Well the undead in Blood Lords #1 at least are
messing with the food supply
which also seems like it might offend Urgathoa!
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This is where mechanics meet how religions work in reality. Urgathoa is essentially the deity in Geb, so strict adherence to that edict would be extremely impractical. State entities in particular still have to act and criminals exist. While comparatively peaceful, Geb is a LE society. Dissenters and traitors don't exactly get told off there, if you catch my drift.
I think a reasonable middle ground would be to say that you aren't allowed to destroy undead without a very good reason - they tried to bite your face off or planned an insurrection that threatens undead society. Stuff like that.
Apart from that, keep in mind that an evil champion's class features tend to work with negative energy, which might not be an ideal damage type in the AP.
There are lots of ways to build to control undead as well, and controlling mindless undead so as to not have to destroy them would work pretty well in this campaign.
Intelligent undead actively causing problems with the revery of the rest would probably fall within, "making an incision to remove a tumor."
For fighting unintelligent undead, you can also ask the GM if it's okay to have your attacks represent "incapacitating blows that would be deadly to living creatures"- things like cutting the legs off a zombie. Part of the issue is the game not really having many rules for the sorts of compromises an Urgathoan could make.
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It's also only the destruction that's the problem... and anathema are personal. If someone else gets the killing blow, it's not an issue.
If you're playing a heal/buff/control cleric (with a party full of negative healing characters) then there's no reason that you personally should ever have to be downing any of them.
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Apart from that, keep in mind that an evil champion's class features tend to work with negative energy, which might not be an ideal damage type in the AP.
This aspect in particular really disappoints me. I thought Blood Lords would finally be an opportunity to make use of those evil champion options, but all their abilities that deal negative or evil damage both seem extremely unhelpful. Now I don’t really know where else I’d be able to try out an evil champion.
Now I don’t really know where else I’d be able to try out an evil champion.
You can sometimes fit in a more moderate Tyrant (LE can work well in many parties), the rest are going to struggle due to their cause code alone, though. The problem is often more that you don't really have much to be evil about - making the RP side of things kinda meh - or that the tone clashes make it undesirable.
The APs released so far in 2e are not ideal, but there are a few. Fists of the Ruby Phoenix really doesn't care about alignment at all and Abomination Vault doesn't seem to care a lot either. Maybe Age of Ashes, but that is heavily dependent of interpretation similarly to this current thread. No idea about Extinction Curse.
The rest just straight-up don't work well. 2e currently lacks a lot of traditional "adventurers go to adventure land and defeat the big bad" APs - which have more leniency for evil PCs - and focuses more on heavily on urbanized areas.
Actually, both the Tyrant and Desecrator should still work well in Bloodlords. Tyrant will have some issues early on - I'm pretty sure book 1 will be mindless central - but apart from that, you are only losing some minor extra damage. And I highly doubt all creatures in the AP will be undead, so not all is lost on that front either.
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Looking at it now, I suppose they do have a lot of options that don’t just rely on dealing evil damage, so I might be underestimating their usefulness!
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Evil Champions can also heal undead with Touch of Corruption, something to keep in mind for all your Gebbite adventurers.
EDIT: Shouldn't this be in the Blood Lords forum?
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Something I didn't see anyone mention here is that a Champions tenants are purposefully in order.
Alignment>Cause>Deity
If your Alignment or cause would require you to kill an undead it would supercede your deities anathema. Edit:Specifically if you were a CE antipaladin of Urgathoa your Cause requiring you to "destroy that which stands in your way." gives you an easy pass to destroy any hostile undead.
I haven't read through my issue of Blood lords yet so I can't say it would be a bad choice but am leaning towrds it might be. A Cleric on the other hand only has their deities tenants so it would be a harder case. That said I don't think any deity begrudges their followers defending themselves if needed. So if you had to kill an undead to save yourself you are probably fine, but if undead are the primary enemy you should probably stick to support for those fights and as a cleric be glad that you don't have a tenant that says you can't knowingly cause harm by inaction.
On the cleric angle it might be interesting to play it how a Sarenraite would, where you offer any intelligent undead the choice of surrender and if they ever cry mercy you will heal them, but if they refuse and insist on trying to kill you they are fair game to your allies at the very least.
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I have been running an undead game for a year now (kingmaker but with characters that are all dhampir and run a necromantic empire )
One of them is a cleric of Urgathoa and if you know kingmaker you know that there's undead in there (vordakai being the main one).
How I've presented it to my player is that... They don't know. Gods don't negotiate and deal with their followers, especially not goddesses like Urgathoa. You can get a phylactery of faithfulness to know when you'd violate anathema though !
That being said, Urgathoa is not the most merciful or understanding of deities, so I feel like players having "a logical and reasonable" reason as to why they're killing an undead would be lost on her. It doesn't matter to her, you devote yourself to her and in exchange she grants you power. Part of that devotion is the tenant that you will put undead life above all else's no matter the cost.
That being said, as mentionned above, if you're not DIRECTLY killing the undead but enhancing someone who is, well, Urgathoa also strikes me as a deity who enjoys a good loophole that craddles the line.
And if you're a GM and you think your players are playing loosey goosey with the Anathema, I'd like to remind you that Urgathoa's minor curse is HILARIOUS!
"You must overindulge or partake in forbidden feasts before you find yourself even remotely sated. You need to eat 20 times as much food as normal to avoid starvation, though you always feel hungry regardless of how much you eat. If you dine on the flesh and blood of sapient creatures, you need to eat only the normal amount of such meals and your hunger abates."
This would be my starting point to punish an anathema violator.
PS: cleric of anathema in Geb can be very potent because of anthemic reprisal. If everyone in your party is an undead, anyone attacking your party is committing anathema against your faith ;-)
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I have been running an undead game for a year now (kingmaker but with characters that are all dhampir and run a necromantic empire )
One of them is a cleric of Urgathoa and if you know kingmaker you know that there's undead in there (vordakai being the main one).
How I've presented it to my player is that... They don't know. Gods don't negotiate and deal with their followers, especially not goddesses like Urgathoa. You can get a phylactery of faithfulness to know when you'd violate anathema though !
That being said, Urgathoa is not the most merciful or understanding of deities, so I feel like players having "a logical and reasonable" reason as to why they're killing an undead would be lost on her. It doesn't matter to her, you devote yourself to her and in exchange she grants you power. Part of that devotion is the tenant that you will put undead life above all else's no matter the cost.
That being said, as mentionned above, if you're not DIRECTLY killing the undead but enhancing someone who is, well, Urgathoa also strikes me as a deity who enjoys a good loophole that craddles the line.
And if you're a GM and you think your players are playing loosey goosey with the Anathema, I'd like to remind you that Urgathoa's minor curse is HILARIOUS!
"You must overindulge or partake in forbidden feasts before you find yourself even remotely sated. You need to eat 20 times as much food as normal to avoid starvation, though you always feel hungry regardless of how much you eat. If you dine on the flesh and blood of sapient creatures, you need to eat only the normal amount of such meals and your hunger abates."
This would be my starting point to punish an anathema violator.
PS: cleric of anathema in Geb can be very potent because of anthemic reprisal. If everyone in your party is an undead, anyone attacking your party is committing anathema against your faith ;-)
I would not ask for the phylactery of faithfulness.
The PCs have been indoctrinated in their deity's faith for years. They know their tenets inside out, and what would displease their deity, even if the players don't.
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I see Urgathoa's Anathema to be the mirror of Pharasma's Edict to destroy Undead- it's an action based entirely on the fact that they are Undead, and nothing else. Pharasma is saying if something is Undead then that is a good enough reason to destroy it. Urgathoa is saying if something is Undead that isn't a justification for destroying it. If they get in your way or otherwise piss you off then Urgathoa doesn't really care if you destroy them, as long as there's a reason beyond them being Undead.
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I have been running an undead game for a year now (kingmaker but with characters that are all dhampir and run a necromantic empire )
One of them is a cleric of Urgathoa and if you know kingmaker you know that there's undead in there (vordakai being the main one).
How I've presented it to my player is that... They don't know. Gods don't negotiate and deal with their followers, especially not goddesses like Urgathoa. You can get a phylactery of faithfulness to know when you'd violate anathema though !
That being said, Urgathoa is not the most merciful or understanding of deities, so I feel like players having "a logical and reasonable" reason as to why they're killing an undead would be lost on her. It doesn't matter to her, you devote yourself to her and in exchange she grants you power. Part of that devotion is the tenant that you will put undead life above all else's no matter the cost.
That being said, as mentionned above, if you're not DIRECTLY killing the undead but enhancing someone who is, well, Urgathoa also strikes me as a deity who enjoys a good loophole that craddles the line.
And if you're a GM and you think your players are playing loosey goosey with the Anathema, I'd like to remind you that Urgathoa's minor curse is HILARIOUS!
"You must overindulge or partake in forbidden feasts before you find yourself even remotely sated. You need to eat 20 times as much food as normal to avoid starvation, though you always feel hungry regardless of how much you eat. If you dine on the flesh and blood of sapient creatures, you need to eat only the normal amount of such meals and your hunger abates."
This would be my starting point to punish an anathema violator.
PS: cleric of anathema in Geb can be very potent because of anthemic reprisal. If everyone in your party is an undead, anyone attacking your party is committing anathema against your faith ;-)
I would not ask for the phylactery of faithfulness.
The PCs have been indoctrinated in...
**Gestures wildly at the entirety of catholic philosophy and ethics**
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I'd see it similar to a good religions tenets against killing. It's OK to destroy undead in self defense, or to otherwise further the creation of unlife in the world and the cause of Urgathoa. If some cleric of Norgrubber created a bunch of undead and had them attack a community of Urgathoa worshipping gouls, Urgathoa would be cool with destroying those tools of Norgrubber.
It could also be that Urgathoa wants just to make sure that their clerics are a negative force in the cosmos, weighing things away from life and towards undeath. As long as the cleric creates or saves more undead beings than they destroy, they are OK.
But then, there are also probably Urgathoa fundamentalist fanatics that are very strict. A pragmatic blood lord would use them, but not really buy into their strict, literalist interpretation of Urgathoa's anathema.
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Geb and Tar-Baphon seem to both get along with Urgathoa well enough, and I am *certain* both of them have killed plenty of their own undead underlings across the ages.
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I kinda agree with Alastar in that Clerics of Urgathoa should not count on logical justifications so much as personally satisfying justifications that can be gotten away with, without questioning. The Anathema for evil gods should be waived around for the power and prestige of Urgathoa and not really for some noble cause. The curse for her sounds like something clerics of Urgathoa might actively be tempted to want to experience, and possibly atone for later, rather than flatly avoided.
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Geb and Tar-Baphon seem to both get along with Urgathoa well enough, and I am *certain* both of them have killed plenty of their own undead underlings across the ages.
Sure... but Anathema isn't always about "I hate when people do this". It can also be a matter of holding certain things sacred. Like, for Urgathoa, she wants her followers to hold undead as sacred and, accordingly, to not destroy them. Perhaps they take sacred oaths as they achieve their station that call on them to not destroy the undead, and it would be breaking those oaths. The idea that religious figures might be held to standards that the lay folk are not is not new... or that there might be a religious group who followed certain strictures because they were bid do so without feeling that everyone else must as well.
As a shining example, I'll note Besmara, who calls on her people to never forsake piracy or settle on land. You can't really have a thriving pirate economy without non-pirates out there producing goods and then trying to transport them over water. It's not that she hates everyone who isn't a pirate - she just asks it of her own followers.
...and yes, there's nothing in her anathema that demands that you *start* piracy, but her edicts lay it out pretty clearly, taken as a whole.
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Worth considering that Urgathoa also forbids sacrificing your life. Clearly she believes that preserving your life at all costs is equally important to respecting the sanctity of undeath. On the one hand, the perfect scenario in her edicts is that both you and the undead continue to exist in some form without conflict. In many cases, especially since Urgathoans and undead tend to be evil, ambitious, or both, this perfect state will not always be possible.
If the ideal is a diplomatic solution founded on mutual subservience to Urgathoa, or respect for the pursuit of eternal life, the first failure state which would still please her, I think, would be the stronger of the two to subject the other to their will. If you can bring the undead to its knees and compel it to join you, you can avoid destroying a sacred unlife while continuing your vision. Likewise, if the undead brings you to your knees, you have the choice of fleeing or offering yourself as a servant to the undead. Especially considering how many undead can create spawn, Urgathoa strikes me as perfectly happy with her weaker servants becoming servants to powerful undead unless those undead specifically blaspheme her in some way.
Now if it's not possible to convince the undead to back down (mindless, for example) or you can't manage a way to control it with your power, and your failure to eliminate the threat it poses is a risk to your life, I think it is a valid failure state to destroy the undead so that you may continue to do the work of bringing more undead into the world. It seems like something of a numbers game. If you kill more undead than you bring into the world, or if the undead you kill are powerful agents of Urgathoa and you are less effective at serving her will, she will be displeased. If you are a more faithful, more effective, and more prolific servant, then the ones you killed either should have bowed to your strength or not opposed you in the first place.
This is where mechanics meet how religions work in reality. Urgathoa is essentially the deity in Geb, so strict adherence to that edict would be extremely impractical. State entities in particular still have to act and criminals exist. While comparatively peaceful, Geb is a LE society. Dissenters and traitors don't exactly get told off there, if you catch my drift.
I think a reasonable middle ground would be to say that you aren't allowed to destroy undead without a very good reason - they tried to bite your face off or planned an insurrection that threatens undead society. Stuff like that.
Apart from that, keep in mind that an evil champion's class features tend to work with negative energy, which might not be an ideal damage type in the AP.
unless this is a lore mistep but on the lich path in the WotR video game
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The video game is not canon, Paizo books are.
I also thought the geb vs whispering way schism was weird
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Actually - Gebbites and the Whispering Way hating each other makes a lot of sense to me.
Gebbites believe that undead are superior to living being - but they also allow living beings to exist and in fact encourage a state of coexistence. Geb trades with kingdoms of the living, Geb has living citizens, some of which even have meaningful rights.
On the other hand, the Whispering Way believe that all living things must be turned to undead, that life itself must be eradicated in favor of universal undeath. The living are the enemy to their cause, or at best tools to be expended. The only worthwhile living creatures are those that actively seek to become undead.
So you have Gebbites thinking that the Whispering Way are dangerous fanatics who will undermine peaceful coexistence and possibly trigger the living to go on crusades against the undead, and then you have the Whispering Way thinking that the Gebbites are mewling, weak-faithed cowards making accords and compromises with the living instead of destroying them.
Yeah, I can totally see those two groups hating each other.
Honestly, the idea that "you're both undead, shouldn't you get along?" strikes me as very out of touch with how these things often shake out in the real world, if you think about it.
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Touché!