Wormser's page

Jeven wrote:

Hell as described in Dante's Inferno

Man, one of these days I need to write a book that describes something I made up myself, use terminology and imagery stolen from a major world religion, and see if I can get non-members of that religion to think my book represents actual canon of that religion.

Quite fun actually. Especially if you choose a defunct mystery religion like the Roman religion of Mithraism. No one knows what the beliefs where but are only guessing based upon the imagery left behind (as well as a list of ranks in the organization)

@Wormser - The Core Rulebook defines what good and evil are for the purposes of the game world. Whether they happen to resemble one or more real-world value systems is irrelevant to the topic of how the game defines them.

Correct.

" You are correct in that good and evil are objective in the pathfinder system since they have been defined in the game's implied assumptions.

However, these definitions are not actually about good and evil in a broader sense (which was the apparent thrust of the OP)."

There is no "Nature" of Good/Evil in pathfinder. There is just a defined set. There is no "Good = Hard." There is only what pathfinder has defined as good and evil

No - We do not know that Altruism and self-sacrifice have been ubiquitous across societies as a valued belief. You take a small sample of beliefs across a narrow swath of history (for example, tell me what the Incans, Mayans, Aztecs, Olmecs, Abysissians, Old Kingdom Eygptians felt about altruism and self sacrifice based upon their own recorded beliefs) Tell me what the Vikings, Goths, Mongols felt about these topics.

So the spell would be "Protection from beings who tend to act against the judeo-christian valued behaviors" instead of Protection from Evil.

You are correct in that good and evil are objective in the pathfinder system since they have been defined in the game's implied assumptions.

However, these definitions are not actually about good and evil in a broader sense (which was the apparent thrust of the OP).

Pathfinder uses a label of good to define actions in alignment with the judeo-christian system when it would be more appropriate to use a labvel like "Belief Congruent"

That does not make either of them Evil.

"Evil" cannot be objectively described. Evil can only be described in the context of a system. Saying that the Tyrant or the Warlord are Evil is an label based upon an assumption that the pathfinder universe is viewed thru the lens of the Judeo-Christian belief system (or other similar belief) which have certain societal values

What this means in practical terms, is that an NPC should ping good or evil based upon the PCs beliefs (thus the same NPC could be both good and evil to two different members of a party).

Since alignment is actually very labile in pathfinder, it is only really useful when describing what types of outsiders are arbitrarily impacted by a spell (and in describing the activity constraints of certain paragons of a particular faith (e.g. Clerics, paladins, etc). In the case of the paragons, the labels of good and evil describe their beliefs in relation to a basic western judeo-christian belief system and are really only a descriptor.

The concepts of "good" and "evil" cannot exist in isolation. They can only be defined and understood in the context of a societal system. A "good" person in some societies would be the person who follows all the rules of conduct and mores valued by the society (not quite the same as lawful but in this society there would only be lawful/good and notlawful/notgood). A "good" person in other societies would be a person who maximizes the goods and services enjoyed by the group even if that involves killing and cheating other people who do not belong to the group. In still other societies a "good" person would be someone who kills individuals who are corrupting the society. Note, probably none of these people would be considered good by the OP. Also, note that none of these behaviours would necessarily be "hard."

Good = hard only when the society has deemed that "good" behaviour/thoughts are those that are altruistic and/or go against a natural inclination for selfishness

It is neither a trap nor overpowered. It is the revised base for monk class. It only adds options to the various abilities. In addition, unlike every other archetype it has been explicitly explained that it will work with ALL other monk archetype (even those that modify the same abilities) with qinggong taking a secondary role. Thus, think of it as Monk 2.0 instead of an archetype

The assertion you appear to be making is that -expanding- the list of available feats is different from - replacing -, - altering -, or -modifying -. That is a particular viewpoint and one that I think the writers of the guides hold. The question is whether the developers of Pathfinder hold the same viewpoint.

The restriction is not limited to replacement only. The APG states that the two archetypes cannot " ... replace or alter the same class feature ..." The rules go on to state that two archetypes cannot be combined if they "... modify ..." the same feature. Thus if an archetype replaces, alters, or modifies the same class feature, they cannot be combined.

Not everything can be perfectly congruent in pathfinder. That is a side effect of having multiple individuals working in a simultaneous development situation with diffused control of the final product(think Apple vs Android environment). Accept that there will be situations where an individual class or archetype has inconsistent features. Your best bet if you would like that feature is to ask the devs to make an explicit break in the rules. This has been done before as I have just found that out with the Qinggong archetype. Since the Qinggong monk allows you to modify almost every ability, it would normally not be allowed to be combined with other archetypes. However, the devs have made an explicit exception where you can combine the Qinggong with all other archetypes by treating the Qinggong modifications as secondary to the other archetypes. You can ask for such an exception with Sohei and flurry

Wormser wrote:

Qinggong archetype is impossible to combine with any other archetype

Covered in an FAQ

APG p73 wrote:

but none of the alternate class features can replace or alter the same class feature from the core class as another alternate class feature

Both alter "Bonus Feats", so they don't work together.

So Qinggong was ruled as an explicit exception to the rule that archetypes which modify the same ability cannot be combined. The mechanism is that Qinggong is essentially a secondary archetype where the primary archetype changes always have priority. I would think that this would be a reasonable approach to all archetypes (primary/secondary) but the game designers have spoken. In the absence of a ruling specific to the combination of Sohei/MOMS, it appears to be an illegal combination since they both offer options for the same class feature

So it is written, so shall it be

Replace "feats" with "monk abilities" in reference to Qinggong

This would then imply that the Qinggong archetype is impossible to combine with any other archetype since it modifies every monk ability by allowing you to tale alternate abilities. Since the Sohei allows you to take alternate feats without changing the availability of the base feats, then how is this different? Allowing a person additional options for every ability appears to be modifying every ability. Since you do not have to take mounted feats, you could effectively leave the feats as original just like the qinggong could choose to leave his/her feats as original.

Is it PFS legal to combine the Master of Many Styles and the Sohei monk archetypes? I thought that I read somewhere that it was NOT legal for PFS but there are a large number of guides/advice which says they can combine. To make very clear, this is a question pertaining to PFS only (not to the broader pathfinder gaming experience).