This change seems really odd to me, since aeons are supposed to be the most neutral outsiders whereas inevitables are the most lawful. Also, if they are going to do this why not also lump in proteans as aeons?
You may have noticed that aeons are now lawful neutral.
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I'm sad to tell you this, but it was inevitable.
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Because Aeon's whole deal was that they were the enforcers of weird cosmic laws, and law enforcement is generally considered, well, lawful.
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Because Aeon's whole deal was that they were the enforcers of weird cosmic laws, and law enforcement is generally considered, well, lawful.
Yeah, going with the older edition bipolar druid bit still makes it seem like they are following some bizarre rule set.
Generally speaking... it is hard to have an outside devoted to "neutrality", since that either leans towards one alignment like this, or they just do... nothing.
It is far easier to have a clear, concrete outside focus and they just happen to be neutral. Such as psychopomps guiding souls to the afterlife. They don't set out to be neutral, but they end up going that way in order to avoid offending the various factions while doing their work.
Generally speaking... it is hard to have an outside devoted to "neutrality", since that either leans towards one alignment like this, or they just do... nothing.
It is far easier to have a clear, concrete outside focus and they just happen to be neutral. Such as psychopomps guiding souls to the afterlife. They don't set out to be neutral, but they end up going that way in order to avoid offending the various factions while doing their work.
Absolutely, and this is why I suspect any "Neutral" Champion will revolve around specific ethoses like soul cycle, and nature ala druidism... not just "Neutrality".
Yeah, going with the older edition bipolar druid bit still makes it seem like they are following some bizarre rule set.I know there was a PFS scenario where the players encountered a Theletos Aeon, and the way it was portrayed I honestly thought it didn't seem like something that even had an alignment, so I guess I don't really quite agree.
Generally speaking... it is hard to have an outside devoted to "neutrality", since that either leans towards one alignment like this, or they just do... nothing.
I imagine outsiders devoted to neutrality would probably look a lot like the Neutral planet from Futurama
I feel like Aeons are lawful neutral in the same way that Cthulhu and other Great Old Ones are Chaotic Evil - Cthulhu seems chaotic Evil, but is actually a being with blue and orange morality that is just so different to us in mindset and scope that our morality simply doesn't apply - for our purposes, Cthulhu is chaotic evil, but Cthulhu itself does not have a concept of good and evil as we understand it, in much the same way that an ant cannot understand the morality of a human.
Aeons seem far enough outside our frame of reference to also have blue and orange morality, but when we try to cram them into our context, their role as guarding the balance end enforcing the laws of the universe seems lawful neutral from our perspective. (Our perspective being what matters for how we interact with them mechanically, as all of the spells and abilities we use follow our moral distinctions of lawful vs chaotic/evil vs good)
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The decision is two fold
1) as stated above, it allows Pathfinder to have their own , non-copyrighted LN outsider race
2) James Jacobs has expressed an interest in doing more adventures focused on the Law/Chaos dichotomy and this gives them a LN race that can be both an ally and villain.
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The decision is two fold
1) as stated above, it allows Pathfinder to have their own , non-copyrighted LN outsider race2) James Jacobs has expressed an interest in doing more adventures focused on the Law/Chaos dichotomy and this gives them a LN race that can be both an ally and villain.
Point #2 had nothing to do with the decision. It was pretty much 100% point 1. Of the 9 primary groups known as "outsider races" in the previous edition, ONLY the inevitables had the problem of being creatures that had no mythological basis, and as such we could only ever use them in OGL products. Once things like novels or miniatures or whatever started getting into the picture, we would have had to rename them anyway. So by making that transition in the core game, it resets things to a baseline. Having them be a subcategory of aeon (which is something we made up ourselves) is a better solution than just dropping inevitables entirely from the game, which was the other option.
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Aren't Aeons based(well more like named after) on Gnostic mythology? Most of them are named after Aeons in Gnosticism iirc and Monad itself is concept from Gnosticism.
Sort of, yes, but the word "Aeon" to represent this type of entity, akin to the word "angel" or "demon" or "devil" or "psychopomp" is not.
More to the point, the fact that they are inspired by mythological real-world concepts is the exact opposite of how the inevitable work (or modrons, for that matter). If someone wanted to pick up our threads in the future and expand aeon lore in their own setting, it'd be easier for them to do so as a result than it is for us to do the same with inevitables (or modrons) because of that real-world mythological source.
Thinking about it, would the aeon's main antagonists be daemons?
Daemons actively seek to unmake all of creation. The most efficient way to do this would be to upset the various cosmic balances and systems that keep the lights running. Aeons generally seem like they are overwatchers of such systems (probably even more so now that they are our LN race), and as such they would be very actively involved in countering daemons.
I could see this causing some nice conflict with psychopomps. One moment, they are joining up with aeons because daemons are using the souls of babies to power a doomsday device. The next minute, the aeons might turn on the psychopomps because they decide that throwing more souls into the pile might be the most efficient way to stop the black hole that got created. The destruction of countless souls in the pursuit of some 'higher purpose' seems like the kind of thing an unfeeling LN race would do.
Proteans want to unmake reality, Daemons just want to eat souls. Destroying reality is a secondary goal.
Proteans think this whole "reality" thing has gotten boring. The destruction of all creation is more like shaking an etch a sketch so they can start on something new and fresh.
New things are then born, end, and replaced. They embody the essence of chaos.
Daemons seek oblivion- the end of all things. Nothing else would be after that, dead stop. It is just that in the short term, they just have to settle on eternally snuffing out the existence of any soul they happen to get their hands on.
The theme for daemons is suffering and death- such as drowning and heartbroken suicide. They want you to die, and they want you to WANT to die. And then you want others to die as well. That is the progression from petitioner souls ('the hunted') to daemon.
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Yeah, going with the older edition bipolar druid bit still makes it seem like they are following some bizarre rule set.I know there was a PFS scenario where the players encountered a Theletos Aeon, and the way it was portrayed I honestly thought it didn't seem like something that even had an alignment, so I guess I don't really quite agree.
Generally speaking... it is hard to have an outside devoted to "neutrality", since that either leans towards one alignment like this, or they just do... nothing.
I imagine outsiders devoted to neutrality would probably look a lot like the Neutral planet from Futurama
I have no strong feelings about this post one way or the other!