Incorrect statement on tenets on Champion description

[hyphz]

Champion, P106:

Quote:

For instance, as a paladin, if an evil king asked you if you’re hiding refugees so he could execute them, you could lie to him, since the tenet against lying is less important than preventing harm to innocents.

This turns out not to be true, though. While the Paladin tenet "you must act with honor.." is the third most important, the general tenet "Do not perform acts that are anathema.." is the single most important one.

A Lawful Good champion must follow Erastil, Iomedae, or Torag, all of whom have anathema against telling lies in some form (although Iomedae calls this "dishonour yourself")

So in fact, a Paladin who lies about hiding refugees is not violating the Paladin code, but they are violating the first tenet of Good by performing Anathema to their deity, which is certainly not OK.

(This has some other weird effects as well, such as followers of Cayden Cailean technically being required to prioritise not wasting alcohol over preventing harm to innocents!)

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

hyphz wrote:

A Lawful Good champion must follow Erastil, Iomedae, or Torag,

This is not so. A champion's alignment must match their cause exactly, but not their god's---it only has to be one allowed by their god.

For instance, Shelyn (NG) allows LG followers, so she can have paladins. I don't believe she has any special anathema about lying.

Also, there are other LG deities than those three---those are just the only three in the "core pantheon" of particularly well-known gods in the Inner Sea region.

[PossibleCabbage]

Really, a deity's anathema should have been on the bottom of the Champion tenets tier instead of the top anyway.

[Cordell Kintner]

You neglected the line right before that one in your quote:

Quote:

If a situation places two tenets in conflict, you aren’t in a no-win situation; instead, follow the more important tenet.

Erestil has the anathema of "choose yourself over your community", which means you could tell lies to protect your community.

Iomedae has the anathema of "abandon a companion in need" before dishonoring yourself, meaning lying would be fine if it meant saving an ally.

For Torag though, I could see the paladin saying to that king "Yea I have the refugees hidden and will never tell you where, evil scum!"

In the end it's all up to the GM whether or not your actions conflict with your code. Different Champions will act completely differently, even if they have the same alignment.

[PossibleCabbage]

If we're in a situation that puts a deity's anathema in conflict with each other, it's incumbent on the GM to just make sure the character is making a good faith effort to "to the right thing" however they have puzzled that out.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

I don't think the order a deity's anathema are listed in is priority order the way the tenets are. Does Cayden Cailean really care about wasting alcohol more than owning slaves?

If you can figure out the deity's priorities, then yeah, take higher over lower and you're good to go.

P.S. Damn but it would be embarassing for a champion of CC to lose their powers for wasting alcohol....

[The Raven Black]

No using alcohol to start / spread a fire then.

[PossibleCabbage]

The Raven Black wrote:

No using alcohol to start / spread a fire then.

I would assume that's not a waste provided you're doing it for a valid reason.

[Ravingdork]

I always kind of figured deity anathema came after the core values anathema.

[pauljathome]

Excellent, I was SO missing "does the paladin fall" discussions. I thought Paizo had managed to make it quite clear that these gotcha anathema interpretations were a thing of the past but fortunately somebody has mananged to rules lawyer their way around the words.

Yay!!!

[DomHeroEllis]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

I don't think the order a deity's anathema are listed in is priority order the way the tenets are. Does Cayden Cailean really care about wasting alcohol more than owning slaves?

If you can figure out the deity's priorities, then yeah, take higher over lower and you're good to go.

P.S. Damn but it would be embarassing for a champion of CC to lose their powers for wasting alcohol....

I'm sure Cayden will give them a hall pass for that one, unless the GM is playing him as a massive jerk.

[PossibleCabbage]

Like gotcha games trying to get the paladin to fall should be answerable with legalistic "this is not technically a lie" stuff.

Like:
"Tell us where the refugees are hidden so we can torture them to death, we know you can't lie."

"Why on earth would I tell you that, even if I did know?"

"Because we're asking you?"

[Thomas5251212]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Like gotcha games trying to get the paladin to fall should be answerable with legalistic "this is not technically a lie" stuff.

Like:
"Tell us where the refugees are hidden so we can torture them to death, we know you can't lie."

"Why on earth would I tell you that, even if I did know?"

"Because we're asking you?"

"That in no way requires me to answer."

[Deadmanwalking]

hyphz wrote:

A Lawful Good champion must follow Erastil, Iomedae, or Torag, all of whom have anathema against telling lies in some form (although Iomedae calls this "dishonour yourself")

I'm pretty sure almost every word of this is false (with only references to Erastil and Torag having anathema against lying being correct).

Firstly, as others have mentioned, many NG and some LN deities can have Paladins as well, secondly those aren't the only LG deities (there are a total of around 20 statted LG deities in PF2 already, and that number is only gonna increase), and thirdly I'd call someone who considers 'lying to save innocent lives' to fall under 'dishonour yourself' to be deeply misguided at best. It's certainly a lie, but a dishonor? No.

Now, heading back to the topic of deity anathema in general, I must agree that giving them priority over the other tenets results in some sincere weirdness sometimes, but a reasonable GM can usually work with it. Unreasonable GMs will be more of a problem...but unreasonable GMs tend to cause problems anyway, even if nobody is playing a Champion at all.

[Perpdepog]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Like gotcha games trying to get the paladin to fall should be answerable with legalistic "this is not technically a lie" stuff.

Like:
"Tell us where the refugees are hidden so we can torture them to death, we know you can't lie."

"Why on earth would I tell you that, even if I did know?"

"Because we're asking you?"

"You're asking me what, again?"

"Where the refugees are."

"Which refugees? There are a lot of them around, you know."

"... The ones you're hiding!"

"I'm hiding refugees?"

"YES!"

"Great! Do you know where they are?"

*Screaming*

And, I've just discovered the next champion I'm playing. :)