Inspired by a recent discussion, I came to wonder: Can the alignment of a deity change based upon the actions of the deity, or can a deity redefine alignment by their actions?
If a Lawful Good Deity ordered their worshippers to execute any members of an "evil" race on sight, regardless of age or activity, would the alignment of the deity change, or as a Lawful Good deity, do their dictates decide what is Lawful Good?
Which is more powerful, which rules the other, deity or alignment?
Inspired by a recent discussion, I came to wonder: Can the alignment of a deity change based upon the actions of the deity, or can a deity redefine alignment by their actions?
If a Lawful Good Deity ordered their worshippers to execute any members of an "evil" race on sight, regardless of age or activity, would the alignment of the deity change, or as a Lawful Good deity, do their dictates decide what is Lawful Good?
Which is more powerful, which rules the other, deity or alignment?
I don't think a good deity would order such a thing in the first place.
Since alignments are partly meta things i Think they shape the gods more than the other Way around. A god wouldent be good is she ate babyes and so on. But the GM Does u
Indeed shape alignments.
i think worshiping a god is the ability/way to do things not of your alignment but not having to worry about your alignment changing, so long as what your doing is supported by the diety.
I think this is like asking "Which came first the chicken or the egg?"
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Actions determine alignment, not the other way around. The god's alignment would change, just as it would for a normal person.
Actions determine alignment, not the other way around. The god's alignment would change, just as it would for a normal person.
Yeah, this. I've always considered alignment to be above even the gods, so alignment trumps all.
I think this is like asking "Which came first the chicken or the egg?"
Speaking for myself, it's not at all like the chicken and the egg. I started gaming in 2e D&D, which is famous for its many campaign settings, each with their own pantheons, including the Planescape setting which is an attempt to reconcile all those settings and all those gods in one cosmology. So for me there's no question at all; gods come and go, but alignment is part of the very fabric of the multiverse.
In another thread, DeadManWalking mentioned that many gamers come at alignment from a real-life religious perspective, which likely explains why they might have the chicken-or-egg reaction to this question, or to quite naturally put gods above alignment. Conversely, being an atheist might further explain my own response. As far as I'm concerned, the only god who has any say over alignment is the DM. :)
Perhaps Tequila Sunrise, but if I recall my Golarion lore correctly good and evil didn't even exist until the gods created them to separate them from law and chaos.
Law and chaos I could see being called primordial fabric of the universe. Actually just chaos. The first being coming into existence naturally disturbed this and created order (law) and then later created good and evil as distinctions form these.
But a question of do gods determine alignment or does alignment determine gods...the answer is yes.
Inspired by a recent discussion, I came to wonder: Can the alignment of a deity change based upon the actions of the deity, or can a deity redefine alignment by their actions?
If a Lawful Good Deity ordered their worshippers to execute any members of an "evil" race on sight, regardless of age or activity, would the alignment of the deity change, or as a Lawful Good deity, do their dictates decide what is Lawful Good?
Which is more powerful, which rules the other, deity or alignment?
If a good god changed their actions to be nongood would the other good gods still consider that fallen god's actions to be good?
Its a pantheon. It does not matter how any one god defines things.
None of them get to change what is [Good]. That is hardcoded into the pathfinder universe.
In Golarion a deity's portfolio is partly connected to them. When Lamashtu took the godhood from that nature deity it soured the relationship between men and animals.
I am not aware of any deity in Golarion having the exclusive portfolio of alingments. There are tons of aligned gods, and this has significant effects on the gods (what alignments their clerics can be, what spells their clerics can cast, etc.) but I am not aware of it being the other way around.
Zon Kuthon went bad. Lots of Empyreals fell to become devils. Ragathiel rose to become an Empyreal Lord.
Divine alignments can change.
Interesting. So far it sounds like the consensus is that Alignment is more powerful than even deities.
If not deities, then who, within the game, is the arbiter of what is Good and what is Evil?
There is a Good deity in the Pathfinder setting whose tenants say to eliminate enemies and not accept surrender. If the divine are subject to alignment alike to mortals, how can a deity be Good while instructing followers to things some would say are not Good. Elimination of enemies and a refusal to accept surrender together are the recipe for massacres.
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Interesting. So far it sounds like the consensus is that Alignment is more powerful than even deities.
If not deities, then who, within the game, is the arbiter of what is Good and what is Evil?
There is a Good deity in the Pathfinder setting whose tenants say to eliminate enemies and not accept surrender. If the divine are subject to alignment alike to mortals, how can a deity be Good while instructing followers to things some would say are not Good. Elimination of enemies and a refusal to accept surrender together are the recipe for massacres.
Alignments exist in universe without arbiters. They just are.
For a good god with some non good tenets:
A creature's general moral and personal attitudes are represented by its alignment
So it must have other general and personal attitudes that on balance for the god as a whole point to good.
Perhaps Tequila Sunrise, but if I recall my Golarion lore correctly good and evil didn't even exist until the gods created them to separate them from law and chaos.
Law and chaos I could see being called primordial fabric of the universe. Actually just chaos. The first being coming into existence naturally disturbed this and created order (law) and then later created good and evil as distinctions form these.
Interesting. So, for the sake of discussion, this begs the question of which god gets to define alignment. Does Golarion have a head honcho god like Zeus or Odin, or perhaps a god of wisdom or knowledge who might be accepted by the others as the arbiter of morals and ethics?
Interesting. So far it sounds like the consensus is that Alignment is more powerful than even deities.
If not deities, then who, within the game, is the arbiter of what is Good and what is Evil?
I think of the arbiter as an omniscient and impartial entity whose sole occupation is the judgment of every other being's character. These judgments are what allows things like protection from evil to work the way they do, but the arbiter is otherwise invisible and impotent.
Not being familiar with Golarion lore, I can't comment on Good gods who hand down questionable edicts.
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Actions determine alignment, not the other way around. The god's alignment would change, just as it would for a normal person.
This. The rules are pretty clear that Alignment is a universal law, like gravity. And one deities have a much harder time bending or breaking. This is certainly the case in Golarion.
Interesting. So, for the sake of discussion, this begs the question of which god gets to define alignment. Does Golarion have a head honcho god like Zeus or Odin, or perhaps a god of wisdom or knowledge who might be accepted by the others as the arbiter of morals and ethics?Perhaps Tequila Sunrise, but if I recall my Golarion lore correctly good and evil didn't even exist until the gods created them to separate them from law and chaos.
Law and chaos I could see being called primordial fabric of the universe. Actually just chaos. The first being coming into existence naturally disturbed this and created order (law) and then later created good and evil as distinctions form these.
Claxon's referring to the apocrypha that's in Book of the Damned: Princes of Darkness.
TO be more specific, Tabris's account of how Asmodeus and his sibling Ihys created the Prime Material Plane, souls, etc.
In that story, good & evil didn't exist as concepts until one of Ihys's creations, Sarenrae, defined them by taking up arms against Asmodeus, co-creater and arguable rightful ruler of the cosmos, after he killed Ihys.
Note that Sarenrae wasn't even a true god at this time - according to Sarenrae's teachings, she was "just" an Empyreal Lord until she ascended to proper goddesshood by throwing down against Rovagug.
It's also worth noting that Tabris is bonkers and probably unreliable.
The Tabris account also completely ignores that Pharasma and other entities (such as the Proteans and the Qlippoths, I believe) predate Asmodeus and Sarenrae.
I'm going to go with "alignment defines gods" rather than the other way around. A god changing her alignment is huge - changing alignment changes what that god even is.
I'd say the default gods of Pathfinder just aren't powerful enough to change what's good or evil on their own. A sufficiently powerful deity would be able to do it, if they so desired. The wish spell already borders on this sort of power. "I wish it were good to do this thing that I want to do".
Interesting. So, for the sake of discussion, this begs the question of which god gets to define alignment. Does Golarion have a head honcho god like Zeus or Odin, or perhaps a god of wisdom or knowledge who might be accepted by the others as the arbiter of morals and ethics?Perhaps Tequila Sunrise, but if I recall my Golarion lore correctly good and evil didn't even exist until the gods created them to separate them from law and chaos.
Law and chaos I could see being called primordial fabric of the universe. Actually just chaos. The first being coming into existence naturally disturbed this and created order (law) and then later created good and evil as distinctions form these.
There is a "head honcho" god, though he is far removed from the universe. Apsu is his name, and he is the equivalent of 3.5's Ao. However, not much is not about how Apsu and Tiamat led to the creation of the traditional Pantheon we are familiar with. It is only stated that Apsu and Tiamat are the original two beings.
Also, you shouldn't try to apply the idea of entropy to moral scales of order (law) and chaos. While entropy is a literal measure of disorder, this is more about measuring the internal energy of a system, and energy dispersion. It just doesn't apply to a philosophical discussion.
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There is a "head honcho" god, though he is far removed from the universe. Apsu is his name, and he is the equivalent of 3.5's Ao. However, not much is not about how Apsu and Tiamat led to the creation of the traditional Pantheon we are familiar with. It is only stated that Apsu and Tiamat are the original two beings.
Uh...no. This is inaccurate. That's the story dragons tell, but it's actively contradicted by a lot of other deity's stories, and there's no evidence in the canon to support it. There've been like ten creation myths portrayed, all of which are mutually exclusive.
Also, Golariopedia is out of date, unsanctioned by its original creators, and just a bad wiki in general. Check out the Pathfinder Wiki instead.
There is a "head honcho" god, though he is far removed from the universe. Apsu is his name, and he is the equivalent of 3.5's Ao. However, not much is not about how Apsu and Tiamat led to the creation of the traditional Pantheon we are familiar with. It is only stated that Apsu and Tiamat are the original two beings.Uh...no. This is inaccurate. That's the story dragons tell, but it's actively contradicted by a lot of other deity's stories, and there's no evidence in the canon to support it. There've been like ten creation myths portrayed, all of which are mutually exclusive.
Also, Golariopedia is out of date, unsanctioned by its original creators, and just a bad wiki in general. Check out the Pathfinder Wiki instead.
I can't access Pathdiner Wiki at work, so I don't.
And it's not inaccurate, or at least not more so than any other lore we have. All of the lore is usually presented thorugh the lens of someone's statements who wasn't present, has an agenda, or is crazy. There a very few concrete things we can say about the lore with absolute certainty. Which, is actually a good thing because it allows these interesting ideas to persist without actually having to change the important parts of Golarion lore that players need to interact with.
You are absolutely right that there are several differnt creation myths which all contradict one another.
And that's the beauty of it.
Most gods have an alignment, but are not gods of the alignment (Asmodeus and Lamashtu being some notable exceptions, since they're effectively deified alignment outsiders). Beyond that, most of my thoughts on both alignment and deities are Planescape-style, which in some ways is explicitly contradicted by Golarion's cosmological design.
I think it fairly obvious that a good deity who ceased to do good things would no longer be a good deity.
That said, Good is a somewhat nebulous concept, and it is quite plausible for a deific being to have a greater understanding of the concept than a mortal, so perhaps something that a mortal would not understand was good (or even thought was evil) the god could understand it was good, and thus order something seemingly evil that was actually good, just beyond a mortals comprehension.
There is a "head honcho" god, though he is far removed from the universe. Apsu is his name, and he is the equivalent of 3.5's Ao. However, not much is not about how Apsu and Tiamat led to the creation of the traditional Pantheon we are familiar with. It is only stated that Apsu and Tiamat are the original two beings.Interesting. So, for the sake of discussion, this begs the question of which god gets to define alignment. Does Golarion have a head honcho god like Zeus or Odin, or perhaps a god of wisdom or knowledge who might be accepted by the others as the arbiter of morals and ethics?Perhaps Tequila Sunrise, but if I recall my Golarion lore correctly good and evil didn't even exist until the gods created them to separate them from law and chaos.
Law and chaos I could see being called primordial fabric of the universe. Actually just chaos. The first being coming into existence naturally disturbed this and created order (law) and then later created good and evil as distinctions form these.
According to this wiki, Apsu shares his primordial-god status with Tiamat, who is unlikely to give him free reign to define alignment.
And then of course there's the issue of conflicting creation stories which DeadManWalking brings up, which while I agree makes the game world wonderfully ambiguous and interesting, doesn't exactly lend credibility to the gods-define-alignment possibility. Occam's razor, and all that.
Some have suggested that Good and Evil are universal forces, with no grand judge deciding them. Without a defined arbiter, how do deities know if their actions would cross the immutable line?
Clearly a deity changing alignment is a huge deal, but it happens so rarely that it is a thing of epic tales. Yet, if the actions of a deity can change their alignment, one would expect more frequent variation. Consider how often alignment change becomes as issue for players, in a rigidly enforced alignment game. Surely a deity has at least as much agency as a player character?
Some have suggested that Good and Evil are universal forces, with no grand judge deciding them. Without a defined arbiter, how do deities know if their actions would cross the immutable line?
Same way anyone else would, scientifically! Alignments are detectable phenomena so the change could be noticed through a detect spell or other consequences. Also Iomedae would not be able to use her paladin powers, just her god ones.
Clearly a deity changing alignment is a huge deal, but it happens so rarely that it is a thing of epic tales. Yet, if the actions of a deity can change their alignment, one would expect more frequent variation. Consider how often alignment change becomes as issue for players, in a rigidly enforced alignment game. Surely a deity has at least as much agency as a player character?
How much agency a god has is very debatable. Some equate them with their portfolios or alignment, so you expect Asmodeus to be Lawful and Evil and Tyrannical and those considerations are guiding him rather than the other way around. Cayden Cailean may have been a good hearted drunk adventurer before he ascended, but he's a Chaotic Good god now.
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Some have suggested that Good and Evil are universal forces, with no grand judge deciding them. Without a defined arbiter, how do deities know if their actions would cross the immutable line?
The same way anyone else does.
Clearly a deity changing alignment is a huge deal, but it happens so rarely that it is a thing of epic tales. Yet, if the actions of a deity can change their alignment, one would expect more frequent variation. Consider how often alignment change becomes as issue for players, in a rigidly enforced alignment game. Surely a deity has at least as much agency as a player character?
Indeed they do. However...I've literally only ever seen a PC change alignment once, because my players usually pick the Alignment they intend to play.
In a similar fashion, Deities are the alignment they want to be. The one that's consistent with their actions thus far, and their preferences for what to do in the future. Why would they do anything to change it? The epic story isn't about what actions a deity takes to change alignment, it's about what convinces them to take such actions, or to want to change.
Some have suggested that Good and Evil are universal forces, with no grand judge deciding them. Without a defined arbiter, how do deities know if their actions would cross the immutable line?The same way anyone else does.
Looking at the alignment threads on the board, I'm going to describe that as "poorly".
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I think this is like asking "Which came first the chicken or the egg?"
That's been answered, by the by. It's 'the egg'.
Dieties do not have quite the free will that mortals do. Giving up that chunk of free will is part of the price of being a god. That's why mortals are so important. A diety's actions, in fact it's entire thinking process are defined by it's portfolio and alignment. Iomedae for instance isn't merely a super powered human. She's The Crusader, it's what she is and what she MUST be, 24/7 evert day of the year, just as Asmodeus is the ultimate Tyrant, being what he must be as well.Interesting. So far it sounds like the consensus is that Alignment is more powerful than even deities.
If not deities, then who, within the game, is the arbiter of what is Good and what is Evil?
There is a Good deity in the Pathfinder setting whose tenants say to eliminate enemies and not accept surrender. If the divine are subject to alignment alike to mortals, how can a deity be Good while instructing followers to things some would say are not Good. Elimination of enemies and a refusal to accept surrender together are the recipe for massacres.
If deities created mortals, and deities lack free will, mortals cannot have free will. It's nearly impossible to create something that you cannot conceive of (on a cognitive level).
Try to think of a sound you cannot spell.
The question is a simplification. Deities are titanic cosmic forces of nature. They personify their alignments. But at the same time, they are supremely willful. So, like humans, they can act outside their alignments.
In-game, the GM ought to play them within their alignments, since alignment is a guide to playing them. But that could include anything from a Good deity refusing to kill, to a Good deity feeling bad about having to kill.
Hardest part is that deities, unlike the rest of us, have godlike Intelligence and Wisdom, and the prescience to know what the right decision is, even in situations that would baffle mere humans like ourselves. That's why it is best for the GM to roleplay deities only in the barest and rarest of instances. Like showing up to bestow some reward, assign some duty or mission, or to mete out a (VERY WELL THOUGHT-AHEAD) punishment regarding a very specific event.
According to this wiki, Apsu shares his primordial-god status with Tiamat, who is unlikely to give him free reign to define alignment.
And then of course there's the issue of conflicting creation stories which DeadManWalking brings up, which while I agree makes the game world wonderfully ambiguous and interesting, doesn't exactly lend credibility to the gods-define-alignment possibility. Occam's razor, and all that.
Indeed Apsu shares this primordial status. Of course, thinking free reign to define alignment is required isn't necessarily true. I would think the actions of each define good from evil, as one is good and the other is evil. They do not decide something is good or evil, but rather their actions could determine what good and evil are.
Now, I'm not saying its actually true but it is a possibility. For me, it's however you want to decide it is for your story. It's not necessary to establish one way or the other.
Some people prefer immutable decrees of the universe that say what good and evil are. And that's fine. I think it's more interesting if the gods collectively define what good and evil are (as well as law and chaos). And I hope others think that's okay too, even if it's not their cup of tea.
I think this is like asking "Which came first the chicken or the egg?"That's been answered, by the by. It's 'the egg'.
I know you understand the purpose of the phrase, that the question has an answer isn't the point. You know what the intent was.
If deities created mortals, and deities lack free will, mortals cannot have free will. It's nearly impossible to create something that you cannot conceive of (on a cognitive level).
Try to think of a sound you cannot spell.
It's actually unclear if deities did or didn't create humans for instance. Many of the deities that exist now have come into being well after the established existence of humans or even the aboleths. Unfortunately, there is decided lack of lore about the early origins of the multiverse in which Golarion resides. It just hasn't been written yet, to my knowledge. Or at least is incomplete to the level of detail we desire.
Deities are just remarkably powerful outsiders, that's all. They have free will, just as all sapient creatures have free will, and they choose their own path in life.
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Looking at the alignment threads on the board, I'm going to describe that as "poorly".Some have suggested that Good and Evil are universal forces, with no grand judge deciding them. Without a defined arbiter, how do deities know if their actions would cross the immutable line?The same way anyone else does.
Confusion about alignment in the metagame doesn't imply confusion about alignment within the game world.
If deities could shape alignment, one would think that Gorum would have made it where he could have a full BAB class that he could still imbue with a modicum of divine power.
But right now, there are deities that don't even have the Domain of War that can have paladins, but all Gorum gets is clerics, inquisitors, oracles, and warpriests (*Snort*). If he wants a servant to embody most the qualities he holds dear, then he has to make sure not to sully them with any divine power, lest they lose out on their ability to make attacks.
So yeah, the deities are definitely subservient to alignment.
We still have hope for Unchained, though.
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While supremely powerful, Deities are individuals and characters like anyone else. I don't think it's any more complex than "deities have alignments".
Confusion about alignment in the metagame doesn't imply confusion about alignment within the game world.Looking at the alignment threads on the board, I'm going to describe that as "poorly".Some have suggested that Good and Evil are universal forces, with no grand judge deciding them. Without a defined arbiter, how do deities know if their actions would cross the immutable line?The same way anyone else does.
If alignment is understood as a certainty within the game world, why would there be guilt over destroying evil?
There is clearly a wrong answer here. It's the one that doesn't put two gods at war with each other over minor disagreements over right and wrong.
Absolute alignment: This is like mathematics, so deities can't change it, although they may convince their worshippers otherwise.
Relative alignment: Deities can redefine this, and even convince their worshippers that it is absolute (and that all the other deities and their worshippers are heretics, deviants, heathens, and all deserve to go to Hell or worse for believing otherwise). This sounds incredibly useful, and it totally sounds like the kind of thing that deities like Asmodeus would invent if it wasn't already invented.
{. . .}
Try to think of a sound you cannot spell.
Musicians do this all the time, and so do people who never learned how to spell.
I think it's more interesting if the gods collectively define what good and evil are (as well as law and chaos). And I hope others think that's okay too, even if it's not their cup of tea.
Could you explain that more? It seems conceptually incoherent.
Does each get a say and are right so the concepts can be completely contradictory and change over time as the gods individually change or the members of the pantheon change?
If it is their physical beings that define good and evil (such as your Tiamat is evil and what she does defines evil example) and not them consciously defining good and evil that seems seems to contradict things like deities changing alignments.
According to this wiki, Apsu shares his primordial-god status with Tiamat, who is unlikely to give him free reign to define alignment.
And then of course there's the issue of conflicting creation stories which DeadManWalking brings up, which while I agree makes the game world wonderfully ambiguous and interesting, doesn't exactly lend credibility to the gods-define-alignment possibility. Occam's razor, and all that.
Indeed Apsu shares this primordial status. Of course, thinking free reign to define alignment is required isn't necessarily true. I would think the actions of each define good from evil, as one is good and the other is evil. They do not decide something is good or evil, but rather their actions could determine what good and evil are.
Now, I'm not saying its actually true but it is a possibility. For me, it's however you want to decide it is for your story. It's not necessary to establish one way or the other.
Some people prefer immutable decrees of the universe that say what good and evil are. And that's fine. I think it's more interesting if the gods collectively define what good and evil are (as well as law and chaos). And I hope others think that's okay too, even if it's not their cup of tea.
Oh, agreed! Planescape, my all-time favorite setting, is in part about ambiguity, contradiction, and having no definitive answers. And I suspect that many non-D&D rpg gamers think these things make games much more interesting too!
(I also find LazarX's 'deities don't have free will' idea interesting...)
So, if Apsu and Tiamat defined good and evil, who are the likely suspects to have defined law and chaos?
So, if Apsu and Tiamat defined good and evil, who are the likely suspects to have defined law and chaos?
Asmodeus and Ihyss from the account in the Devils book. Although it is likely that Ihyss never existed and the account is a lie.
The Maelstrom existed before all else and was Chaos, then Axis defined law. Not gods but planes defined the cosmic forces.
A different chaos existed independent of the Maelstrom, the Abyss.
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If alignment is understood as a certainty within the game world, why would there be guilt over destroying evil?
Confusion about alignment in the metagame doesn't imply confusion about alignment within the game world.
Because the greatest good is not the destruction of evil, but its conversion into good.
(Go and sin no more)
I think it's more interesting if the gods collectively define what good and evil are (as well as law and chaos). And I hope others think that's okay too, even if it's not their cup of tea.
Could you explain that more? It seems conceptually incoherent.
Does each get a say and are right so the concepts can be completely contradictory and change over time as the gods individually change or the members of the pantheon change?
If it is their physical beings that define good and evil (such as your Tiamat is evil and what she does defines evil example) and not them consciously defining good and evil that seems seems to contradict things like deities changing alignments.
I imagine it a bit like all the good aligned deities send avatars of themselves to Nirvana (neutral good plane) and sit down and agree on what constitutes good. It probably takes a while to get everyone to agree, and they get side tracked a lot because law and chaos creep in but eventually they all agree to certain things. So basically the deities come to a mutual agreement over what is good.
As far as physical being possibly defining alignment, while some deities have been noted to change not all deities need be made equal. Not that the lore is accurate, but the lore on Apsu and Tiamat does seem to set them apart on a different level of deific nature. If this was the case, they would be unable to change alignment, though the concept wouldn't mean anything to them because they would never want to do anything that wasn't in agreement with their alignment. I will add, we do know for certain that there are varying degrees of deific power.
Again, these are just theories. I'm not suggesting that either is actually accurate. In fact, my point is more that we can't actual say any are accurate because we don't have enough lore published from would could be considered objective sources to make strong conclusions.
Try to think of a sound you cannot spell.Musicians do this all the time, and so do people who never learned how to spell.
You're almost to the point. Language shapes the way a person thinks. It allows expression of one's ideas to others, but it also limits a person to thinking in certain sounds. That's why it's difficult to think of sounds that can't be expressed in one's own language. Much as it would be difficult for beings of inherently limited will to conceive of true free will.