| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Anecdotal: My Champion of Pharasma wields a dwarven war axe. Because she's of dwarven ancestry, she also has a clan dagger, something she'd only consider wielding as a weapon in very dire circumstances or in religious or ancestral rites. The fact that daggers are Pharasma's favored weapon, in my opinion, adds an additional layer of sacredness and reverence to it. I also appreciate from a mechanical standpoint, it makes that back up dagger just a bit more useful.
I'm personally a firm believer that the lore in the campaign setting shouldn't interfere with really good storytelling. If someone is struggling to come up with a solution for a lore vs mechanics question, talking to the GM, other players, or posing the specific issue to the forums will probably yield some creative solutions. Maybe the result is some help creating a unique backstory, or maybe it's the GM bending some part of the lore or rules to fit the character. There can be different solutions for different character concepts.
If you don't believe this is the way the world works, then simply take a closer look at world religions. Christians have adopted a 2,000 year old method of execution as their religious symbol; Muslims cite the crescent moon from its appearance over important battles. In that context look at art depicting the Crusades - the straight longsword depicting the cross, the scimitar as the crescent. The differences in sword styles evolved with the differences in fighting styles, and the fighting styles evolved with the sword styles - all against the background of...
No one here has argued against carrying symbolic representations of their religions.
Yes, the cross is important to Christians. No, Christians are not expected to carry around, and maintain, actual full sized crucifixion crosses. No, Christian soldiers do not generally choose the most cross-like weapons for fighting, nor has that ever been a primary consideration when choosing weapons.
No one here has expressed a desire for permission to murderhobo. What a silly accusation.Murderhobo is a figurative term, not a literal one. It's a designation for characters who are mechanically efficient but lack depth of character.
....which typically results in a character which just fights and loots.
Look at your argument above. Certain painters from a specific time period noticed a coincidental relationship between the shapes of certain weapons and certain religious symbols. Therefore religious people actually fight with the symbols of their religions, regardless of efficacy.
That is just plain silliness. I like my characters to have real depth to them. I like them to be thoughtful in their decisions. Your logic is simply not compatible with such character building.
But, and this is important, I would never say that you shouldn't play Champions or Clerics. If medieval paintings-->crosses-->swords-->all religions fight with holy symbols is fun for you and your table, then that is what you should do. I like to think about the nature of a given deity, and what would likely matter to them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Anecdotal: My Champion of Pharasma wields a dwarven war axe. Because she's of dwarven ancestry, she also has a clan dagger, something she'd only consider wielding as a weapon in very dire circumstances or in religious or ancestral rites. The fact that daggers are Pharasma's favored weapon, in my opinion, adds an additional layer of sacredness and reverence to it. I also appreciate from a mechanical standpoint, it makes that back up dagger just a bit more useful.
I'm personally a firm believer that the lore in the campaign setting shouldn't interfere with really good storytelling. If someone is struggling to come up with a solution for a lore vs mechanics question, talking to the GM, other players, or posing the specific issue to the forums will probably yield some creative solutions. Maybe the result is some help creating a unique backstory, or maybe it's the GM bending some part of the lore or rules to fit the character. There can be different solutions for different character concepts.
I can't believe I didn't even think of the fact that Carina didn't wield Pharasma's favored weapon. Given I've long since allowed weapons to be blessed and treated as holy symbols, I'd allowed my daughter who was not even a cleric have a dagger that was blessed as a holy symbol of Pharasma in the first playtest adventure, because she asked for it. [I know by rules it is higher level ability to generally allow that, but as I said, I've allowed it in the past so didn't feel compelled to prohibit it, and it wasn't otherwise unbalancing in the case]
So the first two Champions presented in Twitch play, neither of them chose to wield their deities favored weapon as their 'primary' weapon. One of them doesn't even carry a form of their favored weapon.
I really think that pretty well sums up the developers opinion on if Champions are compelled to wield their deities favored weapon, or keep a favored weapon on themselves.
Yes, they will know HOW to wield one, if you hand them one, but it doesn't mean that will be their personal choice.
Now, that doesn't mean that it isn't valid for a Cleric or Champion to individually choose their own personal preferred weapon, as a matter of faith to match that of their deity. But that is an aspect of their faith, not a requirement of their deity, nor a in game requirement or intention.
Couldn’t you just create a deity that has a favoured weapon of the one you want to carry?
I somehow doubt that the transition from daggers to glaives for worshippers of Shelyn happened quickly. The story about her and her brother probably took decades to filter through the culture of her church (or was there, favoured weapon and all, before the church even became a formal organisation, depending on the timing of what happened).
Traditions take a very long time to form and to change, and in addition to that, timing gets... weird... with metaphysical beings living on other planes that work on different timescales.
It is possible that the incident with Zon-Kuthon happened 200 years ago, but that the glaive then retroactively became something that Shelyn always had to her worshippers, so that now records from 5000 years ago depict her with the glaive.
Remember that the various planes have different flows of time, and that deities can often manipulate that within their domains, and that deities are as much manifestations of ideas and beliefs as they are independent beings, so there is definitely a lot of room for things to get a bit weird and nonlinear (assuming that the story about how she got the glaive is even true, it could have been made up by followers to explain a mistranslation of a holy text that changed her description from the celestial word for dagger to the common word for glaive, which is the kind of thing that happens in religion a lot, and followers making up that story could plausibly then even make that story true).
I am quite sure it is something related to that specific fact. Which means she started to consider the cursed glaive a memento of his brother after she managed to snatch it away from him.
From that moment, she probably started to appears with a glaive instead of a dagger.
It is also true that it took some time for the whole Church to move on from the dagger to the glaive, but the whole point of my joke was not to get stick with a favored weapon.
Or else we will be choosing a deity for his weapon and not his edicts/tennets.
A champion, and somehow a Cleric, is a person trained in a large number of weapons, and it is not supposed to necessarily choose his deity favored one.
I remember some guides even giving gods a rating on their weapons. These weren't really the main focus of them but still a consideration.
And decoration is still an option if you think your god is picky. 'The hand of Irori shall chastise you! It's in the form of a fist of cold iron on the end of a metal rod our barbarian whipped up for me.'
Now I want to see a Monty Python scene over use of deity's favored weapon . . . .
|
This would suck if it was an enforced rule and part of what makes the Warpriest Cleric bad if you choose the "wrong" deity. Desna has a starknife which is a martial weapon with a d4 damage. There is no way unless the Gods and magic book adds Starknife feats that a Champion of Desna would use a Starknife since every other Martial melee weapon is better and a Bow short or long beats its ranged options.
Similarly a warpriest cleric gets super screwed since they are only expert in their deity's weapon so a Warpiest of Desna has no choice as losing +2 to hit by using a harder hitting martial isn't an option.
Nicolas makes a good point that the favorite weapon may not be the best weapon for the Champion or Cleric to use. I would like to point out a situation where it might make sense for the faithful to use a starknife.
As a Elven Wizard with Desna as my God, I want to show my faith by using a starknife. It would be nice to cast a spell then for my last action thrown my +1 starknife of returning instead of standing there with a dumb look on my face. The problem before Gods and Magic 2e came out you as layperson didn't have access to your deities favorite weapon, now you don't have training with it. Seems silly that one of the faithful wouldn't have got training in their deities favorite weapon. Just a problem I am faced with in an up coming Pathfinder society 2e gaming session.
Christian soldiers do not generally choose the most cross-like weapons for fighting
False.
nor has that ever been a primary consideration when choosing weapons.
True.
No Crusader sits down and thinks how to make a weapon out of a cross. But what happens - much like what happens in real life religions - is that the forms co-evolve with the beliefs.
I like my characters to have real depth to them. I like them to be thoughtful in their decisions. Your logic is simply not compatible with such character building.
It's the exact opposite.
Religion - for the religious - aren't mix and match, take what you like and leave the rest.
You shouldn't pick Desna because she fits with your personality and then pick a different weapon because it mechanically does more damage.
Nonreligious (and loosely religious) people have a hard time understanding that for the devout, you're simply not looking for excuses to avoid your deity's preferences.
The whole concept of "how do I get out of having to use my deity's favored weapon" is based in mechanical optimization rather than actually thinking about what religion means.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Christian soldiers do not generally choose the most cross-like weapons for fightingFalse.
While the depth and detail of that argument is surely compelling, might I suggest that reality carries even more weight? Most Christian soldiers today primarily use guns, and practicality, not similarity to a cross, rules the day. Even during the Crusades, swords of any shape were a minority weapon. Mounted knights generally used lances. Foot soldiers generally used spears or polearms. Most soldiers just used what was available to them, the specific of which varied a great deal based on where they were from.
nor has that ever been a primary consideration when choosing weapons.True.
No Crusader sits down and thinks how to make a weapon out of a cross. But what happens - much like what happens in real life religions - is that the forms co-evolve with the beliefs.
Certainly symbolic links develop over time, and specific ceremonial object may try to evoke multiple aspects of local life. But the idea that weapon shapes generally co-evolve with religious symbols with an end result of similar forms is disproved by the fact that the vast majority of weapons in the world do not bear strong resemblance to regional religious symbols, nor vice versa.
I like my characters to have real depth to them. I like them to be thoughtful in their decisions. Your logic is simply not compatible with such character building.It's the exact opposite.
Religion - for the religious - aren't mix and match, take what you like and leave the rest.
You shouldn't pick Desna because she fits with your personality and then pick a different weapon because it mechanically does more damage.
Nonreligious (and loosely religious) people have a hard time understanding that for the devout, you're simply not looking for excuses to avoid your deity's preferences.
The whole concept of "how do I get out of having to use my deity's favored weapon" is based in mechanical optimization rather than actually thinking about what religion means.
Again, I refer you to reality. In reality, people are complex. Religion is complex. Religious belief is complex. People most certainly do pick and choose what parts of their religion matter. The devout may believe they have picked and chosen correctly, but you'd be hard pressed to find any religion where the devout agree among themselves on everything.
Now let's step back into the game lore. We don't have a deep codification of Desna's teachings. We don't have some complete history of Desna's Champions. We have a sentence that "you zealously bear your deity’s favored weapon." We have an entry in a stat block about a favorite weapon.
When I say I like my character to have depth, I don't mean that I want them to have some mechanical advantage in a paper thin reality. My Champion is a complex person, dong his best with a complex belief system in a complex world. He weighs how best to serve his deity. Is it better to die with an unsuitable weapon or to use a more suitable weapon to successfully free those slaves? How much does he fight his companions on their well-meaning lies? He is conflicted. He is thoughtful. Because the world is complicated. And he follows a complicated religion that isn't fully and completely described by a stat block.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I agree.
Valuing a specific weapon tied to your god over the better efficiency you can have swinging another one against the enemies of your faith, or the other way around, is a personal choice. Some will do one thing, some will do the other.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
It would be really weird to be a follower of Shelyn because you're a really big fan of polearms but are meh on the art, instead of because you're a really big fan of art but don't intend to pick up a glaive ever.
But as always the important part is that you're thinking about "why does this person do this, instead of all the alternatives"?