Bad Gorum


General Discussion

1 to 50 of 149 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>

9 people marked this as a favorite.

The alignment restrictions for clerics of Gorum seem weird to me. CN or CE only.

Yes, he's the god of War and about smashing things, but there's also bits in his anathema about not being underhand and not killing prisoners out of hand. That comes across as more CG than CE (and there's information in the PF1 Planar Handbook that supports thatlore) but I'd prefer seeing all three alignments as options.


This is a realm where every church has demon as cleric instead of regular cleric of the church and lot of priests dump their common sense roll so roll with it

Dark Archive

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Gorum's church cares only about battle, not battling in order to save people like CG character would. Gorumite would fight to glorious death for sake of glory, not sacrifice themselves for purpose of saving someone else's life.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

It might be because war, while sometimes an unfortunate necessity, is never a capital G Good thing. Individual soldiers and causes may or may not be Good, but when you get right into the pitch and start the dirty business of actual battle... Well, maybe an affable Neutral is what a proponent of such things is going to be.

Just a thought for the discussion.

Dark Archive

3 people marked this as a favorite.

Thats the second thing, CG character would avoid battle if its unnecessary, Gorumite would revel in chance having battle so they wouldn't try to avoid it with diplomacy


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Losing out on N seems weird as well. He's a god of armies as much as individual mercs, a profession that often strives for extreme amounts of discipline and general Lawfulness. Sure, you wouldn't be as likely to fight for lawful reasons as a priest of Gorum, but it makes it that much harder for the, pardon my wordplay, General populace.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Also, his divine realm is in Elysium?


3 people marked this as a favorite.

The alignment choices for all the gods feel more constrained than before. I believe this was a design choice to motivate roleplaying of clerics to be more diety based than before. Just my sense of how things feel. I mean ONLY LE for asmodeus? I know you could be LN or NE before. As I said I think the tightening up of alignment choices are there to help impress upon the roleplaying aspect of your choice of Deity


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Neriathale wrote:

The alignment restrictions for clerics of Gorum seem weird to me. CN or CE only.

Yes, he's the god of War and about smashing things, but there's also bits in his anathema about not being underhand and not killing prisoners out of hand. That comes across as more CG than CE (and there's information in the PF1 Planar Handbook that supports thatlore) but I'd prefer seeing all three alignments as options.

Just occured to me that CG warriors would probably gravitate more towards Caiden Caylien generally.


16 people marked this as a favorite.

The new deity alignment restrictions seem to exist only to stifle creativity. Gorum is a deity who celebrates war for any reason; you may feel free to care about why you fight, but Gorum cares only that you fight. If anything he should be willing to provide blessings to warriors of any alignment.

Some of the other restrictions are even worse. Has the Cult of the Dawnflower been written out of existence entirely? It sure would seem so, given that Sarenrae no longer accepts neutral worshipers and the Cult would be incapable of fielding any clerics.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Arachnofiend wrote:

The new deity alignment restrictions seem to exist only to stifle creativity. Gorum is a deity who celebrates war for any reason; you may feel free to care about why you fight, but Gorum cares only that you fight. If anything he should be willing to provide blessings to warriors of any alignment.

Some of the other restrictions are even worse. Has the Cult of the Dawnflower been written out of existence entirely? It sure would seem so, given that Sarenrae no longer accepts neutral worshipers and the Cult would be incapable of fielding any clerics.

Preach it sister!

Paizo Employee Creative Director

35 people marked this as a favorite.

The tightening of the alignments is ABSOLUTELY story driven, and intended to curtail certain types of clerics who didn't make thematic sense with their deity. By abandoning general rules for allowed alignments and custom designing each deity's allowed alignments we have a lot more flexibility. Whether or not these alignments remain the same in the final printing will of course remain to be seen as it's all part of the playtest and awaiting feedback to help us make the final decisions.

They're not meant to "stifle creativity," but to help make worshipers of the deities feel more like worshipers of the deities and less like proud nails or the like. Nor is it meant to say we won't eventually have rules for heretics or splinter faiths or the like, but those types of things are well beyond the general scope of this initial rules-focused world-lore-light playtest.

But yes, back to the OP... Gorum is a deity who skews toward evil in his glorification and excitement about war.

Anyway, great feedback all! Keep it coming; it's great help for us when we start making the final decisions in a few months or so for world lore elements.

Just wanted to drop in some contextualization here from the world-design side of things, since unlike the bulk of the rest of the rules, this section DOES play heavilly into the lore of Golarion, and there was no room to further explain the reasoning behind the decisions in the book due to space constraints.


Thanks James, always nice to hear from the world builders.


9 people marked this as a favorite.
Arachnofiend wrote:

The new deity alignment restrictions seem to exist only to stifle creativity. Gorum is a deity who celebrates war for any reason; you may feel free to care about why you fight, but Gorum cares only that you fight. If anything he should be willing to provide blessings to warriors of any alignment.

Some of the other restrictions are even worse. Has the Cult of the Dawnflower been written out of existence entirely? It sure would seem so, given that Sarenrae no longer accepts neutral worshipers and the Cult would be incapable of fielding any clerics.

I agree. I do not like this change.

I dunno, maybe there's a difference between clerics that the god wants to give spells to and people who toss a quick prayer to the god in the right circumstances. If Robin Hood were about to fend off a horde of the Sheriff's men in a desperate battle, that's maybe more Gorum's thing than Cayden Cailean's, right? So you pray that Gorum give you strength and true aim, and warn that if you lose, the Sheriff will stamp out all resistance and there'll be no more fighting, but promise that if you win, you'll keep fighting the Sheriff's forces.

Hell, it makes it a lot harder to have morally ambiguous clerics in Cheliax who pray to Asmodeus because he's the only game in town, and whom Asmodeus hopes to tempt to evil.

It's harder to have a neutral cleric of Urgathoa who focuses on the gluttony and excess and so throws wild parties to rehabilitate the god's image, while ignoring the whole disease and undead thing.

Do druids still have to be neutral? Can we not have chaotic neutral gnoll druids who breed warbeasts to honor Lamashtu, or neutral evil nobles who pray to her to protect their family while wearing a mask of civility in public?

What about escaped slaves in the desert of Osirion who are chaotic neutral, but worship Rovagug because they hate civilization and shun any form of laws?

I mean, I can get why they'd do this, but I think giving the gods more nuance leads to a richer setting.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
RangerWickett wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:

The new deity alignment restrictions seem to exist only to stifle creativity. Gorum is a deity who celebrates war for any reason; you may feel free to care about why you fight, but Gorum cares only that you fight. If anything he should be willing to provide blessings to warriors of any alignment.

Some of the other restrictions are even worse. Has the Cult of the Dawnflower been written out of existence entirely? It sure would seem so, given that Sarenrae no longer accepts neutral worshipers and the Cult would be incapable of fielding any clerics.

I agree. I do not like this change.

I dunno, maybe there's a difference between clerics that the god wants to give spells to and people who toss a quick prayer to the god in the right circumstances. If Robin Hood were about to fend off a horde of the Sheriff's men in a desperate battle, that's maybe more Gorum's thing than Cayden Cailean's, right? So you pray that Gorum give you strength and true aim, and warn that if you lose, the Sheriff will stamp out all resistance and there'll be no more fighting, but promise that if you win, you'll keep fighting the Sheriff's forces.

Hell, it makes it a lot harder to have morally ambiguous clerics in Cheliax who pray to Asmodeus because he's the only game in town, and whom Asmodeus hopes to tempt to evil.

It's harder to have a neutral cleric of Urgathoa who focuses on the gluttony and excess and so throws wild parties to rehabilitate the god's image, while ignoring the whole disease and undead thing.

Do druids still have to be neutral? Can we not have chaotic neutral gnoll druids who breed warbeasts to honor Lamashtu, or neutral evil nobles who pray to her to protect their family while wearing a mask of civility in public?

What about escaped slaves in the desert of Osirion who are chaotic neutral, but worship Rovagug because they hate civilization and shun any form of laws?

I mean, I can get why they'd do this, but I think giving the gods more nuance leads to a...

The one that bugs me the most is pharasma. I was almost certain that she'd have an expanded list, since everyone is born, everyone dies. and in lore, she seems the most apathetic to the morality of mortals, since they all come to her in the end, it made sense that she'd cover all nine alignments, but even if they didn't want to suddenly add paladins of Pharasma, for whatever reason, I'd figure they'd have kept her at least where she is. especially given that evil clerics no longer heal undead, by default. She could absolutely have evil clerics who despise undead, but also are fine honoring her with ritual murder (something she never really cared about, before) or chaotic clerics who recognize the chaotic nature of life and death.


6 people marked this as a favorite.

There are a few gods here and there I would prefer a bit more lenient alignment changes, but if this stops all the really weird CN worshippers of vile demons, it might be worth it.


10 people marked this as a favorite.
MMCJawa wrote:
There are a few gods here and there I would prefer a bit more lenient alignment changes, but if this stops all the really weird CN worshippers of vile demons, it might be worth it.

Is Golarion really a better setting if you remove Nocticula's CN worshipers? Clerics that focus in on a specific appeal of their deity's portfolio have long been an interesting wrinkle in this setting and I think getting rid of that goes a long way to ruining the setting.

The fact that none of the deities got an expanded list really shows Paizo's hand with this. I've already argued on behalf of Gorum, and sure, maybe James Jacobs' vision of the deity is a nearly evil jerk, but why does Nethys care what your alignment is? Why does Pharasma? Why does Asmodeus only accept Lawful Evil clerics, when it is absolutely within his wheelhouse to present himself as appealing to those who value order and stability over freedom (ergo, Lawful Neutral worshipers)? Never mind the fact that in PFS this kills the Dark Archive since it is now illegal to play in that system and worship any of the deities of Hell.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Amaranthine Witch wrote:
Also, his divine realm is in Elysium?

I always figured that was a forward bulwark for a war he figured was inevitable or similar aggressive gesture, not "he likes it there".


Arachnofiend wrote:
MMCJawa wrote:
There are a few gods here and there I would prefer a bit more lenient alignment changes, but if this stops all the really weird CN worshippers of vile demons, it might be worth it.

Is Golarion really a better setting if you remove Nocticula's CN worshipers? Clerics that focus in on a specific appeal of their deity's portfolio have long been an interesting wrinkle in this setting and I think getting rid of that goes a long way to ruining the setting.

The fact that none of the deities got an expanded list really shows Paizo's hand with this. I've already argued on behalf of Gorum, and sure, maybe James Jacobs' vision of the deity is a nearly evil jerk, but why does Nethys care what your alignment is? Why does Pharasma? Why does Asmodeus only accept Lawful Evil clerics, when it is absolutely within his wheelhouse to present himself as appealing to those who value order and stability over freedom (ergo, Lawful Neutral worshipers)? Never mind the fact that in PFS this kills the Dark Archive since it is now illegal to play in that system and worship any of the deities of Hell.

Roleplaying is such a quirky thing that varies greatly table to table. my friends and often don't even write down alignment because sometimes you just don't know until you start playing that character to get a feel for where you land on the spectrum. And considering how they have gotten rid of so many other alignment restrictions from other classes, well it could seem like an odd change. But I have have seen some very liberal cleric choices that I wouldn't allow in a game i run. Still it does make it easier for a GM to say hey if that's what you want to play even though its not quite what the rules allow, go ahead, rather than saying no you can't do that.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
PossibleCabbage wrote:
Amaranthine Witch wrote:
Also, his divine realm is in Elysium?
I always figured that was a forward bulwark for a war he figured was inevitable or similar aggressive gesture, not "he likes it there".

That's incorrect. In Inner Sea Gods it's said that Gorum was given his realm willingly by the natives of Elysium. It's unknown why exactly they did this but it's assumed to be a reward for joining forces in a now-forgotten conflict.


6 people marked this as a favorite.

Chiming in with support for CG Gorum Clerics: "Hey, I heard of a fight over there. I'll go check who's in the right and offer a hand!"


2 people marked this as a favorite.

While I can see the reasoning, I don't think it's a good idea to make characters you played in PF1 suddenly in violation of alignment restrictions if you want them in PF2. I had a CG cleric of Gorum in PF1, my friend had a CN worshiper of Pharasma. The fact that they are no longer valid is disappointing.

I don't mind new deities having restrictions outside of "within one step", and I don't mind old deities having additional acceptable alignments (I could see Nethys allowing any alignment, so long as they want to improve their magic). But disallowing combinations that were perfectly valid in PF1 leaves a bad taste in my mouth.


Arachnofiend wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:
Amaranthine Witch wrote:
Also, his divine realm is in Elysium?
I always figured that was a forward bulwark for a war he figured was inevitable or similar aggressive gesture, not "he likes it there".
That's incorrect. In Inner Sea Gods it's said that Gorum was given his realm willingly by the natives of Elysium. It's unknown why exactly they did this but it's assumed to be a reward for joining forces in a now-forgotten conflict.

More details on this situation (though no explicit answers) can be found in the recent Planar Adventures. ^_^

(Though I'll certainly note that a deity living in the chaotic good plane, while not accepting chaotic good worshipers, is an interesting situation.)

Silver Crusade Contributor

13 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm not wholly disappointed or confused by the move towards more tightly restricted worship alignments in PF2. I'm not really a supporter of it, though, and I think there's a very good reason for most (though not all) good and evil deities to accept more neutral followers.

Redemption and temptation.

Asmodeus, of all deities, should be enthusiastic about accepting lawful neutral worshipers. Selling them on the faith's evil aspects as being purely optional, all with an eye towards their slow descent into corruption. By the same token, Sarenrae looking upon a prospective worshiper and saying "you're not pure enough, buzz off" seems less than encouraging to their climb towards salvation.

Now, this could involve tweaks to the anathema system to encourage such worshipers to slowly evolve. At the very least, I would expect systems in place to prevent them from getting all the benefits with none of the moral or thematic dedication, or to prevent them from acting wildly out of accordance with their deity's teachings. But just "pure/black of heart only" seems a bit constraining.

And, yeah. Add me to the group that finds Gorum's forbiddance of good worshipers confusing. This keeps heroic barbarians out of the church entirely, forcing them into the worship of deities that barely fit their cultures and traditions at all.

Dark Archive

7 people marked this as a favorite.

I on otherhand always found idea of CG Gorum worshippers weird and kind of dumb :P

Thing in general is, like, you can't really worship Lamashtu faithfully and be CN, you'd have to be some sort of heretic or separatist. In which case, yeah, it makes sense, but considering that by default clerics ARE assumed to be faithful on aspect of being, you know, priests of the god...

So yeah, if you ask me, I thought it was stifling to creativity to include alignments for the god worshippers who didn't make sense since it made it seem that gods give powers to everyone who is one step away from their alignment space regardless of whether they followed any of the gods teachings at all making it essentially meaningless how you were roleplaying the character :P

I don't really mind it if 2e core book includes rules for separatists and heretics in get go, but I definitely assume CG worshipper of Gorum is a heretic. Gorum cares only about glory of the battle and war, they don't care about saving innocents or minimizing bloodshed.

(note that Gorum in general didn't ever feel like barbarian god to me <_< I mean, maybe its just me, but something weird about barbarians worshipping what might essentially be godly golem if not just godly knight in fullplate)

Also to note, what Planar Adventures says about Gorum's realm is basically "He set up a shop up in Elysium's border next to Maelstrom and nobody in Elysium really likes him, but he is useful in repelling Maelstrom so they haven't bothered to tell him to leave as long he directs his bloodlust towards Maelstrom". Nothing particularly CG about that

(and on final note I always found it annoying how Pathfinder Society allowed evil deities while banning evil alignment. Despite MAJORITY of evil deities being illegal to worship flavor wise. Demon worshipping pathfinder society members would flavor wise get kicked out of the Society, but rule wise it was allowed so it had to be possible somehow despite not making sense despite the whole "Worshipping evil creature that demands sacrifices and blood" thing)


2 people marked this as a favorite.
KuniUjito wrote:
Neriathale wrote:

The alignment restrictions for clerics of Gorum seem weird to me. CN or CE only.

Yes, he's the god of War and about smashing things, but there's also bits in his anathema about not being underhand and not killing prisoners out of hand. That comes across as more CG than CE (and there's information in the PF1 Planar Handbook that supports thatlore) but I'd prefer seeing all three alignments as options.

Just occured to me that CG warriors would probably gravitate more towards Caiden Caylien generally.

To hell with that.

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Heck since Nocticula was brought up, in Nocticula's case it is specifically noted it is unusual Nocticula still gave powers to her CN heretics implying that other demon lords wouldn't tolerate CN followers as much

And on Cult of the Dawnflower, later materials in 1e do actually imply there aren't lots of genuine clerics on their side. (how are you even neutral follower of god of redemption? "Eh, this job gives me bread to eat, but I don't actually care about the cause that much")


13 people marked this as a favorite.

Greatly favor the new restrictions.

Honestly in PF1 clerics were far too generic and what god will you serve was a question more of "what domains you want?" than of "what the idea behind the god is?".

More times than i can number i saw clerics that to pretty much all effects forgot what gods they served and just went ahead being generic good or evil guy.

Anathemas are a big plus, but honestly i will take anything that sets clerics of different gods appart from each other.

Dark Archive

4 people marked this as a favorite.

Yeaaaah, that is my experience as well. Majority of cleric players in 1e I have seen literally forgot what their gods teachings even are <_<


Nox Aeterna wrote:

Greatly favor the new restrictions.

Honestly in PF1 clerics were far too generic and what god will you serve was a question more of "what domains you want?" than of "what the idea behind the god is?".

More times than i can number i saw clerics that to pretty much all effects forgot what gods they served and just went ahead being generic good or evil guy.

Anathemas are a big plus, but honestly i will take anything that sets clerics of different gods appart from each other.

I think this may still be an issue, because spells are now a deity specific thing. Domains certainly have a purpose, but with only one required domain (and the power of the domain seemingly being less, though I have not playtested to see for sure), I can see the shift now being "what unique spells do I want" as opposed to "which domains do I want".

Now the Anathemas are more unique to their deities, but I don't see many who really restrict their accepted alignments that much, or ones where players role playing their prospective patron deities would violate. And if all the anathema does is ensure that players play their cleric (or paladin, I guess, even though I don't necessarily like the mandate that paladins follow a deity) in a way concordant with their choice of deity, then sure, it's a boon, but not really a hugely necessary one, IMO.

Dark Archive

6 people marked this as a favorite.

I don't think anathemas should be alignment restrictions, but alignments themselves implicate how character usually behaves so god restricting them is good signifier of how gods worshippers usually act.(e.g. Asmodeus' faithful usually will try to tempt you to evil and selling your soul to devils so most of them probably won't be LN "This is just my job" or "Eh, I think infernal law is cool but I'm not into the cruel parts")

(also, Gorum's anathema does include "avoiding conflict through diplomacy", I can't think of many CG characters who'd be like "We can solve problem with talking and not bloodshed? Boring, I attack the orc you are trying tot alk down"


This is an interesting conversation.


4 people marked this as a favorite.
James Jacobs wrote:


But yes, back to the OP... Gorum is a deity who skews toward evil in his glorification and excitement about war.

I can see that working, but not with the edicts and anathema as presented. At the moment you have a weird position where a LG dwarven priest of Torag must kill an unarmed orcen prisoner of war, and a CE dwarven priest of Gorum must not. That seems like a disconect between alignment and deity concept.

(Anyway, back to reverse engineering the rules to make a cleric of Milani playable.)


2 people marked this as a favorite.

Personally I've always read Gorumites as caring more about fighting than the reason for fighting as carte blanche for a wide range of personalities among his followers. "They don't care about saving innocents" cuts both ways; a lot of them aren't going to go out of their way to do that, but so long as you're saving and protecting people by fighting the things trying to kill them, most Gorumites probably wouldn't care too much if you did, and if a particularly evil one did, then well, that's just another thing to fight about.

It's one of the reasons why I've always felt that the Worldwound would be particularly attractive to Gorumites because where else on Golarion are you going to find a better fight than that? A few places but not many and not many that people in the Inner Sea region would have heard about.

Liberty's Edge

In this way, I think we are playtesting Golarion 2 in addition to PF2. It will get some time getting used to the similar but different setting and some previously existing characters will be missed

I enjoyed having deities that had less stereotypes than usual in PF1. It is something I will likely miss in PF2. Easy to houserule though

In a way, with the introduction of anathema, I feel that alignment restrictions might even be lifted but that might be some steps too far


2 people marked this as a favorite.
FormerFiend wrote:
It's one of the reasons why I've always felt that the Worldwound would be particularly attractive to Gorumites because where else on Golarion are you going to find a better fight than that? A few places but not many and not many that people in the Inner Sea region would have heard about.

I feel like the Worldwound is one of the few places where one can be both "good" and "live a life consistent with Gorum's philosophy" and now that the Worldwound is closed, you can't be a good Gorumite anymore.

Like the only way you can be "good" and "always fight, no matter what" would be to live in an environment where there's no one to fight but the bad guys.

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
James Jacobs wrote:
The tightening of the alignments is ABSOLUTELY story driven, and intended to curtail certain types of clerics who didn't make thematic sense with their deity. By abandoning general rules for allowed alignments and custom designing each deity's allowed alignments we have a lot more flexibility.

"Flexibility?" That word you use, I don't think it means what you think it means.

What I have read here, as many of my fellow players have already pointed it, is that the current alignments and restrictions put into place do the exact opposite of that.

You say it is not to stifle creativity but I am afraid that is exactly what it does, despite claims to the contrary.


11 people marked this as a favorite.
Darth Bass wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
The tightening of the alignments is ABSOLUTELY story driven, and intended to curtail certain types of clerics who didn't make thematic sense with their deity. By abandoning general rules for allowed alignments and custom designing each deity's allowed alignments we have a lot more flexibility.

"Flexibility?" That word you use, I don't think it means what you think it means.

What I have read here, as many of my fellow players have already pointed it, is that the current alignments and restrictions put into place do the exact opposite of that.

You say it is not to stifle creativity but I am afraid that is exactly what it does, despite claims to the contrary.

Flexibility for the people who are designing the game is not the same thing as Flexibility for people who are playing the game. By being able to limit the followers of a deity more than just "one step" it opens up design space for Mr. Jacobs & co.

Like it doesn't really make sense for Socothbenoth to have neutral followers full stop; and worshiping Ng, Shyka, or the Lost Prince is a really odd decision for a LN person (since nothing says "law over all" like "faerie nobles", right?). I don't see any reason we couldn't have a LG deity which accepts only LG followers, or an NG deity who wouldn't cotton to anybody who's not good in her flock.

Silver Crusade Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Yeah... I like the basic idea. I just disagree with some or most of the specific choices made in its application.

Dark Archive

Eh, I do admit that Torag's "No survivors" thing always confuses me, but in Pathfinder there is LG empyreal lord of execution, so apparently executions and killing prisoners isn't considered evil in Pathfinder <_< It does confuse me since it doesn't sound good to me, but at least it is internally consistent


2 people marked this as a favorite.
CorvusMask wrote:

I on otherhand always found idea of CG Gorum worshippers weird and kind of dumb :P

Thing in general is, like, you can't really worship Lamashtu faithfully and be CN, you'd have to be some sort of heretic or separatist. In which case, yeah, it makes sense, but considering that by default clerics ARE assumed to be faithful on aspect of being, you know, priests of the god...

So yeah, if you ask me, I thought it was stifling to creativity to include alignments for the god worshippers who didn't make sense since it made it seem that gods give powers to everyone who is one step away from their alignment space regardless of whether they followed any of the gods teachings at all making it essentially meaningless how you were roleplaying the character :P

I don't really mind it if 2e core book includes rules for separatists and heretics in get go, but I definitely assume CG worshipper of Gorum is a heretic. Gorum cares only about glory of the battle and war, they don't care about saving innocents or minimizing bloodshed.

(note that Gorum in general didn't ever feel like barbarian god to me <_< I mean, maybe its just me, but something weird about barbarians worshipping what might essentially be godly golem if not just godly knight in fullplate)

Also to note, what Planar Adventures says about Gorum's realm is basically "He set up a shop up in Elysium's border next to Maelstrom and nobody in Elysium really likes him, but he is useful in repelling Maelstrom so they haven't bothered to tell him to leave as long he directs his bloodlust towards Maelstrom". Nothing particularly CG about that

(and on final note I always found it annoying how Pathfinder Society allowed evil deities while banning evil alignment. Despite MAJORITY of evil deities being illegal to worship flavor wise. Demon worshipping pathfinder society members would flavor wise get kicked out of the Society, but rule wise it was allowed so it had to be possible somehow despite not making sense despite the whole "Worshipping evil creature that demands sacrifices and blood" thing)

"Blood for the blood god! ...but not in a bad way. I'll just maybe collect a bit that nobody else is using, if that's ok. Have you considered donating? Every bit helps bring about the subjugation of the world by our dark master. At least come to our bake sale this weekend."

Ok, I had too much fun with that joke. But yeah, I've got mixed feelings. Some of this seems a bit restrictive, like true neutral clerics are apparently limited to true neutral deities, and Norgorber's Reaper of Reputation aspect. Or no LN Asmodeans (being corrupted to LE of course).

But some of these restrictions make sense, I can't see a CN Lamashtu cleric, that's much like my joke above. and a NE Pharasman seems a bit odd. She's pretty indifferent, but many outright evil things tend to bug her. And I thought it strange in PF1 that you could have a CG cleric of Yog-Sothoth; an eldrich abomination who's goals include the consumption of all life and bringing about the reign of the Great Old Ones. And Asmodeus being restricted to lawful makes sense, because he's really big on that. I doubt he'd tolerate a NE cleric, they're just not subservient enough to his infernal law.

As for Gorum, I've never really though about him much because he just seems so uninteresting to me. War for it's own sake... and that's it as far as I can tell. Not really a lot to work with there. I may have missed something due to my disinterest though. But I can see the no good cleric bit. He seems almost like Diet-Rovagug, just focuses on war instead of destruction of everything.

Silver Crusade Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Though I accept the reason for it, and do kind of understand... I'll miss TN worshipers of Urgathoa. T-T

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Eh, you'll get them back when 2e includes rules for heretics. I mean, TN clerics of Urgathoa were those who focused on hedonism and gluttony instead of undeath right? Those were canon in that 1e book that also included CN Lamashtans who worked as midwives.(I think it was... Book that gave Appeaser Cleric archetype? The archetype about non evil worshippers of evil gods trying to appease their wrath?)


4 people marked this as a favorite.
CorvusMask wrote:
Eh, I do admit that Torag's "No survivors" thing always confuses me, but in Pathfinder there is LG empyreal lord of execution, so apparently executions and killing prisoners isn't considered evil in Pathfinder <_< It does confuse me since it doesn't sound good to me, but at least it is internally consistent

That struck me as a bit odd too. Torag is a bit on the genocidal side of lawful good. It seems a bit odd to me. But I think Paizo has been working to stretch the meaning of the alignments a bit. I can mostly accept Erastil as a socially backwards jerk and still lawful good (I think that might have been toned down since the initial write-up though.), but Torag's "KILL 'EM ALL!" just seems a bit much.

And as for god/alignment mismatch, I still struggle with seeing Zon-Kuthon as lawful.

Dark Archive

3 people marked this as a favorite.

I think Zon-Kuthon is mostly LE because his focus is "philosophy/enlightenment of pain" since judging by Irori and 1e monks, its apparently very Lawful thing to be enlightened. Plus the whole thing with Nidal being fascist police state and kytons being LE.

(and yeah, Erastil's traditionalness was toned down. I think official statement was that while he was god of tradition and community, he wasn't ever supposed to be god of traditional gender roles)


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Doktor Weasel wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:
Eh, I do admit that Torag's "No survivors" thing always confuses me, but in Pathfinder there is LG empyreal lord of execution, so apparently executions and killing prisoners isn't considered evil in Pathfinder <_< It does confuse me since it doesn't sound good to me, but at least it is internally consistent

That struck me as a bit odd too. Torag is a bit on the genocidal side of lawful good. It seems a bit odd to me. But I think Paizo has been working to stretch the meaning of the alignments a bit. I can mostly accept Erastil as a socially backwards jerk and still lawful good (I think that might have been toned down since the initial write-up though.), but Torag's "KILL 'EM ALL!" just seems a bit much.

And as for god/alignment mismatch, I still struggle with seeing Zon-Kuthon as lawful.

Pairing Torag's genocidal variant of Lawful Good with the fact that officially none of the traditional orc deities will accept Good-aligned clerics reeks of a certain agenda.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
PossibleCabbage wrote:
Darth Bass wrote:
James Jacobs wrote:
The tightening of the alignments is ABSOLUTELY story driven, and intended to curtail certain types of clerics who didn't make thematic sense with their deity. By abandoning general rules for allowed alignments and custom designing each deity's allowed alignments we have a lot more flexibility.

"Flexibility?" That word you use, I don't think it means what you think it means.

What I have read here, as many of my fellow players have already pointed it, is that the current alignments and restrictions put into place do the exact opposite of that.

You say it is not to stifle creativity but I am afraid that is exactly what it does, despite claims to the contrary.

Flexibility for the people who are designing the game is not the same thing as Flexibility for people who are playing the game. By being able to limit the followers of a deity more than just "one step" it opens up design space for Mr. Jacobs & co.

Like it doesn't really make sense for Socothbenoth to have neutral followers full stop; and worshiping Ng, Shyka, or the Lost Prince is a really odd decision for a LN person (since nothing says "law over all" like "faerie nobles", right?). I don't see any reason we couldn't have a LG deity which accepts only LG followers, or an NG deity who wouldn't cotton to anybody who's not good in her flock.

You're telling me that the Demon Lord of Hedonism wouldn't attract all manner of worshipers seeking deviant thrills without (at least initially) intending to actually harm anyone? Or that he wouldn't grant them a measure of power to lead them down the primrose path?

And, as a matter of fact, given the vagaries of etiquette, custom, and taboos which are built into the Fae's being, I see no contradiction whatsoever between LN and faerie nobles.

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Err, you do know that Socobenoth's worship involves very specific "taboos" right? Including stuff that I'm not sure if forum rules even allows mentioning


4 people marked this as a favorite.

I didn't notice it when I skimmed over the deity list, but now that it's pointed out it does seem very weird that the deities are incredibly restrictive on their cleric alignments, and literally none of them are more permissive. I can understand some deities being very hard-line about this sort of thing, but it seems to be a systemic bias if literally all of them err on the more restrictive side of things.

This bias is most obvious if you look at the TN alignment. Norgorber is the only non-TN deity who accepts TN clerics, while every other deity rejects them. That some of them are picky isn't the problem; the issue is that it's pretty much all of them.

Since I counted them, here's the breakdown:
9 options for NG clerics
8 options for LN clerics
7 options for LG clerics
6 options for LE, CE, and CN clerics
5 options for CG clerics
4 options for TN clerics


5 people marked this as a favorite.

I feel this is the rule that'll be most commonly house ruled out. With Anathema, I felt like they were creating a lot of opportunities for role play where there was a disconnect between your aliment and your deity's, but then to additionally also restrict alignment seems odd to me.
I agree that taking away Asmodeus ability to grant spells to LN/NE worshippers is odd. I thought his church was all about making itself useful to everyone, and offering people power as a way to indoctrinate them. Not to mention the fact that specifics of alignment matter less to them when they've got your name on paper.
I also worry that adding in these new restrictions could seem like Paizo is telling some 1e players that they were 'playing your character wrong'. It's one thing to make a mechanical build no longer playable under new rules, but deity/alignment is core character concept stuff.
This kinda restriction is one of my least favourite things in RPGs, where it hinders your ability to tell interesting stories with nuanced characters, rather than rewarding it.

1 to 50 of 149 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Pathfinder Playtest General Discussion / Bad Gorum All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.