Obediences, Deific and Celestial Obedience Questions

[Kigvan]

So the Crimson Templar PRC in Paths of the Righteous makes it seem like the feats: Deific Obedience, and Celestial Obedience are interchangable.

This seems new to me.

relevant rules text:

"Obedience: At 1st level, a crimson templar gains
Deific ObedienceISG as a bonus feat. If the crimson templar
already has this feat or Celestial Obedience (Pathfinder
Campaign Setting: Chronicle of the Righteous 5), he instead
gains a bonus combat feat."
Paths of the Righteous pg 8

"Divine Boon: At 4th level, the crimson templar gains
Ragathiel’s first boon. At 7th level, he gains the second
boon. At 10th level, he gains the third boon. This ability
allows the crimson templar to access these boons earlier
than with the Deific Obedience or Celestial Obedience feat
alone; it does not grant additional uses of the boons once
the character reaches the necessary Hit Dice to earn the
boons normally. Ragathiel’s boons are detailed on page 21
of Chronicle of the Righteous."
Paths of the Righteous pg 9

Does this mean that someone can use a feat like Diverse Obedience or one of the Inner Sea Gods PRCs to advance the rate at one can get boons listed in Chronicles of the Righteous?

[Sennje]

Originally I would have said no, but the wording in this PRC has me doubting myself.

[Kigvan]

Yeah that is exactly my thinking too.

I originally thought that the only thing that could get Celestial Obedience boons faster is from Mystery Cultist.

I am hopeful that this PRC will lead to the Obediences (Deific, Demonic, Celestial or otherwise) being a bit more linked together.

[Kigvan]

Any other thoughts?

[Kigvan]

Bumping this to see if anyone else has any thoughts on the matter.

[Linea Lirondottir]

Even if it's not RAW/RAI I think having Deific Obedience replace all of the other Obedience feats (and fitting all prerequisites, naturally) would be a good idea. They aren't adding anything to the game, AFAIK, and having a bunch of overlapping and largely-identical feats is silly.

[Kigvan]

Any new thoughts on this or anything official. I would really like some clarification for potential use in PFS

[James Risner]

Not likely to be clarified
So ask your GM at every table and best advice is to go with the conservative interoretation.

[Kigvan]

James Risner wrote:

Not likely to be clarified

So ask your GM at every table and best advice is to go with the conservative interoretation.

Yes I suspect this is the case. Mostly interested for a Seeker character anyway and unlikely to really be much of an issue.

[Diego Rossi]

If that is what you are asking, you can't use Aligned Class feature from the Evangelist prestige class on another PRC. Only to the standard classes.

Kigvan wrote:

So the Crimson Templar PRC in Paths of the Righteous makes it seem like the feats: Deific Obedience, and Celestial Obedience are interchangable.

This seems new to me.

** spoiler omitted **

Does this mean that someone can use a feat like Diverse Obedience or one of the Inner Sea Gods PRCs to advance the rate at one can get boons listed in Chronicles of the Righteous?

They aren't interchangeable. You get a bonus feat from the PRC. You get either Deific Obedience or a combat feat, depending on what other feat you have. That don't change in any way how the feat work by themselves.

To make an example, a fighter can choose a bonus combat feat even if that is a teamwork feat, but that don't make the teamwork feats combat feats.

A GM can easily treat the two feats as interchangeable, as Celestial Obedience is simply a modified version of Celestial obedience that allow the characters to use it with empyreal lords (they are demigods, non gods, so a strict reading of the text of Deific obedience wouldn't allow that).

And Diverse Obedience don't allow you to get divine boons from a PRC faster:

Diverse Obedience wrote:

Diverse Obedience doesn’t allow access to divine boons granted through prestige classes early, as those boons are tied to prestige class levels gained, not overall Hit Dice. If you take levels in a prestige class or archetype that offers accelerated access to a boon, this benefit may be superfluous.

It should work with Celestial Obedience as the benefit don't mention the feat, but the boon and the obedience:

PRD wrote:

Benefit(s): You are treated as though you had 2 more Hit Dice than you actually do for the purposes of determining what divine boons you gain as a result of performing your deity’s obedience.

[ShawnieBoy]

Diverse Obedience has Divine Obedience as a prerequisite, so regardless of whether it works with Celestial Obedience, you're going to have to use both Divine and Celestial Obedience feats.

I really hope there could be some errata somewhere to combine the obediences together.

Diego Rossi wrote:

(they are demigods, non gods, so a strict reading of the text of Deific obedience wouldn't allow that)

'Deity' is splashed around the Cleric class constantly, but doesn't mean that Clerics of Empyreal Lords don't have an Aura:

Core Rulebook wrote:

Aura (Ex): A cleric of a chaotic, evil, good, or lawful deity has a particularly powerful aura corresponding to the deity’s alignment (see the detect evil spell for details).

Reading through it, Deific Obedience refers to the Exalted boons for deities, which wouldn't apply to Empyrial Lords as they don't have any (Unless you assume that those boons are the Exalted boons - I so wish they were... I so want an Exalted of Irez).

[Entryhazard]

The thing should be seen the other way around: the obedience and boons are a property of the deity, and the feats grant you access to them instead of every feat having a dedicated list of obediences and boons, especially considering that obediences and boons are liste in multiple books.

Deific Obedience can access, other than deities, Empyreal Lords, Demon Lords and Eldest. The fact that these demigods don't have multiple lists means that Sentinels, Evangelists and Exalteds use the same boons, as specified in the First Realm book.

The fact that there are multiple feats means that some combinations aren't possible and that's it.

[Diego Rossi]

Or that the Demonic (or whatever is called) obedience was a 3.5 feat in curse of the Crimson throne, Deific Obedience is a feat from an hardbound and Celestial obedience was added when the empyreal obedience where described. I don't have the time to check the printing dates, but it is possible they two latter feats where developed at the same time by different people and based on the 3.5 feat.

[Entryhazard]

Diego Rossi wrote:

Or that the Demonic (or whatever is called) obedience was a 3.5 feat in curse of the Crimson throne, Deific Obedience is a feat from an hardbound and Celestial obedience was added when the empyreal obedience where described. I don't have the time to check the printing dates, but it is possible they two latter feats where developed at the same time by different people and based on the 3.5 feat.

I'm talking about Demonic Obedience from Book of the Damned Vol. 2

Celestial Obedience was published on Chronicles of the Righteous that came a year before Inner Sea Gods that notoriously features the Deific Obedience feat.
Then few months ago The First World, Realm of the Fey added the Fey Obedience for Eldest and the corresponding Feysworn prestige class, but also clarified that Deific Obedience works too, and that simply the three prestige classes from ISG just get the same boons if the deity has only one list.

The different feat have the result that one can't take multiple prestige classes with the same feat, intentional or not