Neurophage's page

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."

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

See, here is one question...

If Chaotic is the alignment of honor, dedication, honesty, and all about following codes... Which is what it seems like the argument here is...

Then what does Lawful mean?

No one said it was. Both Law and Chaos are equally capable of honor, dedication, honesty and following codes. They just follow codes for different reasons.

Falling is a good point gustavo.

Falling from grace is a huge part of the paladin's identity. They can cease to be the class because of their actions. They can become an anti-paladin or a blackguard.
This is iconic and cool and the constant challenge of being a paladin. Doing the right thing or risking damnation. It's a unique part of the class that really should be retained.

But...

If a Chaotic Good paladin broke their oath, would you have them fall?

Yes, because the oath is a solidification of part of who they are. In violating the oath, they've betrayed themselves.

What would a CG paladin have to do to cease to become a paladin and be rejected by their god?

Betray their own heart (which, in this case, is the oath). Chances are, a Chaotic god would want their followers to follow their own conscience and never compromise what they saw as right. Never let anyone, not even your god, tell you what's right and what's wrong, because you already know it. If they stopped doing that, if they went against their own conscience of their own free will and said it was just because they were doing what someone else told them to do, then that would be enough to drive a Chaotic Good god to disgust.

If CG paladins are given more leniency in actions than LG behaviour then it is mechanically advantageous to be a CG paladin as you don't have to walk the moral tightrope.

They wouldn't be given more leniency. Not everyone who follows the code sees it as a tightrope, not even Lawful Good people.

Bardess wrote:

Han Solo could be trusted to never leave his friends in danger.

But what oath would he swear? What cause would he dedicate himself to? What are the tenants anbd

He could swear an oath to never abandon his friends if they're in danger, obviously.

Bardess wrote:

As a CG person (as I like to describe myself) I would not ever deviate from my ethics, even if I may change if I get to know better. And I made many oaths to myself in my life, even if I wasn’t always able to keep them all the time.

I'm more Neutral Good myself. I like good laws, but don't feel compelled to obey all laws all the time. Because some laws are stupid. But that doesn't mean all laws are stupid. And I also feel that my minor civil disobedience isn't going to lead to anarchy.

(I think most people are probably in the range of NG...)

Being LG isn't about keeping all your oaths. It's about honestly trying to keep all your oaths. And believing that laws are worth having.

CG, by it's nature, is selfish good. It's about yourself. And selfish people aren't big on causes or things larger than themselves. They're not going to work for a god.

Chaotic Good isn't selfish. Chaotic Good is just as devoted as the other Goods to bringing out the best in people. It just has different ideas about what "best" means. Chaotic Good prioritizes agency. It prioritizes self-ownership, being free from control, but unable to use external influences and complications as a shield and taking full ownership of one's self and one's actions. Chaotic Good believes that people are at their best when they don't betray themselves; when they're given the freedom to express who they are without having to worry about their best qualities being suborned by anyone or anything else. Chaotic Good would want to encourage other people to be free, to create a society where no one has to feel like they're not allowed to be who they are or try and become who they want to become.

Chaotic Good is just as likely to value causes larger than themselves as the other Goods. A Chaotic Good character dedicated to fighting evil would do so with all of their heart, because that's who they are. Fighting evil, protecting the innocent and safeguarding the world is the cause in their hearts. If they did anything else with their life, it would be not only a betrayal of who they are, but a rejection of their self-hood. If you're one of those people who thinks that the only acts of real altruism require not wanting to help people but feeling obligated to, then sure. I guess you can call that self-centered. But I think that most people would consider someone who sees helping people and stopping villains from doing bad things to be part of who they are to be a good person.

Chaotic Good would follow a god who they felt aligned with their own views and goals, if they followed one at all. They wouldn't take orders, because they wouldn't need to. They and their god care about the same stuff and want to do the same stuff. Orders are redundant. If their god communicated with them at all, it would probably just be a revelation to make information available. How their adherent goes about making use of that information is to their discretion. Any god that has a problem with one of their adherents following their own path of justice probably isn't very chaotic in the first place.

As an example:

What does a paladin of Cayden Cailean look like? What tennants of faith are expected from that paladin? What is their cause and holy quest?

I don't care. I'm the guy who wants paladins to be free from gods altogether.

gustavo iglesias wrote:

Jester David wrote:

They're never going to swear a personal oath. A personal code is the best you could get, and likely one descriptive and variable. Or personal ethics that amounts to lines you don't cross.

That is not true.

Then what is a good example of an oath that would be sword and kept by someone who doesn't believe in laws and acts primarily out of self interest?

You're mis-characterizing Chaotic Good, so this line of questioning is invalid. They would swear the same oath that any other paladin would, but only because they really and truly believe in it at the core of who they are. Free from external influence, this is the kind of person they want to be. They won't let anyone else tell them how they should live or who they should be, but they will do everything in their power to live the kind of life that's most true to who they are and be the kind of person who's most true to who they want to be. The tenets of the oath are what they found when looked inside of their own heart. Breaking that oath means betraying themselves. When that oath breaks, so does their heart.

I feel like, so long as we're talking supernatural powers, every martial character should eventually have the ability to use or manipulate something like qi to create supernatural effects, but monks should be able to do things beyond what the others can. A fighter or barbarian could strike a distant foe through the air or invoke their own inner fire to set their soul alight, and a rogue could steal something from across the room and put out an aura of "I'm not even here," but a monk who simultaneously embodies harmony with all things and the oneness of self should be like a qi wizard.

Whatever happens, I hope we keep a huge lists of minutiae. I have something of a soft spot for how crazy long the gear list was in PF1, especially by the time of Ultimate Equipment. It's another form of character expression. An adventurer having a stove can, a journal, a chess set and a shaving kit paints a completely different picture than the guy whose only significant non-adventuresome possessions are a religious text and a bottle of wine.

A magus would be a magus in mine. Ofc, again, you can call yourselves whatever you want and honestly none of what you said had to be a lie. But let's say you called yourself a wizard, THEN you are lying.

Would they be? What if all of their formal magical knowledge came from studying at a wizard's college, from which they graduated (if only barely)? They cast arcane spells using their intelligence modifier, prepare them out of a spellbook and have to use material components barring taking the Eschew Materials feat. Would it still be a lie for them to claim to be a wizard? Because if that was my magus's background, he would definitely call himself a wizard.

Point is, you can't jump on other classes , without lying anyway, cause they are in world things, but you sure call yourself things that go beyond your class without issues.

And if that's how you want to do things, then more power to you. But if I don't want to, I don't think the game shouldn't assume that I do. How you do things shouldn't have to conflict with how I do things.

To make a simple analogy.

That Razmir for example.

If you have a sorc who is a priest/follower...

If someone ask "Are you a priest/follower... of Razmir" Assuming the sorc is one, this isn't a lie.

But if they ask "Are you a cleric of Razmir" and they say yes, then they are rolling a bluff check.

Would they still need to if their principle responsibility at their temple was clerical work? If their primary function in the temple of Razmir where they serve is to provide general support and assist in the ongoing functioning of the temple in an official capacity, then I think of them, in the most literal interpretation, as a cleric of Razmir.

Hopefully classes will be even better defined now come PF2.

I hope for the opposite. Few things in a class-based game irritate me more than character classes being in-universe terminology. The only purpose it serves is to limit what concepts and character types are allowed to be expressed by which classes. Like, my favorite class is the magus, but not a single one of my magi has ever referred to themselves as a magus. They've been knights, swordsmen, spell-fencers, scholars, magicians and just wanderers, but never magi. I've never defined a single paladin as just being a paladin. Demon hunter? Sure. Crusader? Sometimes. Hero? Only on one occasion. As far as I'm concerned, the class name is for the players' convenience and nothing more.

I dont know where this "everybody knows you are a paladin" thing came from.

Nowhere. It was invented from basically nothing.

It changed the status quo because the paladin is not a divine champion for me. So we took out the Round Table knight class and introduced a class with an entirely different flavor, if that makes sense. Similar mechanics, different flavor.

Okay, here's where I can make my first clarification about my intent. I see this as a false dichotomy. The paladin isn't a divine champion for me, either. It also isn't a Round Table knight. But all of those are things the mechanics of the paladin can represent, even as they stand right now. The champion of the divine can differentiate themselves from the Round Table knight and the oathbound hero driven and empowered by a higher purpose even if they use the same base mechanics. It's the same for every class. The alchemist can be the mad shapechanging chemist, the terrifyingly-calm bomb-maker, the slave-driving reanimator or the focused scholar depending on how the player decides to build and play them. The barbarian can represent the hardy survivor from the wastes, the hot-blooded gladiator or even a werewolf. I think it's weird and kind of wrong to restrict the paladin to such a narrow band of what kind of character the class is allowed to represent.

In a four corners option, I sacrifice the 100% unique paladin. I'd be up for a subclass for each alignment, I just think that's a lot of work and space, and I kind of like the idea of paladins (or exemplars maybe?) being hard-line (two non-neutral aspects) for alignment.

I don't have anything to say here that I haven't said a dozen times already.

For the warpriest plus paladin prestige class option, I'm trading in a base class for a prestige class. That's a LOT to give up. But I also offered to let the paladin wait a book. That's also huge (not sure whether it gives up more or less than making the paladin a prestige class).

I'm also not in favor of making it a prestige class, even if it does remain locked to one alignment. It's a character type that should be playable from the world go. I hate having to houserule in something I want to play that I think really shouldn't be out of reach in the first place (especially given that it's much easier to houserule away extant options than to houserule in new ones) but if that's what I have to do to play the character I want to play from level 1, then I will never stop complaining about how absurd it is that it's my only option.

So I've given my minimum, and offered multiple options that would meet that minimum and take steps toward opening the class up. One of them (the prestige class option) would be very painful for me. So I think I can say in confidence that I've sacrificed points from my position and made a solid attempt at compromise.

Problem is, I've been at this point of the conversation before. Previously, what I've heard in reply is "No, those compromises don't work, we want any-Good and that's not to much to ask".

Because it really isn't much to ask.

And we go around in circles as I explain why that won't work for me.

Because, at least to me, those reasons don't make any sense. Near as I can tell, your objection is based on a singular vision of the kind of character the class represents. The thing is, fulfilling that vision doesn't become impossible by opening it up. You want an order of Round Table knights, all of whom are Lawful Good paladins? Fine, it's yours. No one wants to take them away from you. But please explain, clearly and in detail, how that is being damaged or restricted by other people being able to fulfill a different vision of the class, which is already fully supported by the rules save for a single point. How does it become impossible for you to play and run your paladins as Round Table knights if someone else is able to play and run them as the divine warriors, or if I'm able to play and run them as oathbound heroes? Because clearly there's something one of us isn't seeing.

So my urge is to simply not compromise. I have what I want in PF1, and I have what I want in the PF2 Playtest (sort of, I'd like to see other options tested). I don't like the balance of the other options in PF1 (Antipaladin, Gray Paladin, etc.), but that's not my problem to solve (because if everyone thought like I thought, there would be no need for those options). I want to compromise, because I want people to have fun options and enjoy the game and because I accept that not everyone feels the way I do, but with the way the conversation has been going, why should I?

Great. You have what you want. But we don't. And us getting what we want does not preclude you getting to have what you want, no matter how much you claim that to be the case. And until we do get what we want, this will never end.

Well, since said paladin is Chaotic, he doesn't give two hoots about any rule or oath and can simply ignore any point he believe to be interfering with his cause of a greater good. So we can skip bothering with the code altogether.

Chaotic Good cavaliers of the Order of the Sword disagree with you.

HWalsh wrote:

Athaleon wrote:

I think a Paladin would consider a million lives more important than his personal honor and powers, and would press the proverbial button even at the cost of falling.

I do not think a Paladin would, well they could, but they would fall. It is supposed to be part of what makes a Paladin a Paladin. The Paladin doesn't not do evil to keep his powers, a Paladin believes that not doing evil is right, that not doing evil is more important than those lives. That is what it takes to be a Paladin.

And that's a far more narrow and rigid view of how to play The One True Way than many people hold, even among the Paladin's fans. Of course Paladins don't refrain from doing evil in order to keep their powers, but for them the act must be a sort of spiritual martyrdom: Sacrificing one's soul, rather than one's body, for the greater good. And what kind of Paladin would realistically weigh the moral cost of one evil act against killing three Absaloms and an Oppara and decide the world's better off with the latter? Or that he, with his divine backing and martial prowess, would gamble on his ability to get the job done the hard way? What is that if not vanity?

It's not often I find myself on the same side of an argument as HWalsh, but... yes. A paladin would gamble on their divine backing, martial prowess and every iota of their ability to get the job done the hard way. Otherwise, why do they have that divine ability and martial prowess in the first place? I don't think a paladin would automatically be willing to make e sacrifice, and I don't think they should fall just for making a choice unless they think they should. It's not a sacrifice of personal honor or morality. It's a sacrifice of lives. Kill one to save a thousand sounds plenty reasonable on paper, but who's going to save that one while the paladin's busy saving the thousand? Who care's about a villain's ultimatum? Saving one person today means a thousand will die later? That's convenient. It means they have until later to save all those people. There is no big picture. There's only an artificial big picture created by a collage of smaller pictures. And every one of those smaller pictures that burns or fades or gets stolen diminishes the big picture. The only way to protect the big pictures is to keep all the smaller ones as intact as you can. You can't let evil get away today in order to do more good tomorrow because you can't promise that there'll even be a tomorrow. You've got to do today's good today and trust tomorrow's you to handle tomorrow's good.

You didn't answer the question.

Second: A question for those of you wanting multiple alignment 'paladins'.

Do you actually want the full package? Do you want to find your character tied to tenets so important that you can lose everything by violating them? Because, to me, that potential sacrifice is part and parcel of a Paladin.

Also (and slightly tongue in cheek) do you really want to be responsible for multiplying the should my Paladin have fallen threads by 9?

Yes and absolutely. With the exception of having to be and stay Lawful Good, I have absolutely no qualms with any of the tenets of the Code of Conduct, especially now that the tenets are listed in order of importance. The other Goods can follow a Code of Conduct just as well as LG. When I say I want the paladin open, I mean with all the good and bad that comes with it.

I would also personally open a Paladin Confessional thread encouraging people to question if they should've fallen. Might as well consolidate all of the misdeed-confessing into one place.

I know this is mostly you venting and not a serious post, but if I can ask... what bothers you so much about the Paladin?

It's one class, for traditionalists, it's one of the few things for them in the system.

In your case, it's that every argument you've made (really, that anyone makes) against opening up paladins even just to Any Good has been, to me, completely hollow. The argument has been, to my understanding, that they just can't handle the idea of the class having the ability to be played outside of a fairly narrow range. No one will ever be forced to play a non-LG paladin if they don't want to. No one will even necessarily be forced to play in the same party as a non-LG paladin if they don't want to. Hell, PFS could ban non-LG paladins and I doubt most of the people who want to open them up would even notice. You say that something's being taken away from you from opening up the paladin, but that something, the only conceivable thing that would go away, is exclusivity. You say that the playerbase is split evenly on the subject, but the boards probably represent a minuscule percentage of the playerbase. In my experience, people insufficiently-devoted to a tabletop RPG to post in its dedicated forums are also insufficiently-devoted to take personal offense to minor rules changes. I'm sorry, but that exclusivity isn't worth being defended. If the thought that someone on the other side of the country, hell, someone from the other side of the planet, plays this class outside of the unreasonably rigid way of which you approve somehow personally offends you, then I guess people houseruling away alignment restrictions makes your skin crawl, too. In which case, you're just going to have to deal with it because I'm not going to stop doing it until I don't have to anymore. You don't have to deal with them. You don't have to talk to them. You don't even have to look at them if even that's a bridge too far. But that something that is harmless to probably a majority of the playerbase because they either approve of it or just doesn't care is being denied to them because the last vestiges of resistance to it just can't handle it personally offends me, if only because of how staggeringly petty it is.

My problem is that the only argument against opening up paladins doesn't make any sense and any attempt to call that out is responded to with the rhetorical equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting until whoever disagrees with you gives up and goes away.

Also, tradition on its own isn't worth being protected. Times change, people change and traditions that don't prove valuable enough to stand the test of time are discarded and forgotten, the way they should be.

Rob Godfrey wrote:

Pantheon worship is under supported imho.

I mean, the line in the blog that I find most objectionable is "Paladins are divine champions of a deity" which suggests to me that the Playtest Paladin is not someone who can be devoted to 2 deities, or 7 deities, or 0 deities, but must be devoted to 1 deity.

I would like to see this changed.

Same. Whether my paladin seeks the unity of all the good gods, is the champion of one of them or thinks that the cosmic principle of good is bigger and more worthy of veneration than all of them put together should be my call.

If chaotic doesn't have to mean freedom for everyone, then maybe law doesn't have to mean law for everyone? But again, that's just cheapening the whole Law/Chaos axis.

What you call cheapening, I call adding nuance.

More or less, yes. I'd say the main thing is that Chaotic Good doesn't want to bring out the best you that you can be. They are more concerned making a place where you can be happy and can do what you want to do. They don't want to guide you though, because that would be them influencing you which messes with your freedom.

I don't agree. It is totally within Chaotic Good's wheelhouse to want to bring out the best "you" that you can be. They just think that the best "you" that you can be is someone who wholly and fully takes ownership of themselves, without having to have their best qualities suborned by anyone or anything else. Restrictions and artificial choice limitations are what turn good people into bad people or force good people to do things they don't believe in. They'll give advice if asked, and guide people to discovering their own self-actualized sense of self-ownership if both parties are amenable to it, but that teaching isn't something to be forced onto people. If someone doesn't want to, if their best possible self happens to be someone who needs to be part of the system or even just someone a little less extreme than their philosophy of total and complete self-ownership, then that's fine. It's their choice. The important thing is that they know themselves well enough for that choice to be informed.

I keep hearing and answering this question. There are plenty of posts above.

I've looked through every post you've made in this thread. If you've given a clear and well-explained answer in there to the question "How does opening up the paladin to Neutral Good and Chaotic Good preclude the flavor of a Round Table-style knight?", I haven't seen it.

edit: needed to eliminate a typo

gustavo iglesias wrote:

Malachandra wrote:

Are you though? I've pointed out what the paladin would lose by switching to any alignment, yet you continue to say that it would be a compromise. To go back to the druid example, if we made druids not nature oriented, they would no longer be druids.

To use your example, I can really see a CG nature themed Druid, without being forced to be neutral.

I don't want to change the paladin theme. Just want to open his alignment.

Quote:

But paladins are no longer Round Table knights

Yes, they still are. Just not all of them are Sir Gallahad.

The thing is, their Alignment, to us is part of the theme. If you take that away, you take away part of the theme, and I don't think that is avoidable.

I don't think any of the Paladin players don't want you to have your own special CG Champion. We just don't want it to be a Paladin or have the Paladin class abilities.

I'll be honest: if that's really where the line is, if that is genuinely the hill to die on, I can't see it as a position worth defending.

Milo v3 wrote:

gustavo iglesias wrote:

If they don't have religion, then in my opinion things like divine grace or Litanies and divine spells should change or disapear. In that case, the class start to look more like Cavalie, sort of.

Why, when the following divine classes didn't need to be religious to a deity for their divine power in 1e: Druid, Onymoji, Oracle, Paladins, Ranger, Shamans, and Shifters?

Already answered this question in other thread, but I think "primal" magic should have different flavor, closer to sorcerer in style. I think Paizo will go that route, with the thing they told about 4 kinds of magic, and wizards and Clerics having 2 of them. Druids, rangers or shamans should use this kind of spiritual, /material magic , and not divine. However, if Druids and others stay divine, then yes, in my opinion they should pick one of the multiple nature gods

Okay, but until I see any evidence to the contrary, I'm going to assume that druids still have divine magic and don't need to worship a god. Oracles still notably do not have to worship a god, but still use divine magic and divine abilities. As far as I'm concerned, that's reason enough for a paladin to not need to.

But it's not just Good I'm interested in. I don't want them to be the "goodest of good". I don't want them to be the only shining torch. I don't want them to embody the ideal hero. I think if any of those things were true, all of the other classes would be meaningless. I mean, I might be a really selfless wizard, but as long as I'm not a paladin, I can't embody the ideal hero?

I just want Paladins to keep their Round Table flavor. That's it. And I think I've stated a few times why "Any Good" doesn't fit that (including the post you quoted...) But there are some great compromises out there.

Well now I'm really confused. How does opening the paladin up to NG and CG preclude "Round Table flavor"? More to the point, if they do open up, how does that prevent you from playing that? It doesn't. Keeping it closed just prevents other people from playing it how they want.

Mbertorch wrote:

Malachandra wrote:

Neurophage wrote:

I just want the paladin, the full paladin package with the defensive abilities and the healing and the smiting and the code of conduct and whatever else they decide belongs on the paladin chasis, with an alignment requirement of "Any Good" and no requirement to worship a deity. I don't think Neutral Good and Chaotic Good need their own package of unique mechanics. If the standard paladin mechanics are good enough for LG, they're sure as hell good enough for NG and CG. That's my minimum. Whatever the other alignments get, if I can get "Any Good" paladins who don't need to worship a deity, I'll be happy.

For points made many times, this won't work for me. But I think some great compromise are floating around.

Is it the lack of deity aspect, or all good alignments?

It's the all good alignments that I have trouble with. I actually don't think paladins should be tied to a deity at all, they are alignment champions for me, not divine champions. I guess that distinction is why there is so much trouble. If you think paladins are divine champions, then every deity should be able to have a champion. But if they are alignment champions, then opening them up to any alignment but LG (without some mechanical differences), means they're just some random class. Which is why the "sack of mechanics" phrase comes up often.

Opening paladins up to Any Good does not make them "just some random class." They're still paragons of virtue and personal nobility. They're still the default goodest of good guys. They're still the ones who swore their oaths, even if they didn't think anyone was listening, to stand against evil and be the brilliant torch shining in the stormy night and all that other stuff. They still embody the ideal hero. But who that ideal hero is means different things to different people. If one person perfectly follows every tenet of the code, but they just happen to believe in personal freedom and the inherent virtue of the unfettered will of mankind (they see their own adherence to the code's tenets as being a personal choice. The behaviors required by the code just happened to be how they wanted to live their life. Yes, even the "respect legitimate authority" part. Part of respecting someone is having enough respect to tell them that that they're wrong) then in what way do they not embody the ideal hero?

Paladins should be Warpriests. Or « Knightly Order of X God ». And they should have the same restrictions than the Clerics. But only LG... It is 2018 already.

And Paizo lost the right to call on traditions when they introduced the Goblins as Core. Because in a world where you have Goblins as your normal adventurers, you also have Paladins of Cayden Cailean or Asmodeus.

By that logic, they should just decouple the paladin shell from alignment. If nothing else, just let them be "Any Good" and don't force a god onto them.

I just want the paladin, the full paladin package with the defensive abilities and the healing and the smiting and the code of conduct and whatever else they decide belongs on the paladin chasis, with an alignment requirement of "Any Good" and no requirement to worship a deity. I don't think Neutral Good and Chaotic Good need their own package of unique mechanics. If the standard paladin mechanics are good enough for LG, they're sure as hell good enough for NG and CG. That's my minimum. Whatever the other alignments get, if I can get "Any Good" paladins who don't need to worship a deity, I'll be happy.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

That's not an inviolable rule (torture as a means is Evil, no matter the ends), but it's a pretty good general guideline.

Uh, saywhat? I'd torture the lich overlord to save the lives of innocent children. Classic Utilitarianism (aka CG) demands that you be willing to do the distasteful things in order to achieve the greater good. CG is all about the greater good.

I disagree. This might just be me, but utilitarianism (really, all consequentialist moral systems) is among the least chaotic imaginable because the consequences of our actions often rely upon factors that we cannot control or even anticipate. Consequence-based morality not only discounts the idea of human agency, it outright rejects it. If we had perfect information, if we knew literally everything, then there would be an argument for it. But we don't. As it stands, if only consequences matter, then our choices don't matter. Choices not mattering is not what Chaos wants.

Neurophage wrote:

Melkiador wrote:

Lawful characters don't have to follow laws though. Just ask your local monk. And chaotic characters have slaves all the time, so limitations aren't that important to them.

Law and Chaos are not monoliths. Monks don't necessarily follow laws, but they believe in restrictions. They've chosen a monastic lifestyle and follow monastic traditions. They are restricted in what they do and how they live because they believe that it's the path to a kind of enlightenment.

I mean, how often have you ever met a monk in a monastary? How often have you seen a monk following monastic traditions? Now this may just be a failure of the monk, but the monk's lawful restrictions never seem to affect what he does in game.

It's totally a failure of the monk. The few monks I've played, even in instances where they don't have to lawful, have still been very insistent about when they wake up, when they go to bed, when they eat, what they eat, when they train, how they train, and when and how they meditate, at the very least. If you're gonna be lawful, you have to embrace it.

my argument here is that there is no such thing as an actual difference between Law and Chaos. And more importantly, what would the difference look like if there was one.

Their difference is in how their beliefs about restrictions affect their actions.

Law believes that restrictions imposed upon us, either by ourselves or by others, are the only thing separating us from animals. Problems come from people not understanding that some restrictions are necessary for the world to function. People are at their best when the restrictions of law and order contribute to whatever the individual Lawful character prioritizes most. That everyone live in accordance with the proper set of restrictions (laws, traditions, oaths, etc.) is the goal of Law.

Chaos believes that people cannot be themselves unless they are free. All of people's problems and dilemmas ultimately spring from the artificial limitation of their choices. The only restrictions anyone should ever be under are those imposed by themselves. The triumph of the unfettered individual will (depending on the Chaotic character, possibly only their own) is the goal of Chaos.

Or... Here is a radical idea...

Hear me out...

The CRB gets released with Paladins (who are LG by default with no other options) then later on a splat book comes out that introduces other champion classes with their own effects and their own lore. Your side has to wait, because you are asking for something new, and our side gets to keep what we already have.

That seems like a decent compromise.

You say "something new" as though changing the text next to the word "Alignment" from "Lawful Good" to "Any Good" doesn't take, like, a second. It's as if altering every mention of "Lawful Good" in the class's entry to just "Good" is some kind of monumental task requiring the invention of revolutionary technology before it can even be feasible.

I keep hearing that and I wonder .. why? I've been around for a while and I still haven't heard what makes it so special, singular and unique.

What makes it more than a class, what puts it on a pedestal that keeps it from ever being changed?

Literally nothing. It's an appeal to tradition and holds no more water than any other appeal to tradition.

I've never liked the idea of a paladin having to serve a deity. I've always seen paladins as being very devoted to their personal idea of justice. In fantasy pantheons like in D&D and PF, the gods are usually just people. Very large, very potent and very important people, yes, but ultimately just people. And people can be wrong. If a god is just as capable of being wrong as a man, then the man is better off listening to the voice in his heart than to a voice from the sky. I've never thought of paladin powers as coming from the gods. I've always seen it as the power within, closer in principle to philosophy clerics or oracle mysteries. They may believe in divinity, but they do not serve it. Their mentor and guiding light is something from the grand universe that they learned how to reach; light inside of themselves they learned to turn on. That's how all of my favorite paladins have always played.

Please, don't take that away from me.

All communication in a public forum exists in a social context. Someone makes a statement, and someone views it. All expressions also have personal contexts; they reveal or are informed by their creator's perspective of the world, their place in it, and their statement's place in it. Therefor, the creation and expression of any statement meant to be viewed by anyone is intrinsically a political act, even if the statement's creator didn't intend it to be. Things did not "become" politicized. They always were. It just had to become more visible for people to realize it.

I could go on a long rant (before editing I did), but to summarize- bikini armor is usually a half baked measure that doesn't actually satisfy your desires.

Speak for yourself.

How much does verisimilitude actually matter? We are playing a game, and games are meant to be fun.

I would say it matters a fair bit, but verisimilitude is literally just the appearance of being true or real. That doesn't necessarily mean perfectly conforming to our own world's expectations in every conceivable way. Verisimilitude can also be found in internal consistency. As noted above, Ysgardian Gloryborn armor is forged by Ysgardian smiths to be used by Ysgardian warriors on the battlefield's of Greyhawk's vision of Valhalla. Because Ysgard's warriors are heroic and myth-like, armor and weapons forged by their smiths get their protective and offensive qualities from their narratives as much as much as their designs, if not moreso. It is literally made of the stuff of legends. It's bigger, badder and sexier than its material plane alternatives. You can't make it on the material plane, so if you find it, it's probably from Ysgard. That's a rule and the setting follows it. The idea of Magic A equaling Magic A (a kind of identity property for the supernatural) is also a kind of internal consistency. We accept magic as a force of this fictional universe that protagonists and antagonists can rely upon to create and solve problems for each other so long as it has rules it follows (whether those rules are like immutable physical laws or rules in the legal sense where a sufficiently-crafty person might find a way to subvert a rule or find a loophole). We don't have to know exactly what those rules are or how they interact with each other, so long as it's clear that they exist and characters are at least vaguely aware of some of them. As a side note, this makes outside-context problems where some supernatural element follows a different set of rules that much more exciting, given that you get to see how different rulesets interact with each other or what has primacy when they conflict.

Verisimilitude is also in psychology and behavior. Given X, how would the characters, being people, be expected to react? The most common example of this is "how does the existence of magic reshape how society develops?" To take the Gloryborn armor example above, natives of Ysgard might have different standards of modesty than people from some cultures on the material plane. They don't have to sacrifice the functionality of armor or weapons to capitalize on how well it displays the wearer's heroic figure or how kickin'-rad it looks, so they (not unlike the Drow) might think that anyone who feels the need to cover up is either engaged in some clever stratagem, prepared for a dramatic reveal or is simply ashamed of how they look. Likewise, people on the material plane who know about Ysgardian weapons and armor might see sufficiently impractical-looking equipment as an indication that the person using it either got it from an Ysgard native or is one themselves.

Verisimilitude doesn't necessarily mean making everything perfectly conform to our world's rules and standards. It's just asking "why," and sticking to your story once you have an answer.

Only the nimblest of dwarves would consider chainmail.

Just as well, plate is more fashionable, anyway.

Hell in Pathfinder would suck.

You're a big bad CE bad guy. You're used to being powerful, feared, respected. You wake up in Hell and you're the weakest of the weak, bullied by everyone else, you're not strong enough to be a predator and you never will be.

Everyone here is a wolf, there are no sheep.

It's the lifecycle of an MMORPG open pvp server.

At first everyone rushes it, then the wolves take over, they hit high levels first. The sheep leave and then, with no sheep, the wolves turn on each other, the weaker wolves quit, then the big wolves quit.

The server is abandoned.

Hell is like after the sheep leave... Only the wolves can't leave. They're forced to be prey. They hate that.

For a given value of predator, Hell is the perfect environment for them. For them, Hell is at least honest. There's something genuine about a world where everyone's a predator and everyone knows it. To them, it's just like the living world, except everyone in Hell knows why they're there, so there's no reason to pretend to be a good person. In the living world, you can't kill your way to the top outside of a few specific places. But the only true path to kingship is regicide, and Hell understands that. The hierarchy of Hell goes from rats to wolves, but a rat can kill a wolf provided a sufficiently-clever and lucky rat and a sufficiently-drunk or lazy wolf.

But this is hardly the thread for that discussion. Personally, I'm not fond of creating undead being exclusively evil. That doesn't mean there can't be evil necromancers. A villain who doesn't want to have to pay their underlings or treat them well at all can get by with undead. Skeletons don't complain. They don't eat, they don't need money and they keep fighting even when their limbs fall off. But I like me some good necromancers and heroic undead. I love noble revenants who refused to die before completing their final missions and ghost knights whose oaths of loyalty extend beyond even death. I love the thought of the bones that had returned to the earth unearthing themselves in defense of the living. I will always thank The 13th Age for including the Redeemer talent in their Necromancer class. The lingering wills and souls dredges that stick to the restless and the regretful deserve their chance to be redeemed. Negative energy is both the animating force of death and the force of destruction, but there's no reason that force can't be turned towards evil. If the body returns to the land when the soul goes beyond, isn't it just as easy to imagine undead as the land rising to protect the people upon as it is to imagine a horde of the dead bedeviling the living?

Zhangar wrote:

Glamoured armor can look like whatever the hell the wearer wants while retaining full functionality.

Amusingly, we've had a full plate wearing cavalier glamour her armor into a chainmail bikini, in part just to show off and in part to deliberately draw fire.

I like the platemail bikini over the chainmail.

Same. Also, I was a big fan of the Ysgardian Gloryborn armor template back in 3.5 if only because it was designed to be used for revealing, physique-displaying armor.

Ysgardian natives emphasize heroic recklessness in battle and armor with this template reflects that philosophy. Though they are constructed to heroic proportions and tend to bear flashy decorations, gloryborn armor and shields frequently seem to lack some vital defensive piece. The overall look might awe viewers or even strike terror into the wearer’s enemies, but the items frequently look incomplete. For example, a suit of gloryborn leather armor might be little more than a set of elaborate leather straps constructed to show off the wearer’s bulging muscles by leaving portions of his torso entirely exposed. Likewise, a gloryborn shield cut to resemble a fearsome mask might be oddly shaped and appear ill-suited for protection. But such oddities of design do not limit the effectiveness of gloryborn armor or shields. Gloryborn armor might look as though it couldn’t stop a kitchen knife, let alone a greataxe, but something about its design seems to draw attacks toward protected areas, making it just as effective as armor crafted on other planes.

I can comfortably be placed in the "don't ban" camp, but I've had this convo so many times across so many different forums I'm just going to let past!me do the explaining for me.

I love the armor designs across Dark Souls, especially the Elite Knight set from Dark Souls I and the Alva Set from Dark Souls II but I also love the character designs from Granblue Fantasy. I also don't turn my nose up at bikini armor. Granted, I tend to imagine most of my games looking like JRPGs anyway, but I also want my characters (and my players' characters) to look how I (and they) want them to look, whether that's knight's armor accurate to Earth's history or a few articles of leg and shoulder armor with a thong bikini. I welcome it all with open arms.

If you're a legendary hero who's a breaker of armies, slayer of ancient dragons and world-wrecker known by all, it doesn't matter if your combat attire of choice is the same armor you've worn your entire career, gigantic WoW armor with xboxhueg pauldrons, an overcoat with armor on one arm, a g-string or a loincloth. You and your gear may as well be made of magic. The only requirement that I ever have is that, no matter how it's shaped or how much of the body it covers, a person's attire should make a statement about them. Some element of its design, be it its decoration, color scheme or something else, should be indicative or thematically consistent with the person wearing it.

I want equal representation for all levels of coverage of all armor types across all peoples. Ripped beefcakes with chiseled jaws, fine-featured and slender ne'er-do-wells, stout and stoic defenders, powerfully-built warrior queens, curvy sorceresses and svelte spell-fencers. All manners of dress from more plating than a bank vault to as little as can be gotten away with. My palette might not be all-encompassing, but the people deserve the full buffet.