Should a Deity of civilization and justice be lawful good or neutral? If said Deity acts as a warden and judge for other Deities and powerful outsiders?
Just doing some work on a campaign world and rethinking a deities alignment.
Thanks voideternal. That was my thought process.
If they're judging other deities and believe in civilization, that sounds like lawful neutral.
@Cyrad: Thats how i've been feeling as of late.
Do as you like, and lawful neutral (or even neutral!) could make a lot of sense for most understandings and campaigns. (I'd totally vote "lawful good!" though, 'cause I'm biased like that. :D)
:)
Actually, you may be interested in one or two of my own home-brew setting that I created once.
One is tentatively called "Gods of Sides".
Within it, there are three "core essences" of the divine - an ethically neutral and morally evil "core essence" (Toldeth); a true neutral "core essence" (Taiia), and an ethically neutral and morally good "core essence" (Elishar). These godly essences represent Imperatives - moral guidelines for that which is "the best" or "most important" (generally, morals). These are represented by negative energy (evil), energy (neutral), and positive energy (good).
There are also three "expressed gods" - basically default personalities - that interact with the "core essences" of the gods. These are Hermod (chaotic and neutral), Heimdall (lawful and good), and Freya (neutral and good).
When a "core essence" is combined with an "expressed god" you get an aspect of a given god (and an appropriate church to worship it).
CE: Toldeth+Hermod -> Hermdeth
LN: Toldeth+Heimdall -> Heimdoth
NN: Toldeth+Freya -> Freydeth
CN: Taiia+Hermod -> Hermaiia
LG: Taiia+Heimdall -> Heimdaiia
NG: Taiia+Freya -> Freyaiia
CG: Elishar+Hermod -> Hermishar
LG: Elishar+Heimdall -> Heimishar
NG: Elishar+Freya -> Freyishar
(There is no direct LE or NE representative - the church of Heimdoth absorbs any LE would-be worshipers, while the church of Freydeth or Hermdeth absorbs NE would-be worshipers.)
The idea for these is that the "expressed gods" have their own distinctive personalities and preferences, but they are simply way too powerful, to grandiose, and too glorious for the material plane to handle directly; they are thus distant, and can thus only be "accessed" by reaching them through the "core essences". They are, however, the "big gods" of the setting.
There is one lesser goddess - Dennari - who is a kind of servant-overseer, though, being chaotic good, is whimsical and not entirely reliable. Below her is a host of demigods, and quasigods.
There are no intermediate gods or greater gods - only the three over gods, before the lesser goddess and lower categories "start". These lower gods have all sorts of alignments. Dennari and the gods below her never directly interact with the "core essences" as they're not a "distant" as the other gods, but their worship is fundamentally local to some region or area.
The other "setting" that I came up with doesn't appear to be on this computer (I think it's just jotted notes in a notebook), but, by memory, I think the "greater" god(dess) in that setting was a heavily altered Yondalla (I think she was a Yondalla core, gestalted with Taiia, and given the Tauric, monster of legend, and other templates), with Freya (I did something weird to her, I don't remember) and Dionysus (I think he was an alchemist/artificer with fake limbs due to some trauma or another) and had as the two other "gods" in existence. Though she was lawful good (I think?) she permitted a chaotic neutral god and neutral good goddess to come into existence because she was lonely and also, although exceedingly powerful, finite. Sharing the burden helped and was, in the end, necessary.
I think I came up with these gods while envisioning something like Verces from the absolutely excellent Distant Worlds. In this setting, none of the gods are evil, but there are definitely dark elements to some of the gods, and bad things can happen to them; they can even be driven crazy. Beyond mortal understanding, perhaps, but there are other, darker things that exist and have yet to be fully explored.
Part of the idea is that the Yondallaiia-character brought life and light to a dark world, but discovered there were already things - wicked, evil, awful, ancient "things" - in existence-that-is-not-existence. Bringing mortals (and existence) into existence drew "their" attention, and she created/ascended assistance. Successful assistance, but not-as-lawful-or-good-as-her assistance. Thus the world isn't lawful and good, even though Yondallaiia-character's gamble/omnisciently-designed plan was basically a success.
There are a few other ideas that I had, but I'll only mention one more.
Make nine large alignment boxes.
Take a god with a portfolio element (or "area of concern") and strip all the details about that god away. Put the portfolio (or "area of concern") into a smaller box within the appropriate alignment-box.
Do this for every world/setting that is officially published.
Create a linked webwork between alignments, portfolio elements that were grouped together, and the like.
You now have a list of portfolio elements that have an "inherent" (sort of) alignment, and this helps you develop gods.
This is now how gods can ascend at all, and how they can gain portfolio elements - they start in their own alignment, and may "dip" into another alignment's portfolio element if it has their portfolio element or a portfolio element that was "bundled" with their own. Each god can choose up to one portfolio element, up to one step away in alignment, or by link to their current alignments; they can choose four different times (though if you choose via shared portfolio element - so long as that's the only portfolio element -, that doesn't count against your limit of choices.
For example (taken from the top of my head), let's say that you look through everything and only find the following (you'll find more, but this is just for a simple example):
LG:
- justice
- vengeance and honor
- protection
NG:
- protection
- love
- healing
LN:
- justice and punishment
- honor
- law
CN:
- vengeance and lust
- storms
CE:
- storms
- insanity
Starting with a lawful good god, we want to get insanity... but how?
Well, he takes vengeance and honor, that allows him to tap into vengeance and lust (CN), then storms (CN), and then storms (CE) to get to insanity (CE). That means he's got for elements: vengeance, honor, lust, storms, insanity. Normally this would be beyond the scope, but when you picked up storms from CN and then looked at CE, you could bypass that "choice" because they're exactly the same - on the other hand, LG got you "vengeance and honor" while CN got you "vengeance and lust" which are very different.
Alternatively, the newly ascended lawful good god could choose justice, vengeance and honor, protection; and then either go to NG (via protection) to grab healing, or CN to grab vengeance and lust, or LN to grab justice and punishment.
Anyway, I built that decision-maker once, but... I can't find it, and I don't want to compile it all again. I'm also going to post this in my own thread...
Hope that helps inspire, even if nothing is used for this!
~ Tac
Needs more information. LN and LG could both be potential choices, depending on other intricacies of the deity's beliefs (for example, if the god puts more stock in the letter of the law than the spirit of it then that would be neutral with the reverse being good). An LG god of justice likely emphasizes the law as a means of protecting the weak from injustice while an LN god cares more about establishing order (with protecting the weak being a good yet unnecessary side effect).
Needs more information. LN and LG could both be potential choices, depending on other intricacies of the deity's beliefs (for example, if the god puts more stock in the letter of the law than the spirit of it then that would be neutral with the reverse being good). An LG god of justice likely emphasizes the law as a means of protecting the weak from injustice while an LN god cares more about establishing order (with protecting the weak being a good yet unnecessary side effect).
I'm presuming you mean the last idea, where I talk about aligned portfolio elements. These are just portfolio elements - areas which a god has power over - not the actual gods themselves.
The "needs more information" is (if I'm reading this correctly, and you are indeed talking about the alignment of the portfolio elements) entirely based on the interpretation of the god taking the elements themselves.
In other words, even though insanity is naturally chaotic evil (i.e. naturally lends itself to a chaotic evil deity), the lawful good god who has that element has a lawful good take on it.
Similarly, justice, lust, or any concept you wish to pursue.
The reason the last entry has no information is because it's meant to be a generic matrix by which a deity can acquire portfolio elements within a framework that makes it slightly less arbitrary than "Here, I'll make a god with XYZ elements 'cause why not?"
Of course, you could always do that, but the point of the decision-web created above is to create a logical pattern by which stories or personalities can be suggested when creating new gods.
The gods themselves "fill in the details" as it were, by way of their personalities - that's part of the process of gaining those portfolio elements.
One neat thing is that you can either cross off/remove portfolio elements as deities take them (allowing for interesting organic rises and falls, ebbs and flows, and so on of portfolio elements as rival gods seek to claim titles or elements from others... if gods can claim anothers' elements at all!) or just leave them there, allowing multiple gods to have similar portfolio elements but unique takes, due to unique combinations and paths - or, if two take the same path (perhaps by the same alignment, or some other trick) than their worship can (and probably does) get confused on the material with mortals struggling to understand the esoteric differences between the two of them.
Basically, like having classes, it's a built-in story-maker. You decide how your fighter is a fighter and their alignment, personality, stats, etc.; the fighter class gives you some guidance in how it works out mechanics wise.
This is similar - it's a web of focused decision-making, not an absolute "all gods with this element feel this way" result.
EDIT: let me put it this way - feat chains have prerequisites. This is kind of like that, but the prerequisites are an awful lot of "or" clauses with a bunch of different ways to get there. So do you take the feat Mighty Swing (requires BAB of +5 OR INT 13+ OR STR 15+) via having a certain base attack (BAB of +5), your high intellect (INT of 13+), or your natural proclivities (STR of 15+)? No matter how you get there, you still get there, but you'll look a lot different based on the path you take (and a high STR/high INT/high BAB character can qualify for it three ways).
Similarly, the portfolio element war: so do you take the feat War (CN portfolio element) via having a direct portfolio element ("battle and tactics" allows access to get "battle and war"), alignment-hopping (NG, creation being in both NG and CN, allowing access to CN creation, thus CN war), or your natural proclivities (CN alignment yourself)? Again, no matter how you get there, you still get there, but you'll look a lot different based on the path you take (and a CN/"battle and war"/"protection" deity can qualify for it in three ways).
Now, of course, in the game PF, normally there are a single unchanging set of perquisites. This one is more involved than that because it does allow various paths to get to a certain result. Kind of like making a "successful" caster - there are so many ways to do it right that it doesn't matter if you choose the "optimal" way - you're still doing quite well for yourself by doing it your own way.