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I see no reason I couldn't have a character who believes in collectivist anarchism though. Is that character lawful or chaotic?A character who seeks above all to abolish unjust hierarchies is about as by-the-numbers Chaotic Good as possible.
That's basically my point. Chaotic is not synonymous with "individualism" or "nature" or "progress" nor is Lawful synonymous with "collectivism" or "civilization" or "tradition". These things may be related in some ways, but there are also examples of those relations being backwards.
So we're better off treating all these things as "different things" rather than trying to keep "Law vs Chaos" one of the basic conflicts in the setting. This is also possibly a good idea because the related outsiders are a lot less aggressive than the Good/Evil kinds. Like it's really hard to make a Protean villain (believe me, I've tried) because Proteans can't really have things like "agendas or plans" because that would conflict with their chaotic nature.
It's not like we can't tell stories about "people unite to overthrow oppressive hierarchies and build a better society" without having to figure how this fits into various outer planes. It's a story that makes sense on its own terms.
So we're better off treating all these things as "different things" rather than trying to keep "Law vs Chaos" one of the basic conflicts in the setting. This is also possibly a good idea because the related outsiders are a lot less aggressive than the Good/Evil kinds. Like it's really hard to make a Protean villain (believe me, I've tried) because Proteans can't really have things like "agendas or plans" because that would conflict with their chaotic nature.
...and here's where the genius of the new alignment system comes in - because it's not a straightjacket "chaotic nature" anymore. I mean, it never was, but now it should be a bit more obvious.
After all, if they were "perfectly" chaotic, they wouldn't have a coherent physical form, or even coherent thoughts. They wouldn't fight against Order because that would be a consistent rule that could be used to predict their behavior. It would be ridiculous. On the flip side, a perfectly lawful being would just be a set of laws, with no ability to adapt, learn, or adjust to circumstances.
By similar logic, a "perfectly" good entity would be entirely unable to cause harm - rather hampering the war against evil. A "perfectly" evil character would be unable to stop itself from constantly betraying its allies, even when it wasn't a good idea.
...but that's not what we're dealing with. We're dealing with creatures that are strongly but not absolutely aligned to various cosmic forces. Proteans are able to make and carry out at least simple short-term plans, and Inevitables are able to adjust their plans to take new information into account. Angels can accept lesser evils (like causing harm) to create greater goods (like removing a force of evil in the world) and demons and devils are able to limit their evil acts to only those that benefit them in some way.
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So we're better off treating all these things as "different things" rather than trying to keep "Law vs Chaos" one of the basic conflicts in the setting. This is also possibly a good idea because the related outsiders are a lot less aggressive than the Good/Evil kinds. Like it's really hard to make a Protean villain (believe me, I've tried) because Proteans can't really have things like "agendas or plans" because that would conflict with their chaotic nature....and here's where the genius of the new alignment system comes in - because it's not a straightjacket "chaotic nature" anymore. I mean, it never was, but now it should be a bit more obvious.
After all, if they were "perfectly" chaotic, they wouldn't have a coherent physical form, or even coherent thoughts. They wouldn't fight against Order because that would be a consistent rule that could be used to predict their behavior. It would be ridiculous. On the flip side, a perfectly lawful being would just be a set of laws, with no ability to adapt, learn, or adjust to circumstances.
By similar logic, a "perfectly" good entity would be entirely unable to cause harm - rather hampering the war against evil. A "perfectly" evil character would be unable to stop itself from constantly betraying its allies, even when it wasn't a good idea.
...but that's not what we're dealing with. We're dealing with creatures that are strongly but not absolutely aligned to various cosmic forces. Proteans are able to make and carry out at least simple short-term plans, and Inevitables are able to adjust their plans to take new information into account. Angels can accept lesser evils (like causing harm) to create greater goods (like removing a force of evil in the world) and demons and devils are able to limit their evil acts to only those that benefit them in some way.
I do basically agree with all of this. As much as the shorthand of the alignment table is something I'm used to it's far better to define people and outsiders by their agendas and philosophies; it's always been too wide of a brush stroke to not cause problems.
We've already got that with demons and qlippoths being fundamentally different with goals wildly hostile to each other. If the explanation you get for qlippoths is just "they're CE outsiders" you're almost certainly going to have an incorrect impression of what they're about because you will assume they're just variant demons.
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Is a Protean villain really that hard to make? “This village/nation/planet/universe is an affront to the Maelstrom and must be unmade” seems compelling enough; I’m stunned we haven’t seen it yet. Ditto for some Axiomites trying to eminent domain some swathe of reality for ‘redevelopment,’ or showing the two butting heads somewhere.
Incidentally, Basrakal would be the perfect place for this kind of story.
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tbh, I think its less of problem with "CN/LN main antagonist" and more "every campaign needs to work with paladin in the party" :'D
We’ve seen plenty of Player’s Guide guidance like that before! I don’t think “Holy characters will find a lack of Unholy targets in this AP” is all that crazy.
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One thing I like about dropping "Chaos vs. Law" as a fundamental conflict is that this lets us recontextualize Chaos both Ultimate Law and Ultimate Chaos as undesirable extremes (as Ultimate Law would just be stasis, and Ultimate Chaos would prevent you from having a form, an identity, or an agenda) so the lawful and chaotic outsiders would simply be several steps back from the extreme.
Proteans/Axiomites work much better committed to "their specific causes" than "fighting for Chaos/Law".
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tbh, I think its less of problem with "CN/LN main antagonist" and more "every campaign needs to work with paladin in the party" :'DWe’ve seen plenty of Player’s Guide guidance like that before! I don’t think “Holy characters will find a lack of Unholy targets in this AP” is all that crazy.
Well yeah, but those are often "evil options don't work" or "this is evil friendly ap so paladin is weird".
Thing is that one of genuine problem with ap design is that they are meant to work with all official classes, meaning that normally you can't make encounter that assumes specific class is or isn't in party x'D Strength of thousands I assume benefits from free archetype assumption
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One thing I like about dropping "Chaos vs. Law" as a fundamental conflict is that this lets us recontextualize Chaos both Ultimate Law and Ultimate Chaos as undesirable extremes (as Ultimate Law would just be stasis, and Ultimate Chaos would prevent you from having a form, an identity, or an agenda) so the lawful and chaotic outsiders would simply be several steps back from the extreme.
Proteans/Axiomites work much better committed to "their specific causes" than "fighting for Chaos/Law".
Except that we can already do the "several steps back" thing?
"New axiomites, like many outsiders, are created from the souls of mortals who embodied the ideals of law and impartiality—such as architects, crafters, mathematicians, and philosophers—and found their way to Axis.3 When asked, axiomites claim that this is an adjustment to the changing laws that govern all existence, as demons, devils, and all sorts of other outsiders reproduce using mortal souls, as do the axiomites."
So... most axiomites started out as mortal souls, and are no more lawful than, say, demons or devils are evil. The hierarchs, who came first, are weirder and more alien and closer to the pure, but even they are a step or two out.
The whole "Ultimate" law and chaos pretty much isn't a thing... or at least isn't in any way incarnated as a thing. "Having a body" pretty much means that you've got some impurities in there somewhere.
...and that leaves us with a severe conflict between the outsiders representing Law and the outsiders representing Chaos, who really kind of hate each other, and who are interested in recruiting... using the same mechanisms as the Good/Evil outsiders, who are no more (or less) fundamental.
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The funny thing to me here is that people are arguing about what "Chaos" vs "Law" looks like in the old system. That's not the system we're moving into.
In the new system? Most people, most places, most societies aren't going to have dedicated themselves to Good or Evil. They won't have dedicated themselves to Order or Chaos. They'll just be people, generally with bits of each, like most people are.
Those that do dedicate themselves? They'll also have bits of each. They'll have a team that they're playing for, they'll have certain rules that they have to follow lest they be punished, and they may have a superior or two looking over their shoulder to one degree or another, but all of that is external and explicit. People may expect certain things of you if you've declared yourself as a Champion of Goodness and Order, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything about who you are as a person.
Similarly, the interpretations of the players as to what is good or evil or ordered or chaotic no longer matter. Instead, we have a series of Outsider sports teams, and it's their opinions on the matter that decide what is or is not "cosmological Good". We may feel free to disagree with them, if we so choose.
So the only question (and one, let's be clear, that has already been answered, though we don't know what the answer is yet) is whether we should have two sports teams or four. That's it. Personally, I'd like to see four. I think that it's more opportunities for interesting stories at basically zero cost. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of having lesser Powers out there eventually creating their own. That could be cool too. Still, the underlying structure for Good/Evil/Order/Chaos is already in place, and it would be costly to remove. Why not just keep it? More texture more better.
I would be extremely surprised that a fundamentally evil and unrepentant person would be able to become a devoted servant of Sarenrae. I guess the edicts and anathemas will see to it.
So, no more alignments, but the deities become even more important.
And I really wonder how Pharasma decides which soul goes to which plane, even for those who are unaligned in life (ie, most people).
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Atheist thing started from 3.5 and got dropped during course of 1e, but yeah it used to be "sent to plane of god they worship or the one matching alignment"
But now, we do not have alignment any more, at least not measurable by mortal means for most people.
Pharasma's judgement becomes far less mechanical.
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Atheist thing started from 3.5 and got dropped during course of 1e, but yeah it used to be "sent to plane of god they worship or the one matching alignment"But now, we do not have alignment any more, at least not measurable by mortal means for most people.
Pharasma's judgement becomes far less mechanical.
Actually, even when alignment was an objective thing you could check with a level 1 spell, there is evidence that deciding which plane to send a mortal to was not always a cut and dry process, with different psychopomp ushers holding differing opinions on how much to weigh intentions vs consequences, for example.
All that's really changed to me is that mortals don't carry around a trivially detectable two letter stamp, the rest of the sorting process is probably about the same as it was before, with "plane matching alignment" replaced with "suitably appropriate plane to mortal's actions and beliefs"
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Atheist thing started from 3.5 and got dropped during course of 1e, but yeah it used to be "sent to plane of god they worship or the one matching alignment"But now, we do not have alignment any more, at least not measurable by mortal means for most people.
Pharasma's judgement becomes far less mechanical.
Actually, even when alignment was an objective thing you could check with a level 1 spell, there is evidence that deciding which plane to send a mortal to was not always a cut and dry process, with different psychopomp ushers holding differing opinions on how much to weigh intentions vs consequences, for example.
All that's really changed to me is that mortals don't carry around a trivially detectable two letter stamp, the rest of the sorting process is probably about the same as it was before, with "plane matching alignment" replaced with "suitably appropriate plane to mortal's actions and beliefs"
On most humanoids Detect Alignment only worked on humanoids of 5 or greater Hit Dice, and even then it was usually a faint aura, unless it's a Paladin or Cleric.
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...have we gone three pages without someone invoking Shin Megami Tensei?
For the unfamiliar, it's an RPG series of videogames that don't share a linked setting, but do reuse common elements, themes, and cosmology - including a central conflict between cosmic Law and Chaos. Both sides are committed to an alien extreme, and humanity is as much pawns in their war as they are collateral damage. It's an ideological clash that feels wholly inhuman, and that's what I'm craving here.
To use a specific game in the series as an example, I'll have to get into spoilers - apologies! Excuse the rambling.
Two alternatives are presented. The White seek an end to all this suffering, unmaking reality in a sort of universal suicide/mercy killing. The best ending in the game rejects all of these for human connection, hope, and connection to your home, with the survivors of post-apocalyptic Tokyo uniting to empower a patron goddess of their city as a guardian against these heavenly battles. A spin-off game further complicates things with a pantheon of various Earth deities acting as a distinct bloc and one god who wants to kill pretty much everyone.
Doesn't all that sound more interesting than Good versus Evil?
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Doesn't all that sound more interesting than Good versus Evil?
Nope. Sounds like a typical all the gods are evil, humanity needs to do it for themselves, modern take on a world with real gods. Just another trope that appeals to certain types of people. Whether it is fun or not depends on the execution.
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Doesn't all that sound more interesting than Good versus Evil?Nope. Sounds like a typical all the gods are evil, humanity needs to do it for themselves, modern take on a world with real gods. Just another trope that appeals to certain types of people. Whether it is fun or not depends on the execution.
…the “humanity does it all for themselves” ending is about a benevolent goddess, as stated.
I’m a devout woman IRL. I assure you, I don’t have any axe to grind against the gods, and I’m not sure why you’ve read that into what I wrote.
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Oh hey so I'm not only one who keeps making SMT references xD Law vs Chaos is way unappreciated conflict in D&Disms
But yeah just to note, isn't Stormbringer saga where Law vs Chaos originally is from also "Screw both law and chaos because extremes are bad"? xD
Theoretically yes. But there was a definite Law = Good, and even more Chaos = Evil, bias in the books IMO.
I think another element of the change is to promote the concepts of "Free Will" & self-determination. We've already seen Paizo allow for more of this than implied by the legacy alignment system(s). Holy/Unholy might only suggest the creature's nature (or state its original nature) rather than condemn it to eternally being Good/Evil. Heck, "fallen" is a staple of myths & fantasy, so this balances (hee hee) the system so up, down, all-around (formerly called) alignment shifts become more plausible rather than needing extensive exceptionalism/reasoning.
I would be extremely surprised that a fundamentally evil and unrepentant person would be able to become a devoted servant of Sarenrae. I guess the edicts and anathemas will see to it.
Well, Sarenrae already has the "reform or die" thing sort of worked into her religion a bit. By my understanding of how it works, it woudln't necessarily make a fundamentally evil/repentant person a devoted worshiper of hers, but it's possible that you might see someone who was fundamentally evil and also really liked being alive who'd swear to the side of Good as a sort of hybrid between protective coloration and easily-checked parole because there were Sarenrae worshipers who were checking in from time to time Just To Be Sure. So they might be profoundly evil in their hearts, but they're still following the edicts and anathemas of Good to the letter because they don't want to fail one of those weekly Divine Lance Alignment Checks (or whatever it is that said followers of Sarenrae were using).
...and how morally acceptable each of us individually might find that particular situation is an interesting questions on a number of levels, and no longer one that Pathfinder itself has an opinion on. All it's got is info on what specific groups of strongly-aligned outsiders happen to think, and what specific individual NPCs (some of them gods) think. I think that's great.
Similarly, I could easily imagine certain countries demanding that someone swear to Law/Order and submit to regular "have you violated your anathema" checks under very similar parole-like circumstances, for very similar reasons. Is this more or less morally acceptable than demanding that they swear to Good? Again, interesting questions. I like it when my RPGs have interesting questions.
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On the subject of Protean villains there's a PFS plot thread that features one. You can see it prominently in
Doesn't all that sound more interesting than Good versus Evil?Nope. Sounds like a typical all the gods are evil, humanity needs to do it for themselves, modern take on a world with real gods. Just another trope that appeals to certain types of people. Whether it is fun or not depends on the execution.
Depends on the game.
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I would be extremely surprised that a fundamentally evil and unrepentant person would be able to become a devoted servant of Sarenrae. I guess the edicts and anathemas will see to it.Well, Sarenrae already has the "reform or die" thing sort of worked into her religion a bit. By my understanding of how it works, it woudln't necessarily make a fundamentally evil/repentant person a devoted worshiper of hers, but it's possible that you might see someone who was fundamentally evil and also really liked being alive who'd swear to the side of Good as a sort of hybrid between protective coloration and easily-checked parole because there were Sarenrae worshipers who were checking in from time to time Just To Be Sure. So they might be profoundly evil in their hearts, but they're still following the edicts and anathemas of Good to the letter because they don't want to fail one of those weekly Divine Lance Alignment Checks (or whatever it is that said followers of Sarenrae were using).
...and how morally acceptable each of us individually might find that particular situation is an interesting questions on a number of levels, and no longer one that Pathfinder itself has an opinion on. All it's got is info on what specific groups of strongly-aligned outsiders happen to think, and what specific individual NPCs (some of them gods) think. I think that's great.
Similarly, I could easily imagine certain countries demanding that someone swear to Law/Order and submit to regular "have you violated your anathema" checks under very similar parole-like circumstances, for very similar reasons. Is this more or less morally acceptable than demanding that they swear to Good? Again, interesting questions. I like it when my RPGs have interesting questions.
I get that. But not everybody likes that, especially new GMs and players.
I guess Paizo will do it their usual way : a simple base where things are clear and opt-in options for those who want more complexity on this aspect of the game.
I get that. But not everybody likes that, especially new GMs and players.
I guess Paizo will do it their usual way : a simple base where things are clear and opt-in options for those who want more complexity on this aspect of the game.
Maybe? In this case, though, it doesn't even need to go that far. all of the interesting questions I'm talking about here are emergent. All you have to do to not deal with that complexity is... not explore it in your own game. Sarenrae-worshiping parole officers who exploit the devotion mechanics and Divine Lance effectively to force evildoers to behave in a "good" fashion on threat of death, are... not likely to appear in any APs.
edit: Except that I am reminded that in one way you're totally right and I'm totally wrong because the entire alignment system is now opt-in on a per-player basis.
Something I can no longer find
I had something I wanted to say about something Raven Black said, but the damn software lost it for me, and now I can't find it and I can't remember what I wanted to say. Screw it. I'm going to bed.
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Remember how a certain cult got removed because "there is no way a good god would have such followers". Well now the reasoning behind it is gone, and there are active ways for said cult to enforce their views.
Ahh the beauty of making everything gray.
This is not actually accurate to the statements made on the topic in the twitch stream. This has been brought up before in discussions about the remaster, so I'll try not to belabour the point, but in short nothing has actually changed about said goddess' preference for good worshippers. Those worshippers no longer have an objective measure of their goodness via attunement to holiness, but the expectation of adhering to your deity's standards remains unchanged.
I believe it was Jason Bulmahn who clarified that, "A goddess who cared about holiness before will still care about holiness" to paraphrase a half-remembered quote from like a week ago.
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Being technically within the letter of the law will keep you in the good graces of a scumbag like Abadar but Sarenrae won't tolerate that. Lying is one of her anathemas, after all.
I think we can basically expect all of the deity entries to be the same as they are now, just with the "follower alignments" line cropped out.
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The idea behind the monitors is that too much of a thing (or being an extremist about your cause) is inherently a bad thing (as in bad for your health, or that of your fellow beings and universe).
I find it much more mind-opening than the basic white and black axis of Good vs Evil.
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From the Remaster panel now: there’s no Chaos/Law equivalent to the new Holy/Unholy thing. The planes aren’t changing, but they found they just weren’t ever using Chaos and Law on their own mechanically often.
It’s a bummer for me, but there it is!
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From the Remaster panel now: there’s no Chaos/Law equivalent to the new Holy/Unholy thing. The planes aren’t changing, but they found they just weren’t ever using Chaos and Law on their own mechanically often.
It’s a bummer for me, but there it is!
TBH this sounds bad. Maybe they plan to focus on the new Elemental planes and let Axis and the Maelstrom (and their struggles) slip into the background.
I feel it weakens an important part of the setting.On the PCs' level, the metaphysical landscape just became mono-dimensional.
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From the Remaster panel now: there’s no Chaos/Law equivalent to the new Holy/Unholy thing. The planes aren’t changing, but they found they just weren’t ever using Chaos and Law on their own mechanically often.
It’s a bummer for me, but there it is!
TBH this sounds bad. Maybe they plan to focus on the new Elemental planes and let Axis and the Maelstrom (and their struggles) slip into the background.
I feel it weakens an important part of the setting.On the PCs' level, the metaphysical landscape just became mono-dimensional.
I'll definitely be sad if there's really no way for, say, PC Hellknights to put the hurt on their traditional foes. Equivalents to CN and LN Champions remain a mechanical niche I really, really want - there's room for unflinching Judgment that isn't outright Tyranny, at least in a fantasy world.
EDIT: Or this is all elaborate preamble to some kind of Monitors-focused book with PC options years down the line.
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From the Remaster panel now: there’s no Chaos/Law equivalent to the new Holy/Unholy thing. The planes aren’t changing, but they found they just weren’t ever using Chaos and Law on their own mechanically often.
It’s a bummer for me, but there it is!
TBH this sounds bad. Maybe they plan to focus on the new Elemental planes and let Axis and the Maelstrom (and their struggles) slip into the background.
I feel it weakens an important part of the setting.On the PCs' level, the metaphysical landscape just became mono-dimensional.
I'll definitely be sad if there's really no way for, say, PC Hellknights to put the hurt on their traditional foes. Equivalents to CN and LN Champions remain a mechanical niche I really, really want - there's room for unflinching Judgment that isn't outright Tyranny, at least in a fantasy world.
EDIT: Or this is all elaborate preamble to some kind of Monitors-focused book with PC options years down the line.
TBH I'm not that hopeful now. Especially because a lack of ideas for mechanics that would differ from those of both Evil and Good Champions was previously mentioned as the reason why they did not do Neutral Champions.
And now we have a similar sounding argument to explain why there will be only Holy and Unholy.
I am now beginning to fear that the Champion Class will deal only with those who pledge to Holy and Unholy. And that we will never get Champions that are unaligned with those two polar opposites.
And then you only need to mention which deity supports Holy or Unholy and you're set with very little difference from the current Champion.
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Chaos and Law were always second-tier concepts in Golarion that, frankly, the system did not always handle very well. I feel like officializing it just remains more consistent with the setting and fixes some of the jank that's existed before.
So in the end I guess it means that the Proteans and the Axiomites aren't recruiting.
I wonder what it'll do to their ecology. If we don't have an clearly lawful souls, anymore....
You don't have to change anything about their ecology per-se. Everything works the same, except Law and Chaos aren't these weirdly designed half-assed concepts that only sometimes matter.
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Maybe a misunderstand of my part but the basically are changing the order/chaos part to traditions at last in the dragons. We will have "celestial" and "fiend" dragons from all four tradition. So my impression is that they put the order vs chaos aside.
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The removal of chaos/law isn't a big deal to me. Outside of a few feats/runes the thematic will be done through edicts and anathemas.
Proteans and Axiomites absolutely will still be very different and warring beings. Chaos and Order can be very well done through similar edicts and anathemas as we saw in the Ancestry redesign preview.
The only bad thing I see to this is ease of use. Right now the chaotic/lawful tag in the top of the creature block is very nice, to where edicts/anathemas will require a more wordy portion in the description.
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Path of the Watered Down-Knight.