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I wonder if a PC atheist should get spell resistance. I've been thinking about it for a long time, and if an unbeliever PC is an unbeliever, he should reap the rewards.
Healing magic won't work on him.
Last night, one of my players (the fox fellow) is playing an atheist. They got into an area full of plague zombies and defeated the plague zombies but got the zombie rot. A new player made up a Vitalist, and he used Empathic Transfer to transfer all the diseases into himself.
Now I just thought of something. One's unbelief should stand in the way of supernatural healing, right? So, I thought would it not be impossible to give an Atheist PC spell resistance of 10+1/2 the character's level?
Sounds like a great idea. Surely believers in other gods will likewise resist the application of positive energy channeled by clerics of those faiths. Irori isn't going to heal the followers of Erastil.
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That does not quite logically follow. Atheism in the context of the typical setting would be very different than IRL. Instead of being pure lack of belief in something which is not apparent, it would be an akcnowledgement that divine spellcasting power exists and that it comes from somewhere, since it is plainly observable. They might not believe that the gods are the source of that power or are not beings worthy of reverence or worship, so it is more like Antitheism or Dystheism than what we generally think of Atheism as.
Unless you have some especially wacky magical metaphysics going on in your world, this idea smells of your own personal beliefs infecting your game （whether or not that is true）. And that is not a good thing coming from the DM.
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Healing magic won't work on him.
Why not? Are the entities who grant those spells any less real because he doesn't believe? At worst, they could choose to deny him help, but that's surely not going to be a universal rule.
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The idea sounds dubious to me. The character may be atheistic, but certainly they have seen healing work before, perhaps on other characters. They may rationalize it as coming from a non-divine source, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't affect them. And not believing in the power of the Gods doesn't immunize you from, let's say, a flame strike, right?
Only in settings where divine power works of belief. Which is not the case of Golarion, Faerun, Krynn, Ravenloft and many others. I am not sure about Oerth but I think that divine power is not dependent on belief as well. Eberron might be a case of world where it actually works that way. Or maybe not.
Mechanically, you are giving a player something (SR) for nothing (when does what god/gods/philosophy the PC follows matter if they aren't playing a class that requires one?). All writing a deity's name on your character sheet does is let you choose, what, a few extra traits and maybe a PrC or feat. You could certainly create atheistic traits etc. if you want. Refluffing History of Heresy would be a good start.
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Being an atheist in a world where the evidence of divine interaction is staring you in the face daily (if you're an adventurer) would be akin to insanity.
Deeming them unworthy of praise however, or simply remaining neutral and not picking one to worship, would be more likely.
I like the non-theist trait idea. Maybe a +1 to saves vs divine spells, for instance, may be appropriate.
Atheism only makes sense in a world without deities.
It's the same as in reality, whether or not you believe in something has no impact on whether it exists or not.
Atheism only makes sense in a world without deities.
It's the same as in reality, whether or not you believe in something has no impact on whether it exists or not.
Not quite. One can acknowledge existence of powerful entities but deny them worship, deny their superiority over mortals, etc.
Athar
("Defiers", "The Lost"), who deny not only the gods' right to pass judgment over mortals, but their very divinity. They claim that the gods (whom they call "powers") are powerful but have limits and do not deserve worship. Instead, Athar priests channel divine power from what they call the "Great Unknown", or what they believe to be the true divine force behind everything. Their headquarters in Sigil is the Shattered Temple, the former temple of the dead god Aoskar. The Athar are broadly derived from real-world atheists, agnostics, and Deists.
I agree with what other posters have said here. In most of the worlds of Pathfinder/D&D the gods have proven that they exist. Atheism can't exist. I don't quite know what the equivilent whould be called, but it would have to be something like a distrust of anything divine rather than a belief system.
Either way they shouldn't (IMO) get something like SR for nothing. Whether they distrust the gods or not, that magic is still going to affect them. Resisting it is what will saves are for.
Had a character back in 2nd Ed who was an atheist. He firmly believed that the gods were just a scam created by high level Magic Users. Oddly enough the party didn't have any clerics/priests.
He was a bit on the nutty side.
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Would you allow a character who didn't believe in iron to have damage reduction? Magic exists and is a part of the PC's world. What they believe about where that magic comes from doesn't change the fact that regardless of their personal beliefs there are still people out there throwing fire and lightning and animating the dead and flying and turning invisible, etc. etc.
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Atheism only makes sense in a world without deities.
Oh . . . what a paradoxical statement. That statement just doesn't make sense to me. And here's part of the reason why. For the other part, I suggest you look up the Law of Attraction.
Quite frankly, the reason why it doesn't make sense is because an Atheist actively creates the world he perceives. To him, our world exists without deity. To an Atheist, the Universe is wholly material and thus has no room for the supernatural. The whole reason why I thought of SR first is to reflect his internal convictions on the world around him (or her, as the case may be), is that I wanted his psychology to be mechanically reflected. His disbelief manifests itself as SR, or a small bonus to saves vs. divine spells.
Oh . . . what a paradoxical statement. That statement just doesn't make sense to me. And here's part of the reason why. For the other part, I suggest you look up the Law of Attraction.
Quite frankly, the reason why it doesn't make sense is because an Atheist actively creates the world he perceives. To him, our world exists without deity. To an Atheist, the Universe is wholly material and thus has no room for the supernatural. The whole reason why I thought of SR first is to reflect his internal convictions on the world around him (or her, as the case may be), is that I wanted his psychology to be mechanically reflected. His disbelief manifests itself as SR, or a small bonus to saves vs. divine spells.
The person you describe is not an atheist in Golarian. He's bonkers. Unless he lives in Alkenstar, magic is very self evident throughout life. The supernatural is just plain common. Not he can deny Gods being special, he can deny devotion to them, but he cannot deny something is happening there.
If he doesn't believe in ghosts, will the next ghost he run across not affect him?
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Your open a huge can of worms if you house rule that. I would say just make sure you have well defined rules about what does and doesn't effect the atheist because I could see it being abused.
Maybe make the PC take an "Atheist" feat that as long as he disbelieves in deities existence he gains some SR. I just thinking it's a bad idea to just give SR to an atheist for free.
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*** I just thinking it's a bad idea to just give SR to an atheist for free.
Yeah next thing you know they'll be making it illegal for the rest of us to pray to Cayden Cailean when we're at the bar while putting up their posters all over our orphanages!
J/K!
In all seriousness though, there's no game balance to what you want to do, and it doesn't really make sense thematically. In a world like Golarion, your atheist can't pretend magic doesn't exist, it's all around him. He can believe that clerics are just a special sort of wizard, that all magic comes from the same place, etc. but he's going to know it's there, and there's no reason it should interact differently with him than with anyone else. In fact, I would imagine it would be pretty hard to maintain an atheistic viewpoint if magic behaved one way for people who believed in the gods and completely different for someone who doesn't. Atheism actually makes more sense in an environment where magic can be viewed as a mechanical force of the universe that just requires someone to know how to manipulate it. If his belief or lack thereof actually influences how that force interacts with him, that's an action that directly conflicts with his belief.
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Yeah, one problem with Pathfinder materials is they often use "atheist" when they mean non-worshipping. Rahadoum is described as having an "atheist nature" when the natives (Rahadoumi?) believe there are spell granting mysical entities, but it's not worth worshipping them.
I once had a player create an atheistic character IMC. He didn't deny that clerics could cast spells, just that there were actually gods granting them their powers. He believed that divine spell casters were just different kinds of wizards.
The NPC traveling with the party at the time decided that the atheist character was insane. :)
It didn't even occur to me to give him any benefit from his unbelief. Disbelieve medicine and it it's no less likely to cure you; disbelieve a bullet and it's no less likely to kill you. Magic in a fantasy world is simply real, and denying its existence won't help. In fact, it'll probably hurt.
The previous poster mentioned "Eric the Viking" - I'm reminded of the scene in that movie in which Atlantis is sinking and the Atlanteans say "This is NOT happening!"
They drown.
IMHO this direction lies madness.
It doesn't matter if you believe or not. If we allow non-worshippers to be unaffected by spells produced by a deity, then we need to also allow worshipers of one god to be immune to spells from another god. That's consistent logic.
Secondly, excepting mind-affecting abilities, the spells in the game do something. A flame strike creates holy fire which burns. The fire is there, regardless of your religious views. Why should the fire be less... burny... for you because you don't believe?
Thirdly, it's a hell to adjudicate. What if you don't know that the spell you're facing is a divine fireball or an arcane fireball? What if it's divine and cast via Use Magic Device by anyone else? What if you're not aware of the spell to resist it?
I dunno. Bottom line is that I don't see the point in rewarding a PC for being wrong in his views.
Quite frankly, the reason why it doesn't make sense is because an Atheist actively creates the world he perceives. To him, our world exists without deity. To an Atheist, the Universe is wholly material and thus has no room for the supernatural. The whole reason why I thought of SR first is to reflect his internal convictions on the world around him (or her, as the case may be), is that I wanted his psychology to be mechanically reflected. His disbelief manifests itself as SR, or a small bonus to saves vs. divine spells.
Here is what I wrote of: world-specific cosmology. You are introducing concept that belief is capable of shaping the world and, what's more you are introducing actual cosmological law in-universe that atheist actively creates the worlds he perceives.
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If you talk to an atheist, and they are honest with themselves, they will generally fall in the area of "I am not convinced that God exists, but I am not completely certain about it". This makes them a agnostic atheist, which is often gets shortened to simply agnostic, which is not entirely accurate. Agnostic atheist is much more accurate.
On the other hand, if you talk to a rational believer, you will find that they(myself included) are actually agnostic theists. I believe God exists, but my belief is not a six-sigma 99.9999% proof with no room for doubt.
With that in mind, the gnostics(IE believers who are certain) on both sides(theist and atheist) are, in my experience, very irrational in their beliefs. Anyone who is that certain about about the existence or non-existence of God(s), does not fully understand the inherent uncertainity of being human.
So with that in mind, now you jump into a world with arcane magic, and divine miracles on demand. Being a gnostic atheist, in that world, would be beyond insanity. A more sane approach, one that comes up often in my games, is that divine miracles are really just wizards playing tricks. You don't believe that divine magic doesn't exist, you simply have a less divine explaination.
An honest athiest in pathfinder would say, "It is possible that the Gods exist, but..."
"Maybe gods are just really powerful wizards posing as Gods"
"Maybe divine casters are just wizards faking divine miracles"
etc.
Thus, an atheist would not gain some kind of special immunity to divine magic. An atheist would believe in the effects of divine magic and thus be subject to it. They would, however, question at length the nature and origin of these so called "divine miracles".
TLDR: To be immune to divine magic, you would have to be certain and unwavering in the belief that both arcane and divine magic do not exist.
I have a great idea, atheist divine spellcasters don't prepare spells but instead have an amount of counterspells prepared for each spell level equal to what a believer cleric of samwe level and wisdom prepares, that each automatically succeed against divine spells of the same level and can be used as immediate actions. And they can only choose the Disbelief and Skepticism domains, which also only contain counterspells.
"Sarenrae's fire cleanse you!" *Sarenrae cleric casts fireball*
"Sarenrae doesn't exist!" *fireball fizzles out*
So the consensus is: No. Not worshiping any gods or not believing that they are worthy of worship doesn't make their magic less real. It affects believers and non-believers in any deity the same way.
An adventurer could get healed, harmed, or whatever by divine magic, and still hold that these powerful beings aren't really gods to be worshiped.
It's akin to being apolitical. Being uncaring about politics doesn't mean that you don't think it affects you. You just think politicos are all jerks and avoid them as much as you can.
If you talk to an atheist, and they are honest with themselves, they will generally fall in the area of "I am not convinced that God exists, but I am not completely certain about it". This makes them a agnostic atheist, which is often gets shortened to simply agnostic, which is not entirely accurate. Agnostic atheist is much more accurate.
On the other hand, if you talk to a rational believer, you will find that they(myself included) are actually agnostic theists. I believe God exists, but my belief is not a six-sigma 99.9999% proof with no room for doubt.
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No. Not even remotely the case. Although this (or some variant thereof) may be true for some persons, it is not true for others. Quite a number of real-world atheists (many with significant theological or religious-study background) consider the current world to have significant evidence to NOT be a world in which a 'God Hypothesis' (be it Christian, Islamic, Hindu, or merely Deist) is true. And quite a number of real-world religious persons are convinced of the existence of some form of diety. I'm not sure what 'six-sigma' means in relation to the strength of a sophont's belief -- in this context, it seems like a weasel-word to deny without denying certainty of belief.
As to whether a rpg-world character's belief in the existence of dieties should affect whether or not divine magic functions on that individual -- RAW says the magic does.
The GM is free to modify that to suit his own playstyle and world.
Philosophizing beyond that is unhelpful.
Aboleths are the best atheists.
They remember the time before there were gods, why would they worship them?
If you talk to an atheist, and they are honest with themselves, they will generally fall in the area of "I am not convinced that God exists, but I am not completely certain about it". This makes them a agnostic atheist, which is often gets shortened to simply agnostic, which is not entirely accurate. Agnostic atheist is much more accurate.
On the other hand, if you talk to a rational believer, you will find that they(myself included) are actually agnostic theists. I believe God exists, but my belief is not a six-sigma 99.9999% proof with no room for doubt.
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No. Not even remotely the case. Although this (or some variant thereof) may be true for some persons, it is not true for others. Quite a number of real-world atheists (many with significant theological or religious-study background) consider the current world to have significant evidence to NOT be a world in which a 'God Hypothesis' (be it Christian, Islamic, Hindu, or merely Deist) is true. And quite a number of real-world religious persons are convinced of the existence of some form of diety. I'm not sure what 'six-sigma' means in relation to the strength of a sophont's belief -- in this context, it seems like a weasel-word to deny without denying certainty of belief.
As to whether a rpg-world character's belief in the existence of dieties should affect whether or not divine magic functions on that individual -- RAW says the magic does.
The GM is free to modify that to suit his own playstyle and world.
Philosophizing beyond that is unhelpful.
Sigma-six is a standard of certainty. 6 9s or 99.9999% certainty, which is generally considered a very high level of certainty in testing and standardization circles.
Thanks for reinforcing my point. Significant evidence is not absolute unassailable proof, thus there is a non-zero chance that God does exist. Anything is possible, but a lot of things are highly improbable. There is a non-zero chance that I really do not exists and am just a figment of your imagination. The difference between extremely improbable(say 10^-100) and impossible(10^-infinity) is infinite. A theist and an atheist who claim 100% certainty about their beliefs are both equally irrational.
In a fantasy world with magic, the uncertainty level would increase. So for someone to hold in a fantasy world that powerful beings who may seem like gods to most people simply do not exists is pure insanity. That is something that should be considered when creating a rule for handling atheism. The less insane path would be to acknowledge that gods exists, but deny their divinity.
Aboleths are the best atheists.
They remember the time before there were gods, why would they worship them?
Agreed, they wouldn't worship them, but they also would deny their existence either. IE they would acknowledge that there is some powerful being running around calling themselves a god. Damn kids these days...
Is it just hard not to accept that they exist, and rather than tie yourself down to one, just live your life as is?
My characters generally believe in the divine (that they exist), but they prefer that they don't have to obey the tenants of any of them (worship one).
EDIT: In my opinion, no, Aethiests shouldn't get SR vs Divine. If your character is against this, then that's what will save (harmless) is for.
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The only thing we can be completely sure of is that we are thinking things and this thread is getting off topic.
People get really nitpicky when it comes to religion. You can challenge any statement of certainty with "you can't be 100 percent sure".
"Did you eat eggs for breakfast this morning?"
"No"
"You can't prove that. There is a chance you ate eggs and don't remember. Your insane to make such statements."
Yes. The truth is that I cannot be 100% sure that I actually exist. Reality demands that I assume I exist via "I think therefore I am", because any other assumption is futile and self-defeating, but that is an assumption, not proof. With that uncertainty in place every other possibility is less certain that that.
100% certainty is an illusion. There is always a chance that you made a mistake of logic or math or started with an bad assumption. To claim 100% certainty is to claim that you never make mistakes.
The thing is, it is possible that I did have eggs for breakfast this morning and somehow don't remember it. It is also highly improbable.
If the existence or non-existence of divine beings is uncertain here, then it would be even worse in a world where magic and the supernatural not only exist, but are somewhat common place. I would have a harder time denying that gods existed, but I would also have a harder time denying that the gods are not just souped up wizards pretended to be gods.
Just because I don't believe in gods doesn't mean I can't resist an arcane OR divine spell. Nor should it stop me believing in all kinds of other things - like that the flamestrike that just fried the party HURT a lot, no matter what the original source.
OSW votes AGAINST the OP.
Sigma-six is a standard of certainty. 6 9s or 99.9999% certainty, which is generally considered a very high level of certainty in testing and standardization circles.
Thanks for reinforcing my point. Significant evidence is not absolute unassailable proof, thus there is a non-zero chance that God does exist. Anything ...
Sigma-six applies to a situation in which there is enough significance to make the error-bar LESS than 00.0001% That takes a great deal of quantized data, and applying it to something as vague and poorly characterized as belief in some kind of diety is ... an inappropriate use of the concept.
Enjoy your game!
Just to check back in on the original topic, we all agreed that the Spell Resistance thing was a bad idea right? Because that was my stance and understanding.
Fairly certain that was the universal response, and the OP has probably abandoned this thread, that or he is in for surprise (or not really) when he finds this has now become a philosophical discussion.
I have a number of problems with this post and I have to go through them one by one.
In philosophy there is no data. The error bar is 50%.
This is false. An example: Either Santa clause exists or he does not: 50%!
When people talk about dieties, they make specific claims about what their diety can do. We can evaluate these. For example, from christianity:
There was a great flood.
Prayers are answered.
All or humanity is descended from two people.
etc...
Calculating the odds for the validity of solipsism or atheism is like calculating the odds of getting certain results from a die roll when you don't know if it's fair or weighted or if it's numbered conventionally or even how many sides it has. It could be a moon phase die. It could even be the kind of die that you don't roll at all and the result will be model aircraft parts.
This is a case of moving goalposts. Every religion makes claims. Many of them have whole books that make claims about their gods. I can evaluate those claims for likely-hood and come up with a probability grounded in data.
Likewise, if I have a d6, even if I don't know if it is weighted or not, or what numbers it reads, I know the chance of rolling 7 different values in 7 rolls is 0%.
You have one test and you can't find out the results. Well, you can prove that atheism implies that reality is illusion by dieing and finding yourself in an afterlife, but nobody who's conducted the experiment has managed to share their results.
Atheism does not claim that "life is an illusion" whatever that means. It claims that the specific parameters assigned by religions to their gods are not consistent with the world we see. Atheism makes only negative claims.
One can weigh evidence once one has discarded some of the more difficult philosophies (like solipsism) but even then you only have one world to observe.
The reason we can discard solipsism is because it makes no predictions: Sure the world is an illusion, now what? When you are cut, it still hurts, so you might as well pretend the world is not an illusion...
Even with one world to observe, we can make conclusions. For example, we know that the world is not made out of cheese.
Suppose a guy walks into your game with a character who has two rolled 18s, nothing below 8, and a point buy of over 30. What are the odds he cheated? The odds depend on your point of view. If he were asked the odds would be either 0% or 100%. If you have statistics for how often people cheat at die rolls in character creation you can calculate odds. You'll probably get different odds if you...
That's why I use point buy :p But If I was using rolling, and I had a moment of insanity and had people roll at home: I would ask the guy to re-roll. Not because I think he is cheating, but because he would break any semblance of party balance.
Perhaps this is just my experience with D&D over the many years and perhaps this is simply "how we played the game", but have not many people personally met and spoken to the gods? I'm fairly certain there is a reason that their descriptions say that they appear to mortals as <insert description here>.
At the very least, the gods that were created by interacting with the Starstone were quite provably real. They knew people beforehand. Cayden Cailean had a mother!
Also, Pharasma passes judgement on souls for their final destination. I assume this is done within the spirit's presence. Therefore, everybody who has ever been brought back to life has met a god, correct?
I mean, this thread goes on an on about divine spells as absolute proof, but I figure the fact that gods can come down and share a drink with you is a lot more convincing.
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As an atheist, I feel I should respond to this.
1: No spell resistance for disbelief. That's some Sword of Truth malarkey, and I see no reason for it.
2: Even if a character is an atheist, that simply means that they lack belief in the gods themselves. That does NOT mean that they do not recognize that divine casters are using magic. Magic is something demonstrably real within PF. An atheist/skeptic is very unlikely to care where the deluded fool using it thinks it comes from.
If you want to deal with a character resisting divine magic, Black Raven mentioned the Disbeliever trait. But even then, that would likely be more of an anti-theist: someone who doesn't want ANYTHING to do with these freaky people and their so-called "gods," and resists everything they claim comes from their faith.
3: When dealing with a world like Golarion, the word "Atheist" takes on a very different meaning. Gods demonstrably exist in Golarion. You can talk to them with high-level magic. You can travel to their home planes and play parcheesi with them. An atheist is not a non-believer in the same way that they are in the real world. More likely, an atheist in Golarion is someone who simply subscribes to no religion, and finds the concept of worshiping these admittedly-powerful beings rather pointless. They are likely scientists and wizards, finding no place in their lives for faith and reliance on an outside force for aid. Think Gregory House as a wizard or alchemist. It's not that they deny existence, but rather see no room for belief.
And that's all. I've said my piece.
...Catch Phrase,
-Chris