerals gathered from Manifest Zones where the boundary between Eberron and the elemental planes is thin. Sharn was built on one, and there are a few others throughout.

I'd personally prefer Eberron, but I wouldn't be disappointed either way.

lets talk about the exact rules before I post this -- ffd20, I usually do gestalt or half-gestalt. Any preferences? What level?

I like the upper level of low to the lower part of middle for the starting point. Level 5 is usually a good baseline, and it has the benefit of being around when a lot of games peter out. Generally, I find characters lower than level 3 to be too fragile and strapped for resources to make risky decisions feel all that worthwhile.

Maybe this is just me, but when I run games for my home group, I tend to give characters really high ability score allotments (albeit with limitations on how any individual score can be). Then again, I mostly just do it for the sake of reassurance because I like to have the characters split up to simultaneously accomplish multiple objectives and I don't want them to feel so anxious about getting in over their heads that they never take risks.

I'm a big fan of old, abandoned automatons that continue to perform their intended function long after anyone who has any use for them has died. Amusement park animatronics that keep singing and dancing and maintaining their park centuries after the civilization that built them died off and the park itself has become largely inaccessible, or the machines of an automated railway that continue to move their trains on their intended tracks to their intended schedule, even if they haven't seen a customer in centuries. They have no purpose other than to continue their unbroken vigil, possibly believing that someday someone will again make use of the facilities they maintain, until and unless some external force perverts their sacred mission.

Always a fan of that. Whether they're old facilities meant to stockpile magical power, natural confluences of leylines, or anything else, places of power always make for good lore-building.

There's definitely a (possibly in-universe) conversation to be had about the comparative benefits of being mindful of the gods you make versus just not making any at all. Or, possibly, we're god-hunters, shattering the cults of nascent godlings before they can grow to apocalyptic power.

Also, art isn't life. A deific power being forced to behave like a character in a story, especially one from a myth, is probably going to end up doing some messed-up stuff even with the best of intentions.

Is there an equivalent for an investigator? I saw on the forums there was someone doing a conversion.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the Agent of Inquiry archetype of Bard, if it's not a functional rebuild of the Investigator, at least has a lot of its mechanics included in its chassis.

That's one heck of a dungeon. I like it, reminds me of when I first started playing D&D decades ago.

Building lore through Pbp is a good idea. However, a strong story arc would help to hang player's narratives off of. Something like gods emerging out of the elemental energies and worshipper's faith. Or other anchors you might have for your world.

Do you have any story arc planned for your players?

This kind of reminds me of how demons (or daemons, if you prefer) in Shin Megami Tensei and some spiritual entities in Mage: The Ascension work. Formless entities without substance latch onto cultural and mythological figures in order to be able to affect the world (which is really hard to do when your existence is infinitely-boundless), but end up having to take on the traits of those mythological and cultural figures just as a natural consequence of the process, like a liquid conforming to the shape of its container.

Like, something akin to "the gods" were always lurking in the blind eternities beyond space and time, but couldn't do anything unless people invented "containers" for them first.

I'd play either a Sword Saint or Gunbreaker for a setting like that, if FFd20 classes are in play. Crystals in Final Fantasy games can always do some anomalous nonsense or another. Sealing away an empire's chosen survivors beyond time and space until something causes them to re-emerge isn't outside of the realm of possibility.

I personally prefer Khorvaire, on the whole. I feel like Sharn would be very close to a Final Fantasy VI-esque point if the Day of Mourning had arrived even ten years later and more of Cyre's technology had spread.

Yeah. I was in that thread. The Final Fantasy games are, indeed, Japanese RPGs. Something like Eberron with the tech curve pushed a little further up seems like a natural fit for a Final Fantasy-like game.

If the position of Sword Saint is once again unoccupied, I'll probably go for that with Mystic Knight Red Mage as the sub-job.

I'm definitely interested. If someone's already set on Sword Saint, I think I'd be most interested in Gunbreaker.

Echos Myron wrote:

Question: Is there any way of adjusting the quantity of Mech Skills on Comp/Con? I've only got my +2 Systems factored in. Also, are those two +1's explicitly for separate Mech Skills, or can I throw them both in one skill (other than whatever the +2 is in)?

This is actually a mistake on my part. Gonna make it a bigger font size to make sure people don't miss it.

Your starting character gets +2 to one mech skill OR +1 to two different mech skills.

With respect to this, I've revised Lodestar to fit the rules and done away with the cumbersome 80+ MB form-fillable character sheet (though, I will be keeping and updating it on my end because I consider it useful).

Aurelian-11 Kai-Fei reporting. He's the product of a nonzero amount of Smith-Shimano Corpro genetech and military-grade augments, along with some illegal subjectivity-overriding. He's a close-range duelist who specializes in closing distance and hitting things with swords. My intention was to use the SSC Atlas from The Long Rim as his main frame once we start gaining License Levels, but if that's not going to fly, I've got a backup that doesn't use anything from The Long Rim.

Give a holler if there's any trouble viewing the sheet.

That'd do it. While the setting chapter was excised from the free version of the core book, it's still intact (and mostly unchanged) in the playtest document, which the devs still keep available, free of charge, if you know where to look (by which I mean that their Google Drive was the first result when I searched "Lancer Pre-Release"). I had not meant to come off as unduly harsh. As an indie RPG whose development is headed by open socialists, Lancer tends provoke knee-jerk reactions from people who argue in bad faith. I made a hasty assumption and I'm sorry.

Excuse me, but that's top secret information.

I will actively apologize. I had assumed basically everyone read the setting chapter. It isn't really intended that players keep their eyes off it, but I understand if it's a part someone wanted to keep secret from the players. It is also totally a secret in-universe.

Neurophage wrote:

They are, even in their most benign form, the very kind of coercive hierarchy, the very kind of state, that communists want abolished

So they're like a Monarchy? (Isn't that what Communists hate?)

Neurophage wrote:

It takes, like, five minutes at most to look this up

Where is that?

It's not for me to say, and I already overstepped by bringing it up at all. There's a lot of good stuff about Union today and in the past in the section on the Third Committee in the setting chapter of the core book. The long and short of it is that thinking of Union as "communistic" is probably an overestimation of their own progress. Union has a centralized leadership within Cradle, and it has an uneasy relationship with imperialists and corporate states that span entire star clusters. Plenty of people across the galaxy see Union's Third Committee as being exactly as imperialistic as Second Committee, only preferring soft power to hard power, and there are plenty of very convincing arguments to be made for or against this. Union making economic sanctions against less-prosperous multi-planet empires in order to essentially starve them into compliance sounds more peaceful and less jingoistic than just sending an invasion fleet and killing all local leadership, but it must be remembered that it's the poor who suffer when the rich wage war, even if it's a trade war. It's hard to argue that people shouldn't be angry that the galactic superpower outsiders made them ration food for forty years, especially if it was just to force their society to enter into a galaxy-wide community with which none of them will ever personally interact.

Union wants, someday, for everyone in the galaxy to have their material needs met and never fear being forced into bondage or having their dignity and personhood rejected by the hammer of state violence, but they need desperately to resolve troubles in their own house first. And the longer they wait, the more their doctrine of universal prosperity looks like a grift.

I know the campaign is set up to show that the Communist Union is Perfect. Perfection is a road, not a destination. Nothing perfect can exist in reality. Knowing this, and knowing history and human nature, It must be a façade.

I guess, I'm hoping that you allow cracks in the façade for my character to exploit and hurt the Union.

EDIT:

Blackmailing Union officials, might be a good place to start

No it isn't. The Third Committee is an experiment. It doesn't present itself as "perfect." It presents itself as "different from Second Committee, who were monsters." Third Committee-era Union doesn't have an ulterior motive and its leadership is genuine in its pursuit of First Committee's three pillars, but it's hardly perfect. Already, they are in a less-than-ideal compromise with the major mech manufacturers, including the very anthrochauvanist Harrison Armory, which does not even begin to describe what a raw deal their thing with the Karrakin Trade Baronies is. Already, they are juggling, like, three different ideas of what they want the future to look like and billions of people across the Orion Arm are dying while they struggle to find an answer. Already, they're trying to figure out what keeping track of a civilization the size of an appreciable portion of an entire galaxy will even look like. The logistics alone are orders of magnitude above what any person can even begin to conceptualize.

There are good, legitimate reasons to oppose Union. They loudly intervene into conflicts that aren't really any of their business. They take their marching orders from a giant moon computer that already spat out one handful of gods from one of its simulations and they still think keeping the damn thing on is a good idea. They are, even in their most benign form, the very kind of coercive hierarchy, the very kind of state, that communists want abolished (they're also the kind of state the socialists like Orwell warned about: those that use the aesthetics of socialist revolution without adopting anarchist praxis). Most of all, they're just too big. It is not possible to cleanly administrate a single civilization of that size. Something, somewhere, will eventually get lost or overlooked, probably with disastrous results. It takes, like, five minutes at most to look this up and come up with a more coherent reason to oppose them than "communism bad."

Keychain of Creation back when it was still being updated. Exalted hasn't had a lot of visibility in the tabletop scene, and having a webcomic so perfectly about what Exalted is (or was during, late second edition) about was a real treat.

So, Index III is really bad, and I think it's really weird that it's really bad, but it's also not all that difficult to understand why it's really bad.

Index III is doing this thing where J.C. Staff are absolutely hell-bent on spending no more than three episodes per book of the novel, no matter how badly doing so messes with the pacing of the show. I could understand doing that for volume 14 because nothing really happened in it besides a boring antagonist that no one liked (Terra) dying and Accelerator blowing things up in France. And I guess Itsuwa was also there. But it doesn't make any sense to put so little effort into doing a good job with the first arc of the new season. Index II was eight years ago. That's a really long time for fans of the series to have to wait and J.C. Staff couldn't project any harder just how much they want to speed through the source material so they can make something that makes money instead. Volume 15, while largely self-contained, has the most going on it out of any single book in the entire series. It's starting to show the cracks in Academy City as well as the beginning of GROUP breaking free of the Board of Directors's control. And almost everything of relevance to that arc except the fights was cut out (and even the fights were made pretty underwhelming). And volume 16. Oh my god. If any arc of the series deserved to be at least four episodes, it was Rules of Nature. Doing the whole Acqua fight in only three episodes is nothing short of a tragedy. In any just universe, the British Magic Civil War arc would be the major conflict taking up the majority of the second cour of a 24-episode season. The end of the Old Testament saga of the novel series deserves to be its own 24-episode season, not hastily
crammed into the last third of one.

So, Index III is bad largely because of its pacing. But pacing problems have been part of the Index anime from the very beginning. Remember ten years ago in season 1, when J.C. Staff spent six episodes adapting volume 1, one more episode that went into adapting the Sisters Arc where they introduced Accelerator? Or when they cut out subplots from volumes 2 and 4, one of the three stories from volume 5 (all of which were decisions I ultimately agree with), and then hastily shoved that story into the beginning of season 2 (which I completely disagree with)? Or hen they put the adaptation of SS1 at the end of season 2 instead of making the better decision of putting it at the beginning of season 3? Or how about how both seasons of Railgun are half a meandering adaptation of an arc of the manga with a bunch of filler, with the second half being original content that's worse than what came before it?

So, yeah, Raildexverse anime have pacing problems, but usually those pacing problems involve spending too many episodes on some material, not too few. In the end, Index and Railgun are still J.C. Staff anime, so I can't say I hadn't set my expectations fairly low. But to fall below even those low expectations is just... disappointing.

The Artificer is one of the most complicated classes in d20. By far, the Artificer's most important class feature is Craft Reserve. In 3.5, crafting a magic item requires an expenditure of XP. Craft Reserve is a pool of points the Artificer spends instead of or in addition to XP to craft items. Points of Craft Reserve are not carried over between levels. If you don't use them, you lose them. Don't worry about taking Item Creation feats. The Artificer gains them automatically. Item Creation lets you craft an item if you don't know the spells it requires to craft it, so long as you make a fairly easy Use Magic Device check. Artificer Knowledge, Artisan Bonus and Disable Trap are pretty self-explanatory in terms of what they do.

Level 5 is the game-changer for Artificers, because of Retain Essence. Retain Essence lets you take a magic item, break it down and add the XP used to craft that item to your Craft Reserve. What this means is that every single magic item in the entire game is useful to an Artificer. This completely breaks the clause on Craft Reserve about points not carrying over between levels. To the Artificer, every magic item is a battery for storing Craft Reserve. The party no longer sells magic items they don't need anymore. Just give them to the Artificer and let them turn the obsolete junk into something new.

Your key responsibility as an Artificer is to jack your Use Magic Device bonus as high as you possibly can. It is the end-all be-all.

So long as some people are talking examples, I have one.

One of my favorite evil characters I've ever played was an Infernal Pact Warlock in 4E. His whole thing was that he was the scion of a noble family in a country whose entire noble class and royal family had made bargains with Hell. In exchange for bargaining with devils that their lives would be cut short and their souls claimed by Hell, they received enough magical power to turn their country into a paradise. The people of his country, even the commoners, enjoyed a higher standard of living than almost anywhere else in the setting, all at the cost of the lives and souls of whatever creatures the nobility cursed in order to extend their own lives (that was part of the bargain. Your devil caseworker can and will kill you the moment your time is up, but you can extend your time by laying curses on other creatures, which damns their souls to the Pit when they die).

This guy was arrogant, absolutely convinced of his own superiority and more than willing to give each and every one of his enemies to the devils, not just to keep himself alive, but also because he'd made a deal with his contracted devil to help her advance in the infernal hierarchy in exchange for even more power should she succeed (this was how I represented his Hellbringer Paragon Path and Prince of Hell Epic Destiny). He was also intensely loyal to his party members. As far as he was concerned, there was an "in" group and an "out" group. All of his horrible magical power was for the sake of supporting his friends and countrymen (which is to say, the "in" group), as well as for destroying anyone who got in their way (which is to say, the "out" group). When he served someone, he made them a king so long as their ambition was genuine. When he served alongside someone, he conspired to make their work effortless so long as their efforts were stout-hearted. When someone served him, be basked them in marvels and riches so long as their service was to his standards. He was leal servant, dark confidante and uncompromising-but-rewarding taskmaster.

Was he evil? Only if you consider making pacts with devils, sacrificing your enemies to those devils and supporting an empire that does the same on a mass scale evil. But just because you're an unstoppable force of evil on a quest to become a Lord of Hell and turn your imperial capital into paradise on Earth doesn't mean you have to be a jerk about it.

He was even a member of a mostly-good party. And why not? Good people on a journey tend to fight bad people, and bad people tend to not only have a lot of good stuff, but are also usually bound for Hell already, which just makes the whole process so much smoother. As far as he was concerned, if you're going to sacrifice people's souls to the Pit, you might as well do it to other bad people. The party's already murdering those bad people, and they're evil people so they're probably headed for Hell anyway, so does it really make any difference if it just happen to have this warlock's devil patron's name attached to it? The good people get to beat up the bad people and the scheming devil-worshiper who works with them gets what he wants, too. Everyone wins.

False King Allant from Demon Souls. Every time he hits you with his unblockable grab attack, you lose a level.

Dire Ursus wrote:

Why not just house rule your own weaknesses then? I'm pretty sure that no GM would ever say you CAN'T be unoptimized. Start with crappier ability scores. What's really stopping you?

Oberroni Fallacy, 10 yard penalty.

Just because the GM can fix it doesn't mean it wasn't broken in the first place.

You can't call something "broken" for failing at something it wasn't trying to do in the first place.

I can't believe this complaint even exist. Wizards get spells, which are better than skills in basically every way to the extent that their limited uses don't make up for it. They also main Intelligence, which means they're already getting a pile of bonus skills. Wizards don't need any more help.

I thing that this will give too much power to higher level characters over lower level encounters.

It's a feature, not a bug. Lower level encounters should be trivial to higher level characters, and quickly so.

the +1 per level needs to go ASAP.

flatten it down to +1 per 4 or 5 levels.

And remove it from AC.

No and double no.

Because higher-level people aren't normal.

Let me revise: am I the only one here who actually likes +level to all skills?

Am I the only one who actually likes +level to skills?

Whatever. I love it. Hell yeah. Craft all the things.

Agreed. At the very least, every character should get to just choose a skill off-list as a Signature Skill. It would be one thing if you just couldn't get Legendary except from your Signature Skills, but being unable to even Master non-Signatures is just killer.

Signature Skills feel wonky to me, too. At the very least, I'd like to see every class get get to pick one skill from off-list to be a Signature Skill. The big breaking point for me there is rituals. As much as I love the idea that you don't have to be able to cast spells to use rituals, the way the Signature Skill lists work functionally locks Fighters, Barbarians and Rogues from ever using them.

It was explained to me that the Character Wealth per Level table listed the total value of your gear plus your money, and your character wasn't supposed to have more. Also, that I had to discard the extra gold/items if it did.

You were lied to.

Da Rules wrote:

Table: Character Wealth by Level lists the amount of treasure each PC is expected to have at a specific level. Note that this table assumes a standard fantasy game. Low-fantasy games might award only half this value, while high-fantasy games might double the value. It is assumed that some of this treasure is consumed in the course of an adventure (such as potions and scrolls), and that some of the less useful items are sold for half value so more useful gear can be purchased.

Boojum

"Expected" is the operative word. Most adventure paths are also expected to have 5 PCs at 15 point-buy, but I've never done that before, either. A party that exceeds wealth by level is obviously going to be punching above their weight class, but so is a party whose ability score point-buy totals out to 55. And yet that's the array I give my players. Wealth by level, like the ability score generation rules, was always intended to be a loose measuring stick rather than a hard-and-fast rule.

Sorry, I'm and old fogey and I am having an "everything was better in the good old days" moment. Has anyone noticed that the life of adventurers seem to get grimmer and grimmer as more versions come out? As in, everything that makes life living for a person seems to be getting stripped out and actively discouraged.

When was the last time one of your characters attended a birthday party for their niece? Or their sister? Or HAD a birthday party? Do your character actually have a family written in, much less visit and say hello? Did your non-bard learn to play the guitar because it was fun? OH noo, don't play a non-optimized character or everyone will die! No family, no home, no life other than the daily grind of kill things, get healed, kill things.

This is an adaptation to defend against a particular problem behavior epidemic among GMs. What's point in investing time and effort into giving my character a family if their first actual appearance just has them be murdered for cheap drama? They never understand that it's not engaging or interesting. It's just disheartening. Like, why did I waste all that time in the first place? Sure, you can tell your GM that your character's family is off-limits, but how often does that work?

Now, a new version is coming out. To prevent combat abuses, lets have resonance on magic items so you can only use/have so many. Ok.. so no magic items just for fun? The magic cat who I can play with 3 times a day now costs a resonance point each time I play with it? My character has 50,000 gold pieces, and is homeless. My character has gems and jewelry, but no wife/husband/children to support. Look, I'm rich, but I have no parents to send money to so that they do not loose the farm because they had a bad year.

As a GM, I would probably rule that a magic item that does literally nothing wouldn't cost resonance. If you want a house, a family, then fine by me. If you want to invest in them, then good. You'll be rewarded commiserate to your investment, because that's how I like to do things.

"Wait!" People answer. "But that's just roleplaying! You don't need rules for that.. You can just mail off the money! You can just pretend you have a husband who needs support!"

Exactly my point. The games seem to be getting designed to discourage roleplay in favor of being, almost, a first person shooter. You will be given rules on crafting that no one can make a living at... lest some adventurer get a combat advantage from crafting. You will have a maximum cost of gear you can own... so that no one can buy their way to power... but now you can't dress in silks and satins because that all counts towards your maximum cost.. and heaven forbid if they add the cost of the home you purchased in town.

There has never been, and likely will never be, a maximum cost of gear you can own. Maybe the culture of the boards is distorting your view of how people play, but the people on the internet generally want to discuss mechanics because mechanics are objective. They're an easy place to establish common ground between people who may otherwise have wildly different experiences. Personally, I always run well ahead of wealth-by-level, but a lot of that extra is in intangibles: property, convenience, clothes and art, expensive rare books and chess sets, houses and castles, things that are not easily liquidated, sometimes not easily transported, but exist to add richness to the world and help the party be of prominence. I can't speak to anyone else's GMing style, but I can't imagine it's all that uncommon to give PCs a little something extra once their level-appropriate adventuring needs have been taken care of. And crafting has never provided a livable wage in d20, because the game's money system wasn't built on the assumption that normal people use it. If it were, then some prices would be way higher than they are in PF, and some would be way lower. It was build with the idea that player characters, the kinds of people who go through magic swords, potions and spell scrolls like toothpicks, cheap beer and toilet paper, would be the people making use of it. I don't think it discourages roleplaying. It just leaves it up the party.

I understand the desire to power balance characters, but I am starting to feel burned out on the new gaming systems stripped down characters who all start feeling the same. Different characters come from different lives for the character. Without the roleplaying aspects every character becomes highly optimized for whatever roles they will have, and then adventures will be designed so that if you are not highly optimized, you die.

Sorry, that was my rant moment. I know not everyone agrees with my view of rpgs. I would just really like to see more R built into the new rpgs coming out, including PathFinder 2nd edition.

Boojum

So, maybe this is just me, but the burden of the RP side of RPG has always been on the players, at least with respect to d20. The system has never done all that much to encourage it. Maybe it's done what it could to not get in the way (personally, I disagree with this. There's been some level of obstruction in nearly every edition I've had the chance to read), but almost all encouragement thereof has been at the level of the individual table, not at the level of the system.

Item level has me a bit squeamish. I wasn't a fan of how it worked in SF.

Bardess wrote:

MuddyVolcano wrote:

The Chaos Codes submitted by and large? Strike me as very, very NG because things appear to be blurring into one another. That is:

* Focusing on one element of L & C, rather than multiples
* Focusing on preferred traits, ...as though this concept of mercy or humility is only a Chaotic trait.

This overall just furthers the idea tha perhaps the L-C axis shouldn't be part of PF in the future, as "things I identify with or prefer over the other" seem more closely ascribed to it, and in that vein things become overly squishy. This isn't meant as an insult--it's a respectful concern that has been buzzing about for some time, and I hope it will be seen in that vein.

Maybe we should just say that a paladin is any good, and most of them can follow the same code, regardless their position on the L-C axis.

Then, lawful gods will stress some particular rules, and chaotic gods some others.

I've been championing that idea for a while now.

Same, save for gods.

I don't even think Chaos necessarily has a problem imposing their will on people, because Chaos doesn't shy away from conflict. If you shove enough people with loud, passionate personalities into the same place, sooner or later someone will have a problem with someone else. Even fighting is, in a narrative sense, a conflict born of two groups of people trying to impose their will on each other. So what? It happens. Conflict, once resolved, brings about change, and change is part of Chaos's bag. Nobody's perfect, so everyone always has the potential to change for the better. So, a paragon of Chaotic Good wouldn't so much avoid conflicting with someone else's will or freedom (while asserting their own will and freedom, naturally) as they would try to turn as many conflicts as they could into engines of positive change.

So, with regard to how Chaotic Good interacts with societies and laws, I'd like to bring up something from Eberron: the nation of Breland and its Chaotic Good king, Boranel. King Boranel, believing in the people's right to independence and autonomy, gave the legislative duties to a democratically-elected parliament, who revised the Galifar Code of Justice and made it the nation's constitution, making Breland the continent of Khorvaire's first constitutional monarchy (of course, it wouldn't be a fantasy constitutional monarchy without a Lawful Evil Prime Minister). The Brelish seriously value their great political experiment, as it allows local laws to be voted upon by public assembly and anyone with enough support to be voted into parliament. They are a people who believe that no man is born superior to any other, than different is just different, and that anything can change. Your average Brelish is Chaotic Good, but they're accepting of most other creeds and attitudes, so long as those attitudes don't infringe upon the autonomy of others.

So, yeah. Chaotic Good can totally support nation-building and even laws, so long as those nations and laws foster the independence, free thought and autonomy of the people.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

It would include an externally imposed Code. But who says that Paladin Codes are externally imposed? I've always gotten the distinct impression they were something that the Paladin sought out or possibly even came up with themselves.

One obvious version is for anyone who abides by a certain Code perfectly develops Paladin powers. That's always been my impression of one way Paladins happen: Someone is just so Good and Righteous that they start channeling the power of Goodness itself and becomes a Paladin.

It's interesting how paladin codes work, and how they're developed. Your interpretation is certainly a valid one, but mechanically, there's nothing that immediately springs to mind as to "spontaneous" (for lack of a better word at the moment) paladinhood. They're pretty much all tied to gods, if memory serves. Sure, you could do all the things that would allow you to become a paladin of Abadar, and then Abadar smiles down upon you and you're a paladin. But, that god-tie still exists.

Outside of examples entirely specific to Golarion, there also isn't anything mechanical that contradicts it. It's certainly always been my interpretation that paladin codes are internally-enforced, and I've never encountered any resistance to the notion until extremely recently.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Believing in one's own Code of behavior is totally a valid way to be a Paladin in PF1. And if Chaos were really as against following anyone else's dictates as you imply here, Chaotic Clerics couldn't exist.

That's not necessarily true. Clerics aren't held to the same standards that paladins are (for some inexplicable reason). Plus, there isn't a strict set of behavioural guidelines for clerics either (again, for some inexplicable reason). For some reason, if you want to be a priest and spread the gospel of Bob, Bob doesn't care overmuch about how you act when you're wearing his robes, but if you want to smite that demon, Bob's all up in your business about what you did with that prisoner you were holding last week. It's one of the reasons that I'm glad that they're introducing the anathema mechanic in PF2. However, Bob cares (again, for some inexplicable reason) more about the power he grants to smite evil than he does about the power he gives away to cast goodberry.

Discussion of clerics is kind of out of the wheelhouse, so I'm not going to touch that one.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Chaos is not inherently against every possible restriction anyone could ever impose, not on a human scale anyway. A CG person, for example, is pretty okay with laws against torture and slavery existing. Someone Chaotic will want as few rules as possible in order to achieve the end of disallowing torture or slavery, but they aren't inherently against the idea of such rules existing.

You're right. Chaos isn't inherently against every possible restriction anyone could ever impose (on a human scale). They're still against those restrictions applying to "me" (the chaotic character). I apologize for getting political for a moment (and I'm not trying to bring politics into it, but just to use a convenient example), it's a very "libertarian" point of view. I don't like those rules, so they shouldn't apply to me, and you can't make me follow them. There's a bit of conflation of "good" spreading over into chaos. Sure, the chaotic good person would be against laws allowing torture and slavery, but the chaotic neutral person wouldn't necessarily be, and the chaotic evil person would be glad that torture and slavery happen without regard to the legality of it. It's more a concern for good over chaos.

Chaotic characters are not children. They understand the nature of personal responsibility. In fact, it's part of their thing. Owning yourself means owning your actions. If what you (a Chaotic character) does makes someone mad, it's their right to be mad at you. If it makes the police mad, then it's similarly their right to be mad at you. When people break laws, the consequence is that those people get arrested (so long as they're caught). Chaotic characters might not let rules and restrictions get in their way, but they understand that what they do has fallout, and some of that fallout might be related to rules and restrictions.

Different Chaotic characters interpret this differently. One Chaotic Good character might peacefully surrender to arrest in a Good-aligned society because they understand that it's just the consequence of breaking laws. Even if what you did was Good, it wasn't permitted. Getting busted is just the cost of doing business. Another might decide that if you manage to catch him, then getting thrown in the slammer is fair game. Until they catch you, you're a free man. But once they do catch you, then you have to accept the consequences of your actions. Another still might accept long-term cosmic-level consequences, but not short-term ones. Evade the cops, break out of prison and skip town. You'll get yours when the time comes and they balance the scales, but until then, nothing ties you down except your own sense of morality.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I actually went into that in my previous post responding to you. It comes down to someone philosophically devoted to the ideal of freedom being willing to give up a small amount of personal freedom to safeguard the freedom of others. Good is partially about a willingness to engage in self sacrifice, after all, irrespective of its ties to Law or Chaos.

For someone truly CG, rather than simply CN, the freedom of others is more important to them than their own freedom (or at the very least the freedom of others is more important than the small amount of freedom the Paladin Code causes them to give up).

That would certainly hold true... If the law-chaos axis was more suggestion than ethos. I see the "lawful" or "chaotic" part of the axis as bearing equal weight to the "good" or "evil" part of the axis. Your interpretation seems to prioritize good over chaos. In an equivalent manner, the chaotic character might not be willing to give up any freedoms and seek alternative means of achieving a "good" outcome. It's a valid form of play. I see no issue with "good" working within the context of a code; that part we seem to agree upon. So, let's leave the good/evil out of the discussion, because it's not the salient factor. The chaotic character is all about personal freedom (full stop). Personal freedom is not congruent with the concept that one must follow a code of behavior at all times.

Bolding for emphasis by me.

The extent to which a given character prioritizes the ethical portion of their alignment with respect to the moral portion is entirely up to the player. But I want to focus on the portion I bolded there. As I've expressed previously, I don't see Chaotic as being all about personal freedom. I see them as being all about agency, self-ownership, self-determination. It's easy to conflate that with full-stop personal freedom, but like I said, Chaotic characters understand that actions have consequences. They're not children. They know that being without external control also means being without external protection, and they accept it and everything that comes with it. So, they instead have internal control. Their best qualities are theirs to express, however they see fit. So, to that end, a Chaotic character could certainly follow a code of behavior, but only because see the tenets of that code as part of who they are. They're never going to use that code as an excuse for doing or not doing something, because that isn't Chaotic. If they do something, and someone asks why, they'll say that it's because that's who they are. If they don't do something and someone asks why, they'll say it's because they wouldn't have been able to live with themselves if they did. The reason they'll live by their code and resist breaking it isn't because they need order and stability in their life. It's because they looked inside of themselves and realized the code was what was written in their heart, and breaking it would send them into an identity crisis of self-loathing and existential angst. Their oath is part of who they are. If they break their oath, when they betray themselves, their heart breaks too.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This assumes, once again, that Chaotic characters object to all rules (which I still think is an exaggeration), and that the code is externally imposed (which I wouldn't assume).

I also think it's an exaggeration (and a misrepresentation of my position on this issue). Chaotic characters object to having to follow rules because rules exist, not because the intended outcome of the rule is something they wouldn't choose to do anyway. As to your other point, when "god" says, "thou shalt" or "thou shalt not" in exchange for power, it's an externally imposed ruleset. If the power comes from within, and has nothing to do with any deity or their rules, that's something different than a paladin (holy warrior devoted to a deity). That's a design space that has a lot of potential that doesn't really work well if you try to shoehorn it into the design space of "paladin".

I'm going to paraphrase the only intelligent thing any Assassin's Creed game has ever said, from Revelations and with respect to the latter half of the code "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." To say that "everything is permitted" means that we must be the shepherds of our own societies and fates, and accept whatever consequences come of our actions, be they glorious or tragic. We can't hold out our laws and orders and use them as excuses for action or inaction, because the choice or whether or not to act ultimately comes down to us. Chaos doesn't object to rules (at least, not inherently). They just don't see the value in using rules as an excuse or justification for anything, because people themselves are ultimately the arbiters of what they do. A law doesn't stop you from acting. You stop you from acting. A law doesn't compel you to act. You compel you to act. That is Chaos.

If a Chaotic character's god said "Thou shalt" and they wanted to do it anyway, then they'd still do it. If the god said "Thou shalt not" and they already weren't going to do it, they'd wonder why the god's wasting their breath. You see the paladin as "holy warrior devoted to a deity," and I think it's a shame that Paizo seems to see it that way as well, because I've never seen it that way. I've always seen paladins as oathsworn heroes empowered by their devotion to a cause bigger than themselves. They draw their power from a light within, a light that exists inside of every good heart (if only they knew it themselves), a cosmic force of good that is divine in equal measure to the gods, but is simultaneously part of them and separate from them. The light cannot abandon a paladin. When a paladin falls, it's the paladin losing sight of the light, and only atonement allows them the perspective to forgive themselves. I've never gotten any pushback for that interpretation before. It's always been a valid interpretation of the paladin. It's totally the paladin's design space. It's just that the design space has recently become artificially limited, and I don't think I stand alone in hoping that fake restriction gets removed.

Best wishes!

You as well.

Evan Tarlton wrote:

Kudaku wrote:

One thing just occured to me. If we assume that CG paladins follow the same tenets as LG paladins in regards to deity worship (worship a deity within one step of your own alignment) it would mean that we could have both LG and CG paladins of a NG god like Sarenrae or Shelyn. Two groups that both seek to advance the same causes and reach the same goals but do so using radically different approaches, potentially butting heads in the process. I think that could be a springboard for some really interesting adventures!

This is one of the things that most intrigues me about the possibility of a CG paladin. We can see how a paladin might conflict with a CG cleric of either goddess, but a conflict between paladins would have a very different feel.

I'm actually playing around with a short adventure based around this now!

A small LG country in the River Kingdoms where the color purple is reserved for royalty and his personal guard as a memento of a long-dead king, and it's a crime to wear or use the color without cause. Since the king is a popular historical figure and an anchoring point for the tiny kingdom's sense of self the more recent government, eager to promote their patriotism, have been expanding the law to also include magenta and violet. Some radical politicians even call for the ban of blue and red, since they're the primary colors that form purple. LG Paladins of Shelyn respect this law as best they can so they make a point of not using the prohibited colors in their public art pieces, remove purple dye when they hand out free paint kits on feast days etc. On the other hand CG Paladins of Shelyn find the law ridiculous and needlessly oppressive and see no point in limiting the expression of their art, so they flat out ignore it.

Local governance puts pressure on the church of Shelyn to straighten things out, who are caught between a rock and a hard place. They turn to the PCs - in a conflict where both sides are Good with a capital G and oathbound not to back down, how can they resolve the conflict?

The color thing is a bit silly and I'll probably swap it to something a bit more relevant (depicting a holy person? Reclaiming a controversial symbol?) but I think it has some potential. :)

Conflict over depictions of a holy person has a particularly-fun solution: non-iconic art. A good number of religions around the world admonish depicting the gods in their art, believing that art is a kind of creation and that humans, incapable of making use of the power of creation, are stepping on the toes of the gods by depicting them in their art. Non-iconic art naturally cropped up as a way of representing the gods and their works through abstract representation in visual art and architecture. Islam in particular takes issue with artistic depictions of Allah, and some of the religious art in mosques is seriously kicking-rad. While I think any in-world religion that had a rule against depicting a particular holy person or persons would've already figured out non-iconic art, it would certainly be interesting for a group of PCs to bring about a renaissance of religious art.

I still feel like losing their powers for breaking their oath is appropriate. I realized earlier today that I really like the imagery of a self-sworn oath being something you make a part of yourself, and that you can't against with damaging your self-image to the point of existential crisis. It's like "You swore this oath because this is who you are. You said the words because the virtues they represented were written in your heart. When you betray yourself, when you break your oath, your heart breaks, too."

The issue with this is that, first, the fourth tenet of obeying any lawful authority is both an intensely Lawful part of the Code and utterly inappropriate for a CG champion.

I can respect that. I think we arrive at different conclusions from the phrase "Respect legitimate authority." Respect, to me, does not imply obedience. You can respect someone and their position while disagreeing with them. You can even do it while disobeying them. After all, they have a hard job and it's made harder by disagreeable elements like Chaotic Good people going off and doing good without their authorization or approval. If that means the good king has to have you arrested, then that's fair (you know, so long as they can catch you). They probably had a good reason for telling you not to do whatever you did, and you probably jeopardized something or another by doing it anyway. A Chaotic Good person owns their actions, as well as the consequences of those actions. If the consequences of what they did is that they're considered an outlaw, then it's only fair.

Secondly, the third tenet, the one regarding honor and fair play, also strikes me as pretty Lawful rather than Good. I think Robin Hood should make a solid CG Paladin, and he resorted to ambushes and the like pretty much as his go to plan, lied regularly, and so on and so forth.

It's possible I've also been too narrow in how I think of paladins. Personally, I don't see maintaining a standard of honor as being inherently Lawful, but I guess the decision of whether or not to lie, cheat, or steal (as a last resort to protect the innocent from the forces of tyranny) should be a personal one. I still think even a Chaotic Good paladin should get to choose whether or not they get the standard paladin code or the CG-specific one (what with agency being so important to Chaos), but if a variant code helps more people fully commit to their vision of their character, then I'm in support of it.