What happens if someone changes alignment late in thier life?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion


Do they just go to wherever they were a given alignment longer? Or does Pharisma turn them into two seperate souls? Also, what if a good character gets turned into an undead by a spell or the like but is destroyed?

Silver Crusade

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Pharasma weighs all that they did their entire life (and unlife if applicable).

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Isn't reincarnation pretty much meant for all the weird border cases? :p Aka "Well the result is undefined, so let's give you second try to make it right" kinda dealios?

Silver Crusade

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Not really.

Liberty's Edge

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Pharasma isn't 'weighing sin' and doesn't care what you've done, she's sorting souls by what amount to shapes and colors. Her sole concern is to send souls where they belong, which is to say with others like them, punishment and reward are entirely incidental to her.

The Alignment you have when you die, how well that aligns with your own ideals, and what deity you currently serve (or not, as applicable) are thus the determining factors, not what Alignment you may have had at some other point in time.

So, since it partially depends on how well you're exemplifying your own ideals, it thus also partially depends, on how intentional the Alignment change is (as an unintentional one can be a failure to live up to your ideals, while a very intentional one is just said ideals changing).


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Deathbed conversion has been a topic in the Christian church. Even stranger was a 4th-century fad for deathbed baptism of Christians who converted decades before. Those Christians believed that baptism washed away all their sins, but sins after baptism still mattered. To enter Heaven in a sinless state, rather than having to work off the penalty for sins in Purgatory, they delayed baptism till the end.

Some Golarion religions are a gamble. A follower of Asmodeus, Prince of Darkness, could earn himself a high place in the hierarchy of Hell. Or he could end up as a lowly drudge for eternity if he did not satisfy the edicts of Asmodeus. An end-of-life conversion would look tempting to someone who failed Asmodeus, especially to a god of redemption like Sarenrae. But as god of contracts, Asmodeus would be firm about commitments, and as god of honesty, Sarenrae would be wary of false conversion.

Pharasma does not necessarily judge what would be best for the individual. She might judge what would be best for the afterlife, like not sending a chaotically disruptive soul to a highly structured lawful afterlife. And she probably has agreements with the afterlife gods to follow their standards as well as possible. A false conversion from Asmodeus to Sarenrae would be sent to Asmodeus. Yet a half-hearted conversion from Asmodeus to Sarenrae might end up with neither. Perhaps the dead person lacked the hard heart to rule tyrannically and torture weaker beings, as Asmodeus dictated, and even freed a slave, as Asmodeus forbids. Pharasma might judge him as still lawful evil but not suitable for being sent directly to Asmodeus. She could send the soul to a lieutenant of Asmodeus, such as Barbatos or Mahathallah, who does not have an interest in tryanny and torture.

Golarion also offers second chances. An adventurer who died and went to the afterlife of Erastil could decide Erastil's afterlife was too tame for him. Resurrrected by his friends, he could switch to a more adventurous god, such as Iomedae. I don't think either god would mind.


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It's worth noting that if you do change alignment late in life, Pharasma almost certainly knew you were going to do that all along. Being the goddess of fate, she is extremely hard to surprise.


I actually kind of like the idea of splitting a soul into multiple outsiders, as we already know it's possible to make more than one outsider out of a soul, as that's how dretches form.


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Mathmuse wrote:
Golarion also offers second chances. An adventurer who died and went to the afterlife of Erastil could decide Erastil's afterlife was too tame for him. Resurrrected by his friends, he could switch to a more adventurous god, such as Iomedae. I don't think either god would mind.

Actualy, all souls that are resurrected were never judged and have never seen any afterlife. Pharasma knows whether a soul has not yet fullfilled its destiny and whether it will be resurrected, and if so, she just postpones its judgement until later time. Once a soul was judged and sent to afterlife they are transformed into a petitioner and they cannot be brought back even by a True Resurrection. In such a case only the spell Judgement Undone can turn them back into mortals, but it's much more difficult to perform and usually brings forth the wrath of Pharasma on the caster. (source: Planar Adventures)


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Yqatuba wrote:
I actually kind of like the idea of splitting a soul into multiple outsiders, as we already know it's possible to make more than one outsider out of a soul, as that's how dretches form.

I think that is specific to souls bound for the Abyss. IIRC, demons are relatively unique in their ability to from multiple demons from a single soul, which caused demons to push qlippoths out of the abyss and is one reason they are especially hated among the multiverse.


Yqatuba wrote:
I actually kind of like the idea of splitting a soul into multiple outsiders, as we already know it's possible to make more than one outsider out of a soul, as that's how dretches form.

I have done something like this in the past where all souls split into 9 pieces which gravitate towards the outer realm that fits them, with the biggest 2 or 3 pieces becoming outsiders, and the other parts becoming part of the scenery. I noticed that I tended to run the neutral outsiders (LN CN N) as a lot more active in the world, which I think was my subconscious telling me that "winner takes all" benefits the neutrals (someone who was LG then LE averages out to LN in PF2, but in my system LN might not get much out of the soul, where LG and LE both would).


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The thing I find the most problematic is effects that turn people into evil undead against their will, such as say, a paladin who is killed by a shadow and turned into one by its spawn ability or just an already dead paladin who someone uses create undead on to make an evil undead. Indeed, the whole deal with creating undead being that evil seems to go against the bit about souls that are already judged being really hard to bring back, as a level 11 wizard can apparently pluck already judged souls out of the afterlife (indeed, the spell doesn't even have a time limit.)


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I would assume that if a good person were made undead against their will, once that person's soul is freed (by putting to rest the undead in question), Pharasma would judge the soul pre-undeath.

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PossibleCabbage wrote:
I would assume that if a good person were made undead against their will, once that person's soul is freed (by putting to rest the undead in question), Pharasma would judge the soul pre-undeath.

This is 100% accurate. Same goes for those who got mind-controlled to do evil.


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This is why Pharasma's realm is set up as a legal court. If you look at the write-ups for the various Psychopomp Ushers, you'll see they have differing opinions on how these cases should be treated.

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