I dislike most of the good gods. They tend to come off as self-righteous pricks, smiting and cursing s#$# left and right like a Greek deity.
Sure, I also don't care for the evil gods, but they're evil. They fill their purpose.
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well, I have a tooth against Lamashtu and Urgathoa, oh, and Zon Kuthon...
I'm not sure I get Nethys or Irori
and Abadar makes me break out in hives.
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I rather dislike Iomedae, not because of a particular infamous scenario but because of her incompetence in dealing with Cheliax during the 4600s and 4700s.
She was the heir of Aroden and by right should have replaced his cult with her own and established a better and more just version of his laws (for example, by abolishing slavery). Instead, Cheliax fell into a civil war that was only ended by the direct divine intervention of Asmodeus, resulting in a society that was as much worse (in the sense of being more evil/less good) than the one set up by Aroden as the one Iomedae would/should have set up would have been better.
Then, in the modern day, she failed to either stop the incursion by the Glorious Reclamation or direct its strategy in a direction that would have been more likely to result in victory.
I don't think I know of any war deity who has been less competent at military strategy than Iomedae.
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Scalpels are used for births not daggers. Daggers are meant for killing but in pathfinder they are like one of the worse weapons to do so with and I highly doubt doctors(at least most of them) go around shanking babies with daggers.Pharasma would be my pick, she is everything I would like except for two little flaws, deals with death and has the domain check, deals with fate check, deals with rebirth check, has the healing domain check, true neutral check, favored weapon dagger whyyy??? this should be a scythe, and the most important deal breaker.... she hates undead and wants them all to die.Because she's the goddess of birth as well as death. Knives are not only used to sever the connection between an infant and the mother (by cutting the umbilical cord), but are also needed to perform a Caesarean section in case something goes wrong.
I'm not sure if Pathfinder has scalpels. A dagger is a basic weapon with a connection to prophesy, and can also function in the same role as a scalpel. Besides, grim reapers in Golarion are entirely separate entities that do not work with Pharasma in any way... and they have scythes. Honestly, if I had to choose, I'd give a warhammer and have it be like a judge's gavel. She's the judge of the dead after all.
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Scalpels are used for births not daggers. Daggers are meant for killing but in pathfinder they are like one of the worse weapons to do so with and I highly doubt doctors(at least most of them) go around shanking babies with daggers.Pharasma would be my pick, she is everything I would like except for two little flaws, deals with death and has the domain check, deals with fate check, deals with rebirth check, has the healing domain check, true neutral check, favored weapon dagger whyyy??? this should be a scythe, and the most important deal breaker.... she hates undead and wants them all to die.Because she's the goddess of birth as well as death. Knives are not only used to sever the connection between an infant and the mother (by cutting the umbilical cord), but are also needed to perform a Caesarean section in case something goes wrong.
Please note that I wrote "knives". Scalpels are a kind of knife. Just see the dagger as a symbolic representation of a scalpel.
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Zon-Kuthon
The lore and the backstory are quite interesting. Everything from the Star Towers to the current state of the rulers of Nidal makes for a very complex deity, and you can see why so many of the other deities just don't have a clue what kind of relations they should have with him.
But I don't like him because it's impossible to use Zon-Kuthon in your campaign unless your whole group is OK with what is generally regarded as some pretty nasty stuff. Even as a "bad guy" the sheer ick-factor can lower the fun level for a lot of people.
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Cayden Cailean's followers can get a number of cute mechanics like the brewmaster PrC, or CC's divine fighting technique. On the other hand people who drink like that are IRL both annoying and headed for failure. Promoting fast, binge drinking seems to me to be a terrible idea.
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Judges are suppose to rule fairly and justly so she more of a tyrannical dictator of the dead than a judge.
Who says she doesn't rule fairly and justly? And by whose measure of fairness and justice? Anyone with ultimate authority is going to be called (or seen) as a tyrannical dictator by those that don't agree with that authority figure.
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Example of a personal grudge damning someone?
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She damns peoples souls just because she has a personal grudge with them letting personal feelings get in the way of her duty is not ruling fairly and justly.Judges are suppose to rule fairly and justly so she more of a tyrannical dictator of the dead than a judge.Who says she doesn't rule fairly and justly? And by whose measure of fairness and justice? Anyone with ultimate authority is going to be called (or seen) as a tyrannical dictator by those that don't agree with that authority figure.
She is nonlawful...
I also don't like Erastil for the same reason as Iomedae (he comes across as too much of a jerk to be a good god).
In general i like the gods, so this is trully just a least favorite from me.
Guess i would pick Erastil out of them.
A god that preachs about you "staying at home" is not exactly one i ever felt the inclination to pick.
Chances are i would still pick Desna over him even if i knew the entire game from 1 to 20 would be mostly in one city. Like in Crimson Throne and so on.
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I'll throw another vote in for Sarenrae.
The whole Gormuz incident was unbelievably mishandled. As in, it pulls one right out of their suspension of disbelief.
Also, for one of Sarenrae's main schticks being redemption, she doesn't seem to be very good at it . . . .
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She damns peoples souls just because she has a personal grudge with them letting personal feelings get in the way of her duty is not ruling fairly and justly.Judges are suppose to rule fairly and justly so she more of a tyrannical dictator of the dead than a judge.Who says she doesn't rule fairly and justly? And by whose measure of fairness and justice? Anyone with ultimate authority is going to be called (or seen) as a tyrannical dictator by those that don't agree with that authority figure.
Do you have an example?
I mean, she prevented a lawyer from ever having children for defending a necromancer in court.
She didn't damn his soul, but did curse him for doing his job. Kinda a dick move.
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The lawyer example is from the computer game is it not (is that canon?), and I'm pretty sure it is specifically the creation of undead, not all necromancy, that she hates. Since creating undead is objectively evil in Golarion you cannot say being against it is a personal grudge, can you?
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I mean, she prevented a lawyer from ever having children for defending a necromancer in court.
She didn't damn his soul, but did curse him for doing his job. Kinda a dick move.
Hah, I love it. That's improved my opinion of her, if anything.
Really though, historically, deities and demons were always used to explain stuff that we now understand as genetic defects and the like. This is exactly the kind of juice I can get behind.
I like Iomedae's scene in WotR (Divine tests for champions are cool, and I really think people over-exaggerate what actually happens), I like that Erastil is a controversial traditionalist and while I used to think worship of Urgathoa was crazy her antipaladin code is actually brilliant.
Of the core deities, the only ones that impress me less are Cayden, Torag and Nethys. Cayden, I have more of a personal distaste of his themes, though I don't entirely hate him. Torag's just disappointing as I love dwarves and he's just there being dull. Droskar's way cooler. Nethys, I will agree with the stuff stated above. I don't pretend to understand him that well but he does not at all seem suitable as an object of worship!
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Pre eratta juju oracle removes the evil act of it and the undead match your alignment, White necromancer specifically requires you to not be evil, and no actual bodies are being used there for no souls are being used in the 3rd example so no one is getting harmed there for would not be evil. And the personal grudge is against some one who is not you it is a deity who escaped from pherasma's grasp.The lawyer example is from the computer game is it not (is that canon?), and I'm pretty sure it is specifically the creation of undead, not all necromancy, that she hates. Since creating undead is objectively evil in Golarion you cannot say being against it is a personal grudge, can you?
So a pre-erratta class, a third party class, and a wonky spell combo that many GMs would not allow are the list of the unjust victims?
Not convinced.
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Literally any necromancer ever they don't even need to touch undead, or they could be a good necromancer either using the white necromancer class or the juju oracle(pre errata) or even using stone shape to make a body then using stone to flesh to make it a corpse then using a raise undead spell. All this because she has a grudge against ugagtha or what ever the heck her name is.
Never heard of Pharasma being against "necromancers", if you can even call them such, that never create any undead. If you made a "necromancer", whose only purpose was destroying undead, i believe she would actually side you with you by lore.
Ofc, when we say necromancer, 99.99% of the times are people that raise undead. And that point there are no excuses, no reasons to be given or whatever. If you are raising undead, then you are to be punished by such evil act in her eyes. Cause yes, doesnt matter the reason, raising undead is always an evil act.
I wonder where anyone saw Pharasma punish a white necromancer that never actually have made any undead at any point. What is the source for this?
Pre eratta juju oracle removes the evil act of it and the undead match your alignment, White necromancer specifically requires you to not be evil, and no actual bodies are being used there for no souls are being used in the 3rd example so no one is getting harmed there for would not be evil. And the personal grudge is against some one who is not you it is a deity who escaped from pherasma's grasp.
Pre errata
It was errated because it is always an evil act, therefore the devs had to literally errata the thing to change it.
White necromancer
Isnt this third party? This doesnt count either.
For the third one i wish i could see the source, but from this list honestly, not the first or second counts as far as im concerned. Nothing here changes official pathfinder lore.
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^For official Paizo archetypes, maybe they meant Hallowed Necromancer?
White Necromancer is indeed 34d party (Kobold Press), and has an unfortunate choice of name. Wait, maybe that's why Pharasma hates them . . . .
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I do dislike the universal "Undead are always Evil" trope that Pathfinder uses. If you can redeem a succubus, why not a Vampire?
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Because she's the goddess of birth as well as death. Knives are not only used to sever the connection between an infant and the mother (by cutting the umbilical cord), but are also needed to perform a Caesarean section in case something goes wrong.
Agreed, but that said, I don't like that any of the gods have favored weapons that are also simple weapons and therefore available already to any Cleric. (Maybe if that god was like Desna, and had crazy good Domains, but that's just a patch on a leaky hull, since the Domains shouldn't be that lopsided anyway that Desna is always going to be a better choice than, say, Iomedae...)
I'd love for Pharasma to have a favored weapon called the Cordcutter, a special curved dagger with a notch in the blade used for cutting umbilical cords (and, metaphysically, 'severing the threads of fate'). Exotic weapon, stats as a dagger, but a crit range / multiplier of 19-20/x3 and the 'deadly' property. Slightly sexier than the standard dagger (particularly if one is doing a coup de grace...).
Anywho, Pharasma is probably my least favorite, and mostly because of her portrayal. If she was even a little bit the neutral unbiased arbiter of fates that her PR flaks claimed she was, and not crazy lawful with a dash of 'not good, but I hate evil!', I might buy her schtick, but as presented, naw, she's just a big bag of phony, with her own plane and outsider race, to boot. Asmodeus, Lamashtu, Iomedae, etc. have to share their planes, and Gorum and Calistria don't even have one, but are squatting on planes that don't really match their alignments!
I am totally biased towards Egyptian-style stuff (quelle surprise...), so if more Pharasman art was less the 'let's torture ourselves to prove our worthiness' sect from Ustalav (penitents?) and more the faux-Egyptian Osiriani faithful with their darker skin and golden pectorals and white linen, I'd probably be at least a little more forgiving of her being such a terrible goddess. :)
I like quite a few of the other gods. I've played Clerics of Erastil, Abadar, Asmodeus, Nethys, Urgathoa and Calistria, that I can remember off-hand, and probably a few others. I don't care whether or not Desna is a Mary-Sue, I think she's great (although I hate starknives, and would replace her favored weapon with shuriken or something). If anything, Sarenrae feels more like the 'Mary Sue' to me, but I think she's okay. Cayden, Irori, Gozreh, Shelyn, Torag, Lamashtu, Zon-Kuthon, meh. (Of course the gods of body piercings and mental illness are evil... Sigh.) I don't dislike them, but I'm not burning with a desire to play a Cleric of one.
Gorum and Iomedae would probably be my runner-ups for 'least favorite,' because they seem so limited and inflexible, design-wise. It sometimes feels like that if you're a Cleric of Gorum, you *must* be a violent psychopath, and if you're a Cleric of Iomedae, you *must* be a judgmental jerk.
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I do dislike the universal "Undead are always Evil" trope that Pathfinder uses. If you can redeem a succubus, why not a Vampire?
Because beauty = goodness.
Interesting thing to note, the one demon lord that appears capable of being redeemed? Not the horrid-looking fish monster. Not the sentient jelly. The one that looks like a hot chick.
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I do dislike the universal "Undead are always Evil" trope that Pathfinder uses. If you can redeem a succubus, why not a Vampire?
PF has nonevil undead...
Mostly ghosts, but I think was The Dragon's Demand that had a neutral-aligned Mummy.
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I do dislike the universal "Undead are always Evil" trope that Pathfinder uses. If you can redeem a succubus, why not a Vampire?Because beauty = goodness.
Interesting thing to note, the one demon lord that appears capable of being redeemed? Not the horrid-looking fish monster. Not the sentient jelly. The one that looks like a hot chick.
Time to find out if my players are capable of redeeming a horrid looking fish monster or sentient cube of jelly. Wish me luck
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Redemption has to go to the pretty, sexually liberated one, or else they risk coming off as sex negative.
Also, James Jacobs loves his demons.
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Doing one of good, neutral, and evil major deities, and the one I hate the most.
I hate Milani. I think she's a hypocrite where elves are concerned, though that may just be my reading of her article. Doesn't change the fact I despise her.
I've lost too many relatives to alcohol, so I very much dislike Cayden.
Nethys bores me, and I don't like the split personality.
Asmodeus is too perfect, as people have said, and I've gotten utterly sick of all the Cheliax material.
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Also there are some "real" gods of alcohol (Bacchus/Dionosys being the most well known). So there is some precedent for it.
The thing with Dionysus is that is isn't JUST the god of wine/drinking. He is the god of madness, arts, and creativity. Think of the stereotype of the weird person who is creative BECAUSE they are weird.
While I personally LIKE Cayden Cailean (he is literally an adventurer who became a God), I get why people have issues with him. Since part of his personality/portfolio involves liquid courage, he often rubs people the wrong way. Especially those who have seen the disruptive sides of drugs/alcohol.
Least Favorite Evil God - Zon-Kuthon
The other Evil Gods I see as having a purpose. Asmodeus is the Lawful Evil God of Hell and evil Rulers (and a hold over from the 3.5 days where he was the ultimate lawful evil plotter). Lamashtu as The Mother of Monsters is a re-imagining of other mythical Gods who were also the Mother of Monsters. I even find the idea of Norgorber as a god of secrets (and hence hidden and/or forbidden knowledge) interesting. Even Urgathoa as the Evil god of being completely self centered, self indulgent, and pleasure seeking regardless of the consequences as having an thematic appeal. But I do not get the point of Zon-Kuthon. He is lawful evil, but Asmodeus is the LE god of evil rulers. Zon-Kuthon is most famously the god of sadist, but Urgathoa is already the god of those who seek ALL pleasure regardless of the source. Zon-Kuthon became who he was when he traveled into the vast reaches of space and learned things that should not be learned, but Norgorber is already the evil god of forbidden Knowledge. The ONLY thing that makes Zon-Kuthon even REMOTELY interesting is that he is the sibling of Shelyn. But that is not enough to redeem him in my eyes. Zon-Kuthon is boring and pointless.
Least Favorite Neutral God - Naderi
Why does their need to be a god of Romeo and Juliet romantic tragedy? What player is going to worship this god? What narrative purpose could I possibly use this very specific god for as a GM? What narrative world building story structure does she serve?
Least Favorite Good God - Erastil
He is a Lawful Good god of Nature and tradition. But if I wanted to make a character that worships Nature, I would probably either worship Gozreh or just practice the Green Faith. If I want to worship a Good God I have Cayden, Shelyn, or Sarenrae. If I want to worship Law I have Abadar or Irori. If I want to worship both Law AND Good I have Torag or Iomedea. But none of these are why I ACTUALLY have a problem with Erastil, when I bother to remember he even exists.
All Erastil really has going for him is Tradition which in my mind while lawful is NOT good. Doing something because of tradition is often an excuse for doing something that would otherwise be looked down upon. Why enforce a class system that determines your place in life and subjugates a part of your population? Tradition. Why keep the women at home? Tradition. Why take part in a ceremony that involves bodily mutilation? Tradition. Why do X horrible thing? Tradition.
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I’m just gonna jump on the “Asmodeus is a Villain Sue” train. I just wanna point out that he explicitly may or may not have killed a character who parallels the Abrahamic god and was on equal footing with that character before that.
I've said my piece about my least favorites in another thread about the same topic. But maybe I should post an updated version of it when it isn't 04:01 in the morning . . . .
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I hate Milani. I think she's a hypocrite where elves are concerned, though that may just be my reading of her article. Doesn't change the fact I despise her.
I tend to forget her, since she's not one of the 'big 20,' but yeah, not a fan. I don't know if this is part of her write-up, but I got the impression early on that her faith was one of those 'I don't care about your lives as much as my ideals' kind of deals, where they would sneak into oppressive areas and stir up bloody revolutions, in which many people would die, and care more about the fact that *they want these people to be free* than that these people also wanted to live, and if they really wanted to rise up in revolution (and possibly die in the process), they probably would have done it already without some foreign 'white knights' riding in to demand that that they overthrow their oppressors.
Some folk just want to keep their heads down and get through the day and *not die,* and the tenets of Milani seem to hold those people in contempt, or even consider them collaborators.
Lasting change, IMO, is more likely to be incremental change. Violently overthrown oppressive regimes, no matter the intentions of the overthrowers, seem to inevitably devolve into new oppressive regimes. Milani's agents provacateur, in sewing rebellion after rebellion, seem to feeding that sort of Galtian situation, where the old boss is just as bad as the new boss, and, since the old boss at least knew what they were doing, however horrible they were, the 'saved' people are now stuck in a post-war Iraq sort of situation, where nobody in charge has any clue how to run a country, and there's no food or water or public services, and people are rioting in the streets over things that were kept under wraps for generations while they had an evil overlord to focus their anger on.
And that's my problem with Milani. She's a short term thinker, all outraged angry mob and no follow-through, and, IMO, likely to leave a population she's 'rescued' in far worse circumstances than she found them. Everybody her crusades 'saves' wakes up the next day in the burned out shell of what used to be their homes, with no food, no water, no shelter and no way to provide for whatever of their family survived the glorious revolution, and she's not sticking around, because she's got a new glorious revolution scheduled twenty minutes from now.
And now there's an idea for an Empyreal Lord, an angel or archon of good governance, of laws focused on the most good for the most people, and yet also tempered by mercy and compassion for even the weakest and 'least' among a population. A harried looking sort of demigod, perhaps humorously weighed down with dozens of scrolls and tablets in sculpture and iconography, as if burdened with the plethora of well-meaning laws and regulations that it embodies. Dismissed as a micro-managing bureacrat, obsessed with minutiae, by more aggressive and dynamic Empyreals, they would still be recognized as important in their own way, by those with a longer view of things, as some of those dictates and proclamations they carry around are older than (and have done more good, over the centuries than) some of their hot-headed detractors...
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Literally any necromancer ever they don't even need to touch undead, or they could be a good necromancer either using the white necromancer class or the juju oracle(pre errata) or even using stone shape to make a body then using stone to flesh to make it a corpse then using a raise undead spell. All this because she has a grudge against ugagtha or what ever the heck her name is.
I don't understand the reasoning behind this issue (even ignoring the 3rd party stuff). If the literal Goddess of Death and Rebirth, AKA the ultimate authority figure of where souls go and who gets to judge them, tells you not to mess with the cycle of souls, and you don't listen to her, how are you justified in complaining about how she handles HER business? What kind of moral argument can you make when you have only the slightest idea, the merest concept, of the purpose of the entire cycle is for and the possible damage you can do by interrupting it even a little?
But then, I don't think many characters take the time to think through this issue. Kind of like a lot of REAL people in REAL life thinking about REAL issues. But that's another issue entirely.
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I hate all the CG gods who triumph free will, and Asmodeus for trying to stamp it out. Much ado about something that doesn't exist.
But of course they can't decide to act any differently, so it's not their fault.
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If the literal Goddess of Death and Rebirth, AKA the ultimate authority figure of where souls go and who gets to judge them, tells you not to mess with the cycle of souls, and you don't listen to her, how are you justified in complaining about how she handles HER business?
Let me answer your question with a question.
If Genghis Khan, the literal emperor of the Mongol Empire, AKA the ultimate authority figure of the time, tells you to give him all your stuff, and you don't listen to him, how are you justified in complaining about how he handles HIS business? It's HIS empire, yo, doesn't matter if you never got a say in how it was set up.
What kind of moral argument can you make when you have only the slightest idea, the merest concept, of the purpose of the entire cycle is for and the possible damage you can do by interrupting it even a little?
Woah now, hold up a second. What's this about moral arguments? Pharasma isn't moral; I don't care what purpose she has for the cycle of death that I might be screwing up by necromancing. The only thing that factors into my moral calculus is whether I'm hurting people or not hurting people.
I do dislike the universal "Undead are always Evil" trope that Pathfinder uses. If you can redeem a succubus, why not a Vampire?
People are always complaining about the undead=evil thing.
Does a redeemed vampire sound cool? Not to me, but If it appeals to you, use it. Paizo are not going to stop you.
I agree about succubi, though. A redeemed succubus also does not sound cool. I would ignore this in my game, if a succubus ever came up.
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In my day, we redeemed medusae, not succubi! That's the way it was, and we liked it!
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I hate Milani. I think she's a hypocrite where elves are concerned, though that may just be my reading of her article. Doesn't change the fact I despise her.I tend to forget her, since she's not one of the 'big 20,' but yeah, not a fan. I don't know if this is part of her write-up, but I got the impression early on that her faith was one of those 'I don't care about your lives as much as my ideals' kind of deals, where they would sneak into oppressive areas and stir up bloody revolutions, in which many people would die, and care more about the fact that *they want these people to be free* than that these people also wanted to live, and if they really wanted to rise up in revolution (and possibly die in the process), they probably would have done it already without some foreign 'white knights' riding in to demand that that they overthrow their oppressors.
{. . .}
One revolutionary holiday notable for the church's distinct refusal to celebrate it is All Kings Day, as Milani loathes the Red Revolution of Galt and its associated tyranny and violence.
{. . .}
One revolutionary holiday notable for the church's distinct refusal to celebrate it is All Kings Day, as Milani loathes the Red Revolution of Galt and its associated tyranny and violence.
The above references an article on Milani in The Shackled Hut (of Reign of Winter).
So it appears that Milani DOESN'T want to create a Galt situation and would make an honest effort to avoid doing so, although it remains possible that her actions and/or that of her followers may have done so by accident.
In my day, we redeemed medusae, not succubi! That's the way it was, and we liked it!As a paladin of Calistria, I feel that it is my duty to seduce a medusa.
Suddenly, I am reminded of this 1980s/1990s ad that had the tagline(*) "A hard man is good to find" . . . .
(*)Although apparently the tagline predates the ad by a considerable margin . . . .