Hey folks, do you reckon it's gonna be very very hard to build new ancestries in PF2?
I ask because there are things I like about Golarion, but it's not my favorite setting, and the one that holds the title does have the standard ancestries, but also some more idiosyncratic species.
I figure that some things, like +2 to 2 stats and -2 to 1, are probably gonna be standardized and easy to implement, but racial feats might be tough. And level adjustment... will it still be a thing or will it all be feats now?
I'm also wondering how many years before Paizo publishes a product helping players and GMs in building their homebrew races, probably with a lot of now common PF races included... like, the homebrew part isn't probably their highest priority, but a lot of players will want to dust off and convert their 1e kitsune gunslingers and android vigilantes asap, right?
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I feel like at the core an ancestry doesn't carry more than:
- Size, Movement, and Starting HP
- Attribute adjustments
- Languages
- Special Vision
- Access to Ancestry Feats.
So the two things I'm not really sure about is how we handle ancestries who have a special form of movement based on their form (e.g. Strix and Gathlains can fly, Localaths and Merfolk can swim) or just other special abilities intrinsic to their form (e.g. Astomoi are telepathic and do not eat), and what sorts of things are appropriate for an ancestry feat. I figure the latter will be pretty easy to figure out once we get the book and we can gauge a power level for an ancestry feat at a given level, but the former might need to wait for a few examples in future books.
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I think building new Ancestries will be very hit or miss until we have 20 or 30 of them to look at and get a feel for the balance concerns involved.
After that, I suspect it'll be pretty simple, though it'll involve writing up 10 or so Ancestry Feats at a minimum, so probably more difficult than writing up a race in PF1.
20 or 30?! Holy crap, Deadmanwalking... I hope you're wrong, at least this time.
I think (hope?) you might have the right of it, PossibleCabbage - movement modes and weird special abilities will be tough to adjudicate, but once we see some Playtest ancestry feats, perhaps... perhaps... we might be able to give it a try...
Hey, a girl can dream, right?
Not that Golarion is all that bad, actually... there's just a couple things that bother me... maybe I'll see whether those elements of the setting are still the same or have changed in the meantime...
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20 or 30?! Holy crap, Deadmanwalking... I hope you're wrong, at least this time.
Well, there are 8 in the corebook, there may well be another 8 in the final game's Bestiary (or more...it looks like an Ancestry takes about a page if you've got description and a picture already) and there's likely to be an Ancestry Book coverting PF1 Races fairly early on. Neither of those will be around for the playtest, of course.
20 or 30 probably isn't very far off after the actual game is out, is what I'm saying.
I think (hope?) you might have the right of it, PossibleCabbage - movement modes and weird special abilities will be tough to adjudicate, but once we see some Playtest ancestry feats, perhaps... perhaps... we might be able to give it a try...
Hey, a girl can dream, right?
Oh, basic stuff is probably doable from just the ones in the corebook/playtest materials. I was thinking more complex stuff like flight or Kitsune shapeshifting.
Not that Golarion is all that bad, actually... there's just a couple things that bother me... maybe I'll see whether those elements of the setting are still the same or have changed in the meantime...
Which elements? I'm curious now.
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If I were (re)writing the Advanced Race Guide for PF2, I would definitely include a new version of the popular-though-poorly-implemented Race Builder. It would include a large selection of semi-generic Ancestry Feats: here are some appropriate for any race with a Str boost, here are some appropriate for any race of feline descent, here for any race mostly isolated from others, etc. Then if you were homebrewing an ancestry you could just pick ten or so of those to be available with it.
Not saying they're going to do that, just that it strikes me as doable and useful.
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Well, there are 8 in the corebook, there may well be another 8 in the final game's Bestiary (or more...it looks like an Ancestry takes about a page if you've got description and a picture already) and there's likely to be an Ancestry Book coverting PF1 Races fairly early on. Neither of those will be around for the playtest, of course.
20 or 30 probably isn't very far off after the actual game is out, is what I'm saying.
Oh, didn't realize... but a single page for a whole ancestry? Feats included? You sorta need the feats... anyways if an Ancestry Book converting the PF races to PF2 ancestries comes out rather soon, I'll be on cloud 9.
Oh, basic stuff is probably doable from just the ones in the corebook/playtest materials. I was thinking more complex stuff like flight or Kitsune shapeshifting.
Oh, nice! Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be really tough ancestries... apart from one maybe... uh, I'll need to see how it all develops, but at least more complete parameters will be out relatively soon, if you're right.
Which elements? I'm curious now.
Oh, well, we're gonna threadjack, but... In my opinion the Varisians are a really bad caricature of Roma and Sinti. I live in Europe and I really don't want to engage in exoticizing a culture living in the streets of the nearest city while they starve and are persecuted for their ethnicity. I'd rather have Varisians a lot more similar to actual Roma and Sinti instead of Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it's really tough to find info about the actual people, and if I'm gonna disrespect them then I'd rather not run them at all.
There are similar problems with other ethnicities and cultures, although they're perhaps not as pronounced.
One more thing comes to mind right now - Lamashtu. I feel giving birth and pregnancy are too often demonized in fiction - see Dragon Age and its Brood Mothers, inane monsters who birth darkspawn upon darkspawn. Really horrible. Lamashtu is similar imho, she's the demonification of giving birth to children with disabilities, she's monstrous and evil, and so on.
There are more things - for instance I'd rather free-willed "monsters" like orcs and hobgoblins had various interesting cultures and weren't necessarily wicked and vicious towards everyone... they look like stereotypes of "evil savages". I like orcs, bugbears, PF goblins, but they're so monolithically evil it feels very backwards.
Yeah, sorry, I told you we were gonna hijack the thread ;)
Good night (it's midnight here!),
Ros-
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20 or 30?! Holy crap, Deadmanwalking... I hope you're wrong, at least this time.Well, there are 8 in the corebook, there may well be another 8 in the final game's Bestiary (or more...it looks like an Ancestry takes about a page if you've got description and a picture already) and there's likely to be an Ancestry Book coverting PF1 Races fairly early on. Neither of those will be around for the playtest, of course.
20 or 30 probably isn't very far off after the actual game is out, is what I'm saying.
The many ethnicities inside a single race will also increase the number of Ancestries.
Pathfinder Player Companion: Varisia, Birthplace of Legends describes two human ethnicities, Varisian and Shoanti. Pathfinder Player Companion: People of the North describes four human ethnicities, Erutaki, Jadwiga, Kellid, and Ulfen, and one elf ethnicity, Snowcaster. They also mention other ethnicities in passing, but don't give a full description. I suspect that every ethnicity that received a full description will provide an Ancestry.
The Pathfinder 2nd Edition version of the Advanced Race Guide will probably be published fairly early, because players will be eager to play their favorite exotic species again.
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Oh, didn't realize... but a single page for a whole ancestry? Feats included? You sorta need the feats... anyways if an Ancestry Book converting the PF races to PF2 ancestries comes out rather soon, I'll be on cloud 9.
Well, the Gnome write-up (which we've seen) is two pages, but that includes a picture and description. The Feats plus basic mechanical stuff would only be a page...and that's all you need if you've already got the picture and description via the default bestiary entry.
Oh, nice! Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be really tough ancestries... apart from one maybe... uh, I'll need to see how it all develops, but at least more complete parameters will be out relatively soon, if you're right.
Yeah, I'm quite hopeful it'll be pretty quick.
Oh, well, we're gonna threadjack, but... In my opinion the Varisians are a really bad caricature of Roma and Sinti. I live in Europe and I really don't want to engage in exoticizing a culture living in the streets of the nearest city while they starve and are persecuted for their ethnicity. I'd rather have Varisians a lot more similar to actual Roma and Sinti instead of Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but it's really tough to find info about the actual people, and if I'm gonna disrespect them then I'd rather not run them at all.
Ah. Traditional Varisians can have this issue to some degree, yeah. I will note that not all people who are ethnically Varisian have the same issue, though. Ustalav is almost entirely ethnically Varisian while having few of the problematic cultural trappings, just as one example.
There are similar problems with other ethnicities and cultures, although they're perhaps not as pronounced.
I've personally never found any of them (except possibly the Varisians as mentioned above) more Evil or fantasticized than several of the Avistani/European ethnicities. I mean, a certain amount of inaccuracy is always gonna crop up when doing a fantasy counterpart culture, it's only when it plays into real negative stereotypes or goes to far that it becomes an actual problem.
One more thing comes to mind right now - Lamashtu. I feel giving birth and pregnancy are too often demonized in fiction - see Dragon Age and its Brood Mothers, inane monsters who birth darkspawn upon darkspawn. Really horrible. Lamashtu is similar imho, she's the demonification of giving birth to children with disabilities, she's monstrous and evil, and so on.
Lamashtu is based on an actual mythological Demon/God, and pretty closely in this regard (if not in others). I have a hard time objecting to real mythological beings getting inserted fairly accurately.
There are also several positive motherhood deities (including Pharasma depending on how one defines positive). Lamashtu is only one example.
There are more things - for instance I'd rather free-willed "monsters" like orcs and hobgoblins had various interesting cultures and weren't necessarily wicked and vicious towards everyone... they look like stereotypes of "evil savages". I like orcs, bugbears, PF goblins, but they're so monolithically evil it feels very backwards.
There actually is a fair bit of this though you tend to have to go looking for it. There's an Evil but relatively 'civilized' hobgoblin nation in Tian Xia, and the Orcs of the Mwangi Expanse actually seem fairly friendly with their human neighbors.
Unfortunately, most of this is in relatively obscure books. I'm hopeful that the addition of Goblins as a core ancestry is a sign the books will put more emphasis on this sort of thing, but that's a matter of book emphasis rather than an actual world change.
Yeah, sorry, I told you we were gonna hijack the thread ;)
Good night (it's midnight here!),
Good night to you, too.
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I think that Pathfinder has had so many "I'm evil for no reason" races is because the point of the game was to slay monsters and become legendary heroes, not to question the Morales of everyone you fight and kill. I like having monsters and people who aren't entirely evil, too, so having goblins as a core race is something that I'm looking forwards too even though I'm never gonna play as one.
I have a homebrew race that I wanna put into PF 2 and try it out one day. It'll be interesting to see if I can still make it. :D
Now I am curious
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One thing I wonder about is how we are going to handle ancestries from PF1 that had a bunch of different configurations in terms of stats.
Like Tieflings came in Dex/Int/-Cha (Generic), Dex/Wis/-Int (Faultspawn), Dex/Int/-Wis (Grimspawn), Con/Wis/-Int (Foulspawn), Str/Cha/-Int (Pitborn), Con/Wis/-Cha (Hellspawn), Dex/Cha/-Int (Spitespawn), Con/Cha/-Wis (Shackleborn), Str/Wis/-Cha (Hungerseed), Str/Wis/-Int (the Motherless), and Dex/Cha/-Wis (Beastbrood.)
Are aasimar, tieflings, and changelings going to have like a bunch of floating bonuses/penalties, or do we have to pick one? Does deciding your Changeling is a Slag May cost a heritage feat, and thus come at the expense of like "having claws"?
I imagine some of these ancestries will be among the first added post release, since "shopping for just the right kind of Aasimar was so popular in PF1, so we shouldn't have to wait too long. I do hope that the Changeling variant heritages, even though they were a recent addition, survive the version change.
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I am assuming kobolds won't take long after pf2's release to be made officially, but I am curious to see if it would be possible to homebrew them without too much work. The greater emphasis on racial feats make things more difficult. I just hope the pc race don't end up being made intentionally useless like in pf1.
Thank you to everyone who answered!
Mathmuse: yeah, I noticed the many ethnicities described in the latest pdfs, here's hoping the trend continues - and yeah, maybe the fact players will want to use their old races will work to our advantage!
PossibleCabbage: that's a very good question, you know? I think this kind of highly customizable races will lead to whole pdfs dedicated entirely to the related ancestries, honestly, just like in the past both aasimar and tieflings had products explicitly for them and only for them. Another possible scenario is, they cut the fluff out and put both in the same product. I think claws and other advantages will be feats, honestly. And probably each heritage - peri, angel, archon, qlippoth, devil etc - will receive bonuses to different stats. I wouldn't hate a little generalization, but I hope fans will get what they want.
BluLion: yeah, kobolds are dear to many a player's heart! But I don't think it should be terribly difficult to homebrew them once we see how ancestries and their feats work in the Playtest... we'll have to try!
Khadgar567: true, but I think we can homebrew something taking inspiration from the ancestry feats for elves, dwarves, gnomes, goblins... some ancestries will be tougher than others, I'd bet (someone mentioned gathlains and merfolk, right?), but it should be doable. Not exactly a scientific process but a good enough approximation, I think.
Tayoyo: I hope you're right, I understand wanting to just fight the baddies and get it over with, but almost completely evil species... eeeh. Really not my cup of tea. When I run the Playtest I'm leaving alignment out anyways, so really good and evil won't be a factor (I'm really hoping they give us good guidelines to avoid rendering null some abilities, spell, and items!).
Deadmanwalking: I left you for last b/c I think I'm gonna end up ranting as always ;) Yeah, I like sedentary Varisians a lot better, but I'd really want the devs to research the actual traditions of Roma and Sinti people and put those in the fluff (of course adequately adjusted for the different circumstances... and if they don't, then it'll be up to me, but of course Golarion's appeal will decrease). Same with, oh I don't know, Keleshites and Mwangi - Keleshites were described as a passionate people, for instance, which is clearly an exotification of Middle Eastern ethnicities, and the Mwangi, last I checked, tried to capture the infinite diversity of the various nations and tribes of Africa in 4 peoples. Always better than Forgotten Realms which has only Turami and Chultans and that's it, but if they don't want to spend a whole book writing about Garundi ethnicities on the other side of the world from Avistan, it's okay, just don't lump them all as Mwangi. Give each ethnicity its page and make it clear there's a lot more. Same for the Tian (Tien?... Uuuh...) - they start telling you about this people, then they clarify it's actually 4 different ethnicities roughly corresponding to Japan, China, Korea and the Asian South East... I mean, it's okay if you don't wanna mention every single possible ethnicity like the Hmong and so on, for instance, but don't lump them all together, they're very different!
Now, Lamashtu... yeah, sure, she's a real deity. Invented by a real historical patriarchal society. Since Golarion is completely fictional we don't need to adhere to the same patriarchal standards, so let's use our modern sensibilities - for instance let's make demons for hate, greed and war, not for, say, lust, or in the case of Lamashtu, the birth of disabled children, right? I mean, we, the players, have hopefully a more enlightened vision of the world, different from those of the various cultures in our historical past, right? Zeus' behavior wouldn't fly today - I mean, if you don't say he's good it's still interesting, but he was a rapist, and that's disgusting - that should be a demon, not Lamashtu. So, do we keep our old outdated mythologies, full of patriarchal pablum, objectification, sexualization, demonization... and so on and so forth? Why should we? Lamashtu could very well be a demoness, as many good deities are women too, but why making her "the mother of monsters"? I find it's really a bad way to celebrate femininity and motherhood.
Or, let's have Lamashtu the demoness mother of monsters, but let's not have her completely evil. Let's put a positive spin on her and her activities. Maybe not completely, but less of a clear-cut villain.
I didn't know Pharasma was a mother figure too, wasn't she the judge of the dead?
Oh, btw, fantasizing European peoples is all fine and dandy. Exoticizing peoples who even today suffer under a systematic discrimination in most of the western world and making them clichè isn't the same thing.
Oh, and yeah, orcs and hobgoblins and other "evil races". Some good examples are nice, but the widespread majority are still evil.
I'll put a link I found earlier here: https://www.tor.com/2012/07/30/ecce-orcus-an-argument-for-humanizing-the-or c/
I'm gonna copypasta almost all of Mordecai Knode's article too, because it really resonates with me:
"In “A Modest Proposal for More Diversity,” I called for a greater range of real world ethnicities to be portrayed in fantasy fiction.
The demonization of the orc is the flip side of that. Fantasy has a long and embarrassing history of imperialism built into it. The trope of a bunch of blonde haired white peopleelves, humans, dwarvesagainst a host of dark skinned “barbarians” is not accidental. It doesn’t come out of thin air. It is a response to colonial pressures, to Europeans in Africa and Asia and to Europeans in conflict with Native Americans. The fact is that “hack and slash” or “dungeon crawl” games involve “heroes”usually light skinned onesgoing to where other races live, killing them and taking their stuff. Sometimes this is a matter of dragon-slaying or smashing skeletons, but by and large the threat is one of what Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons call “monstrous humanoids.” They are just
people. “Demihuman,” huh? Less than human? Seriously; so much of fantasy gaming involves breaking into people’s homes, murdering them, and then looting their corpses. Does having green skin and tusks make it okay to pursue a pogrom against them?
There aren’t racial alignments. Demons and devils might have innate alignments (though if an angel can fall and become evil, can a devil repent and become good?) but alignments should be cultural. Drow can be evil because “drow” is a society, a Lolth-centric theocracy founded on slavery and betrayal. Orcs can be evil; they can be caught up in the armies of a dark lord or part of a group of bandits, but then, so can humans. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have evil orcs, but rather that you should have good orcs, as well. No “race” should be inherently villainous. Making orcs into monsters reflects historical attempts to dehumanize people by painting them as animals.
Don’t just make them noble savages; remember, we’re trying to get away from the post-colonial legacy. Tribal orcs aren’t innately a bad thing, but they can be problematic; clumsily co-opting marginalized civilizations is a bad thing. Let’s not put on our rose-tinted glasses here, let’s not go for insulting caricatures. Treat orcs as people, not as a fearful or fearsome caricature. We’ve seen the problems that creating a simplified “primitive” race of “mystics” can bringlook at Avatar’s “Great White Hope” problem and that is something to be wary of. I’m not saying you can’t have animist orcs, just to keep our eyes open going into it.
I’m inclined to say that orcs shouldn’t have intelligence penalties, while I’m at it. I again have to invoke the real specter of historical racism. There have been plenty of pseudo-scientists spouting physiognomy in the guise of anthropology. Heck the word “race” is a perfect example of that legacy. People were actually taught that people of different backgrounds were categorically different, that some types of people are smarter and therefore superior to other kinds of people. That legacy shored up arguments in favor of slavery, apartheid and eugenics for, well, centuries. Making orcs innately stupid seems too much like an extension of that line of thinking.
You know that moment when you are playing a half-orc (or maybe a tiefling) and someone in the game world just reacts to your character with a host of assumptions, all of them bad? Your noble half-orc paladin rides into town on his celestial dire boar charger only to be met by an armed city guard. Or your half-orc druid descends from the forest to purchase supplies only to be told that no orcs are allowed in the city limits. Maybe your lawful neutral half-orc fighter is sick and tired of being treated like he’s some numbskull berserker, excluded from the general’s discussion of strategy. Either way, there is just a moment where your brain clicks. “That isn’t fair.” No, it isn’t. It is pretty terrible when people make negative assumptions about you based on your character race. “Oh, I’m not insulting you, I just always heard orcs were great barbarians; if anything it is a compliment!”
I don’t want to over-state the dawning awareness of inequality, but I do think that the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes is one of the things that makes the hobby great. Obviously it is hardly a patch on real discrimination, but it can rattle your assumptions in a good way. It is a tool by which you can examine privilege. By pretending to be someone else, you get a chance to well, see what it is like to be someone different from you. In a world where “straight white male” is the presumed default of most fiction, a game where the “human male” assumption rubs your character the wrong way can be a good tool for understanding how the bias of an supposed uniform audience or protagonist is a bad thing. Playing a half-orc lets you see how assigning someone “outsider” status on the basis of irrational prejudice is well, a bad thing. Not that it should need to be said, but fiction can shine a light on these things, transforming it from an abstract idea into something personally meaningful.
Take a page from Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the original series, Klingons weren’t entirely dehumanizednotable episodes like “The Trouble With Tribbles” proved that they were still peoplebut more often they were the all-purpose Cold War faceless foe. When The Next Generation came out, though, they put a Klingon on the crew, providing a much bigger window to explore the notions of othering and the outsider. We can do it with aliens why not do it with fantasy races?
I don’t think this is revolutionary. Shadowrun has orcs. Well, “orks.” Warhammerespecially the science-fiction version, Warhammer 40,000has presented orcs as a playable race for decades. From the “Waaagh!” to riding boars to the squigs and nobs, you can see a pretty solid culture take shape. Warcraft of course is another big name in making orcs a playable race; the heroic orcs of The Horde are a great argument for why the orc should be considered part of the “standard fantasy toolkit.” Stan Nicholls has books and comics with orcs as three dimensional characters. Even Forgotten Realms has Obould Many-Arrows, the orc chieftan with a dream of civilization. Eberron has druidic orcs, Spelljammer has the scrosophisticated militaristic orcs in spaceso the seeds have already been planted. Embracing that evolution is only good for the genre".
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I didn't know Pharasma was a mother figure too, wasn't she the judge of the dead?
Areas of Concern: Birth, Death, Fate, Prophecy, Rebirth
Worshipers: Midwives, pregnant women, morticians|
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One thing I wonder about is how we are going to handle ancestries from PF1 that had a bunch of different configurations in terms of stats.
My bet is that, as 'part human' Ancestries, they'll have two floating +2s and a sidebar advising how to distribute them based on heritage. At least one post from Mark Seifter supports this as a possibility, though he wasn't speaking at all officially.
I left you for last b/c I think I'm gonna end up ranting as always ;) Yeah, I like sedentary Varisians a lot better, but I'd really want the devs to research the actual traditions of Roma and Sinti people and put those in the fluff (of course adequately adjusted for the different circumstances... and if they don't, then it'll be up to me, but of course Golarion's appeal will decrease).
I don't actually disagree here, though I honestly think it's more important that Varisians have an internally consistent culture that doesn't play into unfortunate stereotypes of the Roma than that they precisely equate to the real world culture they're inspired by.
Same with, oh I don't know, Keleshites and Mwangi - Keleshites were described as a passionate people, for instance, which is clearly an exotification of Middle Eastern ethnicities, and the Mwangi, last I checked, tried to capture the infinite diversity of the various nations and tribes of Africa in 4 peoples. Always better than Forgotten Realms which has only Turami and Chultans and that's it, but if they don't want to spend a whole book writing about Garundi ethnicities on the other side of the world from Avistan, it's okay, just don't lump them all as Mwangi. Give each ethnicity its page and make it clear there's a lot more.
Well, firstly Garundi are also an 'African' ethnicity, so that's at least 5. Additionally, some of this (as you note) is that we only have about 1/3 to 1/4 of Garund as part of the Inner Sea region. There are clearly, and I believe explicitly, other ethnicities further south. The only ethnicities identified as 'Mwangi' are those that live in the relatively small area that is the Mwangi Expanse. Those further south are identified otherwise.
I'll note that there are only 7 ethnicities (one basically extinct and one distinctly non-European themed) for the whole of Avistan, as well.
Same for the Tian (Tien?... Uuuh...) - they start telling you about this people, then they clarify it's actually 4 different ethnicities roughly corresponding to Japan, China, Korea and the Asian South East... I mean, it's okay if you don't wanna mention every single possible ethnicity like the Hmong and so on, for instance, but don't lump them all together, they're very different!
They never say that one encompasses the whole of Southeast Asia. Indeed, in the Dragon Empires stuff several other Tian ethnicities are noted beyond the four or five taled about in the Inner Sea stuff (which deals with those ethnicities most likely to come to the Iner Sea region).
Now, Lamashtu... yeah, sure, she's a real deity. Invented by a real historical patriarchal society. Since Golarion is completely fictional we don't need to adhere to the same patriarchal standards, so let's use our modern sensibilities - for instance let's make demons for hate, greed and war, not for, say, lust, or in the case of Lamashtu, the birth of disabled children, right? I mean, we, the players, have hopefully a more enlightened vision of the world, different from those of the various cultures in our historical past, right? Zeus' behavior wouldn't fly today - I mean, if you don't say he's good it's still interesting, but he was a rapist, and that's disgusting - that should be a demon, not Lamashtu. So, do we keep our old outdated mythologies, full of patriarchal pablum, objectification, sexualization, demonization... and so on and so forth? Why should we? Lamashtu could very well be a demoness, as many good deities are women too, but why making her "the mother of monsters"? I find it's really a bad way to celebrate femininity and motherhood.
As a mythology nerd, I'm well aware of how awful many historical deities behavior was. But I don't think that necessarily means we should change them or refuse to include them in fictional works. I think we should just portray that behavior as appropriately unacceptable (ie: if you put Zeus in Pathfinder he's Evil aligned, because of all the rape, among other reasons).
And Lamashtu's historical role was as the one who makes women give birth to deformed children, or stole their children away, or murdered their children. Forcing disabilities on children, or stealing or murdering them, strikes me as pretty much completely awful and Evil. Her 'mother of monsters' stuff is sort of an outgrowth of that rather than its own thing strictly speaking. Which maybe means it shouldn't have been emphasized as much, but that train's sort of left the station at this point.
In any case, there are only so many archetypes of Evil. If you're gonna have Gods personifying them you're eventually gonna run right into unfortunate implications somewhere. It's not great, but there's not really a good way around it if you're gonna have your deities be both complex and Evil.
Oh, and to be clear Golarion does not have lust as Evil. The Goddess of Lust is CN, and lust is the part her portfolio her Good followers are most likely to focus on. The Goddess of Love is NG and is fine with lust, she just prefers it to lead to love.
Nor does Golarion have bearing deformed children as Evil, for that matter. It has forcing others to bear deformed children (as Lamashtu does) as Evil, which is a very different thing.
Or, let's have Lamashtu the demoness mother of monsters, but let's not have her completely evil. Let's put a positive spin on her and her activities. Maybe not completely, but less of a clear-cut villain.
This is an interesting thought exercise, and a setting where this is true could be very cool, but it's a bit late for Golarion, IMO.
I didn't know Pharasma was a mother figure too, wasn't she the judge of the dead?
Pharasma is the Goddess of Birth, Death, Fate, and Prophecy. She's sort of the whole cycle of life personified. I suppose in many ways she's more midwife than mother, but there's a definite and very strong birth association with her (it's actually one of her strongest associations).
Players tend to focus more on the death aspect simply because PCs tend to kill things or die more often than they give birth.
Oh, btw, fantasizing European peoples is all fine and dandy. Exoticizing peoples who even today suffer under a systematic discrimination in most of the western world and making them clichè isn't the same thing.
Exoticizing people is indeed a problem, but I'm not sure any of the Golarion ethnicities really do that too much. Some of them are certainly exotic (and I'd include some Avistani ones in that), but all are also portrayed as real, complex, peoples with good and bad things about them.
I mean...I'm not sure what you want here? Fantasy cultures that don't even resemble any real world culture? That can be interesting but doesn't tend to result in the kind of world most people want for Pathfinder/D&D and can be accused of cultural erasure just as easily as Golarion can of exoticizing people.
I mean, unless you make up cultures out of whole cloth (which has its own issues, as I note above), you're either including things based on real world cultures...or you're not. Not including something based on African and Asian cultures seems to me to be much more problematic than including them is.
Oh, and yeah, orcs and hobgoblins and other "evil races". Some good examples are nice, but the widespread majority are still evil.
I'll put a link I found earlier here: https://www.tor.com/2012/07/30/ecce-orcus-an-argument-for-humanizing-the-or c/
I'm all for making it clear that not all Orcs are Evil or stupid. I'd love to hear more about the relatively friendly ones in the Mwangi Expanse, for example.
But I don't object to the Hold of Belzen being Evil any more than I object to Cheliax being so. Countroes primarily populated by one group being Evil is pretty reasonable, IMO.
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Indeed, I haven't encountered a "we can kill them because they are orcs" game since high school. Eventually people start to say "wait a minute..." when that is a suggested course of action.
It's easy enough to come up with a pretext for "these orcs are fair game to kill" (e.g. they are aggressors, they are being held accountable for their actions, doing so prevents something worse, etc) just like it's easy to come up with a pretext for "these humans are fair game to kill."
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Yeah, I could say stuff about the all evil races, but Deadmanwalking said it for me, and I've said it before, and so has he, and so have others.
Golarion has never encouraged you to kill any humanoid individuals without justification, and every pathfinder adventure I've read has trivially provided that justification. Several punish you if you just kill goblins or whatever on site, if not with legal ramifications than for missed opportunities to just talk to them and find out important things.
I was actually surprised by the final chapter of an AP I read recently, where the PCs can actually negotiate with the "evil race" final boss and resolve the adventure without murdering them. The final boss is still evil, as are their minions, but they are still a rational actor.
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Or, let's have Lamashtu the demoness mother of monsters, but let's not have her completely evil. Let's put a positive spin on her and her activities. Maybe not completely, but less of a clear-cut villain.
This is an interesting thought exercise, and a setting where this is true could be very cool, but it's a bit late for Golarion, IMO.
I altered the gods of Golarion to create a setting where the gods interact with the player characters more comfortably. Instead of being in direct conflict with each other, they are working together to keep Rovagug trapped inside the high-magic planet of Golarion and cultivate the souled people who developed there. They disagree greatly with each other, but the good gods need the ruthlessness of the evil gods, the evil gods need the cooperative spirit of the good gods, the chaotic gods need the discipline of the lawful gods, and the lawful gods need the flexibility of the chaotic gods. And sometimes, the gods have to negotiate among themselves.
The characters in my Rise of the Runelords campaign worshipped Desna and fought cultists of Lamashtu. They gradually learned the story of Lamashtu.
With the earthfall of the Starstone, Golarion was cloaked in darkness of a thousand years. The gods took measures to protect the peoples of the world, but the natural ecosystems were going to collapse. The nature gods tried to create a new class, druids, who would have the magic to protect the ecosystems. The good gods agreed out of compassion, but the evil gods did not want another non-evil power in the world.
The demon lord Lamashtu saw an opportunity. She caught the minor nature god Curchanus, but stealing his power was beyond her. She made a proposal that would give his death meaning. If he gave her his powers over to her, she would become a nature god and tilt the negotiations with the evil gods to allow the creation of druids. The forests, jungle, plains, swamp, tundra, seas, and other ecosystems would be preserved. Curchanus agreed, but gave her only his nature domain as he died. His other domains went to Desna.
Thus, Lamashtu is the evil nature god. She is the god who protects nature by teaching it to rip out the guts of those who might damage it.
Lamashtu took a particular interest in the Thassilonian empire destroyed in the earthfall. She intervenes to keep it an untamed land where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Whenever civilization tried to rebuild itself there, in the area that would be called Varisia, she would ravage their cities. Thus, Varisia not only has ancient Thassilonian ruins, it has more recent ruins, too. Races that worship her thrive. Human tribes that worshipped her gradually became non-human. The Shoanti barbarians did not worship Lamashtu, but she liked their savagery and left them alone. The other Varisian humans learned to live without cities and formed a mobile culture based on lore that did not require schools and libraries. Those are the only two human cultures of Varisia that survived Lamashtu's culling. The elves and gnomes of Varisia live in harmony with nature, avoiding her ire. The current cities of Varisia, built by the Chelish empire faster than Lamashtu could rally nature against them, are targets of her cultists.
This has nothing to do with the original Mesopotamian mythology of Lamashtu, but it entertained my players and explained why no-one successfully used the ancient knowledge and magic in the Thassalonian ruins improve life in Varisia.
Areas of Concern: Birth, Death, Fate, Prophecy, Rebirth
Worshipers: Midwives, pregnant women, morticians
How did that escape me? Omg I love Pharasma even more! Thank you for the heads up!
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Here's the thing though.
Orcs who are doing bad stuff? A-OK to slay.
Orcs who are minding their own business? You should probably do the same.
We can substitute "orc" for any number of fantasy creatures here (including humans!). Whether or not the creature in question is "inherently evil" is pretty much immaterial.
My bet is that, as 'part human' Ancestries, they'll have two floating +2s and a sidebar advising how to distribute them based on heritage. At least one post from Mark Seifter supports this as a possibility, though he wasn't speaking at all officially.
That's a very good bet. Good reasoning.
I don't actually disagree here, though I honestly think it's more important that Varisians have an internally consistent culture that doesn't play into unfortunate stereotypes of the Roma than that they precisely equate to the real world culture they're inspired by.
Agreed. That they don't caricaturize Roma and Sinti is the most important aspect.
Well, firstly Garundi are also an 'African' ethnicity, so that's at least 5. Additionally, some of this (as you note) is that we only have about 1/3 to 1/4 of Garund as part of the Inner Sea region. There are clearly, and I believe explicitly, other other ethnicities further south. The only ethnicities identified as 'Mwangi' are those that live in the relatively small area that is the Mwangi Expanse. Those further south are identified otherwise.
Okay, look, I don't need a hundred Garundi ethnicities, but why lump 4 of them as Mwangi? Doesn't it strike you as odd? Like, "Hey, we don't have time for these marginal ethnicities, let's just describe them in general and give pointers in the little they differ from each other!" - I'm sorry? Is that ethical in your opinion?
I'll note that there are only 7 ethnicities (one basically extinct and one distinctly non-European themed) for the whole of Avistan, as well.
Yeah, you're right, but again you can't really be racist against white people in a game played by a majority of white people, when white people in the west are not systematically subjected to racism. The way you present PoC though... that makes all the difference.
Oh and I wouldn't hate more Avistani ethnicities... Celts anyone? But yeah, Avistan is pretty okay.
They never say that one encompasses the whole of Southeast Asia. Indeed, in the Dragon Empires stuff several other Tian ethnicities are noted beyond the four or five taled about in the Inner Sea stuff (which deals with those ethnicities most likely to come to the Iner Sea region).
My bad, I didn't read attentively enough. Thank you.
As a mythology nerd, I'm well aware of how awful many historical deities behavior was. But I don't think that necessarily means we should change them or refuse to include them in fictional works. I think we should just portray that behavior as appropriately unacceptable (ie: if you put Zeus in Pathfinder he's Evil aligned, because of all the rape, among other reasons).
And Lamashtu's historical role was as the one who makes women give birth to deformed children, or stole their children away, or murdered their children. Forcing disabilities on children, or stealing or murdering them, strikes me as pretty much completely awful and Evil. Her 'mother of monsters' stuff is sort of an outgrowth of that rather than its own thing strictly speaking. Which maybe means it shouldn't have been emphasized as much, but that train's sort of left the station at this point.
But she's a visibly pregnant woman. Who messes with pregnancy. And the mother of monsters bit being an outgrowth doesn't make it any better, she still is, and prominently. Why can't we have a goddess of killers, or a goddess of war - they could still be evil but at least they wouldn't play into the demonization of pregnancy and femininity. Which is the real point of the original Lamashtu, btw. Why not someone like Kali, who definitely has a fierce, demonic aspect but is the last resort of evil against evil? Destruction to make place for growth? Something less obviously evil and just evil for its sake? The side of nature of the mother who eats her children?
In any case, there are only so many archetypes of Evil. If you're gonna have Gods personifying them you're eventually gonna run right into unfortunate implications somewhere. It's not great, but there's not really a good way around it if you're gonna have your deities be both complex and Evil.
Complex is nice, morally grey is better than evil, I think, but, let's not grab old gods and use them as is, let's make new gods for what we're awed and disgusted by today. Most are fine. Erastil is a filthy sexist who's defined as LG somehow... Gozreh is awesome and I'd emphasize their hermaphroditism. I honestly like them all, except Lamashtu as she is at this moment. She could be altered in portfolio or alignment... Or I could demote her to archdemon and characterize her better... or I could play in another setting...
Oh, and to be clear Golarion does not have lust as Evil. The Goddess of Lust is CN, and lust is the part her portfolio her Good followers are most likely to focus on. The Goddess of Love is NG and is fine with lust, she just prefers it to lead to love.
Yeah, I know. But the 7 sins of Thassilon really smell of patriarchal religious dictatorship if you know what I mean. Greed is fine. Hate would be great. Lust? Even rage is useful. Pride? Pride is great, and hubris was invented to keep the masses in their places. See, fantasy doesn't have to stay anchored to antiquated modes of thought forever... actually, to stay relevant, it should revolutionize the playing field, like China Miéville, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Tamora Pierce, George R R Martin... science fiction keeps marching on... and we fantasy-lovers are left in the lurch.
This is an interesting thought exercise, and a setting where this is true could be very cool, but it's a bit late for Golarion, IMO.
It wouldn't be a cataclysm if a goddess was retconned into something a little less sexist. Even just making her generally CN would work, or a more complex figure, like Baba Yaga, who at times does evil, at others does good... again, demonesses and witches abound through myth and folklore, and a lot of them are a lot more ambiguous than Lamashtu - even Lilith, who's her equivalent in Jewish myths, is more complex and interesting than her.
Pharasma is the Goddess of Birth, Death, Fate, and Prophecy. She's sort of the whole cycle of life personified. I suppose in many ways she's more midwife than mother, but there's a definite and very strong birth association with her (it's actually one of her strongest associations).
Yeah, I somehow didn't know! I love Pharasma.
Exoticizing people is indeed a problem, but I'm not sure any of the Golarion ethnicities really do that too much. Some of them are certainly exotic (and I'd include some Avistani ones in that), but all are also portrayed as real, complex, peoples with good and bad things about them.
I mean...I'm not sure what you want here? Fantasy cultures that don't even resemble any real world culture? That can be interesting but doesn't tend to result in the kind of world most people want for Pathfinder/D&D and can be accused of cultural erasure just as easily as Golarion can of exoticizing people.
I mean, unless you make up cultures out of whole cloth (which has its own issues, as I note above), you're either including things based on real world cultures...or you're not. Not including something based on African and Asian cultures seems to me to be much more problematic than including them is.
No, exotic doesn't equal exoticizing. Exotic means "originating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country", while exoticizing is "portray (someone or something unfamiliar) as exotic or unusual; romanticize or glamorize" and is in the 2nd meaning most of all that is harmful. Taldans, Chelaxians, Ulfen, they're all white, Scandinavians don't suffer systematic prejudice IRL, Chelaxians don't exist, and Taldor was Byzantium. They can be exoticized ad libitum.
And it's not a matter of saying only good things - that's idealizing. Exoticizing can work in reverse too - "Oooh, the Mongols were really bloodthirsty barbarians!" (No they weren't). Orcs are an exotification of tribal native cultures, to negative effect. Varisians are an exotification parody of Roma and Sinti, "Hollywood gypsies" to tell it like it is. I think it's incredibly offensive and it spreads misinformation and racism.
Making up cultures whole cloth actually is a great way of populating your setting with very interesting folks, just look at Eberron, but I agree that Golarion can't go that way at this point, and it's fine, if the cultural equivalents aren't romanticized. Adapt Arabs, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans to the fantasy world, but portray them faithfully and objectively. Learn about them as they are in the real world, preferably from books they wrote, not some white orientalist. Same for Roma and Sinti. You want real world analogues in your setting? You need to be willing to go the extra mile and do them justice. Be fair.
I'm all for making it clear that not all Orcs are Evil or stupid. I'd love to hear more about the relatively friendly ones in the Mwangi Expanse, for example.
But I don't object to the Hold of Belzen being Evil any more than I object to Cheliax being so. Countroes primarily populated by one group being Evil is pretty reasonable, IMO.
I'd rather making it clear that no orcs are inherently evil or stupid. Or friendly, as for that. Just treat their cultures like you do the humans: without judging. No long paragraphs of fluff telling how evil it is that a culture practices cannibalism for instance and how that is totally nefarious. Real world people practiced cannibalism and they certainly weren't evil. Cannibalism isn't evil. It's killing innocent people that makes you a murderer, but a whole culture can't be judged only on the merit of one single trait. Otherwise the Mongols were all murderers (nope) and the Romans were all slavers (much more complicated than that, it wasn't American chattel slavery).
I... don't see how you can be okay with a whole country of people being evil with a capital E honestly, being that Belkzen or Cheliax. We all know the chelaxian government and aristocracy are corrupt, but the commoners are normal people, fearful of devils and Hellknights and a bit too tolerant of halfling slavery, but certainly not evil. Belkzen? I can get behind orcs being violent, aggressive, warlike, and I can understand if Belkzen's culture employs slavery and degrades women and half-orcs - it's all right. From that to saying "THE HOLD OF BELKZEN IS EVIL"? Honestly? I think I'm gonna start a petition to ask the devs to change it.
By the by, there's a better method of categorizing different species, it involves the following traits:
- chauvinism - is the species intolerant towards other species or does it tolerates and even like them? Orcs could tend towards the former, but considering they're social beings it's unlikely
- concentration - is the species single-minded and attentive or easily distractible? Orcs, being mostly carnivorous hunters, should be rather observant and perceptive, maybe bonus to wisdom
- curiosity - is the species receptive to new things or they don't even care about finding them? Orcs being typically hidebound can make sense because they are incredibly fertile and don't need a lot of invention to protect their children, and they eat little other than meat so they don't need a lot of different approaches, but that doesn't mean they must be stupid
- egoism - do members of the species see themselves as individually important or would they sacrifice themselves for other members? Orcs tend towards selfishness, which is alright considering their propensity towards strong males with harems and again high fertility and little care wasted on children
- empathy - sensing and caring about the feeling of other beings of the same or another species - here's the twist, hunters who work in groups should like company and perhaps be moderately sensitive, while solitary, scavenging carnivores would probably have low empathy and be rather bloodthirsty... but if orcs work better as the latter, it's not like fantasy is hard sf
- gregariousness - how sociable and how much needing company the members of the species are - orcs shouldn't be either very chummy nor congenitally loners, unlike, in the latter case, a dragon, or in the former, thriae
- imagination - how well members see patterns, come up with new ideas and invent new behaviors - orcs shouldn't excel, again because they don't need to take care of their children, but being hunters (and sometimes gatherers) should leave them average
- suspicion - how distrustful and fearful members are about new things or surprises - orcs are large-ish carnivores, so they're probably rather brave
- and finally playfulness - doing things purely for fun, sense of humor etc (it appears humans and even octopi are particularly playful compared to most animals) - orcs might only be occasionally playful considering they don't bond with their children, but since they live in large groups they shouldn't be total wet blankets
Now, isn't this a more interesting and objective way to see a different species? And this is just biology, nature - consider how nurture could mess up everything, how different orcs in different circumstances would be completely... different!...
... almost like people...
I am assuming kobolds won't take long after pf2's release to be made officially, but I am curious to see if it would be possible to homebrew them without too much work. The greater emphasis on racial feats make things more difficult. I just hope the pc race don't end up being made intentionally useless like in pf1.Kobolds:
20 ft. movement
Darkvision 60ft.
Starting Languages: Common and Draconian+2 Dex
+2 Int (crafty crafty Kobolds)
one floating boostRacial feats of course depending on cave life, dragon society, traps and trickery and a dragonfeature feat trees. Start with scale colore for social situations, then divide into more scale stuff (resistance and armor), nimbleness (tailweapons/uses and wings) and two or three feats for breath and such.
That's a good start! But 2 bonuses, 1 penalty, afaik, so maybe good dex and int and bad strength (they're tiny!). I like what you're doing with the feats, but I'll have to see the Playtest and start from those, otherwise I suck at making new mechanics ;)
Or, let's have Lamashtu the demoness mother of monsters, but let's not have her completely evil. Let's put a positive spin on her and her activities. Maybe not completely, but less of a clear-cut villain.This is an interesting thought exercise, and a setting where this is true could be very cool, but it's a bit late for Golarion, IMO.I altered the gods of Golarion to create a setting where the gods interact with the player characters more comfortably. Instead of being in direct conflict with each other, they are working together to keep Rovagug trapped inside the high-magic planet of Golarion and cultivate the souled people who developed there. They disagree greatly with each other, but the good gods need the ruthlessness of the evil gods, the evil gods need the cooperative spirit of the good gods, the chaotic gods need the discipline of the lawful gods, and the lawful gods need the flexibility of the chaotic gods. And sometimes, the gods have to negotiate among themselves.
The characters in my Rise of the Runelords campaign worshipped Desna and fought cultists of Lamashtu. They gradually learned the story of Lamashtu.
With the earthfall of the Starstone, Golarion was cloaked in darkness of a thousand years. The gods took measures to protect the peoples of the world, but the natural ecosystems were going to collapse. The nature gods tried to create a new class, druids, who would have the magic to protect the ecosystems. The good gods agreed out of compassion, but the evil gods did not want another non-evil power in the world.
The demon lord Lamashtu saw an opportunity. She caught the minor nature god Curchanus, but stealing his power was beyond her. She made a proposal that would give his death meaning. If he gave her his powers over to her, she would become a nature god and tilt the negotiations with the evil gods to allow the creation of druids. The forests, jungle, plains, swamp, tundra, seas, and other ecosystems would be preserved....
Holy s!#@. I mean, holy, s&&*. Really, Mathmuse. So good. I could almost use it verbatim in my games. I'd only leave out alignments, but that's personal preferences and moral relativism.
Good stuff. Why has Paizo not hired you yet, again?
Here's the thing though.
Orcs who are doing bad stuff? A-OK to slay.
Orcs who are minding their own business? You should probably do the same.We can substitute "orc" for any number of fantasy creatures here (including humans!). Whether or not the creature in question is "inherently evil" is pretty much immaterial.
So why portray them as evil, if it works for any species? Why insisting a whole species of sapient creatures must be EEEVUL, congenitally, with very rare exceptions? Why the heck? Can't there be good and neutral and evil orcs as there are humans and gnomes and even goblins now? What's the big deal, you can always have a particularly war-mongering, demon-worshipping orcish culture, like Belkzen for instance - doesn't need to be ALL ORCS ARE EEEVUL!!!11
It's such a backward, offensive setting element to leave in...
Seriously; so much of fantasy gaming involves breaking into people’s homes, murdering them, and then looting their corpses. Does having green skin and tusks make it okay to pursue a pogrom against them?
Playing treasure-hunting murderhobos would not satisfy my players, and the Paizo writers know this.
Since we are talking about orcs, let me present Pathfinder Adventure Path #86: Lords of Rust, 2nd module in Iron Gods, as an example. The blurb says,
The heroes of the town of Torch follow a trail of clues to the sprawling junkyard known as Scrapwall, where bands of desperate and violent brigands vie for control of the technological remnants and ruins found within. The Lords of Rust dominate Scrapwall, and their swiftly rising power threatens more than just the town of Torch, for this gang has the support of one of the terrifying Iron Gods of Numeria. What slumbers fitfully beneath the wreckage of Scrapwall could catapult the Lords of Rust into a new level of power if they're not stopped!
The gangs in Scrapwall are largely divided racial: human gangs, ratfolk gangs, and orc gangs. The Lords of Rust started as an orc gang, but they have been recruiting heavily and became a gang of orcs, ratfolk, humans, and androids. One prominent sub-boss is a troll. The growth is because they converted from gang to cult and gained divine power boosting them.
Furthermore, absolutely no-one in Scrapwall has Good alignment. The inhabitants are descendants of bandit raiders or outlaws in hiding. Sympathetic NPCs are true Neutral and Chaotic Neutral. The leaders and rank and file of the Lords of Rust are Chaotic Evil like their god, with two exceptions at Chaotic Neutral and Lawful Evil.
And still the module works to goad the party into conflict with the Lords of Rust. The party went to Scrapwall because villains from the Lords of Rust tried to steal another town's technological power. Welcoming members of other Scrapwall gangs want to send the party against the Lords of Rust. If the party develops a reputation as a new authority in Scrapwall, the Lords of Rust will send an offer: join us or die. And the join option includes gladitorial combat to prove worth and conversion to their religion.
My party avoided the Lords of Rust until that ultimatum. They had entered Scrapwall pretending to be archeologists hiding from the Technic League, a legitimate but corrupt authority in Numeria, and had moved in with a friendly cleric of Brigh also hiding from the Technic League. They wanted to assess the threat of the Lord of Rust's god Hellion without initiating conflict themselves. Six weeks later in Golarion time, after holding a public concert, rescuing hostages, fighting off a raid of man-eating ogres, and defeating an attack by a rival gang, the party developed enough reputation for me to force the issue with the join-us-or-die offer from the Lords of Rust.
Paizo does not rely on the excuse that orcs are irredeemably evil. If some orcs are the enemy, then they will have crimes to prove it and hostility to goad the player characters to combat.
I read the Monster Manual and see a lot of humanoid monster species labeled as evil (lawful hobgoblins, chaotic orcs, alright). Then I read a pdf about orcs and it only emphasizes how their culture is savage, violent, primitive, superstitious, aggressive, sexist... s%++ I could go on all day, it seems like every possible facet of evil the writers could dump onto orcs made the cut.
Yes, the generic orc in the Bestiary is Chaotic Evil. The entry says,
Along with their brute strength and comparatively low intellect, the primary difference between orcs and the civilized humanoids is their attitude. As a culture, orcs are violent and aggressive, with the strongest ruling the rest through fear and brutality. They take what they want by force, and think nothing of slaughtering or enslaving entire villages when they can get away with it. They have little time for niceties or details, and their camps and villages tend to be filthy, ramshackle affairs filled with drunken brawls, pit fights, and other sadistic entertainment. Lacking the patience for farming and only able to shepherd the most robust and self-sufficient animals, orcs almost always find it easier to take what someone else has built than to create things themselves. They are arrogant and quick to anger when challenged, but only worry about honor so far as it directly benefits them to do so.
James Jacobs, the creative director at Paizo, has explained the Bestiary entries represent one sample of the race, a particular individual or tribe found in a previously published module, so that Paizo can re-use the art and stat block. GMs have asked in the forums whether they can give a creature a better weapon than a spear or better armor than hardened hide or different alignments than Chaotic Evil, and he said yes, though adjust the CR to match the improvement. Barbaric orc raiders are likely the first use of orcs in the Paizo material.
Numeria has a human tribe similar to the Bestiary description of orcs, the Sunder Horn barbarians. I put a few former slaves escaped from the Sunder Horns into Scrapwall to illustrate the weaker residents of that junkyard. In contrast, the Ghost Wolf barbarians are more noble, the Blood Gar barbarians are river-based pirate raiders, and the Black Horse barbarians are the current rulers of Numeria.
Seeing how Orcs don't have a unified culture. They've been represented in multiple lights. No I don't see anything offensive towards native cultures. They have had some tribal structures that look like real world ones (because, well I challenge you to come up with a fictional culture that someone can't link to some melding of real world cultures) but they've also had more feudal structures, warlord led structures, norse raiding based cultures etc. Orcs are not some monolith.
And yes, you can be racist to white people.
EDIT: To be clear I am totally against the use of alignment tags for sapient humanoid species. But I don't think we should be stripping out anything that might be offensive if you look to hard because then we end up with a setting with nothing in it.
If we portray orcs these ways but don't label them all CE, I'm with you. I only want playable orcs, I don't want Paizo to completely remake all their various cultures (I didn't even know on Golarion they had more than a couple!). I just want orcs like in WoW and in TES. Real people, with real cultures, some good, some wicked, some aggressive, some peaceful. If orcs must be generally violent, prone to rage, tribal... it doesn't matter one bit to me as long as all that isn't labeled Evil.
If we can portray orcs in a slightly more positive light, like Ulfen are portrayed, or Kellids, or Shoanti, maybe heavier on demonic worship and slavery but making up for it somewhere else, even better! Just... please... no more "Usually CE" orcs.
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As an aside, I'd say that TES Orsimer also tend towards chaotic evil, and that Warcraft orcs have been slowly run into the ground over the last decade or so due to being too prominent in their series. Then again, I played Alliance, so what do I know?
I am not familiar with Warcraft, but I am familiar with The Elder Scrolls. Orc, formally Orsimer, has been a playable race since the beginning, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, which was too sketchy to illustrate culture. In the more recent and more popular The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, orcish culture is organized into enclaves that followed the tenets of Malacath. Malacath religion believes in clearly defined social roles earned by strength and skill, in strict obediance to his code of conduct, and in revenge against offenses. The Code of Malacath was set up to make the orcs strong enough to survive their enemies, because many people of other races want them exterminated as sub-human (er, sub-elven. The "mer" in Orsimer means they are an elf variant). In The Elder Scrolls Online, my wife plays an orc named Malacath's Mercy (which means a quick death), who scoffs at the rival Trinimac religion among the ESO orcs, which favors military nationalism. I have not tried an orc character in ESO yet.
This is not Chaotic Evil. Many orcs in Skyrim served honorably in the Empire's military and retired either to traditional roles in the orc enclaves or to blacksmiths and guards in the human cities. Orcs are also common among the bandits, but outnumbered by the human bandits.