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Pathfinder is rich is gods, demigods, Eldest, demon lords, Horsemen, mythic beings, and all sorts of other divinities who meddle in mortal lives and compel the souls of their faithful... so many so, in fact, that it can be a bit overwhelming! Amid the endless ranks of the holy and the profane, I want to know - who's the best of the bunch?
Whether you love what they stand for or adore the villains in their service, once played their most pious Cleric or their most devoted Inquisitor, tell me all about the god of your choice!
By alignment, the deities I think I have the best handle on, and so are the ones I'm going to be quickest to reach for as a GM are:
LG: Torag
NG: Sarenrae, though when Shelyn fits she really fits.
CG: Milani
LN: Erecura
TN: Ng, though I'm good with Pharasma it's just she's not someone you want to overuse.
CN: The Lantern King
LE: Achaekek
NE: The Green Mother as an an antagonistic force/obstacle, but Arazni as a sympathetic force.
CE: Lamashtu
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I wouldn't say I like him, but I have a healthy respect for Nethys. In a bustling celestial bureaucracy of gods jockeying for influence on the material plane and the devotion or obedience of the people who live there, Nethys has the guts to openly say "I honestly couldn't care less." He doesn't care who you are, he doesn't care why you follow his teachings and listen to his clergy, and certainly won't directly intervene in your life. He doesn't answer prayers or send miracles. But at least he's open about that. He only cares that you have and use magic, and pursue its study. What you use it for is entirely up to you, and he lets mortals sort out their own messes (or not as the case may be).
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The deity I constantly come back to is Casandalee, who's a terrible fit for the vast majority of campaigns and corners of the setting, but was a big part of me falling in love with Golarion. A fantasy world where you can have an ex-android goddess of synthetic life? There's just so much to like with the genre weirdness she invokes, and as a big Android fangirl, I'm so glad they essentially have a patron goddess now. Her teal lipstick is gorgeous, too.
Her Champion options don't make a ton of sense, and I'm just not a fan of the Cleric class, so the only Casandalee devotee I really feel I can build right now is a Lore Oracle. She's a major piece of me wanting a 2e Inquisitor-esque class so badly.
I also have a lot of love in my heart for Arazni, who bears no disrespect but empowers the abused and victimized to stand for themselves. She rocks - even before having the awesome focus on the unwillingly undead! I can't wait to see her story continue; it feels so unfinished at present, and I'm eager for what comes next.
By alignment, the deities I think I have the best handle on, and so are the ones I'm going to be quickest to reach for as a GM are:
LG: Torag
I'd love a little bit of your perspective on Torag, if that's alright to ask! I've spoken before about how I've struggled to see him as a Good deity, between his harsher demands and his presence among the Godclaw, so him being the LG deity you reach for (before someone like Iomedae, or Erastil, or even Tanagaar) is a surprise. I'd love some help understanding the father of the dwarves!
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I fully confess I've been a sucker for Iomedae pretty much as soon as I got into Pathfinder. As my username suggests, I tend to gravitate towards the most LG, paladin-like deities in a setting, which started with Heironeous in 3rd Edition D&D, followed by Tyr and Torm in Forgotten Realms, The Silver Flame in Eberron, and Bahamut in 4e.
One of my most treasured D&D things is an old battered copy of Dragon Magazine, Issue #354, which had an article detailing Heironeous. It was at my local library and I'd check it out many times, before the library was clearing out their magazine section to make way for new ones, at which point I purchased it (along with all the other issues of Dragon and Dungeon they had), and it's been on my shelf ever since.
When Pathfinder showed up on my radar, I immediately made a beeline for the section on the setting's pantheon (I do that for every campaign setting, honestly, I may be an atheist but I always find RPG religions compelling.) and Iomedae's symbol was the first thing that drew my eye. The following text had everything I could have wanted: honor, justice and chivalry, with swords as the favored weapon, and her being a former mortal like Torm was intriguing! The first Pathfinder Adventure Path book I ever bought was The Sixfold Trial, book 2 of Council of Thieves, since its backmatter had an article on Iomedae much like the Heironeous article I adored so much, and from there I got sucked in to Pathfinder completely.
To this day, Iomedae has been the easiest deity to write on that line of the character sheet for me. The only PC I've ever completed a Pathfinder AP with, in Iron Gods, was Fireday the android Warpriest of Iomedae, a knight-in-shining-power-armor eager to bring justice to Numeria and end the evil of the Technic League! And I love how she's grown and evolved in Starfinder to become a patron of humanity and all of Lost Golarion's children, from orcs and halflings to drow and space goblins (plus, she's got a cool robot arm now!) while still retaining the core of who she is as a tireless force for justice who knows to learn from her mistakes.
She may not be the most visually striking deity compared to the solar majesty of Sarenrae or the imposing brutality of Gorum, but that humility even as a deity is endearing and has a dignity all its own. She hasn't forgotten where she came from and why she does what she does. It's all for the protection and hapiness of Golarion and its people, people like she used to be...
Arazni is one I've really come to appreciate and I'd love to see more of her story, but I also don't know if I could play a proper cleric of Arazni. I think I'd rather like to play the Iomedae half of a Iomedae/Arazni buddy adventure.
I would eat this up, especially the Arazni half! Those two definitely need to hash out the aftershocks of their very different relationships with Aroden, but I don’t know how to get that “on-screen.”
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I have mostly been a GM in Golarion-based games. Thus, I judge Golarion deities by how fun they are to roleplay as the GM.
My Rise of the Runelords party consisted mostly of Desna worshippers, since that adventure path starts at a Swallowtail Butterfly Festival in honor of Desna. When I retired my gnome ranger/monk, who worshipped Desna despite his Lawful Good alignment, to take over as a GM from my sick wife, my wife created an 8th-level lyrakien bard who was on vacation from her job as a messenger of Desna. We wanted a built-in excuse why my wife's character might suddenly disappear whenever my wife was off for medical care: the lyrakien would have been called away to deliver a message from Desna to another god. Besides, the so-called vacation was really undercover work to keep the heroes on track to save Varisia. I roleplayed Desna as friendly but elusive. She like to help people behind the scenes.
My Iron Gods campaign put the gods into higher gear. The final villain in that adventure path is the evil intelligent computer Unity. It had access to divine power and planned to ascend to godhood. Several technolgy-loving party members worshipped Brigh, and the party had occasional divine aid through a lyrakien Leadership cohort and an Arbiter familiar. When the party reached 15th level, three gods talked to them. Neutral Brigh, Lawful Neutral Alseta, and Chaotic Good Desna were teamed up to monitor Unity and make sure that it would ascended to godhood only if it could remain sane. They did not want to have to deal with a mad god, and Unity had been crazy for a few centuries before rescue from isolation by the android Casandalee.
I developed a fondness for those three gods: Desna, Alseta, and Brigh. During the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest, my wife made a goblin paladin of Aleta, and Alseta gained an agenda of transitioning uncivilized goblins to civilized people if they wanted.
Casandalee would also be on the list of favorite gods to roleplay, but in my Iron Gods campaign, instead of ascending to godhood in place of Unity, Casandalee chose to return to life as an android. The untapped divine power left behind might fall into the hands of Gold-Flame Honeysuckle Vine, the leshy sorcerer in my Ironfang Invasion campaign, who has declared an ambition to become the god of familiars. If she succeeds, I will let her be the god of synthetic, bio-engineered, and magically-altered life.
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This is a delightful thread! Thank you! Deities are one of my favorite parts of this game—more so than the setting itself, since so many of them are direct exports from my homebrew setting that I started working on back in the late '80s. As a result, I've been living with many of them in my head for a lot longer than most other parts of Pathfinder and Starfinder, and it's always a blast hearing about how they've enriched other folks' games! So... thank you for sharing! :-)
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This is a delightful thread! Thank you! Deities are one of my favorite parts of this game—more so than the setting itself, since so many of them are direct exports from my homebrew setting that I started working on back in the late '80s. As a result, I've been living with many of them in my head for a lot longer than most other parts of Pathfinder and Starfinder, and it's always a blast hearing about how they've enriched other folks' games! So... thank you for sharing! :-)
I'm sure it's a bit like asking to choose a favorite child, but is there a Pathfinder deity you especially love?
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I'd love a little bit of your perspective on Torag, if that's alright to ask! I've spoken before about how I've struggled to see him as a Good deity, between his harsher demands and his presence among the Godclaw, so him being the LG deity you reach for (before someone like Iomedae, or Erastil, or even Tanagaar) is a surprise. I'd love some help understanding the father of the dwarves!By alignment, the deities I think I have the best handle on, and so are the ones I'm going to be quickest to reach for as a GM are:
LG: Torag
So the first thing to understand about Torag is that he's not good because of his demands and edicts, but "Torag is Good" is the lens through which you view everything he says and does. The sine qua non of Torag is that he is a patriarch- he's literally the father of the dwarves, and though a lot of bad things can be associated with "dadliness" Torag is decidedly not the worst version of any of those things.
So think of Torag like a good sitcom dad (e.g. Bob Belcher) where his various personal failings are tempered by the fact that deep down he's a good person who wants what's best for everybody in his care. The reason Torag works so much better for me as a "Family Man" than Erastil is that Torag is surrounded by his entire family, all of whom are characters we know something about. So you can bounce Torag off of his Wife, children, siblings, etc. who are all characters who fundamentally want the same sorts of things (peace, security, happiness, productivity) but who disagree about how best to get about them. So there's a certain notion of "Torag is being too harsh" that is addressed by "Folgrit and Bolka are literally telling him this." I think a good part of why I gravitate to Torag is the he's surrounded by people he respects that quite regularly tell him he's wrong, but in an caring and affectionate way.
The tension he has with his entire family also lets you cast Torag as "too stern" and "too harsh" depending on the needs of the story, since his sister and brother are for sure going to argue for the less permissive perspective. So one of the reasons I gravitate to Torag is that there's a lot of different ways I can use him. He can be an ally, an obstacle, a moderating force, an intensifying force, etc. I can use him to tell stories about Noblesse Oblige and the harms of paternalism.
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This is a delightful thread! Thank you! Deities are one of my favorite parts of this game—more so than the setting itself, since so many of them are direct exports from my homebrew setting that I started working on back in the late '80s. As a result, I've been living with many of them in my head for a lot longer than most other parts of Pathfinder and Starfinder, and it's always a blast hearing about how they've enriched other folks' games! So... thank you for sharing! :-)I'm sure it's a bit like asking to choose a favorite child, but is there a Pathfinder deity you especially love?
Desna. Which is why she got the first deity write-up, back in the second volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path.
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Arazni is one I've really come to appreciate and I'd love to see more of her story, but I also don't know if I could play a proper cleric of Arazni. I think I'd rather like to play the Iomedae half of a Iomedae/Arazni buddy adventure.I would eat this up, especially the Arazni half! Those two definitely need to hash out the aftershocks of their very different relationships with Aroden, but I don’t know how to get that “on-screen.”This might just be an opportunity for me to mash just about every thing I like into one adventure, but an Arazni cleric hiring some adventurers to pull a heist on Abrogail Thrune to steal Iomedae's sword back, because the Iomedaens won't do it.
Why does Arazni want that sword? Well, she can't just ask Iomedae to chat.
Ohhhhhhhhhh my god. I’m sold. I’m completely in on this.
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I like all of the core gods and some of the others present in the Gods & Magic. But I'm drawn to Shenlyn and Zon-Kuthon. I have somewhat soft spot to LE entities. Zon-Kuthon was something different from your typical LE god and when I started to read about the history of the two, I got several ideas for adventures, short stories and such for one god's follower or the other. So whenever there's new Lost Omens book I go through what followers of Zon-Kuthon and Shenlyn got.
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I like all of the core gods and some of the others present in the Gods & Magic. But I'm drawn to Shenlyn and Zon-Kuthon. I have somewhat soft spot to LE entities. Zon-Kuthon was something different from your typical LE god and when I started to read about the history of the two, I got several ideas for adventures, short stories and such for one god's follower or the other. So whenever there's new Lost Omens book I go through what followers of Zon-Kuthon and Shenlyn got.
ZK is great. I can’t safely use him or the velstracs at my table, but everything about him, Nidal, and all his sad history with Shelyn is peak uniquely Golarion stuff. I’m so fascinated by their father being a spirit wolf, as someone who wants more spirits and Shamans in the setting.
I’d love for a high-level story to touch on the lost piece of Dou-Bral that must be out in the cosmos somewhere. Maybe it’s best saved for 2e Mythic?
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I don't typically play religious characters, but I do have a few deities that I like.
If I had to pick a number one favorite, it'd probably be Kazutal, though very closely followed by Tsukiyo.
I also like pretty much any deity that has an edict/anathema of help/do not harm children. So deities such as Andoletta, Chamidu, and Mother Vulture definitely get a thumbs up from me.
Nalinivati and The Lost Prince are my favorite neutral deities.
I intentionally avoid evil deities regardless of how much I may or may not like them, but I do have a certain appreciation for Moloch, as he is noted as being one of the few deities to reliably answer prayers in an active way. I was really hoping he'd be like Dispater in being an archdevil who allows LN followers.
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Tales of evil gods reminds me of how Lamashtu, Mother of Monsters, has fit into my campaigns.
She showed up in Rise of the Runelords as a patron of evil clerics. Lamashtu served well as a god of angry people who wanted to become monstrous and watch the world burn. That campaign also had Lamia and Lamia Matriarchs in significant roles, and about a quarter of them served Lamashtu. Most of the lamia were more power hungry than pious, but cleric levels were an easy way to power.
Lamashtu was willing to give away power cheaply in hopes of furthering her agenda to make the world monstrous. People seeking revenge against the status quo flocked to her in secret.
Yet in my Ironfang Invasion campaign, followers of Lamashtu have been relatable. Sergeant Repral, overseer of the War Beast Camp for the Ironfang Legion, is a hobgoblin of the Hunter class in Assault on Longshadow. In converting her to Pathfinder 2nd Edition, hunter was not available. Rather than converting her to a PF2 ranger, I made her a PF2 warpriest cleric of Lamashtu. She was tending the monster beasts of the Ironfang Legion because she loved monsters. I kept her origin story that Repral had grown up in the Darklands deep below Molthune. I added that her hobgoblin parents had fled the Goblinblood War in Isger and died in the Darklands, so Repral had been raised by Lamashtu-worshipping goblins who hoped that she would grow up as a big (compared to them) strong warrior. But goblins have full strength despite their smallness, so the tribe was disappointed in Repral until Lamashtu took mercy and gifted her with a constrictor snake animal companion.
The party let Repral live, because she was against slavery, unlike other leaders in the Ironfang Legion. They developed a secret alliance with her. The party is chaotic, non-human (an elf, two gnomes, a dragon-blooded halfling, a tailed goblin, a catfolk, and a leshy), and sympathetic to the Ironfang Legion's stated goal of creating a homeland for monstrous humanoids. They fight against the legion enslaving the humans, elves, and dwarzves.
In the next module, I filled in content as the party traveled and added Krov Thirdmother and her orc tribe from the Nesmian Plains article in the back of Trail of the Hunted.
The most recent master [of the abandoned Everrest estate] is Krov Thirdmother (CE female orc warpriest of Lamashtu 5), who commands a force of three dozen exiles—all fanatical Lamashtu-worshipers— from the Thornscar orc tribe of the northern Fangwood Forest. She plans to form a new tribe using the fecundity gifted to the sect by their goddess, but currently divides her attentions between raiding nearby ranches and warring with the [local] harpy flock....
After two decades, the Chernasardo Rangers had forced an end to the orc raids on Nesmian ranches, and the orc tribe had settled into becoming a merely unfriendly tribe of monster ranchers raising basilisks, snapping turtles, and ringhorn rams.
Lamashtu worshippers seek chaos, ugliness, and monstrous power, but without a motivation for revenge they end up as maniac monster lovers instead of evil cultists. Rather like the zany goblin mascots of Paizo.
I've been thinking what I could add to this discussion but my current fixation has been temporarily redirected. Suffice to say, though, Golarion was the first Tabletop RPG setting whose deities section actually caught and held my interest. I don't remember who it was first, either the "death deity who isn't an evil omnicidal entity" or the "sun deity who wasn't a generic wise old man"
From there I soon found many deities in the core pantheon that appealed to me as interesting characters, including especially Desna and Shelyn. I've added interest to that list so many times now I'm a touch hard pressed to say who us my favourite, but if I had to pick it might be one of those two, at least as far as the big names go.
For the lesser known demigods, I might say Arshea is a favourite, though I have by no means vetted the host in depth, and Desna has some demigoddesses associated with her which I like but don't all recall now
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Tales of evil gods reminds me of how Lamashtu, Mother of Monsters, has fit into my campaigns.
-snip-
Just want to say that all of this is brilliant - thank you for sharing it! Your insights almost make me wish she could have CN followers, but I don't know that she can be rehabilitated like that at this point. For a similar option, I think of the obscure Iblydan hero-god Iapholi, a half-fiend human believed to be the reincarnation of an ancient avenging Mythic harpy , who's a figure of "monstrous acceptance" seeking peace between 'monsters' and humanoids.
...man, I want to see Iblydos in detail, and not just because it feels like my best chance for official playable Minotaurs.
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The deity I constantly come back to is Casandalee, who's a terrible fit for the vast majority of campaigns and corners of the setting, but was a big part of me falling in love with Golarion. A fantasy world where you can have an ex-android goddess of synthetic life? There's just so much to like with the genre weirdness she invokes, and as a big Android fangirl, I'm so glad they essentially have a patron goddess now. Her teal lipstick is gorgeous, too.
If I can be my most indulgent Pathfinder self: I can't help but wonder if Casandalee has made overtures to the Wyrwood people, who are seemingly Pathfinder's most successful "artificial" Ancestry. While her own beloved Androids are on the rise, they're still fresh from horrific oppression and few in number, while Automatons are the broken remnants of a past age (with human souls) and Poppets are exceedingly rare. Wyrwoods are the exception - integrated into Arcadia's societies, with plenty of history and culture to themselves.
And coincidentally, the whole continent is littered with skymetals... Casandalee might have some Androffan blueprints to pass along. Alternatively, they paint their bark-skin with imitation circuit patterns, and merely revere here as a great ally to all constructed peoples under the sun. Of course, I'd also love to hear about any faiths indigenous to the Wyrwoods, who we just know so little about. One of my favorite untapped niches! Here's hoping we see them soon.
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Waaay back when, my favorite deity was Razmir. I don't remember where I read about him first, but there was a definite gap of time between when I learned of Razmiran, the Living God, and his masked missionaries and when I found out it was all a con and his priests were in on it.
In fact, I was so disappointed with that revelation that I decided to just kind of ignore it. In my home version of Golarion, Razmir grants divine spells. Who or what he is remains a mystery behind his mask and none are more deceived than his acolytes who have taken him at face value.
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A more recent god I am a fan of is Lubaiko. A goddess of fire and revolution speaks to me on a core level.
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Just want to say that all of this is brilliant - thank you for sharing it! Your insights almost make me wish she could have CN followers, but I don't know that she can be rehabilitated like that at this point.
I was talking with a friend about this recently, the Lost Omens Travel Guide presents Allbirth, a much more genial version of Lamashtan worship among gnoll, orc and half-orc youth which is a lot more craft and art focussed and eschews the usual cannibalism and deformity in favour of artistic expression and masquerade and non-lethal ritual combat commemorating her eventual clash with Pazuzu, with attendees even inviting other non-human friends. Despite gnolls' association with slavery, some of the imagery even reminds people what awaits such people in the Abyss. It seems much more like a Mardi Gras celebration, and I thought was a bit queer-coded, a goddess who encourages her faithful to embrace and be proud of what society sees as "monstrous" without compromise or shame or restraint, because to her and her followers it isn't monstrosity.
But I would absolutely be down for Lamashtu being "redeemed" to be a goddess who, while still thoroughly evil, can have some positive aspects or minimises the negative. In the same way IRL Halloween redeems vampires and witches and mummies, and began as a way to demystify figures of terror into figures of fun and the feeling of power and control over them that can instil (and to make money off it).
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Honestly, the setting is so rich in amazing deities that I'd be hard pressed to pick 'The Best' as I tend to rotate the top spot depending on my mood when asked.
But given my mood now at this posting? My standouts would be:
Shelyn- Honestly, she's fantastic. We're talking a goddess with every reason to be bitter with the loss of family she cared dearly for, cynical with how things have gone horribly wrong in the world. Instead she perseveres pointing out the beauty and love that can still be found all around and within us. She's taken up the burden of an evil artifact and rather than the tired old trope of it corrupting her, she's UNcorrupting it, bit by bit, step by step. She loves her brother and works to help free him from the darkness. She's peaceful by nature, but not inactive. Her clerics are directed to find the beauty in this world, or build new things of beauty to give others hope. Absolutely adore her, probably one of my favorite 'gods of love' ever in any setting.
Cayden Cailean - The Accidental God gets a bit of a bad rap from some as a glorified Frat Boy but I think that's the wrong way to approach him. If there was a Frat party of the gods, Cayden is the guy who would drink others under the table, sure, but he's also the guy who would make sure each of the losers had a safe spot to sleep it off where they wouldn't be molested. Then he'd pay the tab. I prefer to focus on his aspects of Courage and Freedom. Cayden strikes me as the guy who gives a good "Fifteen seconds of reckless courage" speech to those who really need it. Courage lets you turn the rest of your virtues into action, Cayden was a mortal of action, now he's a god of one. Fortunately his love of not just his own freedom but the freedom of others means he uses his bravery for good causes. I once had a player in my group who followed Cayden Cailean respectfully though she did not play a cleric. She summed up her view like this "See Shackle? Break Shackle" and I thought that was just a dandy fitting way for a follower of Cayden to be. Cayden Cailean, even on his more obnoxious days he's the Jack Burton of the deity set and that's still entertaining..."Yes sir, the Check is in the mail"
Adanye - Of the Lawful Good deities, I don't really dislike any of them but I never had a favorite....
until I saw Adanye in the Mwangi expanse book! Now understand, I am not a cat person, and I'm not a catfolk person (Got nothing against either mind you) but I was genuinely and pleasantly caught off guard how much I loved the focus of this furry divinity: hearth, imagination, protection, solitude? Life stressing you out? Adanye suggests you get out of the crowd for a bit, enjoy a warm fire and a nap. As a guy with social anxiety I was instantly hooked as in 'This is the wisest goddess EVER!'. Whoever made this goddess, thanks! She's a gem!
Honorable mentions to Sarenrae, Besmara, Kurgess, Pharasma , and for some reason Urgathoa
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Oh wow, you’re always having the best ideas for threads, keftiu!
I dunno why, exactly, but I have always found the idea that suffering has to lead to something better, poetically beautiful… And I guess that my favorite deities tend to be those whose values or what they represent can be drawn from such an idea. Not that who they are or what they do don’t matter to me, though! Gonna spoiler all of this so the post isn’t like, incredibly long.
Okay, maybe I am extrapolating a fair bit in here hahaha, but I like this assumption. Plus, it can differentiate from Nocticula’s own self-redemption, which I imagine is a little more “egotistical”.
Since then, I’ve been fascinated by Vildeis. I like the idea of martyrdom. :B The faith seems to be so urgent in its precepts: For her followers, I imagine that life is not be enjoyed. They give up on their own luxuries, even the smallest ones, so others can live more peacefully — the ultimate sacrifice is not a mere, chivalrous last moment, but the dedication of your whole being to something better.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that she is the best deity for players… But she’s great for melancholic worldbuilding, imo, and for the frequent NPC.
Whenever I read about her, I feel this… I don’t know how to explain this well, hmm… This fire, in my heart. This determination. Her journey reads so incredibly personal that it spawns so, so many ideas and seeds and character concepts…
I do hope we an optimistic ending for her, or at least a hopeful intermission. Also, deviating a little because everyone knows why she is usually like, a great deity: I am really curious about her relationship with Iomedae. I mean, c’mon! She was her paladin, once in a blue moon. Let them speak! Not even the Prismatic Ray made me feel so enthused by the thought of deities’ social dynamics.
But then I grew up, thank god, read stuff by myself (hey, English is hard!), realized that things were not so bad after all...
And then, as I kept playing, I noticed that, at least in my bubble, people really don’t like her for being Lawful Good. I mean, that’s fine, obviously, right? But this same people kept badgering wrong information about her, and even after a lot of conversations, they still… Well, they didn’t care about anything that she has done, really. They just wanted the armored lawful good paladin woman to be bad. Yep! I’m going there.
At least in my bubble, I’m fairly sure of what I’m talking about. Pretty butterfly eldritch horror and sun nice beautiful woman never got any sort of hard time like, ever, despite having their own mess ups. Armored short haired headstrong gal kicks the wrong rock, and she's suddenly the worse? -.-
So, I guess I grew kind of invested! I find the hardships that come with living with honor a very interesting dramatic hook. That her faith is most likely the most militant of all the Inner Sea just reinforces that her followers are not content with staying idle. I’d love to know what exactly happened that she did not attempt to help Arazni during her time as a compelled undead, because someone that does that by convenience cannot be the same deity that risked a lot when she was the only deity that helped mortals against the Worldwound, at least on a major scale.
Fun fact: Whenever I play, I actually hardly play as a follower of any deity that I actively like! I usually pick a regional deity, or a deity that know but don’t know a lot. Helps me interact with aspects of the setting that I’m not that familiar with. Grew to like Shelyn a lot, doing that!
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[…]Desna has some demigoddesses associated with her which I like but don't all recall now
I’ve been really enamored with Black Butterfly since I found out about her. I love a friendly cosmic horror, one who’s a patron of mutes and space travel, and a sworn foe to the evil things that lurk in the dark between stars. She rocks!
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In regards to how Iomedae's probably the Good deity most likely to get tarred with the brush of hypocrisy, my two copper pennies is that some of the same qualities that made her my favorite also made others suspicious of her from the get-go.
Given other settings tend to have a "generic knightly good god," it was easy to project some of their qualities onto Iomedae, and in some settings those gods and churches are used to tell stories of things like religious intolerance, corruption, hypocrisy and cruelty rationalized by the divine. Lots of times these churches also tend to have very "Catholic-looking" trappings, and Iomedae does too. It didn't help things that Golarion as a setting was trying hard to be darker and grittier than its predecessors in its early days. So you'd see things like Prelate Hulrun hurting innocent people in Kenabres out of paranoia for demonic spies from the Worldwound, the Knights of Ozem committing MULTIPLE screw-ups that resulted in Arazni's current state, the two-page spread in Faiths and Philosophies written in-character as a fanatical Iomedaean who is clearly meant to be interpreted as wrong about the faiths and belief systems they're criticizing, the Low Templars (mercenaries hired by Mendev to fight the Worldwound because they were running out of paladins, and whose morals are much more flexible), Iomedae worship in the Mwangi Expanse being a soft form of Chelaxian imperialism, and the Fiercely Virginal Order of Blessed Exoneration (an order of nuns in the River Kingdoms who for lack of a better term parody Catholic boarding school culture and the long-discredited stereotype of the violent man-hating feminist) described in Part 2 of the Prodigal Sons story that played out in the backmatter of the original Kingmaker books, and you'd come away with the conclusion that Iomedae's church is made up of hypocrites, incompetents and lunatics. Follow that up with the encounter with Iomedae in Wrath of the Righteous, which has been stated BY the writers themselves to have been a misstep they probably should have revised at least one more time, and the ultimate failure that is Tar-Baphon's escape, and it's kind of understandable WHY some players would think Iomedae's church and by extension Iomedae herself sucks.
As the setting has evolved, however, that's changed. The devs have made it CLEAR that Clerics just plain don't GET divine power unless their personalities and actions are "in sync" with their god's for lack of a better term. An evil priest with Catholic-styled trappings is probably going to be of an actual evil deity like Asmodeus, or a Neutral one who allows for that, like Abadar or Pharasma (hello, Pharasmin Penitence). We get deeper insight into how Iomedae thinks and how she views the world, as well as acknowledgement that her faithful HAVE made mistakes and more importantly ARE LEARNING FROM THEM. And I'd argue Knights of Lastwall alone has done a LOT to rehabilitate Iomedae's image and make people WANT to play as Iomedaeans.
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I appreciate the thorough post, Zousha! Iomedae has definitely suffered some as the poster girl for Lawful Good; being the assumed default for crusader types has absolutely drawn some unflattering depictions of zeal to her banner. I'm glad to see 2e firm up on deities demanding their followers fit them, and her dropping of LN to underscore that she is Lawful GOOD is a change nearly as welcome as merciful Sarenrae ditching her wing of radical political assassins.
My reading is that Iomedae is a relatively young goddess - less than a thousand years, which is chump change compared to the likes of Asmodeus and Pharasma. She knows well that Aroden's adventurism often left things more broken than he found them, but also can't afford to let Evil go unchallenged, and splitting that difference must be difficult. Seeing Arazni claw back independence and divinity for herself must have been quite a shock; these two goddesses inherited very different burdens from their dead shared master, and I thin Arazni's return to the stage has given Iomedae a little extra depth that's greatly warmed me to her.
I'm not sure that the role of honest Iomedean do-gooder is in me anymore, but I'd gladly have any that were played sincerely at my table - especially if I could play the bitter Araznian Inquisitor to play off the shiny Iomedean Paladin.
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I honestly never thought of Iomedae as the standard bearer for LG, but as "the new God on the block" who is prone to making mistakes primarily because her background was that of a zealous crusader. She's both more proactive than other deities, and more prone to messing up.
Like I view the infamous scene in WotR where she basically tries to bully the PCs rather than just dealing with them in a forthright manner as a clear case of "a young god messing up."
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I honestly never thought of Iomedae as the standard bearer for LG, but as "the new God on the block" who is prone to making mistakes primarily because her background was that of a zealous crusader. She's both more proactive than other deities, and more prone to messing up.
Like I view the infamous scene in WotR where she basically tries to bully the PCs rather than just dealing with them in a forthright manner as a clear case of "a young god messing up."
It's hard to get more classically LG than "the Iconic Paladin follows me, as do all of the recognizably European crusader-knights" plus her various cathedrals. The only other LG power in the core 20 is Torag, who's always felt more defined by his dwarfiness to me.
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I'll ship it.*snip*Would you call the two "star-crossed?"
They feel less like lovers and more like two women who got hurt by the same selfish man, and I say that as a lesbian who adores Arazni. Trying to build a romance out of shared pain isn't the best idea... but at the same time, Arazni needs to finish out her redemption arc, and Iomedae needs to loosen up, so it could be good for both of them.
I'd sooner see Kazutal help her find a nice Arcadian deity to settle down with, far away from the roiling nightmare that is the Inner Sea :p
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I do kinda ship Iomedae with Apsu though xP
Joking aside, wait I have never posted here?
Well I have lot of deities I like, but my overall borderline memetic favorite is KURGESS
Come on you can't not love Kurgess and his oiled muscles and good sportmanship xD
(I have lot of different gods I'd like to gush about, including very spoilery ones from Iron Gods ;D)
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I always imagine Kurgess as the multiverse's most chill and fun workout buddy.I do kinda ship Iomedae with Apsu though xP
Joking aside, wait I have never posted here?
Well I have lot of deities I like, but my overall borderline memetic favorite is KURGESS
Come on you can't not love Kurgess and his oiled muscles and good sportmanship xD
(I have lot of different gods I'd like to gush about, including very spoilery ones from Iron Gods ;D)
Some years back, I published a DM’s Guild supplement about trans characters in Eberron, and one of my NPCs was a transmasc priest of Dol Dorn who encouraged others to explore masculinity with lots of working out and friendly competitive sport. Kurgess is a very similar deity; my priest could come over completely intact with those two gods swapped.
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It's hard to get more classically LG than "the Iconic Paladin follows me, as do all of the recognizably European crusader-knights" plus her various cathedrals. The only other LG power in the core 20 is Torag, who's always felt more defined by his dwarfiness to me.
Oh yeah, something I forgot to discuss in my big post that's equally important is that Iomedae also carries the infamous Paladin stigma: the assumption of "Lawful Stupid" alignments, policing your fellow players' behavior and general obnoxiousness. Paladin being her literal character class before ascending probably didn't endear her to people who either have been in parties with badly-roleplayed paladins before or who dislike that character type on principle because of the stereotype.
Well I have lot of deities I like, but my overall borderline memetic favorite is KURGESS
Come on you can't not love Kurgess and his oiled muscles and good sportmanship xD
You're right, I can't! He's just such a good-natured bro (and I mean that in the best way)!
Plus, the lore bit about traveling priests of Kurgess carrying a portable puppet theater on their backs and putting on puppet shows for children where they stop is just SO sweet! I imagine many of the shows teach kids important lessons about eating their vegetables and being a good sport so they can grow up strong and healthy like Kurgess!
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Oh yeah, something I forgot to discuss in my big post that's equally important is that Iomedae also carries the infamous Paladin stigma: the assumption of "Lawful Stupid" alignments, policing your fellow players' behavior and general obnoxiousness. Paladin being her literal character class before ascending probably didn't endear her to people who either have been in parties with badly-roleplayed paladins before or who dislike that character type on principle because of the stereotype.
Absolutely. She's "the Paladin goddess," for good or ill, between her place in the core 20 and the existence of Seelah, and that carries a lot of baggage from both other fantasy works and the turbulent quality of "Lawful Good" many players have encountered over the years. It doesn't help that her relative youth and inexperience as a deity can further some of this, even though she and her followers have plenty to be proud of.
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Ironically, I think LE crusader god that actually acts like how fandom stereotypical paladins act would be instantly more popular because people have weird way of hyping up LE villains as more honest(and thus better because to some people honesty is automatically highest virtue ^^;) than LG paladins :p
Its weird thing. Either way, I kinda get feeling that lot of people would give Iomedae pass in setting where Lawful Good alignment didn't exists. Like this is something I thought about a lot when making my alignment homebrew for my kingdom building homebrew I'm working on, good alignments get lot of flack because people argue about "Is this good enough" while with evil its much easier to accept "yeah that's evil". In setting where there isn't good or evil alignments(I went with collectivism vs individualism for that axis for the homebrew) its possible to have both to have both jerk and nice paladin in same alignment and both to be in character to alignment, so I don't think people would cause as many arguments about it because they wouldn't be looking at character through lens of "how good they are".
That said, I could be too optimistic again and they might hate her for the other reasons.
...Well depressing questions aside, here is as sidenote another deity I like but not the Iron Gods ones yet: Gogunta! I just think its sweet that she seems to have actual loving relationship(for demon) with Dagon, but besides shipping those two(;P) I just think her multi faced frog form is just most adorable frog mutant ever xD That and she has one of those deity names that is fun to chant aloud
Ironically, I think LE crusader god that actually acts like how fandom stereotypical paladins act would be instantly more popular because people have weird way of hyping up LE villains as more honest(and thus better because to some people honesty is automatically highest virtue ^^;) than LG paladins :p
Heh, there's an interesting thought. What does the opposite of Iomedae look like? Or rather, what would Iomedae look like if in an aternate universe instead of a Paladin/Champion in life, she had instead been a servant of Asmodeus instead of Aroden and when she ascended became the exemplar for Hellknights instead? Or if a Hellknight of Asmodeus went through roughly equivalent events and then took the Test of the Starstone, reasoning that if Paladins/Champions get their exemplar in Iomedae then why not them? The Order of the Godclaw worship Iomedae as part of their pentumvirate, but what if there was a far more singular patron?
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I'd be careful now...we're treading dangerously close to reviving the ancient "paladins of Asmodeus" discourse! *scare chord*