I wouldn't change the wording of the last one, but have it apply to any sentient race.
DON'T!
Leave it as is...If the player is such a rules lawyer he/she twists that around and says "What? I'm doing nothing wrong!" while chewing on a dead elf have the Paladin fall...
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If the player is such a rules lawyer he/she twists that around and says "What? I'm doing nothing wrong!" while chewing on a dead elf have the Paladin fall...
Into the welcoming hands of Urgathoa, no less. Goddess of Glutonny and Archenemy of Pharasma. She will be delighted to have such a nice new Antipaladin
A gust of wind carrying the taste of ash blows through the corridor, setting the previously still brain-craving zombies astir.
Gliding behind the charnel breeze a black-cloaked figure silently pads forward. the glint of dull white porcelain-glazed armor shows once or twice before the undead pay attention to two much more important facts.
The first fact is that the creature's visage was nothing but a stylized blue spiral on a porcelain-glazed mask.
The second fact is that the gleaming silver scythe so casually wielded seems to have little difficulty cleaving through the tops of skulls...
In the wake of silent steps further down the passage, the dying sight of one once more returning to its proper death is the flicking of grue from that curved blade. A brief remembrance before its return to the line ever winding its way through the vastness of the Boneyard.
"How come she never said anything?"
....dammit....
But seriously man, awesome. :D
Actually have had a character concept along these lines for a long time, though the homebrew Death goddess' symbol was a bit more along the lines of a stylized skull like the one in this movie poster. Minus the lady in the sockets of course.
I'm glad you like it, Mikaze! :) Have fun, and let us know how it goes please!
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That is not desecration. That is preventive measure. You can treat the body with respect after the taint of undead has been cleansed and lay it to rest after that has been done.
Nice idea, however the "I shall not desecrate the remains of the fallen" could be troublesome. I think it is entirely justified to chop of the head of a recently deceased if that prevents him to rise as an undead later.
I wouldn't consider cremation to be disrespectful, in a world where corpses can arise as zombies or ghouls or wights (which is even *more* disrespectful, in 99% of cases).
Burial rites in a world where zombie apocalypses are a possibility should, by grim necessity, involve various non-tacky means of preventing that (cremation? good option. 'sky burial?' sure. chopping the body up and feeding it the hogs? practical recycling of materials, but icky and terribly unsafe, depending on how it's done.).
Other options could include mummification rites that don't remove the organs, but actually remove and individually wrap the limbs and head, or that skeletonize the body and then coat it with clay that is then baked into the approximation of it's original form (similar to some central/south american 'mummifications'), etc. Anything that pretty much makes the body useless for animating gets the job done, and there's plenty of respectful (even if sometimes creepy) options in the real world, let alone a fantasy world, where jettisoning bodies into another dimension via some sort of rope trick-like spell or consuming them with 'sacred fire.'
Desecration isn't even an issue. Can't desecrate what isn't sacred, and unless the dead guy was a god (or has a permanant consecrate aura or hallow spell tattooed on his butt), a corpse isn't sacred.
Maybe add, "I will not atempt to postpone the time of my death with magic".
That means the paladin can't accept healing spells.
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Maybe add, "I will not atempt to postpone the time of my death with magic".That means the paladin can't accept healing spells.
Only if you are a jerk. First lets point out that Phrasma has no problem with magical healing and does in fact have the healing domain. The statement is clearly in reference to various powers that grant immortality in one form or another.
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Only if you are a jerk. First lets point out that Phrasma has no problem with magical healing and does in fact have the healing domain. The statement is clearly in reference to various powers that grant immortality in one form or another.Maybe add, "I will not atempt to postpone the time of my death with magic".That means the paladin can't accept healing spells.
Not so clear apparently. Maybe "I will not attempt to cheat death with magic" would work better. or even better "I will not attempt to abscond from the cycle of life and death", as magic is not the only way to cheat death.
I now have visions of a Paladin of Pharasma sent against those who, without thinking of evil, cheated death, however involuntarily. Would make for both a great campaign and delicious dilemnas
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Not so clear apparently. Maybe "I will not attempt to cheat death with magic" would work better. or even better "I will not attempt to abscond from the cycle of life and death", as magic is not the only way to cheat death.
I was thinking of people like liches (or other seekers after immortality-through-undeath) as the number one foes for this group.
I now have visions of a Paladin of Pharasma sent against those who, without thinking of evil, cheated death, however involuntarily. Would make for both a great campaign and delicious dilemnas
A LN or NE group of Pharasmins who seek out those who have 'cheated death' (through resurrection, or fate-twisting powers), and arrange for grisly circumstances to strike them down, a la the Final Destination movies, could be creepy.
Being a N goddess, she's quite able to have NE clergy, and worshippers can be of any alignment. A NE splinter of her church that hunts down and kills people they think have lived too long, or survived improbable odds, or 'cheated death' could be funky.
They could have aspects of the Euthanatos, from the Mage: the Ascencion game, perhaps even tying life and death into fate and probability, and believing that the universe only has so much 'good luck' and opportunity to distribute, and that some people get more than their fair share of chances, or gain great opportunities (patronage from a noble, born to wealth, a chance to attend a great academy, etc.) and utterly squander those opportunities, not only missing out, but having basically devoured and wasted that opportunity, so that nobody else can benefit from it. The Pharasmin 'Fate-Maker' might seek out these wastrels and snuff them, so that they don't consume and ruin any more of the limited opportunities that fate provides to people, and so that more worthy individuals gain the opportunities that the wastrel is squandering.
Sort of a cosmic Robin Hood of fate, stealing opportunities from those who are squandering them, so that they might become available to those who would better appreciate them...
The more I think about this, the more I want to play a Pharasmin paladin with a black cloak and silver scythe.
Sendin' undead on their way to rest, lookin' scary, bein' righteous.
I actually got to this thread "googleing" (?) "Pharasma paladin", since I've just created one to play Rise of the Runelords... of course she's proficient with scynthe, and OF COURSE she wears a black armored coat! So much flavour it turns me on.
I find this code very interesting, I've already sent it to my GM to see what we can do with my poor "illegal" and awesome paladin.
But I am sorry to inform, that you just lost all your Paladin abilities for breaking Pharasma's Taboo of using Thread Necromancy...
Other than that, have fun with it! ;)
After thinking about it I decided if he used the Undead Scourge variant, I would allow it.
That's a strange 'condition'. Given that, in undead heavy campaign, OF COURSE that archetype is going to be the most useful one.
And, he's going to anihilate each and every one of the campaign bosses, but I guess you know what you're getting into. As if it isn't enough that Smite is an overpowered ability, it will be even more so with paladin dealing even more damage than the regular paladin.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Reading through the entry for Pharasma, I get the jist that the soul is more important than the body to her. The care of the remains seems incidental and would change depending on the culture the priesthood is living amongst. The body is nothing but a husk for containing a soul until it dies. If a culture burns, consumes, inters, or respects the remains, her clergy would most likely follow local custom.
She does not care how they lived their life, just that they live their alloted time and do not try to extend their souls stay on the prime plane via undeath. Whether or not the sun orchid elixer is an acceptable means most likely leads to divisions within her worshippers. Afterall, the creature never died and prevented the soul from being judged. The Test of the Starstone gifts divinity to a mortal and prevents the soul from being judged and Pharasma doesn't seem to have a problem with that. She knows their fate and that she will someday be able to judge them.
Her fate aspect would not care if the life was ended in a way someone might deem early or uneccessary. They lived their time and now the soul can be judged.
As for what happens to the soul upon death, again she doesn't seem to care as long as she judges the soul and sends it to the correct destination. Creatures removing souls from the stream prior to judgement would draw her ire, but not a daemon obliterating the soul that was judged to their domain.
As a paladin code, it seems well written. I just do not think it is particularly apt for a worshipper of Pharasma. Particularly, the parts about killing and the treatment of the dead. The code seems to be written with a more Western Christian frame of mind and ignoring the ways other cultures have treated the dead. Golarion is not based upon our perception of morality, but rather the cultures in the game.
You guys DO realize how old this thread is, right?
Just checkin...
Yeah, but you got it started by replying to the thread necromancer, so there it is. What's the big deal anyway?
When I saw the first line of the code, it made me think of Unforgiven. "It's a hell of a thing killing a man. Take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
It's an especially appropriate line, since the guy he said that to was supposed to have killed himself afterward.
The more I think about this, the more I want to play a Pharasmin paladin with a black cloak and silver scythe.
Sendin' undead on their way to rest, lookin' scary, bein' righteous.
That's the kind of appearance a friend of mine has in mind for his Lawful Neutral Dhampir Inquisitor of Pharasma, who's a dedicated undead hunter running around with a scythe and possibly a gun with silver bullets. The character works together with my Tiefling Cleric of Pharasma, who is either Neutral Good or True Neutral (I might just make a thread to see what other people think after an analysis of sorts). We plan to play these two characters in Carrion Crown.
Also, I support the Paladin of Pharasma and just might show it to my stingy DM in hopes of him actually liking something for once.
I'm going to counter everyone whose said to replace "man" with "sentient being" in the oath.
"sentient being" sounds dumb.
I'd also recommend finding the Dragon Magazine article on Wee Jas. She's LN, but some of the rites of dealing with the dead are fitting.
Thank you for reminding me about my favourite Greyhawk deity (and by extension, favourite D&D deity) of all time. She's a good inspiration for a somewhat unusual Paladin, to say the least. Also good to compare her to Pharasma and draw conclusions, even though things such as what's Wee Jas' stance on undead have varied and changed throughout her write-ups, which is confusing to say the least.
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Ah, Wee Jas. Greyhawk had some really amazing gods. Whoever did the write-ups in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer deserves a medal!
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I'd probably house rule Pharasma to LN (with a dash of good, like how Wee Jas was LN with a dash of evil) anyway, and make her 'legally' able to have an order of undead-scourging Paladins. She acts more lawful than half of the gods that actually are lawful, and is ego-tastic enough to think that her own 'laws' of life and death are more important than other non-lawful gods 'laws,' in addition to having a strong distaste for the tools of evil, neither of which really suits a goddess who purports to be 'true neutral' or 'an objective arbiter.'
She's all agenda-having and judge-y. Tweaking a letter in her alignment line just brings her mechanics in-line with her flavor, IMO.
You might need to pass on this revelation to James Jacobs and hope he agrees.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Ah, Wee Jas. Greyhawk had some really amazing gods. Whoever did the write-ups in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer deserves a medal!
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Yeah, whatever happened to those guys on the Gazetteer anyway? ;-)
More seriously, the 'Core Beliefs' article really does give some ideas for a good follower of a neutral death deity. (like helping the living cope with and celebrate the death of a loved one.)
Wee Jas was my favourite Greyhawk Deity.