Me and my friends have been playing a Hellknight themed campaign in PF2e for about half a year now. We're on session 24 right now and there's definitely many obstacles we've had to deal with in regards to trying to figure out answers from the material available across many books. Naturally we went to Path of the Hellknight from first edition for the basic information, in which every play read it cover to cover and we selected Order of the Nail for our campaign. Our group spans alignments, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil x2, and Lawful Good. This hasn't been much of an issue because since we're all Hellknights even if we don't exactly get along we all work for the same order and that is extremely effective in terms of keeping us on the same page. If anything this group has been more cohesive and unified than almost any other campaign I've played in because everyone was on board with the theme and we're operating as Hellknights.
So what could be the problem? Well, the answer is that the source material for what is supposed to be a rigid organization that follows absolute law is surprisingly vague on many, many facets that actually affect play at the table to a significant degree. It doesn't actually describe any of the laws or restrictions that are put upon Hellknights or any examples of how Hellknights deal with other laws that contradict their own. It says Hellknights hold Hellknight law above all other law, and they hold others to the expectations of the Measure and Chain as ruthless enforcers of the law, but it doesn't give an example of how they actually deal with other governments or nations (beyond ignoring them if they think they're wrong.)
There's no examples of how Hellknights actually punish crimes. We had to scrounge the internet for something that seemed to function as a general guideline for common crimes like theft, murder, assault, destruction of property, etc.
There's no examples of when it's okay to use people for devil sacrifices. It says they don't serve devils, but they definitely do summon them as tools. The Hellknights have authority to forcefully conscript people into military service or labor for the cause of fighting chaos, and if they can forcibly put someone on the frontlines to die, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to say they can forcibly conscript someone to being a sacrifice for a devil who is going to be more useful in an upcoming fight than the person that they conscript. However, it doesn't actually say what their stance is on this in general and for any order other than Order of the Gate, who it seems considers this standard doctrine.
It doesn't say what to do with wealth that's gained from fighting off monsters or enemies. If trolls raze a town to the ground and take all the wealth, and then the Order of the Nail tracks them down and kills them, is that wealth considered the same thing as stolen goods, or is it considered something different? Obviously the Hellknights aren't a charity and they could easily just consider it a charge for their service of killing the trolls. Yet, that's just an assumption, it's not actually backed by any sort of useful information within the source material.
In summary I feel like with the product there was a design decision to not tell GM's and players how to play their characters or run their campaigns. So instead of actual hard rules and guidelines there's instead a lot of vague concepts that are up to interpretation. I think in this specific product, and in Hellknight products going forward this is a definite mistake having actually played a campaign using it. The Hellknights are a rigid order of doctrine and law, and it's very difficult to play a game when you have no laws or doctrine to refer to. There's no explanation of the ranks and their actual duties or responsibilities. There's no small "handbook" of how you should conduct yourself, when you should have your helmet on, when you should wake up, expectations of drinking or overeating or whatever.
In my opinion the book should be basically designed for rules lawyers to use and abuse, because the Hellknights ARE rules lawyers and that actually supports the gameplay of playing in a Hellknight order.
Sacrifices are more a Demon thing then a Devil thing.
Check back in a year or two; we’ve gotten 2e love for all of the Lost Omens Character Guide factions except for the Hellknights at a pretty reliable pace so far, so a fresh look at them seems inevitable fairly soon.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Gamerskum wrote: Sacrifices are more a Demon thing then a Devil thing. In the supplement princes of darkness it says under the Barbazu section
"They are also often found serving spellcasters and worshippers of Asmodeus on the Material Plane where they make ruthlessly effective soldiers.[1] Spellcasters normally offer a bound and helpless captive for a bearded devil to slaughter during their summoning as it makes the bearded devil more likely to comply."
Referenced from https://pathfinder.fandom.com/wiki/Barbazu
In the case of our campaign ten gnome sacrifices were offered to a group of ten Barbazu to secure their service for a year and a day. These barbazu were then used as a bargaining chip to secure the aid of a summoned Gelugan alongside monetary payment. The caster assumed correctly that the Gelugan would be more likely to comply with a contract of service if they had devils under their command instead of just weak mortal troops.
keftiu wrote: Check back in a year or two; we’ve gotten 2e love for all of the Lost Omens Character Guide factions except for the Hellknights at a pretty reliable pace so far, so a fresh look at them seems inevitable fairly soon. That would definitely be useful. The core of my feedback is that if a new supplement is made that's actually intended to support players and game masters then a direct source of the measure and chain seems extremely valuable for reference. Knowing what it actually says and the laws of the Hellknights would make playing and running them much more agreeable and manageable. It would be far more useful than just a list of relevant NPC's and current events for plot hooks or whatever.
|
2 people marked this as a favorite.
|
The Measure and Chain is described as being encyclopedic in length and detail, I can't imagine that they would ever be able to publish such a thing, though perhaps they might have snippets.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
As impractical as it would be to print the Measure and the Chain proper, when we get a Hellknights book for 2E we should absolutely receive a Cliff Notes version. As OP has observed it's difficult to determine how a Hellknight would adjudicate a given situation if the code the Hellknights treat as inviolable is completely unstated. This isn't a problem if the Hellknight is an NPC. In that case it can simply be left vague except as it pertains to the plot. and the PCs won't know any better. However, if the PCs are Hellknights, they need a general idea of what the most important parts of the code are in order to handle important conflicts that may arise. Something akin to a list of anathema for Hellknights is definitely warranted.
GM_3826 wrote: As impractical as it would be to print the Measure and the Chain proper, when we get a Hellknights book for 2E we should absolutely receive a Cliff Notes version. As OP has observed it's difficult to determine how a Hellknight would adjudicate a given situation if the code the Hellknights treat as inviolable is completely unstated. This isn't a problem if the Hellknight is an NPC. In that case it can simply be left vague except as it pertains to the plot. and the PCs won't know any better. However, if the PCs are Hellknights, they need a general idea of what the most important parts of the code are in order to handle important conflicts that may arise. Something akin to a list of anathema for Hellknights is definitely warranted. I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
The Raven Black wrote: I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
...We're probably NOT getting a Hellknight AP, but not for that reason. After Agents of Edgewatch it probably makes more sense to Paizo to have the Hellknights play a role in an AP rather than make them the focus, given the reception to their first AP where the PCs were law enforcement.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
GM_3826 wrote: The Raven Black wrote: I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
...We're probably NOT getting a Hellknight AP, but not for that reason. After Agents of Edgewatch it probably makes more sense to Paizo to have the Hellknights play a role in an AP rather than make them the focus, given the reception to their first AP where the PCs were law enforcement. I'd feel better about Hellknights being the ones beating up protesting workers than Good-aligned police officers, but that's another thread entirely...
Hellknights are in a tricky place, but we've seen in many places that PF2 likes wrangling with and/or reinterpreting fraught older material. I imagine they'll get to them eventually, and find some angle for them to not be completely loathsome as PCs without losing what makes them fun. The brewing anti-Thrune elements teased in LO: Legends excite me a fair bit!
keftiu wrote: GM_3826 wrote: The Raven Black wrote: I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
...We're probably NOT getting a Hellknight AP, but not for that reason. After Agents of Edgewatch it probably makes more sense to Paizo to have the Hellknights play a role in an AP rather than make them the focus, given the reception to their first AP where the PCs were law enforcement. I'd feel better about Hellknights being the ones beating up protesting workers than Good-aligned police officers, but that's another thread entirely... That's not just an Agents of Edgewatch thing, it's a repeated Paizo motif. Paizo assumes that Good-aligned PCs can play nicely in both Curse of the Crimson Throne and Serpent's Skull. CotCT's iconic roster includes Lem (CG), Seelah (LG, paladin), and Ezren (NG); SS's includes Kyra (NG), Valeros (NG), and Ezren (NG). CotCT has the PCs beat up striking workers, among other things, after being deputized into the Korvosan Guard; SS has the PCs put down a colonial uprising.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Those were P1 adventures from over a decade ago, not to ignore those problematic elements but the incident in SS caught flak when it was current.
“Has happened before” and “repeated motif” are a bit different in their implications, especially when there’s a decade inbetween.
Rysky wrote: Those were P1 adventures from over a decade ago, not to ignore those problematic elements but the incident in SS caught flak when it was current.
“Has happened before” and “repeated motif” are a bit different in their implications, especially when there’s a decade inbetween.
It was not removed for CotCT anniversary, and while I have not read AoE, from keftiu's comment I glean it shows up there too, three-ish years ago.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
GM_3826 wrote: The Raven Black wrote: I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
...We're probably NOT getting a Hellknight AP, but not for that reason. After Agents of Edgewatch it probably makes more sense to Paizo to have the Hellknights play a role in an AP rather than make them the focus, given the reception to their first AP where the PCs were law enforcement. The problem was not PCs being law enforcement by itself, but how it was implemented.
And I do not see Hellknights as being law enforcement in the modern meaning of policemen at all.
That said, I too really hope we see a great book on them one day, including more variety in the characters and motivations.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
The Raven Black wrote: GM_3826 wrote: The Raven Black wrote: I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
...We're probably NOT getting a Hellknight AP, but not for that reason. After Agents of Edgewatch it probably makes more sense to Paizo to have the Hellknights play a role in an AP rather than make them the focus, given the reception to their first AP where the PCs were law enforcement. The problem was not PCs being law enforcement by itself, but how it was implemented.
And I do not see Hellknights as being law enforcement in the modern meaning of policemen at all.
That said, I too really hope we see a great book on them one day, including more variety in the characters and motivations. Yeah. Hellknights have more in common with a religious order rather than what I'd call a police force in the strictest sense. Heck they've even got their own pantheon.
The Raven Black wrote:
I feel Paizo will only do this if they do a Hellknight AP.
Better to let the GM decide what the core tenets of the Measure and the Chain are that best suit their campaign.
Maybe this means we will never see a Hellknight AP.
Letting the GM decide doesn't really help the GM decide what should be in the Measure and Chain. I mean currently my DM is doing exactly this, he's taking an entire week to do a write up on his interpretation of the Measure and Chain's basic tenets because he has to for the PC's to know what the Hellknights expect in terms of their conduct.
However, it would be way more useful to have an example cliffnotes version where the DM can say "yeah I don't like rule 4 for my campaign, and we're ignoring rule 16" than "yeah I guess I have to write everything from scratch and just guess." I don't understand why it's so controversial for game developers to simply state how factions work in their world with unambiguous details that don't need to be projected or interpreted.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Velocifaptor wrote: I don't understand why it's so controversial for game developers to simply state how factions work in their world with unambiguous details that don't need to be projected or interpreted. This is the funniest thing I've read in a while.
Recent threads in General Discussion
|
