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What empirical evidence could one (say, a leading academic in Rahadoum) collect that confirms the existence of the soul or its effects? Like presumably with plane shift and observation we could observe shades in the river of souls being processed in the boneyard, but it's entirely valid to view those as the echo of a person and not anything intrinsic or important to the individual that created the echo. Like plainly ghosts exist, but they are distinct from the person they resemble.

Like couldn't any magic that affects "the soul" be instead interpreted as magic that affects the mind or the body instead? You could certainly render someone akin to a corpse with the right application of chemicals or specific kinds of brain damage.

A valid read from a Golarion atheist is that the thing that leaves your mortal shell and passes through the river of souls to be judged by Pharasma is not, in fact, you. It is simply a reflection or an echo that marks your existence. You could even go to the boneyard and interview shades and they would tell you that the fragmented dream-like memories they experience feel like a different person was involved in those.


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R3st8 wrote:
You are comparing souls with eggs and livestock? as if having your souls turned into planar mortar is some small favor?

You're right, from an atheist perspective eggs are more important than souls. Eggs can become poultry or breakfast, and both are useful to a living person. Souls have minimal value to a living person- you can't even tell that you have one or if there's anything wrong with it.

Atheists are specifically people who should not be worrying very much about souls.


moosher12 wrote:
Treerazor also respawns even if he's killed. And has yet to truly die. Says so in his own entry.

He's likely to die next month, for keeps.

But there are two basic problems with this approach:
- Literal gods do not have stats specifically so that they cannot be killed by anything except the story.
- While this is a game with a lot of combat rules, reaching for violence is not the best answer for everything.

Like if a dragon decides to talk to you instead of just smashing something and eating your livestock, that's a more powerful thing showing you respect, and the best response might *not* be "violence."


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I think atheism in Golarion is more like "as I go on with my day, and do the things I need to do, and then the things I want to do, at no point do Gods enter my thoughts, and I am not less happy, successful, etc. because they do not." Like in Pathfinder you can't really disagree with "the Gods exist" because it's just a fact that they do, it would be like saying "there's no such thing as a scorpion."

Atheism in Pathfinder should be akin to "I do not benefit from checking my boots for scorpions, because I live my life in a way where I do not run into scorpions" (e.g. they don't live in the place I do because of climate, I don't leave my boots outside, I wear sandals instead of boots, or I am immune to scorpion venom for whatever reason, etc.) So the atheist in Golarion should be someone who does not see benefit in celebrating the Gods, participating in religion, fearing the gods, etc. so they just don't do those things. There might be religion-adjacent community events that they might participate in for the community, but not the religion.

The interesting thing about Rahadoum is that it is a mix of that kind of atheist, and the misotheistic kind. People in Rahadoum disagree with each other about a great number of things, so why not this? Some Rahadoumi folks will believe that celebrating the Gods because they are powerful is ridiculous, but they would also believe that objecting to Pharasma's judgement is ridiculous because she is, in fact, very powerful. You just treat the experience like "the dragon has asked you to relocate your chickens, because the coop you have built is an annoyance to the dragon" you understand that this is something you should just go along with, since you have a good idea what the alternative is like and it's worse.


Trip.H wrote:
Uh, or you can rob a tomb and get cursed by her directly. Already almost forgot that's still a thing. Yup, that's Pharasma.

Any god can curse you at any time. Abadar can curse you for stealing, Arazni can curse you for wronging someone as can Calistria, Asmodeus can curse you for trying to get out of a contract, Cayden Cailean can curse you for being a coward, Erastil can punish you for laziness, Irori can curse you for being unflexible, Rovagug can punish you for building something, etc.

These acts of Divine Intercession are extremely rare, and we have rules for them mostly to allow the GM to apply them when they make the story more interesting. Pharasma isn't going to curse everyone who disrespects the dead any more than Abadar is going to curse everyone who steals or Asmodeus is going to punish everybody who is trying to wiggle out of a contract. These things happen thousands of times a day on millions of different worlds without the Gods intervening, but they could if they (read: the GM) really wanted.


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Vasyazx wrote:
So what is her problem with clone then since it basically same thing(only diffrence is body)?

The "If Pharasma has decided it's your time" clause in Clone, Resurrection, etc. is basically to signpost to the GM "you are allowed to shut this down through divine fiat if you think this is getting out of hand" in a place where the GM can point to it in the book if the players object that their Clone shenanigans are getting out of hand. Like the PCs should clearly not be able to resurrect absolutely anybody, and "Pharasma says no" is why you can't guarantee why you can't resurrect whoever had that skull you found to ask them questions.

I would flavor it via "Pharasma can't object to anybody living past their prescribed expiration" since Prophecy can no longer be trusted, but there might be some cases where it can.


Vasyazx wrote:

-Upload your soul into a construct like the ancient Jistkan Artificers.

would that be evantually shut down like in case of clone spell? if it isnt then why shut down clone spell in first place?

Most likely not, since you can play one of these. So there are still Jistkan Artificers running around it's just that most of them broke (hence rare ancestry) and a lot of them had extended periods of isolation that sort of broke their personalities.

Pharasma has no beef with steps people take to prolong their lives (except undeath) since some amount of that is to be expected. If you upload your soul into a machine, the machine can still die- I mean, Golarion is eventually going to blow up and Rovagug is going to get out. Good luck surviving that.

And the problem with becoming a Fae, of course, is that as a native to the First World you are subject to being completely changed and remade by any more powerful Fae that has that idea appeal to them, and the Lantern King has a cruel sense of humor. So you're basically trading "one tyrant" for "a bunch of pettier tyrants."


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steelhead wrote:
That is not true. I would be very interested to see where your claim that she ‘invented the concept of mortals’ comes from. My understanding is that the First World was the original experiment by many of the gods - not just Pharasma - and the concept of souls and primessence (is that the correct term?) was created when the gods realized they needed a balance to the chaos of the Maelstrom and the growing demonic plane. The First World was the experiment that made them come to this understanding. Giving mortals the choice to decide where they would end up was a compromise between all the gods.

If Pharasma created anything, it was the notion that there are eight outer planes, since at the insantiation of this universe she stood at 5 on the Number Pad and looked in the in the other eight directions. If she had looked up or down there might have been more planes, but this happened in an instant. Everything after that has been making the best out of the situation they found themselves in.


One assumes that, since they've had eons to work this out, the employees of the Boneyard have developed a system of onboarding the recently deceased that is a humane and kind as can be managed in this sort of situation. If someone is an ardent misotheist they might be better served by talking to a caseworker whose power over the shade is more akin to a monarch over a subject, then they can discuss where they would like to go a la "your actions in life suggest you would be best suited to Elysium, but if you would like to stay here we can accommodate you;'it is possible you qualify for reincarnation, would you like me to check?"


I mean, one can rage against the tyranny of gravity, or one can construct an airplane. The former doesn't help you do the latter.

Yes, Pharasma objects to Necromancy, but there are multiple Pharasma-approved methods for opting out of the whole cycle of souls:

- Become Mythic and achieve immortality that way.
- Achieve Apotheosis
- Get your soul diverted to the First World when you die, this nominally involves "worshiping one of the Eldest" but given the nature of the Eldest this can be transactional.
- Upload your soul into a construct like the ancient Jistkan Artificers.
etc.

The fact of the matter is that much like how airplanes need to land eventually, everything is also going to end someday, and the soul of everything from Rovagug to sea otters ends up in the river whose terminus is at the Boneyard. Most Rahadoumi atheists aren't extremely principled along the lines "no god should have any power over me" since if you think about it, (in the game world) Asmodeus does exist and he could show up and set you on fire any time he wanted to. Gods are more powerful than you, but so are dragons and kings and one doesn't worship those.

A really principled "Pharasma will never touch my soul" person could instead travel to the Void (formerly the Negative Energy Plane) and hurl themselves into a patch of nothingness. This doesn't accomplish anything, but the thought of doing it might make you feel better.


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Vasyazx wrote:
Well house always win so even if you reject the game your essence still be used to futher one of gods agenda in these case you become building material for top god personal plane that doesn't sound as satisfying end for follower of laws of mortality

This feels like having strong feelings about which tree grows on your burial site. At some point you have to learn not to care about things you have no input on. I imagine a good part of "onboarding the recently deceased" is getting them to come to terms with this fact.


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Castilliano wrote:
An eternity becomes an eventual hell, quicker so if one's just waiting. Optional annihilation should be an option too, at least at some point, at least for the conscious mind. Then donate the essence to some cause, sans deities if possible. Is there a cosmic Doctors Without Borders? Or deity that recognizes deity-worship is problematic?

Planar adventures describes the graveyard that those who refuse judgement or those who cannot be judged for whatever reason as a peaceful spot where eventually all but the very strongest of wills eventually just go to sleep in their grave and merge with the foundation of the boneyard. That's like "oblivion, but you have a grace period to meet new people and say your goodbyes if you want" which seems like as nice an end as any. People could even visit you there, but eventually you're going to run out of things to care about and you'll peacefully fade away.


R3st8 wrote:
The issue is that, unlike other gods, you will always meet Pharasma at the end of your life, and the fact that Rahadoum is aware of their bleak prospects in the afterlife highlights my point. How can one say she is hands-off when she is the one who decides the fate of your soul? You can run from a tyrant king and avoid Asmodeus like the plague by never getting close to a contract, but you cannot avoid Pharasma.

I'm just not sure why atheists are all that concerned with the fate of their souls. Like even the most ardent member of the Pure Legion understands that when they die, it's someone's responsibility to dispose of their mortal remains, and likewise it's someone's responsibility to dispose of their less tangible remains. That second duty falls to Pharasma. You can either choose to accept her judgement, or just wait out eternity in a quiet, peaceful place. What is it an atheist would want from the afterlife other than the second part?

The afterlife in Pathfinder is neither a reward nor a punishment, it's basically just recycling. The story of the person who had memories and identity ended when they died- upon their soul's transit through the afterlife whatever comes out the other end will have neither that person's memories nor their identity.


I think given how rapidly the power level ramps in 1e Mythic, a lot of Reign of Winter books 5 and 6 would have needed to be extensively rewritten to accommodate mythic, unless we did something like "mythic tiers accumulate much slower" so the PCs were like Mythic Tier 2 at the end, which might not have been worth implementing a whole subsystem. Like considering what the WotR party did to Baphomet and Deskari, I would have felt bad for Elvanna facing off against something like that.


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R3st8 wrote:
QuidEst wrote:
From a worldbuilding stance, you generally do want reasons why there aren't a bunch of immortals running everything with millennia of entrenched power
What do you think gods are?

Mostly hands off. Like if you go in the town square and start loudly proclaiming how much Abadar sucks, he's not going to smite you or send an underling to smite you by proxy. If you go in the town square and start loudly proclaiming how much the local authorities suck, you're likely to get arrested. In terms of the actual stories we tell when we play these games, literal intervention by an actual god should be exceptionally rare, but Terrestrial authorities will tell the PCs to do (or not do) things all the time. You can burn down the entire art museum and Shelyn is not going to show up (but the cops most likely will.)

What QuidEst is saying gets to how a fantasy world should be as recognizable as possible to the people who play the game. It would be hard to have anything resembling a normal social order if all of the leaders in government and industry are thousand-year-old vampires who are opposed to change. Blood Lords really tries to dig down on how ossified Geb society is since many of the various civil powers are deeply entrenched by virtue of "not aging, because undead." This should be a flavor available to players and GMs who want to play around in that sandbox, but generally "change" should be an option available in other places.


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moosher12 wrote:
Also, until the new Secrets of Magic replacement says otherwise, it was well established that being powered by negative energy actually does make you develop a disdain for the living, not too how unlike a normal human naturally disdains bugs. And it is always a conscious effort to maintain classical humanity toward the living, that is bound to eventually slip away after several thousand years of seeing mortals rise and fall. Like, you can hold your humanity as an undead for years, centuries, even millennia, but it's usually not a matter of if you will lose that spark of humanity, but when. All a good willpower does is delay it.

As I understand it running something designed to run on vital energy with void energy simply causes problems akin to pouring frying oil into the gas tank of an automobile- it technically can power an internal combustion engine, but you are going to cause problems by doing this.

LO: Book of the Dead provides additional clarity on this, as a knock-on-effect of "powering the machine with the wrong energy" every form of undead has an "undead hunger" specific to its form that initially surfaces as a craving, but if not sated somehow will overrule one's rational faculties. So a vampire who cannot sate their urge to drink vital blood will find themselves driven to tackle and completely drain the first person they meet, which likely has social consequences.


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Despite Pharasma's dislike about necromancy and the undead, she's allowed a remarkable number of necromancers and undead to go about their business. If she wanted to play "whack-a-skeleton" there's a whole planet of undead out there in the same solar system as Golarion. She doesn't even treat necromancers or former undead differently when their souls do end up in her court. If Urgathoa herself shuffles off the immortal coil, her judgement would be as quiet and professional as Aroden's was.

Necromancy being inherently evil has nothing to do with Pharasma, it has to do with "you are deliberately choosing to accelerate the destruction of the universe for selfish reasons." It's not really different from any other harmful act done for selfish reasons in that way. The harm for any particular act might be minimal, but it's still evil.

The interesting moral quandary RE Pharasma and the Undead is along the Arazni/Pharasma axis, a la "I ended up Undead through no choice of my own, why should I be asked to hasten my non-existence?"


Claxon wrote:
Outside of ordering her faithful to destroy all the Undead, she takes a pretty neutral and hands off approach to most things.

My take is that she's genuinely too busy to take a personal interest in most things (remember in Pathfinder the Gods have a Universal purview- Pharasma handles everything that dies anywhere in the Universe, much like how Sarenrae is every Sun), she just has a relatively competent organization that keeps tabs on things. Her main project these days is likely getting an answer from one of the Outer Gods about whether the Seal going missing is a thing that they've ever seen before.


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exequiel759 wrote:
The only real "inconsistency" I have with Pharasma is that she appears to accept that daemons eat souls which should likely have a similar effect to someone's soul to becoming an undead. I personally take it as that when a daemon eats a soul, it effectively forces that soul into reincarnating as a daemon and not that the soul simply disappears. Probably this is the intention, but unless I missed something I didn't get that impression so I find weird that Pharasma thinks its okay when she's so against playing the souls of the people.

I think the thing about Pharasma sending souls to Abaddon, the Outer Rifts, and the Maelstrom (all of which have a somewhat corrosive effect on the Universe) is that she's simply choosing to send that particular energy contained within the soul to a place where it's going to do the least damage.

If you think of Pharasma's job as essentially "waste management" her job is to sort the recycleables, from the biodegradeables, from the regular garbage, from the medical waste, from the toxic waste, from the nuclear waste. It's a bad idea to put toxic waste in your compost pile, after all. You do the least damage with the really toxic or dangerous kinds of energy if you quarantine it on the plane where there's a lot of it already.


But here's the thing: In the "Age of Lost Omens" absolutely nobody has a "supposed death." It says right in the Artokus entry in LO:Legends:

Quote:

“So, you’ve called us here to see if my boss has strayed out of line?” The meerkat’s tail twitched.

“Something like that. We like to check in once every century or so. At one point, we knew when all this would end.”
Artokus sighed. “Then prophecy broke, and so did my known terms of service.”
“An oversimplification, but yes,” the morrigna said. “You could even live forever.”

So anybody whose job used to be "go out and kill people who are living beyond their prescribed expiration date" has to find new work since nobody has one of those anymore.


"Monitor" is the grouping term for neutral outsiders, it's analogous to "Angel" and "Fiend" in that way. An Inevitable has as much to do with a Psychopomp as a Succubus has to do with a Phistophilus or a Hound Archon has to do with a Passion Azata.

I don't see how "Psychopomps generally don't get involved, but might on a case to case basis" suggests anything nefarious. The bestiary entries for various creatures generally phrase the thing in terms of "how it might come into conflict with the PCs." Like the entry for "Grizzly Bear" is not an accurate portrayal of how bears act in the wild, since bears very much do not go around looking for fights!


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Pronate11 wrote:
And they don't seem to be connected to Pharasma. Someone else doing things that Pharasma did not ask for is not a criticism of Pharasma, but of the Aeons.

Yeah, Inevitables are machines native to Axis who fight an endless war against the forces of the Maelstrom. They are the mirror to Proteans in that they are the "big guns" of each side. If there's an inevitable specifically obsessed with something, it's probably because a Protean once did something to make that thing not work how it's supposed to.

None of this has anything to do with Pharasma. Artokus's caseworker is a Morrigna, which is the kind of Psychopomp you would encounter as an actual living human. The majority of the scarier ones are posted along the River of Souls to make sure nothing is dipping into it in order to harvest souls for their own purposes.


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IIRC, the specific thing about the Sun-Orchid elixir is not that it makes you immortal, but that it undoes the effects of aging. So if you win the auction, you might buy yourself another 80 years of life, but then in 80 years you need to either accept death or somehow get your hands on more.

That's why "limiting production" is something that does work for Pharasma's people since obviously they don't object to steps mortals take to prolong their lives, a psychopomp isn't going to come hassle you because you're eating healthy and getting plenty of exercise after all.


moosher12 wrote:

Also Trip, I think you forgot the cold war situation that gods don't get to actually directly act near as much as they would like to. They can have their servants act in their interests, but they usually cannot act beyond that, as it tends to result in battles that are much more destructive than intended.

If Pharasma was that much of a hardbutt about reinforcing the no-undead rule, Tar Baphon would have ceased a long time ago, as would Geb. And, really any lich. Undead really would not be a thing. Because as much as Pharasma would like to, her hands are tied, especially as unholy forces would be willing to team up against her over it.

Yeah, the whole "Celestial detente" thing is interesting since it's unofficial (there's no "grand pact" agreed to by all the Gods), it's just a very successful ad hoc solution. Basically the problem is that when a deity intervenes directly, that provides an opportunity for all of that Deities enemies to respond in kind, but does not provoke all of that deities allies to respond to the enemy actions because they don't want to provoke even more enemies.

You reflect this in how the younger and less experienced Gods are much more directly interventionist than the older, established ones. Iomedae and Arazni are out there doing stuff, Pharasma and Asmodeus very much are not.

Pharasma's underlings who intervene are very much akin to Postal Inspectors. Almost everybody will never run afoul of them, you have to be doing something very specifically wrong to get their attention, and they are terrifying when they have you in their sights. We have canonical evidence that "unnaturally extending your own life" is not enough to bring down their full wrath, since the guy who invented the Sun Orchid Elixir made a deal with them (basically "if you limit production and don't share the formula, we won't object.")


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Trip.H wrote:
It really seems that you have a soft spot for Pharasma here.

No, I'm just the GM and I understand that I control all the NPCs and so a read on Pharasma like the one you're suggesting doesn't either help me tell fun stories or enhance the player experience, so I wouldn't run Pharasma or her people anything like what you're suggesting.

If anything, I would run her as "way too busy to worry about anything like that". Like she had a birth to death prophecy on every mortal not because of any effort on her part, but because of how the universe worked. This is not "against player agency" it's a meta-commentary on how any story that predates the influence of Player Characters is entirely decided by the GM.

Now that the Omens are too lost, her people are too busy trying to keep the ledgers balanced than to go around harassing a handful of extremely powerful people. Like read the bit in Lost Omens Legends with the conversation between the morrigna Tosof and the alchemist Artokus Kirran (the guy who invented the Sun Orchid Elixir)- it's above all polite. That's how I choose to portray Pharasma's people. They are a bureaucracy and Pharasma is just an extremely busy manager.

"The Setting" is not a list of instructions for a GM to follow, they're a series of prompts to take whatever inspiration you can from. Like the fact that Achaekek has failed to prevent the apotheosis of Aroden, Norgorber, Cayden, Iomedae, Nethys, Irori, Nocticula, Arazni, Casandalee, etc. etc. ad nauseum suggests that the idea his job is "stop people from becoming divine" is incorrect, which is way more interesting to me ("What, then, is his job?") than "sending him against PCs."


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Gods are characters, and thus they're allowed to have preferences, even strong ones. But Gods don't have that much input on the material universe. Like sure, Pharasma hates undead and doesn't want you to become a vampire, but she's not in any position to do anything about it. It's not like Zon-Kuthon goes around turning off the lights, or Milani has been able to do away with oppressive government. You can destroy so much art and Shelyn can't do a thing about it.

The preferences of these deities exist to frame their role in stories, not to constrict player agency. If your GM is throwing Achaekek at you because you want to take the Test of the Starstone, that's a GM problem not a setting problem.


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Where does this "Groetus hates Pharasma" idea come from? Groetus literally works for Pharasma- he's part of her org chart. His job is literally "sweep up and turn off the lights for this universe once the Survivor leaves to make the next one."

Nobody in the Maelstrom has any reason to hate Pharasma, because Pharasma's whole system is an acknowledgement that the Maelstrom has won, it's just a matter of time until their victory is complete.

Rovagug hating you is just proof that you exist.


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There's no sense in which the universe only exists because Pharasma manages it. It's just that she was there first, and set up the system to head off the catastrophe that undid the last universe she came from. It's because of this that every other God views her as a trustworthy neutral arbiter.

If she shuffled off this immortal coil, the system would still run pretty well, it's just that you'd get other Gods trying to bully her successor in ways that nobody bothers to try on Pharasma. Like if Asmodeus and Abadar disagree on the destination of a soul, they will defer to Pharasma's judgement and the dispute will end peacefully, a thing that wouldn't necessarily happen with a less tenured judge renowned for her impartiality.


Powers128 wrote:
I'm pretty sure Hell still does a lot of torturing of petitioners. That's how devils are created. Petitioners still exist as "individuals" at least for a while before their essence is absorbed into their plane. From what I understand that's how it is for the rest of the planes too. In places like Elysium, you can choose to retain much of your original identity too I believe.

It's my understanding that individuals who get tortured in Hell in the afterlife are those who end up there because Hell has a contractual claim on them, which is a different process than going through Pharasma's judgment.

It's been a while since I read Planar Adventures (my copy moved to a different state) but my recollection is that only truly exceptional souls maintain any "sense-of-self" after judgement. Some souls will become building-blocks that will eventually become some kind of outsider, who might have visions of a past life, but they don't necessarily feel any commonality with that person.


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Trip.H wrote:
Don't want your soul to go to the abyss after all that impulsive cannibalism? Just spurn the help of the gods and commit all those heinous acts of violence yourself! Who knew avoiding damnation was that easy, wow.

The thing that I think you're really missing is that in Pathfinder there's no continuity of identity or memory after your soul-stuff gets sent off to another plane. You don't go to Hell to be tortured, you just become some of the quintessence out of which Hell is built, and there's no really a "you" in any meaningful sense anymore. You're not a soul that devils will torture so much as "you're part of the available material from which everything in hell, including Devils, is made out of." There might be a Devil someday down the line that's made out of essence that was once part of you, but that Devil is not you.

Like the point of mortal life in the cosmos is to sort the energy that pours out of creation's forge and use it to reinforce the outer planes against the maelstrom's influence to render everything into undifferentiated potentiality. Pharasma's less "a Tyrant that sends you to some eternal punishment" and more "in charge of managing the Universe's wastewater." Things die, their soul-stuff will float down the river of souls to the reservoir at the Boneyard, where she processes it and sends it off to where it belongs, or at least where it can do some good/less harm.


Claxon wrote:
I quite like the idea that judgement on only actually happens when the soul/petitioner is ready for it. Like yes there's a line...but your spot in line doesn't really mean anything, because people get called forward or told to wait all the time.

I think I remember reading that a lot of Pharasma's underlings rule on some of the real clear cut cases too. So it's not like the system isn't set up to go real fast or real slow. There's probably technically a small amount of soulstuff in like "grass" so there's probably a team who just handles those cases really efficiently.


BotBrain wrote:
Also from a narrative perspective having defined rules creates a whole can of worms.

It used to be that the diagetic justification for "Pharasma will let a petitioner hang around in the waiting room for ten thousand years" is because she was quasi-omniscient and knew whether or not some group of heroes would need to talk to (or resurrect) that individual ten thousand years from now. But now the Omens are Lost so she can't do that reliably, but since the whole system was used to that sort of thing happening for eons, there's not like a docket where we need to shuttle people into the courtroom at a good pace.

After all, since the resurrection ritual includes "if the target doesn't want to return, the ritual fails" you can let people face Pharasma's judgement at whatever pace they prefer.


Powers128 wrote:
She sometimes does send people home as a duskwalker. I always liked the ironic use of these guys. To keep the balance of life and death, Pharasma bends the rules a bit sometimes.

Well, specifically there are many examples in the setting of people who get reincarnated, and spirits that linger on (to guide their people, say) before being judged. Paizo will never drill down on "what makes a petitioner go back or linger" because this is also a game and you don't want players trying to optimize their character's deaths.


Darth Grall wrote:
Just realized the remaster killed my Inventor build because the invention can only be level 0 weapons and not a Gun Sword... Why did they prohibit level 1 weapons for level 0's?

I think because the role of making totally mundane items level 1 (or higher) is to signpost "brand new level 1 PCs probably shouldn't have this" so you don't want to let the inventor get around that. Like you technically could afford Full Plate at level 1, but it will cost 100% of your starting wealth so it's a bad idea. Normally this is fine since proficiency operates in big bins like "heavy armor" and "martial weapons" but the inventor cares about their specific innovation.

I think a friendly GM would probably let you rebuild your innovation as a similar level 1 item in downtime later though. That seems like a simple and easy to apply houserule that solves a problem.


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Pharasma respects atheists. Per the PF1 Planar Adventures book, she will allow anybody who rejects the legitimacy of her judgement the opportunity to just wait out eternity in a quiet spot in the boneyard.

You could also just choose to be judged and become part of the foundation of some plane or another. She will respect your choice either way.


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If you're a GM who is having a problem with "Drow existed in our game world, but now they don't and indeed have never existed" one thing I would suggest is that this is a great spot to play around with time shenanigans if that's something you're into.

Like your players might have been to Zirnakaynin when it was full of people, but nowadays nobody lives there at all, and nobody has lived there for possibly thousands of years. This is weird, and thus should be of interest to players and GMs.


Nidal is on Cheliax's side, but will do as little as possible to not get Cheliax (or anyone else) against them. Bringing up Nidal is an example of how most of Cheliax's allies are not anybody who can or will help them very much.

Nidal will probably send enough shadowcasters to keep tabs on what is going on to report back home, and no one else.


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One imagines that the Shackles are not that excited to fight on the side of Cheliax, since perhaps the most exciting thing they have had to brag about in the last decade was "sinking that Cheliax fleet when they tried to invade us in 4712 after the Hurricane King betrayed us."

Also the alliances here are complex. The Shackles are against Vidrian and Vidrian is allied with Ravounel which is allied with Cheliax, but Vidrian wants very little to do with Cheliax and Ravounel's isn't really that interested into helping their former masters.

So I would say that the Hurricane Queen would declare official neutrality and allow her captains to just take whichever prizes they set their eyes on.


I would think that the Shackles captains would want to avoid the Inner Sea itself, since Andoran is a naval power (moreso than Cheliax probably) and the pirate's solution to "they have superior numbers" is discretion and the fact that the ocean is very large.

Mostly I imagine the targeted bounties will be anything coming and going from Andoran's overseas colonies.


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It does feel more thematic for the relatively stable Hell-themed authoritarian country to not have actual slavery, with its inherent violence, but more "indentured servitude" and various contractual shenanigans that make you technically free but for all practical purposes keep you in bondage. It's just that you're no longer buying and selling "a person" but their debts and contractual obligations.


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Yeah "we're going to risk our ships and our people to participate in a far-away war that doesn't really concern us and does not stand to make us wealthier" is a very out of character thing for pirates to do.

Cheliax might offer them letters of marque to prey on Andoran ships in the Arcadian Ocean, but they didn't really need permission to do that anyway on an individual captain-by-captain basis. At the same time, Andoran might make the same offer to Shackles captains.


They won't remaster SoM until it sells out. If it continues to not sell out the existing print run, a better solution is to simply update the relevant material in other books.

The reason G&G was remastered was that they sold out the book, so they needed to order a new print run anyway.


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I think the in-lore thing about slavery is that the big thing was the PFS event of the Fiendflesh Siege of Absalom wherein any slave who took up weapons to defend the city was given manumission, and after that was all over there were basically no slaves left in Absalom so they had to decide whether to get a whole bunch of new slaves, or just to pay people for the jobs that slaves were previously doing and they picked the second one and banned slavery.

With Absalom no longer being a safe port for slavers (and Andoran being otherwise right in the middle of Cheliax and Okeno) it was extremely difficult for the slave trade, and an industry in the Inner Sea, to continue existing.

The thing I think needs more explaining is why Cheliax stopped it within the country though.


One thing about evil Gods, specifically, is that when they are prominent, like Lamashtu, there should be at least a single perspective on that deity that a reasonable person could see and think "that sounds like a deity I should follow."

Like Zon-Kuthon tells you to overcome, Asmodeus does bring order, Urgathoa wants you to enjoy your existence, and Lamashtu will accept you for who you are. It's just that they also do other stuff.

Talking about a deity from the perspective of a follower who is not a mustache-twirling villain does make some sense.


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The thing about sexually-themed villains is that they're just not interested in doing stuff like that anymore. The early days of Pathfinder were "edgy" in a way that the current iteration has less interest in. All the lore still exists, so you can use those entities if you want, but Paizo isn't going to put them in anything without a compelling reason to do so.

The decision to "do a Hellraiser type AP set in Nidal" is not limited by "well, we can't cross those content lines" because they absolutely could if they wanted to give fair warning and context. It's basically an economic decision about how "this is going to drive away more people than it will attract, and it probably wouldn't sell as well as something more mainstream."


I think a big difference between 1e and 2e Pathfinder is that the latter established a "baseline" for content that they're not going to transgress without specific signposting and a good reason. So there's no reason you can't have "Hellraiser: Golarion Edition" in the game, it's just that you wouldn't want to do that in a "normal" book because the space you would use to advise caution to the reader would be better used for more stuff in theme with the book. If you had a whole book where the various content warnings apply throughout (like a deep dive on Nidal and/or the shadow realm) then that's the best place to flesh out the various Velstracs.

Regarding Socothbenoth, the thing about the Outer Rifts is that the most depraved thing you could ever imagine, there's something in the Outer Rifts that's incredibly into whatever that is (and it might even be incredibly powerful.) It's just that we're not going to talk about 99.9% of them ever in an official capacity.


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Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:
I don't think it's ever been made explicitly clear what made Aroden live 5000 years to raise the Starstone and ascend to godhood, but he certainly wasn't a normal Azlanti even by the standards of his day. You could probably qualify him as a mythic character who eventually became a god.

Yeah, I figure Aroden lived 5000 years because he was Mythic, but not divine. 2e makes it clear that the main effect of Mythic power a mortal can achieve is "immortality."


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Eeveegirl1206 wrote:

Isn’t Rauhdoum’s anti deity stance fanned on by beings like Aboloths and Asura who use it as one of there base of operations?

They love the idea of mortals who reject gods.

There is an internal tension in Rahadoum between a faction of social conservatives who want to expunge anything related to Gods or Religion from their society and a faction of progressives who want to take the energy that would otherwise be dedicated to religion and redirect it towards education, science, engineering projects, etc. for the benefit of everybody. After all, for the money and effort we would have spent to build a temple we could instead build a hospital or a school. Rahadoum exists in a superposition of "extremely enlightened" and "extremely closed-minded" which is probably not indefinitely sustainable.

They're going to eventually have to tackle this internal division in Rahadoum, but there's no actual hurry.


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There's an ambiguity in what we call "The Test of the Starstone" since it could refer to "what happens when you touch the rock" or it could refer to "what happens once you attempt to cross the chasm and attempt the dungeon with the intention of touching the rock."

The truly mysterious portion of the experience is "what happens when you touch the rock" but the rest is fairly understandable. You have to cross a bottomless pit with a novel method and get into a cathedral with no doors. Then you have to go through the most deadly dungeon Aroden could devise. I imagine you are free to leave at any point during the dungeon part (it's just the Cathedral of the Starstone won't let you back in if you leave).

Once you get to the rock and you clear away the skeletons, a few things can happen:
- You look at all the skeletons and decide not to touch the rock.
- You touch the rock and join the ranks of the skeletons adding ambiance to the room.
- You touch the rock and become a god.
- You touch the rock and you somehow let go before you become either a skeleton or a god.

I imagine if you were in the room to watch the last part from the outside it would look mostly like the classic SF/F "it's too much power/super-power meltdown" sequence where their eyes and face start to glow and their concerned onlookers want them to stop for their own safety.


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Ravingdork wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
vyshan wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:

We try to make sure that when a villain or evil group or whatever gets dealt with in an Advneture Path or adventure that we seed in more villains for future games. I do this with "Spore War" in a few ways, as an example.

RPG Villains are trees, and we are the lumberjacks who need to nurture them and help them thrive even as we send them out to the harvsest so we have job security.

So are we going to be getting more villians and evil groups for the inner Sea? :)
Yes.

Oh good! For a little while there I was beginning to think that heroism might have finally won out! XD

That would have made for the most boring setting ever!

On the other hand, too, if you want to add new villains and threats because you came up with a really good idea for a few new ones, then you kind of have to let the heroes knock off some of the older villains/threats else your setting starts feeling a bit too Grimdark.

Golarion is supposed to be a place where most people can have relatively peaceful lives, but something that requires some heroes to save the world or at least a big chunk of it seems to happen a couple times a year. It's about striking that balance. If you try to stack too many crises on top of each other it's like a hat on a hat.

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