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My point was that having any group be 'always Evil, we can kill them because of how they look' runs into very serious unfortunate implications, regardless of the in-universe source of that 'always Evil' tag. It's easier to not worry about with fiends and undead due to their mystical nature...but that doesn't make them completely unproblematic.
I strongly disagree. I think it's OK to say that you reject settings having attributes which lead to good and evil existing as objective invariants - the alignment system, the soul judgement cycle etc. It's also OK to say that such settings are not suited for roleplaying law enforcement, if you insist that RPGs must always be deeply thought provoking at the expense of fun.
But if you accept Golarion for what it is - a high fantasy world - then it's simply illogical to say that the 'always Evil' tag is not acceptable, because the whole cosmology is invented around making it acceptable. Similarly with always Good celestials, always Chaotic fey and so on. Blindly transposing them to represent whole real complex people means taking away that complexity from the people you're trying to represent that way.
He'd be in serious trouble and have to make hard moral choices. Of course, a person without money who cannot buy food also has hard moral choices to make. The vampire's are harder, but blaming anyone for choices he might make in the future if circumstances change radically is monstrous.
Note that I did not say that the LN Kaer Maga vampire is okay to kill on sight, in fact I explicitly said it would not be good or lawful to do so. However I do believe that equating it with a person having to steal food is not appropriate, because a vampire preys on sentient people. Equating it with a cannibal would be more appropriate.
A vampire's choices in Golarion are pretty clearly suicide or feeding regularly. It is unsurprising that few choose suicide, but an easy choice to make if they decide to do so...I mean, they just choose to meet the sunrise.
And they think and feel and speak and even love...
I'm sorry to be that guy, but do you have examples of Golarion vampires doing that? In general fiction (not postmodern stuff which intentionally subverts established tropes) and in what I remember from Carrion Crown they very much do not feel anything except their own eternal suffering and especially not love. Therefore there is absolutely no possibility that a vampire chooses to meet the sunrise. I feel like you are projecting something else that does not belong in a vampire lore at all. Vampires and other undead are not killed or murdered, they are destroyed which actually frees up the soul of their mortal precursor that was held hostage.
Actually, my point is not that all undead or fiends must be killed by PCs on sight regardless of how they act, but that undead or fiends should not be expected to be shown acting in non-evil ways. A situation where there's just a friendly local neighborhood monster chilling out not troubling anyone should not normally be possible unless it's the whole focus of the story. There are a lot of living, mortal creatures which can be used for making nuanced characters. But in a high fantasy game there should also be room for clear-cut, irredeemable villains symbolizing certain bad sides of human existence taken in isolation, and some of them should be cunning and deceitful villains.
Declaring a sentient being an "unperson"
In a world with an alignment system, not having a mindless trait is not enough to be sentient. If a creature trait has a fixed alignment tag, it means it is intrinsically and inseparably bound to the external absolute good/law/evil/chaos forces and cannot act against them except for extreme story-driven circumstances such as divine influence or near-death experience. So yes, these beings are actually objectively "unpersons" because they cannot freely choose how they act (this is also true for always-Good beings and is why summoning and binding them to fight for you is not an Evil act).
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I’m awful curious to hear what non-lethal weapons people are so insistent these cops will use. You’re gonna tell your Fighter they can’t have a sword? A Ranger with no bow?
Well, firstly there's the whole thing where you can do nonlethal with any weapon for a -2 to-hit penalty. That's not ideal, but it's hardly impossible to work with, especially since it doesn't need to be on every attack all the time (depending on circumstances).
Secondly, there are in fact easily accessible nonlethal options in melee weapons (most conventionally, the sap, whip, and unarmed strike). So if you want to be nonlethal you assuredly can at early levels just by packing a backup weapon. Ranged options are trickier, I'll grant you.
Thirdly, there is of course magic. A lot of magical options can be nonlethal if used properly. And magic is the primary offense of many PCs.
Fourthly, and admittedly speculatively, I'd be shocked if this AP doesn't include additional options for nonlethal force, such as the return of the Merciful property from PF1 as a Rune, a Feat to remove the above penalty, or similar things.
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I’m awful curious to hear what non-lethal weapons people are so insistent these cops will use. You’re gonna tell your Fighter they can’t have a sword? A Ranger with no bow?
Yes? There are by my count 8 weapons with the nonlethal trait to choose from (including unarmed attacks), and you can make a nonlethal attack with any weapon at -2. So the fighter can just use a sword at -2 if they so choose; 1st edition had merciful magic weapons, and I would expect a similar effect to appear in 2e, or be easily homebrewed that weapons have a "nonlethal" rune. That's honestly a non-issue.
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I strongly disagree. I think it's OK to say that you reject settings having attributes which lead to good and evil existing as objective invariants - the alignment system, the soul judgement cycle etc. It's also OK to say that such settings are not suited for roleplaying law enforcement, if you insist that RPGs must always be deeply thought provoking at the expense of fun.
Good and Evil being objective and creatures being invariably Good or Evil are not the same thing, and in fact the latter is explicitly and canonically untrue in Golarion.
But if you accept Golarion for what it is - a high fantasy world - then it's simply illogical to say that the 'always Evil' tag is not acceptable, because the whole cosmology is invented around making it acceptable. Similarly with always Good celestials, always Chaotic fey and so on. Blindly transposing them to represent whole real complex people means taking away from what they are supposed to be - a symbol for an aspect of human experience.
It's really not. The objectivity of Alignment is because it is measurable (with magic) based on a creature's actions rather than being just a subjective judgment, not because it is somehow inborn. This is entirely internally consistent and handled pretty consistently.
In short, your assertion that 'always Evil' is the foundation of the world framework is demonstrably false.
Note that I did not say that the LN Kaer Maga vampire is okay to kill on sight, in fact I explicitly said it would not be good or lawful to do so. However I do believe that equating it with a person having to steal food is not appropriate, because a vampire preys on sentient people. Equating it with a cannibal would be more appropriate.
Is it? The vampire need not kill or even permanently damage people if they do not wish to. It's certainly worse, and I said as much, I was just pointing out that it's a difference in degree rather than kind.
I'm sorry to be that guy, but do you have examples of Golarion vampires doing that? In general fiction (not postmodern stuff which intentionally subverts established tropes) and in what I remember from Carrion Crown they very much do not feel anything except their own eternal suffering and especially not love. Therefore there is absolutely no possibility that a vampire chooses to meet the sunrise. I feel like you are projecting something else that does not belong in a vampire lore at all. Vampires and other undead are not killed or murdered, they are destroyed which actually frees up the soul of their mortal precursor that was held hostage.
Doing what? Loving someone? I don't have an example off the top of my head, but nothing about their stated motives, goals, or psychology prevents it. And I checked out Carrion Crown doing a search for 'love', and basically nobody you meet in that AP loves anyone (there are a whole two exceptions, both in Book 2). Not humans, not vampires, nobody. So that's not much evidence of anything in regards to vampires specifically.
Actually, my point is not that all undead or fiends must be killed by PCs on sight regardless of how they act, but that undead or fiends should not be expected to be shown acting in non-evil ways. A situation where there's just a friendly local neighborhood monster chilling out not troubling anyone should not normally be possible unless it's the whole focus of the story. There are a lot of living, mortal creatures which can be used for making nuanced characters. But in a high fantasy game there should also be room for clear-cut, irredeemable villains symbolizing certain bad sides of human existence taken in isolation, and some of them should be cunning and deceitful villains.
Non-Evil fiends and non-ghost undead are certainly rare. They are not, however, unknown or impossible in the setting, and while notable and unusual need not be the focus of a story to be interesting (the aforementioned LN vampire in Kaer Maga makes an interesting and notable cameo as an information source in The Redemption Engine, for example).
In a world with an alignment system, not having a mindless trait is not enough to be sentient. If a creature trait has a fixed alignment tag, it means it is intrinsically and inseparably bound to the external absolute good/law/evil/chaos forces and cannot act against them except for extreme story-driven circumstances such as divine influence or near-death experience. So yes, these beings are actually objectively "unpersons" because they cannot freely choose how they act (this is also true for always-Good beings and is why summoning and binding them to fight for you is not an Evil act).
There are no creatures with fixed alignment tags in Golarion. Explicitly. Both by the rules in the Bestiary and per the word of James Jacobs, whose statements on such matters are controlling.
Aligned Outsiders come very close, but even they can theoretically change or we wouldn't have fallen angels and risen fiends, and unlike them undead have absolutely no rules restricting their alignment in any way. Are most vampires Evil? Sure. Does anything prevent them from not being? Nope. Not a damn thing.
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Considering that the books are written, in fact most are probably off to the printers, thus this discussion will have little to no impact on the content, makes the entire thing pointless and unnecessarily speculative. The assumption seems to be that either Paizo will do a good job with the sensitive material with minimal icky parts, or that they will largely fumble it and the whole of the AP will be a disgusting mess. Chances are no matter what they publish, I’m fairly certain we’re going to get both perspectives anyway.
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Well, firstly there's the whole thing where you can do nonlethal with any weapon for a -2 to-hit penalty. That's not ideal, but it's hardly impossible to work with, especially since it doesn't need to be on every attack all the time (depending on circumstances).
And that's just the base penalty. In 1E you could do nonlethal at no penalty with certain weapons (saps) or feats (bludgeoner) or weapon properties (merciful), and I would be very surprised if more and better options did not exist in 2E. That said, "you can deal perfect nonlethal damage" seems like a get-out-of-jail-free card, particularly as real "less-than-lethal" weapons (beanbags, rubber or wooden bullets, tear gas, tasers, etc.) are not so harmless as their pitch-men like to say.
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Okay, I stand corrected... though it doesn't make sense to me why he is listed as LE in this case.
And re-reading that bit, the area text and the development text actually contradict each other, as one says that he actively asks for atonement, while the other says that he doesn't unless PCs actively dispel or suppress mind control first.
I will still point out that before he does so he must be subjected to the atonement spell (now a ritual) which restores his alignment if it succeeds, and otherwise he is said to relapse into evil forever.
This seems to assume that the change in alignment upon being turned into vampire is gradual, as he is mentioned to be turned only recently; I am not sure if it still holds true in second edition.
There are no creatures with fixed alignment tags in Golarion. Explicitly. Both by the rules in the Bestiary and per the word of James Jacobs, whose statements on such matters are controlling.
http://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1001
some types of creatures must be or tend to be certain alignments.
It means that there are types which must be certain alignments, and other types which tend to be certain alignments.
Examples on http://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1039
Angel
Traits good (usually NG), celestial
It means that angels can be non-Neutral Good, but cannot be non-Good.
Undead
Traits Almost all undead are evil.
James Jacobs aside, I believe that you are wrong regarding to the rules. I will see if I can find a James Jacobs quote but I believe he generally said that specific story needs can overrule the general assumptions about the creature type, which is fine as long as it remains specific to the story, as otherwise it invalidates the whole assumption to begin with (e.g. if every other drow is like Drizzt then the whole drow canon is basically wrong).
I’m awful curious to hear what non-lethal weapons people are so insistent these cops will use. You’re gonna tell your Fighter they can’t have a sword? A Ranger with no bow?
I mean, bolas sound like a pretty cool weapon for this AP. But I imagine that at least 50% or more of combat encounters are going to involve supernatural dangers where players will be able to use their swords and bows. Hopefully, a lot of the non-lethal encounters will be ones that can be resolved through diplomacy and careful investigating.
I’m awful curious to hear what non-lethal weapons people are so insistent these cops will use. You’re gonna tell your Fighter they can’t have a sword? A Ranger with no bow?
Just four different kinds of monks. Hopefully the character variety for the "all monk" party will increase somewhat with the APG (monastic archery probably isn't nonlethal though.)
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Here's a bunch of James Jacobs quotes:
"Always evil" does not preclude unique exceptions. It's what makes those exceptions special. RAW text is for building the foundations of a game, not a millstone to shackle possibilities.
Correct.And by adopting a firm "Non-ghost undead are ALWAYS EVIL," I keep things from being flooded by countless writers eager to break that rule and suddenly it's no longer an exception.
EXAMPLE: Before Driz'zt, drow were almost always evil. They remained almost always evil AFTER Driz'zt... but that's not the public perception.
I don't want that happening to undead.
undead are pretty much ALWAYS evil in Pathfinder, with a very rare few exceptions so as to not be statistically relevant.
Saving lives and defeating undeath are good acts.
Bolstering undead and hurting people are evil acts.
For me, it's not always evil to kill another creature in the game because there ARE fundamentally evil creatures in the game. We try hard to present these as fundamentally evil so many tables won't have to grapple with the philosophical question of whether it's "right" to kill for the greater good.
I rest my case.
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Plus not for nothing, but non-lethal weapons, aren’t exactly tickles and back rubs.
In real life police use their “non-lethal” (more accurately described as “less-lethal”) weapons all the time, often inappropriately.
Police batons, tasers, pepper spray, tear gas, “rubber bullets” in fact a big problem in the protests is the inappropriate use of these items against protesters.
If the game was really tackling the difficult concepts, it would actually be harder to not accidentally deal lethal damage, permanent injury or worse even with items designed for purpose.
And even unarmed grapples, well George Floyd, died of a knee on his neck. There’s issues of inappropriate application of force, that players are going to have to deal with.
Even if this was a fantasy game about “good” policing, it would be a lot less fun, as player characters would need to be investigated for every use of force, dot their i’s and cross their t’s in order to obtain warrants to enter private property.
Adventurers can kick in doors, and ignore due process, rights and laws, because ultimately they are fictional Fantasy tropes.
Police who do that aren’t heroes, they are literally The Problem.
Will the AP assume Wealth by Level? That’s a very well funded department when the players hit like even 4th or 5th level, or will players be looting the criminals they’re catching?
There’s a lot of unknowns at this point, and again, it’s not that I’m against the idea of a game that explores these themes, I’m just not sure Pathfinder has the sophistication to do it.
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Also please note: When I say the game is not fit for a certain purpose, I am not hating on the game to say that. If I didn’t like Pathfinder, I wouldn’t BE here. I love this game, but trying to use it for the wrong purpose, trying to put it in a conversation it has no business being in, is worse for the game and worse for the hobby.
Pathfinder can do amazing things with representation, with cultural sensitivity and even with cathartic fantasy violence (punch nazis, or their Fantasy equivalents!)
But it can’t do everything, it’s okay to leave some topics for other games that are better at doing those things.
A Pathfinder romantic comedy musical Adventure Path, sounds rad, until you realise the game is just not designed to do that.
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However I do believe that equating it with a person having to steal food is not appropriate, because a vampire preys on sentient people. Equating it with a cannibal would be more appropriate.
Not exclusively. The Bestiary explicitly notes vampires can feed on, and turn into their spawn, just about any living creature.
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Or, they can release it, no matter what it says and those who are okay with it, will buy it and run/play it. For those who don’t like it, don’t buy it, don’t play it. And we all move on.
This. Plus, I find it hilarious people are/were (or at least, seem to be) fine with idealised revolutionaries (Hell's Rebels, Council of Thieves), idealised pirates (Skull and Shackles), idealised colonisers (Kingmaker, Ruins of Azlant) and such, as Unicore pointed out.
But good PC cops? ThaT iS tOo muCh!
Gimme a break. Paizo have made their stance on current matters perfectly clear. It's their perogative to release this AP or not, and considering the costs involved and the release schedule, I've no doubt they'll go ahead with it.
And then we'll be able to judge the product for what it is, not what we think it'll be.
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Or, they can release it, no matter what it says and those who are okay with it, will buy it and run/play it. For those who don’t like it, don’t buy it, don’t play it. And we all move on.This. Plus, I find it hilarious people are/were (or at least, seem to be) fine with idealised revolutionaries (Hell's Rebels, Council of Thieves),. . . idealised colonizers (Kingmaker, Ruins of Azlant) and such, as Unicore pointed out.
Speak for yourself.
Creative Director
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We'll have more to say very soon about Agents of Edgewatch—we're not ignoring this thread, but we need to make sure what we say is right. I believe the goal is to release more information about Agents of Edgewatch later this week though. So please continue to be patient with us for a few more days while we work to make things right.
The topic of this thread seems to have drifted far from the original intent now talking about undead and alignment, though.
That said, we're certainly starting to explore non evil undead more in Pathfinder. Folks who have the 2nd Edition Bestiary 2 get to see some examples. MOST of the undead in Bestiary 2 are still evil by default, but...
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Also I just find it odd that after Hundreads of Ap issues in dozens of Ap's people think this is the ap there suddenly going to have players killing/attacking random people for no real reason.
I mean outside of the 100% up front your totally evil ap and the earlier parts of skull and shackles (Were to be fair the party members have basically been presed into service against there will and the evil one does have reasons it's just that there well evil) I cant think of an Ap that has you just attack people who arent already well known to be evil or dont attack you first.
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Also I just find it odd that after Hundreads of Ap issues in dozens of Ap's people think this is the ap there suddenly going to have players killing/attacking random people for no real reason.
The problem is that there are a great manner of things which are more or less the standard adventurer fare (the "muderhobo" stereotype does come from somewhere) that are deeply, deeply inappropriate if the person doing them is a good-aligned officially licensed representative of the state charged to serve and protect a community.
Like just maintaining "wealth by level" for police officer PCs is almost surely unethical. A 12th level PC is worth about 5,000 GP. If they got their money from their salaries that's a wasteful use of resources (why give four people *that* much money) and if they got it from seizing things they took from criminals, that has its own set of issues (in modern america forfeiture from law enforcement takes more things from people than does "theft" in the traditional sense.)
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Or, they can release it, no matter what it says and those who are okay with it, will buy it and run/play it. For those who don’t like it, don’t buy it, don’t play it. And we all move on.This. Plus, I find it hilarious people are/were (or at least, seem to be) fine with idealised revolutionaries (Hell's Rebels, Council of Thieves), idealised pirates (Skull and Shackles), idealised colonisers (Kingmaker, Ruins of Azlant) and such, as Unicore pointed out.
But good PC cops? ThaT iS tOo muCh!
Gimme a break. Paizo have made their stance on current matters perfectly clear. It's their perogative to release this AP or not, and considering the costs involved and the release schedule, I've no doubt they'll go ahead with it.
And then we'll be able to judge the product for what it is, not what we think it'll be.
If you think I’ve been quiet about fantasy colonizers or how d20 fantasy games have massive structural issues with glorifying colonialist violence, you’ve probably never seen a post from me. I literally made my forum account to voice concerns about racism in how Varisians were presented.
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We'll have more to say very soon about Agents of Edgewatch—we're not ignoring this thread, but we need to make sure what we say is right.
Just be careful you don’t wait too long. That is the mistake GAMA made and it significantly affected their decision to cancel Origins Online.
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Also I just find it odd that after Hundreads of Ap issues in dozens of Ap's people think this is the ap there suddenly going to have players killing/attacking random people for no real reason.
I mean outside of the 100% up front your totally evil ap and the earlier parts of skull and shackles (Were to be fair the party members have basically been presed into service against there will and the evil one does have reasons it's just that there well evil) I cant think of an Ap that has you just attack people who arent already well known to be evil or dont attack you first.
Because it's NOT no reason. But those reasons should make PCs feel pretty uncomfortable. Let's take an example gleaned from the blurb.
The party catches someone being a cutpurse at this festival. They chase him down and he resists arrest.
Do any of these acts justify the PCs killing that person?
I would hope not but the resolution of that encounter will likely be combat given that this is pathfinder. Combat that has a possible or even likely result of the extrajudicial killing of a man whose crime was petty theft by the legitimate authorities who are good aligned PCs.
This is what I and others are talking about. It doesnt seem like a good idea.
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Isn't the info about the state of the Precipice Quarter from the Guide to Absalom and therefore like a decade out of date? I seem to recall that the Guide also says that the Precipice Quarter is largely uninhabitable and has no real official municipal presence in it - and we know that has changed in the intervening years. Is there some reason to completely assume that the recovery project for the Quarter didn't already do anything about its previous inhabitants and the circumstances that lead them to try to survive there?
Do you have anything written pointing any of this out?
We go off the latest published material, and Guide to Absalom is the latest published material on the subject to my knowledge.
You mean, anything written that says that the Precipice Quarter is habitable and has a municipal presence again? I mean, that's kinda the premise of Agents of Edgewatch, isn't it?
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Well yeah, but we're trying to figure out what before the rebuilding that led to its reopening at the start of the AP.You mean, anything written that says that the Precipice Quarter is habitable and has a municipal presence again? I mean, that's kinda the premise of Agents of Edgewatch, isn't it?Isn't the info about the state of the Precipice Quarter from the Guide to Absalom and therefore like a decade out of date? I seem to recall that the Guide also says that the Precipice Quarter is largely uninhabitable and has no real official municipal presence in it - and we know that has changed in the intervening years. Is there some reason to completely assume that the recovery project for the Quarter didn't already do anything about its previous inhabitants and the circumstances that lead them to try to survive there?
Do you have anything written pointing any of this out?
We go off the latest published material, and Guide to Absalom is the latest published material on the subject to my knowledge.
My point when I raised the question is that the transition from what we read in the original Guide to Absalom and what we are going to find in Agents of Edgewatch has already occurred. We know that things are different, and that's all we know. There are quite a large number of possible routes we might have taken from point A to point B, and a bunch of people are making assumptions about which route was used, and all without the slightest bit of textual support.
Maybe the criminals the PCs will be dealing with will indeed be people who have been living in the Precipice all along. On the other hand, maybe all those people were killed by ghouls and giant cockroaches. Maybe they were given financial assistance to reestablish themselves in the Quarter; maybe they were given incentive to leave. We don't know. We do know that it will have already happened, and no matter how good or bad, the PCs will be dealing with the aftermath, not the process itself.
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My point when I raised the question is that the transition from what we read in the original Guide to Absalom and what we are going to find in Agents of Edgewatch has already occurred. We know that things are different, and that's all we know. There are quite a large number of possible routes we might have taken from point A to point B, and a bunch of people are making assumptions about which route was used, and all without the slightest bit of textual support.
Maybe the criminals the PCs will be dealing with will indeed be people who have been living in the Precipice all along. On the other hand, maybe all those people were killed by ghouls and giant cockroaches. Maybe they were given financial assistance to reestablish themselves in the Quarter; maybe they were given incentive to leave. We don't know. We do know that it will have already happened, and no matter how good or bad, the PCs will be dealing with the aftermath, not the process itself.
The text says that the Precipice Quarter was a ghost town, literally and figuratively, with travel restricted at night. Nobody has been living in the Precipice Quarter up until now.
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Just because of the gameplay style of the Pathfinder, I'd be surprised if any of encounter involved taking down unarmed or peaceful folk <_<
Ya know, I know its easy to be cynical of writing you haven't yet seen, but there is unfortunate thing here where even if writing isn't to your liking... Well umm..
...I don't think paizo can literally do anything about that since it was written over years ago? Like maybe they can make small chances, but they can't just cancel entire thing without firing people or losing most of their profits.
So its one of those situations where you have to trust that paizo writers did things with care over year ago before the current events, since while they might be taking extra care to edit things that might be iffy, its kinda unlikely they are able to do major changes
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You know I'm starting to think Paizo should just call it a day and pack it all in since it's becoming more and more clear no matter what they do someone somewhere is going to find something to be offended about.
On side note, I'm offended by this statement (;P) because fact is that EVERY creative work offends SOMEONE somehow, BUT that doesn't mean creator ISN'T responsible for minimizing the harm. If creator's goal isn't to be shocking or edgy(in which case being offensive is the goal itself) they can and should do effort to minimize offensive nature of the work and possible harm caused by it.
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http://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1001
some types of creatures must be or tend to be certain alignments.It means that there are types which must be certain alignments, and other types which tend to be certain alignments.
Examples on http://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1039
Angel
Traits good (usually NG), celestialIt means that angels can be non-Neutral Good, but cannot be non-Good.
No, it doesn't. That's under 'Trait Abilities' in the GMG, a section that begins with the following text:
"Creatures with certain traits tend to have similar abilities to one another. Many of them appear here, to help you make your creatures match the theme of the trait when you build your own creatures."
Emphasis mine. In a rules sense, all that entry means is that Angels tend to be Good, usually Neutral Good. It's far from a hard and fast rule.
Now, in universe, almost all Angels are indeed Good, but not necessarily for the reasons you seem to think (or not entirely, anyway). It's partially because, as is demonstrated in the canonical redeemed succubus arc, if you stop being Evil you lose the demon (and, in PF2, presumably fiend) traits pretty rapidly. The same for an Angel becoming Evil...basically all Angels are Good because by becoming Evil they cease to be an Angel.
Undead
Traits Almost all undead are evil.
Well, firstly this is from the same section, so still not a hard and fast rule.
Secondly, 'almost' is the key word there. I've never for a minute argued that most undead aren't Evil. They are. This is particularly true of mindless undead, too.
But 'almost all' and 'all' are very different things. Which has always been my point.
James Jacobs aside, I believe that you are wrong regarding to the rules. I will see if I can find a James Jacobs quote but I believe he generally said that specific story needs can overrule the general assumptions about the creature type, which is fine as long as it remains specific to the story, as otherwise it invalidates the whole assumption to begin with (e.g. if every other drow is like Drizzt then the whole drow canon is basically wrong).
Well, yes, but that's a statement about what stories Paizo is interested in telling, not about how the world works metaphysically. The two are entirely separate things.
Here's a bunch of James Jacobs quotes:
I rest my case.
Those all, like your above remembrance of them, talk about how most undead are Evil, and about how, narratively, Paizo lacks interest in exploring non-Evil undead...or at least, did when he wrote them.
They have nothing to do with the metaphysics of the setting and the idea of Alignment as absolute or unchangeable, which is what I was arguing against, and in fact here is a recent quote about that:
Even in the case of undead and fiends, there's no such thing as "irredeemably evil" (or the inverse of "irredeemably good or lawful or chaotic") in Pathfinder. As for how each table handles things like combats in adventures... that's best left to each table of GMs and players to settle on. For our adventures, we have to assume a midline stance to a certain extent... but we do try to include a LOT of background info on named NPCs in our adventures precisely for the reason that if any one of them gets a change of heart in a game, the GM will have some info to build from in making their role in the campaign more significant.I feel like "irredeemably evil" should be reserved to things like mindless undead, fiends, things which become what they are via evil, and things that are fundamentally alien (like aboleth or mindflayers.) The extent to which someone can empathize with a thing, the less they should be treated as "a thing which is, by nature, evil".
There are, after all, no shortage of humans who the PCs can feel justified in killing due to the what those humans are doing rather than what they are.
Emphasis mine.
Alignment is not considered unchangeable in Pathfinder. Full stop.
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Personally, I will continue to treat undead and fiends as a group as irredeemably evil and a direct threat to all “goodly” beings until/unless they demonstrate otherwise. I’m certainly not going to wait and see if this is the one in thousand that is not evil just in case it is and give the other 999 the chance to do their thing. And because it’s a fantasy game that has absolutely zero impact on real life, it does not reflect my attitude towards any race, religion, gender, etc.
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Also I just find it odd that after Hundreads of Ap issues in dozens of Ap's people think this is the ap there suddenly going to have players killing/attacking random people for no real reason.
I mean outside of the 100% up front your totally evil ap and the earlier parts of skull and shackles (Were to be fair the party members have basically been presed into service against there will and the evil one does have reasons it's just that there well evil) I cant think of an Ap that has you just attack people who arent already well known to be evil or dont attack you first.
Because it's NOT no reason. But those reasons should make PCs feel pretty uncomfortable. Let's take an example gleaned from the blurb.
The party catches someone being a cutpurse at this festival. They chase him down and he resists arrest.
Do any of these acts justify the PCs killing that person?
I would hope not but the resolution of that encounter will likely be combat given that this is pathfinder. Combat that has a possible or even likely result of the extrajudicial killing of a man whose crime was petty theft by the legitimate authorities who are good aligned PCs.
This is what I and others are talking about. It doesnt seem like a good idea.
The idea that Good PCs ending up killing the petty cutpurse is the likely result has zero basis.
All tavern brawls I experienced in PF2 did not end up in bloodbaths.
So resorting to lethal force when the GM makes it clear that other options are available is a player's choice and usually a jerk move that puts the whole party in hot waters with the local law.
Truth be told, I have the nagging feeling that AoE will go out of its way to make most non-Evil encounters possible to deal with through non-lethal means.
Which would be very far from the norm in many previous AP fights where giving the benefit of doubt to opponents usually ended up in PCs starting the fight at a clear disadvantage.
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Personally, I will continue to treat undead and fiends as a group as irredeemably evil and a direct threat to all “goodly” beings until/unless they demonstrate otherwise. I’m certainly not going to wait and see if this is the one in thousand that is not evil just in case it is and give the other 999 the chance to do their thing. And because it’s a fantasy game that has absolutely zero impact on real life, it does not reflect my attitude towards any race, religion, gender, etc.
Assuming someone is probably up to something and killing them on sight are different things. The first is reasonable for undead and fiends in Golarion...the second is much less so.
Which is to say 'They're a vampire, we should look into them.' strikes me as reasonable, while 'They're a vampire, let's kill them.' is not reasonable absent evidence of wrongdoing.
Also, to feed back into AoE, for police specifically, even suspects you know with personal certainty are guilty should get a trial, as determining guilt is not your damn job. That's part of being an officer of the law. Sure, vampires are likely to resist arrest and you need specific measures to restrain them...but if you have those things, you should still try to capture them rather than kill them if possible so they can stand trial for their crimes.
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Part of the problem may be that vampires and some of these other creatures fall into a category that doesn't really exist in real life: They're overwhelmingly likely to be evil and dangerous, but not technically guaranteed.
I think that's exactly backwards. There are many categories of people in places who are profiled and treated as being "overwhelmingly likely to be evil and dangerous" despite being perfectly ordinary human beings: Black men in white suburbs, Arab men in western airports, Hispanic children on the left bank of the Rio Grande, and so on. Against these people, any treatment is acceptable, including deprivation of life and liberty on a whim of the state or a private citizen. The category exists in real life, it's just that the naturalistic justification for it is a whole lot weaker in real life than in the imagined world of the Lost Omens Campaign Setting. By strengthening the naturalistic justifications for racial discrimination (meaning "treating people differently based on essentialized quasi-biological but really socially-constructed differences") in its world, the Lost Omens Campaign Setting makes it easier to rationalize naturalistic differences in the real world. We know vampires aren't real. But we also know that we treat people in real life the way many say we ought to treat vampires.
In order to avoid falling into this trap, yes, we ought to apply the presumption of innocence. And not merely as a legal fiction in the context of jury trials, the way we do in real life.
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But in Golarion vampires aren't just people like any other people.
Even if we accept the premise (I don't), we should still treat them as if they were. Because once we start making concessions to the position that we can discriminate based on naturalistic distinctions between peoples, we get into line-drawing territory: which naturalistic distinctions form a legitimate basis for discrimination, and which don't? And in principle, there is nothing standing in the way of all naturalistic distinctions becoming a legitimate basis for discrimination, which we know because we in fact draw these distinctions based, as you say, on nothing but b+%~+&+#.
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I think part of the reason James Jacobs was trying to steer us away from the conversation about the morality of killing vampires in this thread, beyond its potential irrelevance to this AP ( it was just a player mentioned example after all) is that adding the dimension of supernatural power to the conversation of who has rights in a community, what those rights are, and how they get protected, is inherently an exercise that exceeds the scope of real world ethics.
It can be fun, and interesting, and even a valuable learning exercise to imagine ourselves into situations where we consider these things, but the real physical and psychological impact of living in that world is not something that be established as a universal truth.
As I have argued from the beginning, for some players, an AP where the PCs will represent legitimized authority within a community could be a harm causing experience. This could be a result of the adventure writing, but it is likely just as dependent upon the rest of the players and GM and the way they react to the scenario.
This is also possible in every other AP, as RPGs generally do tend to glorify violence AND the personal acquisition of power, and it seems incredibly weird to say that kind of power fantasy is perfectly fine as long as we don’t ever try to apply limits or responsibly to that power that would be determined by political structures that might exist in the game world.
It would be incredibly rude, and even engaging in an act of violence, to force someone to play a game who has had traumatic experiences that could be triggered by being in a scenario where they have to associate so closely with something that has caused them harm in the past. But even for people who have had traumatic experiences, it can be just as harmful to have others attempt to decide for them whether playing such a game would be more traumatic or possibly cathartic. Individual players will need to decide that for themselves and with their tables.
How well AoE will exist as an AP that allows for players to have positive or negative experiences with it is something I am very interested in, but feels premature to decide. As someone with a traumatic history with the police and the FBI, I am very interested in seeing how this is handled.
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I think we should all take a deep breath and a step back and give Paizo the benefit of the doubt for now. In four weeks, the first adventure will be out to subscribers, and then we can argue based on what's really in the book and not what every one is projecting onto it.
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It's partially because, as is demonstrated in the canonical redeemed succubus arc, if you stop being Evil you lose the demon (and, in PF2, presumably fiend) traits pretty rapidly. The same for an Angel becoming Evil...basically all Angels are Good because by becoming Evil they cease to be an Angel.
Well yes, that is exactly right. When a demon stops feeling and acting like one, they cease to be a demon. It does not contradict a view that all demons are evil.
So while I admit to having been too vehement about zero possibility for redemption of individual supernatural evil beings, the broader point of them inherently drawn towards evil and as such not subject to being on equal starting ground in the eyes of the law as free-willed humanoids still stands.The Golarion model of free will, and the historical usage of it in D&D prior to Pathfinder <...> should not be mistaken for verisimilitude
That is exactly my point - it is not realistic or scientific and was never claiming to be such and should not in any way be used to guide or benchmark real-world actions. It's like the Satanic Panic all over again, only Policing Panic this time.
And considering some of the misuses to which the rhetoric of free will is applied in RL (to wit, bad actors claiming people are "responsible" for circumstances in which they are systemically oppressed by asserting that they have the free choice to do otherwise) I would prefer if we were to avoid this line of argument for assessing moral status.
Wait, how does this apply here? One does not become a demon or undead out of necessity or because Pharasma is racist.
I guess that raises the question of what happens to the campaign if the player do use lethal force when they shouldn't have.Excellent question and I hope it gets addressed in the blog and/or player's guide. I think this would be the one campaign where all players will have to consent to what is essentially a champion's code, only instead of getting supernatural powers for following it, they will get legal powers. And if they fall, it's game over.
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The idea that Good PCs ending up killing the petty cutpurse is the likely result has zero basis.All tavern brawls I experienced in PF2 did not end up in bloodbaths.
So resorting to lethal force when the GM makes it clear that other options are available is a player's choice and usually a jerk move that puts the whole party in hot waters with the local law.
Truth be told, I have the nagging feeling that AoE will go out of its way to make most non-Evil encounters possible to deal with through non-lethal means.
I guess that raises the question of what happens to the campaign if the player do use lethal force when they shouldn't have.
If they're kicked off the force or arrested does that mean the GMs out the cost of all of these books?
Is that going to incline people to let stuff slide (so to speak)?
Some might of course, but for many when you run you an AP you have a social contract between the party and GM, in that this is what the story is going to be.
The players ignoring the story and other party members to play rabid cops is no different than showing up to play Wrath of the Righteous with Antipaladins or Hellknights in Council of Thieves or a Hobgoblin slaver in Ironfang Invasion.
So make sure everyone is on level with the expectations of what the story will entail and ask, or find a different game. Agents of Edgewatch is not unique in having to worry about disruptive players derailing the story, and I fully expect there to be sidebars or call outs in the adventure that amount to “hey, don’t do this”.
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not what every one is projecting onto it.
This thread is better than a Rorschach test for getting people to display all their real-world anxieties.
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But in Golarion vampires aren't just people like any other people.Even if we accept the premise (I don't), we should still treat them as if they were.
Expect table variation. I do not apply 21st century real life morality to a <select your period> fantasy game with fiends, undead, fireballs, and actual gods all interacting with us on a daily basis. IMO it is ludicrous, but everyone plays the game in whatever style makes them happy and therefore it is not BadWrongFun.
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Expect table variation. I do not apply 21st century real life morality to a <select your period> fantasy game.
Indeed, I generally expect people in a fictional fantasy world to be more culturally and socially advanced than we are on average.
Because it's fiction, and it works the way the people writing it want it to work.