I mean, I'd like to play an elf that's a womanising perv because he is so, not because he was designed that way, like elves are.
Huh? Last time I checked, elves tended to have a fairly open stance on sexuality, with everything allowed that pleased both (or all) participants... just when was the 'perv' part added to the mix?
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Incidentally, it is a shame that despite avoiding it at first Golarion ended up with a god for the dwarves (Torag) and a god for the elves (Calistria) like all the other settings. I much prefer gods who are as racially diverse as possible, because their portfolio is what matters to them.
It is quite strange, as a fan of elves who grew up reading Tolkein and Tolkein-style elves (didn't he actually invent the humanoid, playable-race style elf?) to learn that Dwarves get a Good god (Torag), Humans get a good god (Aroden), Halflings don't get their own god but favour 8 gods: 6 good, 1 neutral and 1 evil; Gnomes get one god of their own who is clearly a bit obscure (Brigh, N) and mostly worship G and N gods with no favoured Evil gods... In essence, their religious nature is pitched with a Good slant.
Elves get strongly aligned with Calistria (CN but really pretty nasty), despite their original Sovyrian pantheon being CG, CG, NG.
Because of this attitude, many accuse her of being evil,
but in truth she is just amoral—she eschews right and
wrong and fairness because she knows the world is not a
fair place. Is it right that the whole world suffered the Age
of Darkness because of the Azlanti? Is it right that Shelyn’s
brother became the plaything of unknowable horrors? Is it
right that a leader-by-birth can tax his peasants-by-birth
into starvation? Calistria is beyond these questions, and
uses her abilities to survive. If others choose to follow her
path, so be it. And if others get
hurt as a consequence, so be it, as
every creature has the right—and the
responsibility—to avenge their injuries.
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Evil with excuses.
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but I am curious what the beef with Cayden is.Originally I thought "What an interesting deity".
After the 57 straight carbon copy binge alcoholic came along that simply overemphasised the whole "ale ale ale" aspect I started to just burst a vessel with the one dimensional approach people take to him. There never really appears to be any effort to delve into Cayden, just a sort of juvenile "Hey look beer lulz" and people playing a tall version of the hackneyed Dwarven Alcoholics trope.
Theres only so much of that I can take.
There's more to following Cayden than just "Party like your Frat house is closing", especially as it also doesn't line up well with the really high Wis stat of the followers.
I'm not vexatious about, just completely over the same boring personality that they all seem to take.
Now if a player was interested in pursuing the wisdom learnt from the science of brewing and its application to the world around him/her then that would be different and interesting.
"The vigneron learns the art and science of picking a particular grape at a particular point in the season, and his timing and choice defines the nectar he produces, thus the lesson for us here today is..."
"The brewer learns that by having patience when crafting his ale he.. and we can learn from his patience and apply that lesson here today"
not
BEER BEER BEER HA LULZ IM A DRUNKEN REBEL CG/NG YAY ALEZ!
Ooooh, so you got a problem with players interpretation of his worshippers, not Cayden himself. Alright. ^^
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I have one player running an Elven Bladebound Magus from Jinin (the elven nation in Dragon Empires). He runs him marvellously - a stoic eastern warrior who sometimes gives way to his emotional, mercurial elven nature. Utterly cold and controlled on the battlefield, completely hot with passion when in romance. Follower of Tsukiyo, of course, because it's a deity that's too cool to pass. Everybody at the table has an absolute blast with his character (including me when role-playing his cantankerous female vehemently atheist intelligent blade).
Ooooh, so you got a problem with players interpretation of his worshippers, not Cayden himself. Alright. ^^
That would actually be a very fair assessment.
So its more Cayden by extension :p
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I find Golarion's elves to be refreshing. I like that they kept much of the traditional lore surrounding them, but played up their capricious, fey-like aspect. They also acknowledged that elves are often held as being attractive.
I think people tend to focus too much on the lust aspect of Calistria and the elves. Calistria certainly doesn't strike me as a Jersey Shore girl. She's much too intelligent and successful, in my opinion. Calistria is also a trickster, and while she may be utterly mercurial and out for herself (something much of the world is about), she still helps out from time to time for the greater good. An example of this can be seen in how she supposedly, after Desna invaded the Abyss to destroy the demon lord Aolar, disguised herself and caused the demonic host gathered to collapse into bickering. That takes plotting, planning and intelligence. Not something I would expect from a vapid or shallow individual.
The Vengeance aspect I tend to view as a 'take care of yourself' kind of thing. The world is harsh, survival is hard, and people will wrong you if you let them. An eye for an eye, and all that. Not outright evil, although some of Calistria's followers certainly take it to extremes. In some cases, vengeance could be seen as a form of justice (although that is Iomedae's domain).
She also seems to harken back to ancient deities, for example Aphrodite, who had both good and bad things about them. In the classical world, erotic love was generally referred to as a kind of madness. Sacred Prostitution has been around since early civilizations, and while prostitution has many negative connotations in the modern world, it wasn't always that way.
The Advanced Race Guide says that "Elves accept in Calistria (and her priests) behavior they would denounce in others, because Calistria is clearly (to elves’ perceptions) serving as an example of personal artistry and freedom of expressions, rather than seeking some base physical gratification."
Hasn't there been other sources that say something similar (that the elves don't view Calistria as just a lustful being)?
Just my 2 cents!
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Evil with excuses.It's your game and your Golarion. If everything needs to be either black or white, have it your way.
That has nothing to do with seeing that vindictive, pointlessly murderous and selfish mindset as evil.
I might disagree with some of the assessments of Calistria, but I am sympathetic. There are some takes on Torag that have popped up on the boards and even in one adventure that I'd consider downright monstrous. No freakin' way he'd keep his G with that going on.
Huh? All along I thought Torag was neutral.
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I might disagree with some of the assessments of Calistria, but I am sympathetic. There are some takes on Torag that have popped up on the boards and even in one adventure that I'd consider downright monstrous. No freakin' way he'd keep his G with that going on.Huh? All along I thought Torag was neutral.
You'd think, looking at everything taken together but his alignment listing.
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-It does...its cleary an adjecive/adverb made from a noun. Unless you use it to mean dirty...but that is out archaic.
Etymology online
-Since males and female elves are equally out there, slutty would not be the word of choice. Somehow I can imagine a group of jealous human house wives refering to the slutty elf girls in the woods, stealing their husbands/boyfriends away. Kind of reminds me of some people I know.
-"That damn elf woman has no shame"
-"And she's 90 and still dresses like that"
-"Men are so weak"
blah blah blah
Stuff like this makes me more and more glad I am ditching alignment completely next time I run. If they players feel something needs to be condemned as evil, they have to justify it and not just look up its alignment tags. If they want to call something good, same deal.
You'd think, looking at everything taken together but his alignment listing.I might disagree with some of the assessments of Calistria, but I am sympathetic. There are some takes on Torag that have popped up on the boards and even in one adventure that I'd consider downright monstrous. No freakin' way he'd keep his G with that going on.Huh? All along I thought Torag was neutral.
His Paladin code from Faiths of Purity certainly contained a few "WTH?" things.
-Sexual morality as good/evil is a very cultural concept. Marrying 15 year old girls was common in this country 100 years ago. Today, you'd be in jail. Heck my great-grandmother was not only her husband's 1st cousin but also 16.
-The only problem with what Umbal Reaver says is I imagine his game turning into a OOC debate over morals. This is not likely to end well...
Games are already OOC debates over what actions fit into each alignment. By taking away the 'defense' of alignment labels, the player actions stand on their merit alone. By the way, I've played other non-D&D alignmentless games for over ten years.
If a character does something and the player asks, "Did I do a good action?", the response is not yes or no. It's, "Who are you asking?"
Stuff like this makes me more and more glad I am ditching alignment completely next time I run. If they players feel something needs to be condemned as evil, they have to justify it and not just look up its alignment tags. If they want to call something good, same deal.
I mostly play Dark Heresy these days: Everything that's not us is probably evil. Better safe than sorry.
Much easier, that way. ;)
I approve.
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Mad props to Paizo for daring to write Elves as something different than high-magic-tree-hugging-tolkienesque-FR wimps.
Bit of shame dwarves didn't get the same treatment.
I am on the otherside of this one. I prefer the old school elves. It is proably the pastor in me and that in the last few years the gaming group has included one of my friends teenage daughter.
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I am on the otherside of this one. I prefer the old school elves. It is proably the pastor in me and that in the last few years the gaming group has included one of my friends teenage daughter.Mad props to Paizo for daring to write Elves as something different than high-magic-tree-hugging-tolkienesque-FR wimps.
Bit of shame dwarves didn't get the same treatment.
Same, though I try to branch them out beyond "foresty tree hugger". My setting has "desert bandit raiders" and "polar pioneer eskimos" elves as well. =)
Amusingly, I did go and change Dwarves. Kobolds got the mining and digging and living underground. My Dwarves are sailors, pirates, and merchants. YARRRRRRRR.
Not as huge an issue for me though as I don't use the Golarion pantheon. My elves worship primarily Artemis, Nike, Freya, and Hermod ;)
Grechskii elvski?
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Yeah, let's pretend some terms were never used.Personally I think they could have done without putting sacred prostitution into game lore, but its not coming out of nowhere. Pre-christian and even most christian western civilization isn't nearly as uptight as we are; few people know that the first statue they found in the ruins of Pompeii was of Pan having sex with a goat. It was a center-piece in a wealthy Roman house.
Those were some interesting times. I'd rather not talk about it.
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Imagine that, a Chaotic Neutral deity of retribution being a heinous b@$+@.Hence why I am not keen on players rolling with Calli followers; they tend to see it as an excuse to roll with the more anti-social aspects.
Interesting my players and I have always seen Calistria followers as a very social type. I guess it just plays out differently on every table.
Van-Kathoon is for the anti-social types. Or Urgotha. I'm not seing Calistria. Then again I used to thing Nerull was the best god in greyhawk.
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Most of the neutral gods seem to have a 'slant' towards them. It's easier to picture a CE cleric of Calistria or Gorum, for instance, and a LG cleric of Irori, than a CG cleric of Calistria or Gorum, or a LE cleric of Irori. Pharasma is another one, who seems 'unfriendly' to her CN or NE clergy, despite technically allowing them. Nethys and Gozreh, on the other hand, I could see working well with CN, LN, NG or NE followers, and Abadar makes sense to LG and LE followers.
My own view of Calistria is colored by my seeing her as Anya(nka), from Buffy, the 'Patron Saint of Scorned Women,' so my own baggage / assumptions make it harder for me to see her as being as open to CG clergy as she would be to CE clergy. I could look past that and see her temples and portfolios being all about taking back a woman's power to decide when and where and how she has sex, purely on her terms, and actively going out and punishing men who try to disempower women or control their sexuality. In a faux egalitarian fantasy setting, where the general assumption is that women aren't treated like property or denied rights or married off as children to be fourth wives of fat old rich friends of their fathers, Calistria's temple doesn't necessarily make a ton of sense, but, as a reaction to real-world treatment of women and their sexuality, I could see Calistria's arrangement as a 'good thing.' "Nobody's marrying me off, buster, and if you want this, you meet me in the temple, surrounded by *my* people, and show me the proper rites and observances, and don't even think that I'm gonna be your submissive property, because we've got Inquisitors that will hunt you down like a dog..."
As for elven promiscuity, it appears that elves are, like in many fantasy settings, not terribly prolific, and probably have to have a lot of sex before 'one takes.' Biologically, it would make sense they have a strong libido, if they've got to have sex a thousand times before someone gets pregnant.
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Bit of shame dwarves didn't get the same treatment.Huh? Dwarves remained high-magic-tree-hugging-tolkienesque-FR wimps in PF?
*ducks for cover*
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I see a lot of the traits that people are describing in PCs (adopting the extremes of their less than reputable deities). I think it's silly. The lack of maturity on a player's part does not constitute poor design on Paizo's part.
Inara from Firefly is basically a sacred prostitute, and classy to boot. Calistrian priestesses don't have to play into the "Jersey Shore" pettiness unless they choose to. Calistria doesn't care, and probably thinks they're a little stupid, but that doesn't mean she's going to smite them for not being petty.
On the other side of that coin, an elf could completely eschew sexual relations -- maybe s/he thinks him/herself too good for that and only self-gratifies. But then in some social situation, say a noble slights one of her allies... well, jokes on him because the elf is going to humiliate that punk in public at the big banquet next week, Calistrian style.
A high Wisdom Cleric of Calistria would be a social nightmare, on the scale of Desperate Housewives. Epic backstabbing and gossip. It doesn't HAVE to be a 'high school soap opera porno with pointy ears.' That's just what you people are making of it. The descriptions of deities are blown out of proportion because they are deities.
Imagine if you watched a sitcom with characters who were all entirely believable, whose actions and reactions all made perfect sense. I have never seen one.
The next two spoilers are only somewhat related...
She stole and sold a small weapons shop from a guy who tried to sell her drugs by forging his signature on some papers and then turned him in for selling drugs. She took the money for travel expenses.
She's not a prostitute, and she's not petty. She has goals and methods that suit her personal examination of her faith.
EDIT: Added a tag.
As for elven promiscuity, it appears that elves are, like in many fantasy settings, not terribly prolific, and probably have to have a lot of sex before 'one takes.' Biologically, it would make sense they have a strong libido, if they've got to have sex a thousand times before someone gets pregnant.
Good theory, though one wonders if it's the males or females (or somehow a combination of the two) that lacks a human-like fertility. If they're so highly active, then it can't be that female elves don't ovulate as often, or that the males have under-active... meiosis. (Trying to keep this PG; not exactly sure what terminology is considered 'decent'.)
Half elves come out of a mix, so I would think they have to be similar enough in that regard.
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It's not really being cried out if people are just pointing out things that make them uncomfortable. Different people percieve things differently after all.
Calistria doesn't really bother me, but others might not feel the same. And we may not even be looking at that particular deity from the same angles. I can certainly see how some would react negatively to her.
(The idea of her engaging in frequent "Counter-Trolling" after reading Book of the Damned 2 really won me over. It's a pretty awesome story.)
Oh wow. I just looked that up. It always slips my mind that Desna is a total badass.
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That's a bit more useful. The main pages on Dionysus barely mentions that stuff.
So Dionysus was sometimes terrible. That makes him terrible (or at least makes some of his followers terrible). It doesn't absolve Calistria.
My point wasn't that it should absolve Calistria; only that in this particular instance, I don't think a male god would have caused too much controversy as I think most people would simply interpret it as a Dionysus knock-off.
Actually, I'm surprised Calistria herself is not more controversial as she definitely plays into some of the more odious Femme Fatale stereotypes.
As a god, though, I actually really like Calistria. In many of my games she and Gorum are the only two gods present. Gods who are essentially 'good' or 'evil' chafe me fiercely (admittedly this is my own hang-up; I think the idea of any vastly powerful deity sharing the morality of mere mortals narcissistic) and I prefer they simply have things they want done. If you're going to be a cleric devoted to some lofty ideal (Good, or Law, or Community) that power comes from within.
It also provides a convenient excuse why the gods don't step in every time some elder evil is about to destroy the world and it's up to a Ragtag Band of Misfits to stop it. The gods don't care---Gorum would see you destroyed if you can't defend yourself, and Calistria would maybe help if you hadn't offended her in some way. Again.
Also, to the guy whose Cayden beef is players playing all of his clerics as alcoholics: Cayden HATES alcoholism and if all they did was drink they should be stripped of their powers immediately until they atone. I don't think he would preach patience or how to properly brew, as someone suggested, as I think he's a bit more boisterous than that, but his focus should definitely be on bravery, adventure, and traditional chivalry (didn't he become a god to impress a woman, after all?) and drinking should be a part of the merriment after the quest is done, the dragon slain, and the damsel rescued.
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I do think the prostitution thing is really ugly. Paizo writers need to do some actual research about the real social cost of prostitution before they pollute the setting with unrealistic ideas about 'sacred prostitutes'.
I'm sorry, but the writers at Paizo actually do know their history. Prostitution is not some new negative phenomenon, and there are actually several examples of sacred prostitution in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution
I do think the prostitution thing is really ugly. Paizo writers need to do some actual research about the real social cost of prostitution before they pollute the setting with unrealistic ideas about 'sacred prostitutes'.I'm sorry, but the writers at Paizo actually do know their history. Prostitution is not some new negative phenomenon, and there are actually several examples of sacred prostitution in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution
Ninja'd by almost a full page...?
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Ninja'd by almost a full page...?I do think the prostitution thing is really ugly. Paizo writers need to do some actual research about the real social cost of prostitution before they pollute the setting with unrealistic ideas about 'sacred prostitutes'.I'm sorry, but the writers at Paizo actually do know their history. Prostitution is not some new negative phenomenon, and there are actually several examples of sacred prostitution in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution
Yeah, I just caught that. Don't I feel silly.
Do explain where was this mentioned?It's not really being cried out if people are just pointing out things that make them uncomfortable. Different people percieve things differently after all.
Calistria doesn't really bother me, but others might not feel the same. And we may not even be looking at that particular deity from the same angles. I can certainly see how some would react negatively to her.
(The idea of her engaging in frequent "Counter-Trolling" after reading Book of the Damned 2 really won me over. It's a pretty awesome story.)
Under "Aolar, Lady of the Hunt" on page 30-31, if I know what Mikaze's talking about for sure.
It's not a lot of info, though.
Humans get a good god (Aroden)
Aroden was not Good, Aroden was Lawful Neutral. Iomaedae is LG.
It's off topic, but it's a point that constantly gets up my nose that people seem to consistently believe Aroden was Good. He was no more Good than Abadar. To be honest, I have problems with Any racial deity being anything other than Neutral on the Good/Evil spectrum.
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The last time I played an elf, I marked his deity as Shelyn. Goddess of beauty, and her favored weapon is a glaive (and my elf was a Fighter [Polearm Master]). Makes enough sense. It's not like every elf has to worship the same deity, right?
I didn't really read elves as being overly promiscuous, just a bit foppish-- they probably all have chaises longue in their houses and drink fancy coffee in the afternoon. When I roleplay an elf, I talk with a French accent (makes a nice counterpoint to the Scottish accent of the dwarves).
Honestly, if any of the core races can be labeled as "extra promiscuous", it's HUMANS. Just look at all the different half-human races there are! Half-elves, half-orcs, half-dragons, tieflings, aasimars, sylphs, ifrit, oreads, undines, the list goes on. Two out of the seven core races are half-human. If that's not crystal-clear evidence that humans will bed anything that moves, I don't know what is.
Not all aasimar and tieflings are partly human. Sadly, this seems to be what they want to be canonically true.