graegos's page

But again, why and how is he playing a ("cleric of a "?) deity without knowing anything about said deity?

The why is either they want to play a generic cleric and are required to pick one because PFS says they have to and/or because there simply isn't any further information about the deities in the CRB that tells them anything useful beyond what they are gods of and what domains they have. The 3.0 CRB actually had more information about the deities listed than simply "these are what they are deities of and what their domains are."

The "how" is the more pressing part. What does a character who is devoted to a god look like when the player knows nothing about their god except a name and alignment?

The character looks like whatever the player thinks the character should look like even if it's not the same as what another player or even the DM thinks the character should look like.

Do people actually do that in PFS?

Let's say I want to play a cleric because, you know, cleric's can heal people. Let's also say I want to play a cleric of death. If I want to play a cleric in PFS I cannot simply pick the death domain, I have to pick a deity first, then domains or pick a domain I really want and pick a deity based on that. So, my healing death cleric would fit with Pharasma because they have those two domains (death and healing). Up to this point nothing about Pharasma beyond the domains has even mattered. Even in playing the healing death cleric nothing about her worship of Pharasma might ever come up because it has little to no impact on the PFS scenario system where what happens between scenarios is of little consequence.

I mean, I really just want to play a generic cleric with the death and healing domains, but PFS said I had to pick a deity. Now you have a generic healing death cleric of Pharasma who wanders around the countryside working for the Pathfinder Society who probably doesn't know anything about Pharasma other than what the CRB tells me which is next to nothing and probably won't matter until level 5 (12 scenarios in) when I can try to cast Animate Dead.

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If the fluff for the deities in the CRB is that important it should be in the CRB. Having the fluff for the deities in the CRB wouldn't be that much of a stretch considering WotC included the fluff for the deities in the 3.0 CRB in the 3.0 CRB.

I'm starting a game with my friends this Thursday and two of them are starting with vertu low rolled charisma, the lowest being 5. If it was intelligence, they would be 3 points away from not being able to speak!

So I feel like prices will be higher for them off course and randomly fights will stay because they looked at someone wrong but I'm wondering if any of you have good ideas how to punish these people.

Thank you

You don't, well, you shouldn't. You GM the game so that everyone involved has fun. Intentionally increasing prices for them, putting them constantly into combat etc just creates a hostile environment for the players which can adversely affect the players who don't have characters with low charisma.

Instead of figuring out how to make playing the campaign harder for them you should ask them why their characters have low charisma in the first place and go from there. This is because charisma is a collection of personality, social and physical traits which makes it a complicated stat.

You could just give them a Charisma of 10 and call it a day. You are the GM, after-all.