QuietBrowser's page

The Alignment 9-grid. We all know it. Law to Chaos. Good to Evil. So simple, on paper, yet a source of endless debate in practice. And well know why: It's because everyone seems to have their own interpretation of what actually defines a given alignment. Whether Lawfulness means personal discipline or respect for the existing laws of the land, for example.

So, out of curiosity, I thought I'd start this topic as a place for people to share their own personal interpretations of the alignments. Of course, I wouldn't be so crude as to not start with my own perspectives.

Lawful Good - The Two Pillars
A character of this alignment, as the creedo suggests, recognizes the existence of two pillars of morality - lawfulness and good - and considers them to be mutually supportive. Good exists to promote law and order. But law and order exist only to support and promote goodness. Law does NOT equate to Good; laws can be corrupt, can be defiled, can be WRONG. A law that is wrong must be swept aside and replaced with one that is right. A Lawful Good character prefers to attempt methods of reform that are not disruptive first, then to try more extreme methods. When a Lawful Good aids a village that has been attacked by raiders, after the initial threat is finished, he or she spends time to help the village prepare to defend itself by establishing training regimes for defenders, evacuation plans, and other orderly methods to ensure they can survive on their own when the character leaves.

Neutral Good - For the Greater Good
Spread good as far and as wide as you can. That is the creedo of the Neutral Good character. Law and order can have their place in supporting or promoting goodness, but they are not essential to it. A Neutral Good character is concerned only with doing as much good as they can, however they can, and what methods they use or forms it take matters not in the end.

Chaotic Good - Benevolent Whimsy
Liberty and freedom are all-important to the Chaotic Good character, but so is happiness, joy and good. These characters are driven entirely by their own wants and whims, but their wants and whims are fundamentally positive. These characters want others to be happy and do good things simply because it feels good to be good. Impulse and benevolence are the two driving forces of such a character's life. A Chaotic Good character is suspicious of law and order because they know how easy it can be corrupted into a force of oppression. They do not inherently oppose law - "do what thou wilt, if it harm none" - but they are always watchful for its abuse and quick to act to oppose law that stifles and oppresses.

Lawful Neutral- The Law Is All
Law Equals Good. That is the perspective of the Lawful Neutral character. Actual morality is a meaningless distinction. The laws are inherently right and must be obeyed, and those who do not obey the laws are wrong. Evil comes from rebellion and discord, good comes from obeying the law as they are written. The spirit of the law matters not, only the letter. That does not mean that laws cannot change or be revised, only that they should be considered carefully; is the problem truly with the Law, or with fallible mortals who do not adhere to the Law's purity?

True Neutral - I Don't Care
The True Neutral character is apathy, plain and simple. Not malice, for they have not that level of meanness in them. They don't want to hurt anyone, really, but they don't care enough to try and help, either. A True Neutral lives a fundamentally self-focused existence; they care about their comforts, but not enough to disrupt the existences of others in their pursuit. They just want to live their lives, and extend the same courtesy to others.

Chaotic Neutral - I Do What I Want
Selfish desire rules the heart of the Chaotic Neutral character. These individuals care only about one thing: satisfying their own personal wants and whims. They don't necessarily want to hurt anyone, and hurting people certainly isn't the goal, but if they have to hurt someone, or break a promise, or do something wrong, well, then they'll do it. A Chaotic Neutral is selfish, NOT stupid. They want to get what they want, but that doesn't mean they can't be thoughtful or patient.

Lawful Evil - Evil For A Purpose
A character of the Lawful Evil type lives by the creedo "the end justifies the means". They have a Purpose, a goal they want to achieve, and whether they view it as ultimately noble or a self-admittedly selfish one doesn't matter. All that matters is that they will do ANYthing it takes to achieve that goal. A Lawful Evil character is pragmatism incarnate. They keep their darker urges shackled to their command; they may enjoy the torturing of innocents, but they will not do so without a cause. To give in to their desires is to lose sight of their goal, to allow their means to become the ends in and of themselves.

Neutral Evil - Because It Benefits Me
Selfishness taken to its darkest interpretation is the Neutral Evil character. Such a character is out for himself (or herself, or itself) above and before all else. They do whatever they feel they can get away with and may benefit them, whether that benefit is a pragmatic one (assassinating or framing a superior to usurp their place, betraying a friend to gain a physical reward) or a personal one (raping a woman desired simply because they have coveted them), but recognize that some measure of self-control is warranted. Their goal is to state their desires, but evil is a tool to that end, not an end in and of itself.

Chaotic Evil - Because I Can
This is the darker counterpart of Chaotic Neutral. This is a character who not only lives by the creedo of doing whatever they want to do, but whose desires actively encompass wrongness. They kill and torment and defile and destroy for no greater purpose or rationale than because it is what gives them pleasure. This is a character who will burn the world, if he thinks the flames will be pretty enough. Their desires are all they live for, and their desires are inherently sick and twisted. Other Evil characters may have similar sickness in them - a love of inflicting pain, a joy in slaughter - but they do not let it rule them the way a Chaotic Evil character does.

I apologise if this topic has already been started, but I didn't think it was a bad one to open.

I have something of a personal interest in Greta, from the 2nd adventure module of this path, due to my previous interest in Undrella the Harpy, and I was curious what various actual players did when presented with the possibility of a flirtatious (and even, optionally, "redeemable by love" type) winter she-wolf taking an interest in them.

Mostly I'm interested in seeing if anyone actually "took it up" with her after she invited them out for coffee, and how far it went.

Like folks say, though the fluff tends to describe the Paladins as tied to the gods, their underlying motif hasn't ever really been "champion of the divine", but the "knight in shining armor", inspired by the Arthurian mythos, tales of knightly chivalry, and romanticized visions of the medieval Crusaders - don't forget, it was the 80s, and Gary Gygax was a pretty devout Christian.

The whole hiccup got started in 1e, became more muddled in 2e, and since then it's basically been a sacred cow; everyone expected Paladins to be Lawful Good *and* divine champions at the same time.

Honestly, OP, one of the things I thought WoTC did right with 4th edition was giving that sacred cow the chop and just making Paladins the holy warriors of any and all faiths. Removes the need for classes like the Blackguard or Antipaladin, which have always been kind of ridiculous.

Besides, if I want to be a "knight in shining armor", I can spin that out of any armor-wearing Lawful Good character - fighters, cavaliers, rangers... I don't need a specific class to fit that archetype.

Let's not forget; if Pathfinder leans towards any aspect of the Cthulhu Mythos, it's the branch that Robert E. Howard developed. There are "horrors in the outer dark", and they are much more powerful than humans, but they are not inherently unstoppable. Conan has gone up against creatures that would be "Great Old Ones" himself, like Yag Kosha or Khostrel Khel, and been involved in killing them.

Lovecraft's personal characters tend to die and/or go insane because of meeting the various horrors of the Mythos because they are quite explicitly normal people. Something that cannot be said to apply to any decent Pathfinder character.

Really, your average PC is doing things that would be inconceivable to Lovecraft's "rational, civilized men" pretty much at first level, where clerics can mend wounds with a touch and wizards can hurl bolts. Goblins and orcs and magical beasts would, to one of Lovecraft's heroes, be terrifying things that should not be - to a Pathfinder, they're literally part of the scenery. Dangerous, yes, but hardly something to go crazy over.

One simply cannot cross a fantasy setting that actually allows players to achieve the heights they can in D&D or Pathfinder with the Cthulhu Mythos without inevitably sinking into Lovecraft Lite territory. A level 20 wizard is at the least as dangerous and powerful in a pure Lovecraft setting as a Starspawn of Cthulhu.

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but the Demons Revisited section entry for the Shadow Demon has the Iconic Paladin having been possessed by a shadow demon and/or having been shot in the head by the Iconic Gunslinger, who in turn looks like she's either been possessed by a shadow demon or is about to be pounced on from behind by one.

Adjule wrote:

I definitely understand. My biggest gripe with portraying only the Chaotic Evil orc society is a half-breed of them is an available core race. I can understand having creatures with CE societies, even if I don't like it at all. But that's the biggest reason I dislike having that for the orcs.

well...

Half orcs breed true, so that's a way to get more half orcs out there.

...Which does absolutely nothing to alleviate the actual complaint here, which is that half-orcs have no real cultural background besides being shunned and bullied to draw upon, whether they are first-generation hybrids or the latest in a long line of half-orcs.

Even the Advanced Race Guide openly states (page 51) that half-orcs brought up in the rare ghettoes and hamlets of their own kind tend to be no better off than the ones raised amongst humans or orcs, as "bullying and physical confrontation comes easy to a people who have been raised with few other examples of behavior".

That's the thing that people keep complaining about; there may be token lines hinting at the existence of half-orcs who can't be pigeonholed as victims of prejudice and abuse, token evil teammembers or Drizz't style cultural rebels, but the bulk of all official media on actually playing a half-orc focuses pretty much exclusively on those options.

I mean, orc-raised half-orcs *have* to be either token evil teammates, very dark anti-heroes, or Drizz't style rebels, since all detailed orc societies are Chaotic Evil cesspits of hatred, violence and abuse. Human-raised half-orcs come from a background as being shunned and hated and "unable even to hold normal jobs" (ARG, page 51) in many places. And even if they were raised by half-orc parents themselves? They're still really no better off than if they were raised by humans. They maybe had a bit more love and affection growing up, but their background is still predominantly one of bullying and violence.

Actually, Mikaze, there's two of those human man on female thri-kreen stories up now, that I know of. The famous one from /tg/ on the 1D4chan wiki, and a newer one on a website called SoFurry.

The only problem with a "safe" jorogumo/man relationship in Pathfinder, Odraude, is that Pathfinder Jorogumos differ from their mythological variants by having a parasitic reproduction system. Mythological jorogumos simply chose to eat humans or feed humans to their offspring; Pathfinder's ones reproduce by being inseminated, paralyzing the father, and then laying their eggs into the father's paralysed body, out of which the hatchlings will fatally eat their way upon hatching. Rather puts a kink in the relationship.

Not to say I couldn't see, say, a tragic Romeo & Juliet type scenario (the man is willing to die to father his lover's children, the jorogumo doesn't want to have children if it means killing her lover), or a murder-mystery type scenario where the jorogumo is instead killing other men and/or women to serve as broodhosts in place of her lover, but it's still a rather limited setup.

Now, I know that Character Alignment is a highly subjective affair in D&D. I apologize for writing this, but I just had to get this off of my chest after reading some topics on here about Paladins vs. Lawful Evil settlements or encounters.

I just never understand why Lawful Good vs. Lawful Evil seems to be so hard to figure out. Why? Because of this:

The essence of Lawful Good is "laws are important, in so far as they support, protect or promote goodness". It is not "law equals goodness". That is the essence of Lawful Neutral, where one prizes the letter of the law above all things and does not concern oneself with the morality of the law.

If the above statement can be taken as the essence of Lawful Good, then, the obvious addendum is that "if a law actively harms or oppresses others, or otherwise promotes the cause of evil, then it is a bad law, and should be opposed".

In other words, a Lawful Good character is not obligated by their alignment to obey laws that directly serve or benefit evil. Such laws breach the purpose of law in so far as the Lawful Good alignment recognizes it (to whit, promoting the greater good of the community) and thusly are inherently worthless. Paladins serving gods devoted more to Law may wrestle with it, but ultimately their calling is to be a force for Good, which means they are empowered to ignore laws that purposefully aid or empower Evil.

That said, alignment should be tempered by common sense. A Paladin, or any Lawful Good character, does not walk into the middle of Chelish slavemarket and start attacking the slavers -- not because it breaches their alignment, but because common sense dictates that such an action will not help the cause of good, may result in the innocent being harmed by accident, and almost certainly result in their dying having accomplished nothing.

A Lawful Good character always tries to work so that they promote Good with the minimal amount of social unrest. This means they are very procedural and attempt to keep disruption to a minimum. And once they have achieved the Good they set out to do, they should strive to smooth over the disruption they caused and get things smoothly organized again.

Ultimately, the primary goal of a Lawful Good character is to uphold and promote Good. The Lawful part comes in their procedural, organized methodology to doing so. Take, for example, a town that has just been saved from a rampaging goblin tribe: the proper course of action, for a Lawful Good character, is to not only drive off or kill the goblins, but to remain in the village and organize it so that such tragedies do not happen again. Be responsible for initiating the construction of defenses, organize a militia, set up safehouses and plans of action - only when the town has been organized such that they should be able to defend themselves against a subsequent attack will a Lawful Good character move on. Simply killing the creatures and then moving on is a Chaotic Good action, and even then you'd expect them to stick around long enough to see to patching up any injuries or otherwise helping out individuals.

From what few of your posts I have seen in my short time here, Mikaze, I rather expected that you would have a positive answer to my questions. I must confess I never expected you to actually post here, though.

As for your stance on half-orcs, I must confess a preference for that sort of mutual consensual origin myself. Honestly? I can't help but feel that Paizo sticks to emphasizing the "half-orcs are children of rape" thing more to emphasize their status as Darker & Edgier than D&D, for all their talk about it emphasizing the heroicness of the half-orc adventurer. In theory that may be true, in practice... can anyone name an important major Paizo-written half-orc who actually *was* a rape-brat? The only three I can immediately recall off the top of my head are Irimjka (whose earliest origins are "found as a mysteriously abandoned baby in a graveyard"), Irabeth Tirablade (orc father chose to give up his tribe and evil viewpoint because he fell in love with a human woman) and Tsadok Goldtooth (human father befriended orc mother while they were slaves together on a pirate ship, she helped him escape, they fell in love).

Anyway, to answer my own question, I obviously believe the first two questions deserve a "yes" answer. Ultimately, I think the idea adds a lot more to the setting, and offer a lot of potential for story-hooks and character concepts. It can be played for comedy or grotesquery, yes, but it can also be played for other things.

The reclusive spellcaster/librarin and his gynosphinx companion becomes instantly memorable when the subtle hints of them being a couple are recognized. Killing a Jadwiga warlock, only for his winter wolf ally to scream in heartbreak and go berserk at the sight of her lover's death adds a definite element to the encounter. The hag who lives in tenuous peace with the nearby village so long as her lover and their changeling daughter is left alone, the medusa terrorizing a village because she's in love with a local youth or maiden and demands they give him/her up to be her concubine, the thria queen sending the party to track down the renegade soldier who fell in love with and stole away her latest consort, the "kidnapped" prince who refuses to leave his siren lover...

But then, I'm more than slightly mad, so maybe these scenarios that keep popping up in my head really don't work and aren't meant to be.

Something I've noticed while flicking through the four core bestiaries for Pathfinder alone is that quite a few monstrous races are depicted as depending on human(oid) partners from other species to propagate themselves. Harpies, hags, sirens, thriae, jorogumo - and those are the ones I remember off the top of my head.

Now, the books are also quite clear that generally, such races keep their monstrous status by the way they treat their partners - jorogumo, for example, borrow the motif of Ravenloft's Red Widow and use the sires of their offspring as food for said offspring once they hatch, for example. And Pathfinder in general is pretty strong on the "Always Chaotic Evil" thing.

But still, I found myself wondering: is it at all possible that, in Golarion, some monstrous races could actually fall in love with humans or humanoids? Not necessarily to the point of changing their alignment, but even if Love Redeems isn't necessarily true, Even Evil Has Loved Ones, as they say.

I mean, harpies might be Chaotic Evil as a race, but the Chaos part of that alignment is just as important as the Evil part.* Hags might be black-hearted, but that doesn't mean there isn't room in their hearts for some twisted sliver of love - hell, Planescape: Torment has Ravel Puzzlewell's sincere love for The Nameless One as an important backstory element, and I know a Dragon Magazine article included a magic item made from the head of a green hag who died after watching the evil human ranger she truly loved by murdered by her jealous sisters**.

And that's not getting into Pathfinder hints on the matter, such as Irabeth (Wrath of the Righteous) and Tsadok Goldtooth (Skull & Shackles), who were both born of loving human/orc couples, or the comment about Sirens dying of heartbreak from losing their human paramours in their bestiary entry, or Undrella (harpy, Legacy of Fire) and Greta (winter wolf, Reign of Winter), who are both romanceable *and* redeemable NPCs.

I guess what I'm asking is this:
#1: Do you think it's possible that a monstrous humanoid could actually fall in love with a non-monster, in the Pathfinder setting?

#2: Do you think such a character actually fits in the world that is Golarion?

#3: Have you ever made use of such a couple, or encountered such a couple, in your Pathfinder games?

* Which is, incidentally, why the writeup about it "being traditional" to eat the fathers of their daughters after being fertilized in the Classic Monsters splatbook never made sense to me; chaotic races are, by their very nature, not prone to such regularized behavior. A harpy could kill and eat their partner after sex, yes, but she'd do so on a whim. She'd be just as likely to figure on keeping him alive until she grows bored, especially if she thought he was a pretty good lay. And if some other harpy complains? She beats her up. That's Chaotic Evil in a nutshell: you do what *you* want to do, and to the Abyss with everyone else and what they think of it.

But then, on this chain of thought, I made a homebrew setting where harpies *used* to act like Golarion ones, except that the harpies who kept their lovers alive produced more daughters, who grew up healthier (the fathers would take special care of the chicks they fathered to convince their "spouses" to spare them and/or to gain them as allies), and eventually they became the dominant strain of the species. Classic Pathfinder-style man-eaters remain a fringe minority pushed to the backwater regions, whilst the "normal" harpy was a still-dangerous, but less hostile, Chaotic Neutral race that wasn't so opposed to civilization, even being a valid player race (using Strix stats, if one is curious).

** No, I can't remember the item name, the article (I think it was a Bazaar of the Bizarre, focused on either Hag items or Swamp items) or the issue number. I would love to find out. I dimly remember another item from the article being a cloak of swamp reeds and the like that had... some effect, I can't remember if it was Pass Without Trace or an Extradimensional Mansion type effect that only worked in swamp environments.

First of all, I've never started a topic on these boards before, so I'm deeply sorry if I say anything offensive or if I'm putting this in the wrong way.

Pathfinder continues to grow, and as part of that, it's brought out quite a large number of new classes to the iconics. Advanced Player's Guide gave us the Alchemist, Cavalier, Inquisitor, Oracle, Summoner and Witch. Ultimate Combat gave us the Gunslinger, Ninja and Samurai. Ultimate Magic brought the Magus into being. And Advanced Class Guide is looking to give us the Arcanist, Bloodrager, Brawler, Hunter, Investigator, Shaman, Skald, Slayer, Swashbuckler and Warpriest.

That's a lot of new content. But I was curious; what do people think of these various additions to the Pathfinder class array? Which ones do you like, dislike, think could have been done better, etcetera?

Since it's only fair, here are my answers to the question I'm asking.

Alchemist: I'll be honest, I'm not really a big fan of the Alchemist. I just never honestly saw the point in it. It's basically a class revolving around potion-brewing, with a little treading on the Barbarian's heels via its Mutagen feature. Ultimate Magic made it a little more attractive, but still, I would probably never play one myself. I suppose if you were determined to run a caster-free game it's a good finangle, but, yeah, honestly I see the Alchemist's various bombs and the like as something better off folded into the Gunslinger, or else used as part of a more "Mad Scientist" typed class.

Cavalier: When I first saw this class, I immediately skipped over it. My first thought was "if a player wants to be a Knight in Shining Armor sans Spells, why not just be a Lawful Good Fighter with the right feats?" But, when I actually took a second look, I found myself pleasantly surprised. The fact that it doesn't overemphasize the Cavalier's steed, to the point that the class is useless if not mounted, helped a lot, as I've heard was the case with 3.5's Knight base class and Cavalier prestige class. In all honesty, the class's focus on buffing party members and debuffing enemies through non-magical means actually reminds me a lot of 4e's Warlord class.

Inquisitor: ...I just cannot, for the life of me, see the point of this class. It's a powerful archetype and all, but I just can't get behind it. I can never really figure out what an Inquisitor actually does when combat rolls around - I guess it's sort of a cleric-spell-casting Rogue. It's very odd because I've seen 4e's Avenger, I can easily imagine fluffing one up as member of their church's inquisition (or an equivalent organization - Warhammer's Witchfinders, for example), and come up with plenty of ideas for that, but trying to do the same for Pathfinder's actual Inquisitor class leaves me... well, stumped.

Oracle: On the one hand, I shouldn't think much of the Oracle, since it's literally a Divine analogue to the Sorcerer. But on the other hand, I find the Oracle really, really cool. I like the class's fluff and I like it's crunch support, something that I find is generally the case for Pathfinder classes vs. 3.5 classes. The Curse motifs are cool, without overly impairing the class in the name of flavor, and the Mysteries they choose really emphasize the difference between two Oracles.

Summoner: Yeah, I know it's cliché on these boards, but I'm not a Summoner fan. It just seems like a glorified, over-specialized version of the Conjurer specialist. Even the Eidolon, which could be very cool and fluffwise actualy is, fails to really make the class useful. If a Pathfinder 2e came out and the Conjurer killed the Summoner and took the (upgraded and less confusing) Eidolon for itself, I'd be quite happy.

Witch: Packed with juicy characterization, flavorful without being too weak or too powerful, the Witch is one of my favorite classes to be added to Pathfinder, and I think the gem of the APG. The fact it's the first time a D&D setting has included a "Red Mage" type base class further cements its approval in my mind.

Gunslinger: Gun-wielding characters in fantasy RPGs are a controversial element. All things in consideration, though, I'm very happy with the Gnslinger's existence and I applaud Paizo for including it. The Grit system was unexpected, but works out quite nicely, giving players a reason to really "play up" the Gunslinger properly, as opposed to the fun-killing "I sit way, way in the back and snipe at the bad guys" that gun-wielders tend to get stereotyped as in such settings.

Ninja: If I'm honest, my first impulse when presented with the Ninja was to recoil as needless Japanophile pandering. The Monk kind of gets by on tradition and unique place, but the Ninja is basically a Rogue with Japanese flavor added on top. Forcing myself to take a look revealed what's actually a pretty decent class, crunchwise, but still, I probably would rather have had a Ninja archetype for the Rogue than a full-fledged class. I mean, I could easily reskin the Ninja's crunch for a more mystical sort of assassin class, but I just don't get it being so essential to do "magical Japanese Rogue" as an independent class.

Samurai: Remember what I said about the Cavalier and the Ninja? Yep; this is another class where, though investigation has revealed decent crunch, I just don't see a point behind it as an independent class. Pathfinder's archetype system means that the Fighter could *easily* have represented the Samurai. Kudos to Paizo for being smarter than 3.5 and not making the Samurai yet another Alignment Restricted class, though, even if this is one example where I could kind of see a suggestion of aiming to be Lawful as appropriate. And that's rare from me, since I'm not a huge fan of the 9-grid character alignment system.

Magus: My favorite class in Pathfinder, hands down. I have always been a huge Gish fan, ever since I first cut my teeth back on AD&D. I love 4e's Swordmage, and I love Pathfinder's Magus. I will confess to being a little disappointed at the spell selection, but I guess that's a side effect of coming from 4e's "every caster has unique spells" perspective, and I certainly find the ones that the Magus has very unique. The Bladebound archetype in particular is one of my favorites in the game.

Arcanist: Honestly, I find myself puzzled about my feelings for this class. I do like the basic idea, and arcane casters have always been my favorite. But, at the same time, I find the execution of the idea kind of blah. Good crunch, just... not very exciting. I really don't know how I feel about it, to be honest.

Bloodrager: Once I actually took a look at it, this class really caught my attention. I find the idea very interesting, especially because it reminds me of the Irish myths of the Riastrad, or "warp-spasm", a rage that actually mutated and transformed the berserker. Honestly, I feel the Bloodrager could be more interesting by focusing on that side of it, rather than by making it another melee-ranged spellcaster like the Magus. Either way, I like it a lot, and it even gives me ideas for 4e and its Hybrid Classing rules, especially since the Sorcerer and Barbarian there can mesh pretty well.

Brawler: Truth be told? This is one of the ACG classes I'm least looking forward to. No matter how hard I try, no matter what angle I look at it from, all I see is a Monk stripped of that pesky "must always be Lawful" rule that I've always hated, and with less Eastern flavor to its mechanics. So, yeah; I would rather see a unarmed combat-focused archetype for the Fighter and simply strip the Monk of its Alignment Requisite than see this class.

Hunter: I don't know, I just don't find this class very interesting. The fact it reminds me a lot of the World of Warcraft class called the Hunter - especially as it was portrayed in WoW's short-lived D20 tabletop game - doesn't help. I'd never want to play one myself.

Investigator: Strangely, even though I'm not an Alchemist fan myself, I really, really like the Investigator. It just seems so very suited for an urban-set game, and with a little fluff-work I could easily see an Indiana Jones or Laura Croft-styled adventurer-archaeologist character being built on the Investigator class's crunchwork. Definitely one of the more promising classes coming.

Shaman: Being a hybrid of the Witch and the Oracle, I find myself strangely ambivalent towards the Shaman. It's an interesting idea, I suppose, but I just can't get into it.

Skald: I'd probably never play a Skald myself, but the "barbarian bard" archetype is an old one and I suppose it's handled pretty well. It looks promising so far, but it's just not my area of interest.

Slayer: Another medicore idea, from my point of view. The combination of the Ranger's Tracking ability and the Rogue's Back Stab certainly makes for a lethally effective crunch-combo, but honestly I think a refluffed Ranger or Rogue already does this class just fine. I guess it works if you absolutely need 100% crunch support for your bounty hunter, but I don't care for it much at all.

Swashbuckler: Ordinarily, I probably would have asked "why not just make this a fighter archetype?" But, looking at what they've done for it, I really do like the Swashbuckler as a class on its own merits. It meshes up with the archetype it's drawing from so very well that I can easily see places for it in games I might be inclined to run.

Warpriest: Alongside the Brawler, this is the class I find least interesting in the ACG. Either it's a beefier Cleric, or it's an attempt to create a non-Alignment Restricted variant of the Paladin. There's just... nothing here to really excite my attention, and I can't help the feeling it owes a large part of its existence to Pathfinder's retaining the idea of Alignment Restricted classes. Which is my big problem with the Brawler, as well.

According to the Anniversary edition for RotR, there is literally no difference between Sin Magic and Virtue Magic. Both are just fancy names for the seven schools of magic that the Thassilonians practiced, and it's ultimately a matter of semantics (and differing acts for scoring points) - a character who has high Charity receives the same benefits for Abjuration-based Thassilonian magic effects as someone who has high Envy, since these are the opposing sins and virtues.

The Sin of Envy and the Virtue of Charity both correlate to the school of Abjuration.

The Sin of Gluttony and the Virtue of Temperance both correlate to the school of Necromancy.

The Sin of Greed and the Virtue of Generosity both correlate to the school of Transmutation.

The Sin of Lust and the Virtue of Love both correlate to the school of Enchantment.

The Sin of Pride and the Virtue of Humility both correlate to the school of Illusion.

The Sin of Sloth and the Virtue of Zeal both correlate to the school of Conjuration.

The Sin of Wrath and the Virtue of Kindness both correlate to the school of Evocation.

As for Marislova, her wanting to leave at all costs seems... contrived. It's meant to turn Jadrenka against the party. But considering Marislova is still in love with Jadrenka... then I suspect the moment she learns Jadrenka is in danger, she may switch motives and instead want to save her love. And this could even be how she "proves" she is faithful.

Though there is an alternative: Marislova as a replacement PC. After all, it's a dangerous land. Traveling alone could be fatal. And there is no guarantee of escaping Jadrenka. But traveling with the group? Safety in numbers and allies all in one. ;)

Honestly, I always felt that Marislova's wanting to leave at all costs makes sense.

I mean, it's just my personal interpretation, but Jadrenka doesn't seem to be what you'd call a sane individual - I certainly wouldn't expect her to be, what with having been raised from birth by her hag mother and having spent centuries living with the paranoid knowledge that if she *ever* fails in her duties, her mom gets to take her place *and* turn Jadrenka into a hag herself. By the time the party finds her, Marislova has to be feeling that Jadrenka's lost it, especially with how she's treating Marislova.

Even beyond the fact that Marislova is under severe emotional distress from Jadrenka's refusal to listen to reason and "tests" of her faithfulness, the relationship is frankly rather one-sided.

I mean, Maris fell in love with Jadrenka, despite the fact she was not only a changeling (which lore tells us are seen as inherently creepy in-universe by their very nature), but also one who had absolutely no clue about how to act around people, since, like the Iconic Witch, she was raised by hags. Maris didn't let the fact he'd have to move into Artrosa to be with her stop his feelings, even though this meant he'd be moving into a dungeon full of evil Fey, one of whom is his new stepmother (i.e: a crazy, evil, malicious, cruel, powerful spell-casting crone with a taste for humanoid flesh), out in the middle of nowhere. Even when Artrosa began inflicting him with gender dysphoria, he could have cut and run, but he chose to stay, embrace her womanhood and become Marislova, all to be with Jadrenka.

And how does Jadrenka thank her for all these years of love, faith and devotion? By believing Kyrisjana when she claims Marislova and her have been having an affair - one would think that one wouldn't *need* Int 21 and Wis 14 to realize that maybe trusting the half-succubus Chaotic Evil nymph isn't a very smart idea, especially when it comes to the faithfulness of your ever-sacrificing lover - and imprisoning Marislova, subjecting her to psychological/emotional abuse by continually forcing her to take cruel "tests" to prove her innocence, but never accepting that Marislova is innocent.

So, yeah. I honestly don't blame Marislova for wanting to bug the frak out of Artrosa if she's convinced the PCs can get her out of there.