Cleric forced to renounce deity, More info inside.


Advice


In a campaign that my character is a Vitalist, Cleric class, she was jailed for going to a nation that has made religion illegal. I have since made a new character, and spoke to the GM about my other character. I have not given up on her just yet. He has said that if she renounces her deity there is a chance that she will live.

My Cleric was the parties only healer, and have been though a lot of near death encounters. I have never played an Ex-cleric and want to know what I can expect other then the normal ex-cleric rules. The Gm is saying there might be an alignment change, I am currently True neutral, the Deity in question is Sarenrae.

This boils down to death or renounce her deity to save her life. I Kinda want to keep her alive and keep playing her as she is a fun character.

Many thanks in advanced.

Dark Archive

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At the very least I could say there's an opportunity for some good roleplay. Sarenrae is the goddess of redemption. Would you be able to atone for renouncing Sarenrae? If not, how would your character develop? In any case, this could lead to an interesting side quest and some character development. In the worst case your character coild become a villain fighting an unholy war against Sarenrae.

I'm also a little bit concerned that you're being forced to choose between 2 options. That might just be a sign of bad GMing, especially if the GM wants to get rid of your character by killing it or by making it not fun to play anymore. A third option would be necessary where in you could try to escape.

Edit: You shouldn't change alignment if you're forced to renounce your faith.


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Or you could just die a martyr, and be spontaneously resurrected by the power of your Deity Herself.
Stranger things have happened on Golarion.


Or mount a rescue with your new temp character and the party, call it a cool intermission and flip the DM the finger for trying.


I forgot to say but in an encounter before we reached Avendale my Cleric used detect magic and blinded herself looking at something our GM brought in that was WAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY above our level. And we as dumb players instead of investigating and leaving decided to try and beat it. Long story short, This thing for lack of better world Blinded my character to protect it from my deity.

As for the Atonement, if my character is not killed yes she "might" be able too. However due to that dang war all our party's gold, silver and platinum was taken as with our two war horses, and weapons.

As for the 2 options I am SURE there is other ways, escape is one as a fellow party member is hellbent to rescue the Cleric. The others have been forced into the ranks of the military while my cleric is jailed and the other female was let go.

I was thinking that the forced alignment change due to renouncing my faith was too much. Also I want to point out that the GM is not out to kill my character, his dice are doing that all too well.


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Consider this quote from the Sarenrae’s paladin’s code.
The best battle is a battle I win. If I die, I can no longer fight. I will fight fairly when the fight is fair, and I will strike quickly and without mercy when it is not.

You may not be a paladin, but that is still part of the teachings of your deity. This may give you some wiggle room to seem to renounce her, but keeping true to her in your heart. Considering that neither you nor your deity are lawful oaths may not have the same impact if either of you were lawful. I am not sure if an atonement spell is necessary if you are actually following the dogma of your deity.


Ishara wrote:
In a campaign that my character is a Vitalist, Cleric class, she was jailed for going to a nation that has made religion illegal.

Did you know this about the nation before you went there and why did you go there?


Really a good gm will move away from the dice when needed. I don't think there is any rule about detect magic blinding the person. Also "renouncing" will not effect your alignment. Sorry but I think the GM is playing everything loose except keeping your character around


ekibus wrote:
Really a good gm will move away from the dice when needed. I don't think there is any rule about detect magic blinding the person. Also "renouncing" will not effect your alignment. Sorry but I think the GM is playing everything loose except keeping your character around

Some times you'll get players that want to see most of the GM rolls rather than just hear them behind the screen, in those cases it's hard to fudge rolls in the parties favor, just guessing this may be a similar case. Still it's an interesting case, and from the sounds of it, it may have been the party that decided to venture there despite nudging against it and other DM warnings.

Silver Crusade

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For what it is worth, in the real world there are countless examples of people who formally renounced their faith in order to avoid martyrdom and then rejined their faith as soon as they could and were accepted back into their faith.

Also, of course, lots of people who chose martydom.

I must say, though, that the GM sounds (based on insufficient evidence) to be a bit of a control freak who is determined to tell the story the way HE wants. Conscripting characters and forcing a "renounce or die" choice seems VERY heavy handed unless there was a lot of in and out of character warning.

Mechanically shamans and oracles make great healers if they're also not considered "Kill on sight" classes in this world.


Honestly reading through this, it just feels like the GM is railroading things, but maybe that's just my take.

The fact that your character has been captured and being put to death unless you renounce your faith and you and the rest of the party have no other options...I see that as bad GMing. Unless you as the player want to stop playing the character there should be some sort of option for your character to escape, IMO.

Edit: I agree with Paul Jathome heartily. This smackl of heavy handiness.


@Scrapper- huh I've seen gm's prevent players from rolling behind screens but never the gm. To me that would seem you don't trust the gm, who is running the world. Maybe it is just me, when I used to gm and I knew someone would be killed by that crit I just rolled...well I didn't roll that crit after all, not saying to abuse it, just keep things fun.
I would talk to the gm if you really want to keep the cleric. Maybe a npc frees him and now he is indebted. Or he renounces with every intent to reconnect with his god.


ekibus wrote:

@Scrapper- huh I've seen gm's prevent players from rolling behind screens but never the gm. To me that would seem you don't trust the gm, who is running the world. Maybe it is just me, when I used to gm and I knew someone would be killed by that crit I just rolled...well I didn't roll that crit after all, not saying to abuse it, just keep things fun.

I would talk to the gm if you really want to keep the cleric. Maybe a npc frees him and now he is indebted. Or he renounces with every intent to reconnect with his god.

Me personally as a GM, having my players(four plus out of eight) want most of my rolls visible on the "Boss" or "Weird" encounters, but don't seem to mind my behind the screen rolls when it's common mob encounters they expect to take out like the trash.

Just suggesting that it's not always heavy handedness if the players, through their actions, have backed a GM into a corner.

At this time, not enough information to support a conclusion either way though.


You could always lie about it. Pull a Galileo : Abjure, say the words, but keep believing. Just be careful and don't get caught.
Sarenrae shouldn't have too much of an issue with such trickery.

Or actually renounce. Are the circumstances dire enough that you would renounce your faith and turn your back on your goddess ?
In which case, do you turn to another worship, one more fitting your current situation (and still try not to get caught) ?
Are you now powerless, and how do you deal with it (search for absolution if you have regrets, adopting the Laws of Man after that godly betrayal - assuming this is Rahadoum, resign yourself and find a new way to go through life ...)
Or does something stranger happen : your goddess sticks with you, no matter what is asked of you, or you lose her grace only to gain something else : There's now an archetype for fallen clerics, with the interesting RP of "I still how power somehow ... Why ? Where does it come from and what's the catch ?"

Being a regular fallen cleric is doable temporarily, but isn't much fun otherwise.

This is very much more a RP dilemma than a mechanical one, so : what do you want to do, and why ?
Are you angry and/or disappointed in Sarenrae for letting this happen to her faithful, devoted servant ? Resigned to obey but not ready to turn your back on her? Can you afford to deceive this anticlerical nation's justice and are you willing ?

Edit : I forgot to say I very much second something that was said.
If you choose to die for your faith, make a big deal of it, be a martyr so that your example can inspire others. Serve your goddess to the end, before joining her.
Go out in a (possibly literal) blaze of glory : you are, after all, a PC.


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While there could be underhanded stuff here, it's impossible to tell objectively. If the nation you went to has laws against worshiping deities and you are worshiping a deity and they find out (or at least have a good reason you might be, like a holy or unholy symbol), then you get arrested. If the punishment is death, then it's death. Whether repenting will save you or not isn't the point.

Only if the GM is not letting you take other actions is it clearly malicious or poor GMing. For instance, if your cleric or your new character and the party cannot possibly save him at all and the only choices and options they have are repent or die off-screen, that's bad. Otherwise (even if it's very difficult or almost impossible) if you want to risk breaking into prison or staging an escape at the execution or taking the high-priest/king hostage, that's all just potential options and hooks. If they fail, they could lead to death anyway and for more of you, but that's just how it goes.

Like the others say, repenting shouldn't affect your alignment at all in any but the most super-narrow and specific example (and by that I mean I can't think of one).

Also, like ekibus mentioned, detect magic doesn't have any effect for overwhelming auras anymore technically. Since that level of power is typically artifacts and deities, however, there really isn't any reason a GM can't say that you find the aura 'overwhelming' enough that it blinds or hurts or makes you not want to just focus on it (like looking at the sun), though the usual reason for this is that they don't want to have to go into the schools or the details or the specifics of the aura. It's not really unfair, since such auras are typically story and plot related (just based on their sheer power) and that falls into GM territory and plot reasons (ie. it's used to alert you to something very important), whether you misinterpret it is up to you.


I think you and your DM need to have a conversation. Obviously you as a player don't know what renouncing would entail, and what exact effect it would have on your character, but you character should know, or at least have a pretty good idea, what that would entail. Your GM should tell you, the player, what that choice would mean and also explain how that translates in mechanical terms. If that results in something you believe would be viable and fun to play then go for it. If your GM won't do this, I would expect you need to just go with a new character.

You might though also explain to the GM that you do really enjoy playing this character, and would prefer their be a way that you can keep your character and be able to contribute to the party (i.e. not be a 3/4 bab with no class abilities.)

Possibilities include: 1) renouncing doesn't actually mean anything at all as far as your God is concerned, being forced to say something doesn't change your connection to your diety. 2) Atonement spell (personally I wouldn't think this would qualify as 'intentional transgression' since although it is thought through your character isn't doing it to transgress, but to continue the fight another day) 3) Find a new god. There are examples out their of clerics that fall from one god to join up with another, picking up an already higher level cleric is a nice coup for a diety, probably though it would be a deity that is at least a bit opposed to Sarenrae in one way or another though.

Grand Lodge

Say you renounce then flick into the hidden priest archtype. It's super flavorful.


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That said there's some benefit to telling them to go f+!# themselves and going down a martyr.


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Spells are a huge part of being a cleric. The hugest part even. If you don't have a god, you don't get spells and if you don't get spells, you aren't a cleric, you're a gimped fighter with crap BAB and HD who is also feat starved and has no way to buff itself into competitiveness with the other party members. Chances are very good that you're not a skill monkey either so you can't really fight, you can't heal, buff, debuff or act as a controller and you won't have much out of combat utility. What exactly does your GM imagine you bring to the table after he's made you renounce your god?

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