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In other words, we will never again have debates about what Chaotic / Lawful means or should be.
Given how often they were used as white-washing of things IRL to justify horrific acts?
Good Riddance.
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One would suspect that in the future the discussion would be less 'Did X break their anathema' and more 'Am I seeing the same story-picture that X is seeing here, am I having a disconnect as player/GM with my GM/player?"
Which is a *helpful* thing for games and helps them grow and weed out folks that have mutually incompatible play styles.
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I Mean, D&D 4e wasn't really wrong about how there really being 5 alignments:
"Good, and you do it by the book."
"Good, but they're really more what we'd call 'guidelines'."
"None"
"Regular Evil, you're selfish and you don't care about hurting others but there's a line"
"Deranged Evil, you care more about hurting others than personal gain, if there were a line crossing it is the *point*"
Like you often couldn't tell the difference between an NG and a CG character without looking at their character sheet. Since both were willing to break laws, lie, and cheat in order to do good. Sure you might spot a difference if it comes to "what do we want to do about the system as a whole" but that didn't come up a lot.
A lot of time it's just "we need to get the maguffin from the private collection of this one rich jerk" where "let's just sneak in and steal it without hurting anybody" was the approach for all but one flavor of "good" characters.
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Why? Are collectivist and individualist philosophies not allowed in the game now?Paizo does not seem as interested in those and their conflicts as they are in Good vs Evil.
I see it the other way around. Conflicts between law and chaos become much easier to get deep roleplay out of when not constrained by arbitrary stances.
Look at Firebrands again. If you're chaotic then once you've won the revolution and thrown out the colonial occupiers... because you're chaotic do you now have to try to overthrow yourself?
As a lawful agent of the old regime, do you snap into place the moment the new power has taken control?
Firebrands is all about the struggles for freedom among people who resist oppression.
It is ripe for these kinds of stories about the role of order and chaos in a society. But you can't so easily tell such tales when people are put in silly boxes of law and chaos rather than more complex framings of what causes they are for or against.
Firebrands tells me that Paizo is actually more interested than ever before in telling stories about law and chaus in society and among people - but that alignments and the boxes of 'law and chaos' actually get in the way stories about them... It was getting in the way of itself.
Without 'law and chaos' as arbitrary terms in isolation - more complex stories about 'interpersonal and political conflict among people in crisis' can be told.
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Snipping a bit for clarity...
Do you have a source for "everything is cannon"?To be fair to Temperans, their argument is most likely intended to reference the idea that even though the mechanics of the game may have gotten an update in the move to 2e, players would still be able to tell the same kinds of stories. Unfortunately, Temperans often seems to interpret mechanics somewhat literally, and objects even when an aspect of the lore is updated with a deeper and richer context and understanding.The setting moving forward because time advanced? Okay that's fun.
New planes being discovered? Weird and throws things into chaos, but it doesn't invalidate anything.
Changing mechanics to better fit what was intended? Okay that's fair.
Deleting a major part of the mechanics and the lore because they were choosing not to use it? That is pure BS and horrible.Just because they were not making those stories, didn't mean they had to outright delete the mechanics and by association the relevant lore. Want a great example? Imagine they decided to delete fire from the setting and the mechanics because "well we don't want to tell stories with fire" and then said, "we didn't get rid of fire you just cannot use it without homebrew", that is what they are doing.
I am not interpreting mechanics literally. I am talking about the concepts that the mechanics represented.
I don't want to sell you short on one thing: Something was changed. I would even say something of value was lost. Where I cannot agree is the idea that chaos damage was a 'major part of the lore'. To say that deleting chaos damage is like deleting fire damage only holds up if you imagine a game where there's only one kind of monster that is weak to fire, and the only way to deal fire damage is to be a member of a certain magic tradition and worship the gods of fire. In such a game, it would make sense to wrap fire damage up with the other kinds of energy damage. One would likewise have to imagine this is a world where mundane fires either don't exist, or don't deal fire damage.
That said, if this change does in fact mean, as many have read into it, that the concepts of law and chaos have actually been removed from the lore, I would be most upset. If inevitables no longer care about order and proteans no longer care about chaos, but instead are both just another type of monitor with no meaningful distinction between them, that would be an incredible disservice to the cosmos.
However we have what I take to be explicit confirmation this isn't happening: the essence of lawfulness may no longer be an energy you can attack others with, but the concept of Axis as the city of perfect law has not been deleted from the lore. Thee story that in the early days of the multiverse, the forces of chaos rose out of the Maelstrom and laid siege to the gates of order and lost does not require these forces to have custom damage types.
More than this, you are ignoring one important thing: "because they were choosing not to use it"
I do not have the money to fend of Hasbro's litigious army, so it can't be me who funds Paizo's legal team when they decide that their competitor using a four-point moral axis that has the same names is good enough justification to start a fight. It doesn't matter who invented Law and Chaos, it only matters who has enough money to keep throwing at the argument, much like words in an online flame war.
I truly am disappointed that we couldn't get a version of the game where holy and unholy aspected spirit damage are accompanied by 'orthodox' and 'chaos' aspects. Ideally, no monster would be unkillable without having somebody aspected to chaos in this hypothetical game, but I still would have liked to see them exist. My disappointment however is outweighed by the fact that, since mortals are no longer good or evil, lawful or chaos, even if you could still sanctify yourself to chaos, the only time it would ever matter that you did is if your GM threw an inevitable at you--not even devil and archons have special weakness to chaos. What kind of metal your sword is made of matters more than whether you are sanctified to chaos.
In short, yes, losing law and chaos as divine aspects sucks. I agree, it does unambiguously represent an retcon to how the cosmos works. I disagree that chaos having a custom damage type truly mattered to the war between law and chaos, and I strongly disagree that the only reason was because it was useless.
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This is a good point. If they had decided to keep Order energy and Disorder energy, on top of Holy and Unholy, and these are both axes of cosmological beings that only effect those creatures directly tied to their opposite, AND they were going to actually even start introducing more of them into the game than they had in the last 4 years, all we would have is another very, very niche situation where having that energy would help you. At least moving to anathema, the weakness of these kinds of niche creatures are things that players can probably target with their actions instead of with special materials and energy types. If anything, I really hope remastered monster core leans into cosmological beings of all types having targetable anathema and not too much of a dependence on having access to holy or unholy energy.
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One thing that I think works about walking away from Chaos and Law as "damage types" is that what a Protean does to you that you really wouldn't like isn't so much "damage" as "they can and will warp you, maybe permanently."
So contextualizing Aeon attacks with the more "they can geas you, age you, or unmake you" stuff and the Protean attacks with the more "they can change you" stuff, is more thematic than damage.
I assume that there's still going to be a way to hit their weaknesses.
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Snipping a bit for clarity...
I don't want to sell you short on one thing: Something was changed. I would even say something of value was lost. Where I cannot agree is the idea that chaos damage was a 'major part of the lore'. To say that deleting chaos damage is like deleting fire damage only holds up if you imagine a game where there's only one kind of monster that is weak to fire, and the only way to deal fire damage is to be a member of a certain magic tradition and worship the gods of fire. In such a game, it would make sense to wrap fire damage up with the other kinds of energy...Do you have a source for "everything is cannon"?To be fair to Temperans, their argument is most likely intended to reference the idea that even though the mechanics of the game may have gotten an update in the move to 2e, players would still be able to tell the same kinds of stories. Unfortunately, Temperans often seems to interpret mechanics somewhat literally, and objects even when an aspect of the lore is updated with a deeper and richer context and understanding.The setting moving forward because time advanced? Okay that's fun.
New planes being discovered? Weird and throws things into chaos, but it doesn't invalidate anything.
Changing mechanics to better fit what was intended? Okay that's fair.
Deleting a major part of the mechanics and the lore because they were choosing not to use it? That is pure BS and horrible.Just because they were not making those stories, didn't mean they had to outright delete the mechanics and by association the relevant lore. Want a great example? Imagine they decided to delete fire from the setting and the mechanics because "well we don't want to tell stories with fire" and then said, "we didn't get rid of fire you just cannot use it without homebrew", that is what they are doing.
I am not interpreting mechanics literally. I am talking about the concepts that the mechanics represented.
Inevitables may care about Order and Proteans about Chaos. But PCs will only care about Holy and Unholy (or none of those since they will be an option).
But it could not really be avoided because two axes with 3 settings do make a 3x3 grid and we all know where it leads.
Inevitables may care about Order and Proteans about Chaos. But PCs will only care about Holy and Unholy (or none of those since they will be an option).
But it could not really be avoided because two axes with 3 settings do make a 3x3 grid and we all know where it leads.
I've been meaning to get back to that line of thought running through your last half dozen posts in this thread, because it genuinely baffles me but I've been having trouble knowing where to begin--aside from all the other activity that's happening right now.
A page back you said that Law and Chaos are a thing of the past, that characters will no longer be able to choose between following the law or rebelling against it because they don't get energy from the gods that supports them if they do. I feel like I must be misunderstanding you, because that makes as little sense to me as saying good and evil characters do not exist in any setting where holy damage doesn't.
It appears as if you are saying players cannot choose to care about the law anymore because they don't get powers from it. That without holy damage, characters can't care about helping others.
Conversely, I feel that caring about these things is more important to a character now because they aren't stamped with a label that designates which team they belong to. Caring about law or chaos no longer affects what damage types you have and are immune to, and because you don't need to pick a label, you don't have to choose the entire package deal of "I believe in the law and traditions and following orders" or "I believe in rebellion and change and freedom" - you can play a character who feels tension between these ideals--who always follows the law but believes absolutely in the freedom of the individual, and struggles when they see one value clash with another.
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I think the one important thing to consider the context on what the lawful/chaotic split is actually getting removed from: not the current system where there's "set of alignment-based damage types which hurts creatures with the opposite alignment", but "a set of traits which hurt people specifically connected to the opposite alignment but otherwise do nothing". Currently, with how the system seems to be set, the trait would only effect a total of 33 creatures (1 with a resistance to chaotic, 12 with a weakness to chaotic, 20 with a weakness to lawful), including the members of that group which are either already also have a weakness to good/evil (like the greater barghest) or could be easily folded into holy/unholy (like various qlippoth). Of course, the number would probably increase a bit, but we're still looking at these being incredibly less common than good vs evil.
I very much enjoy the law / chaos axis (the monitors are some of my favourite outsiders), but without the damage impacting all creatures of the opposing alignment it ends up doing practically nothing mechanically. People could argue that it should be included anyway, but it just then turns any options designed to help you combating order / disorder creatures trap options (well, more than they are now).
With that said, I also don't really feel the damage types going away really does effect Golarion's law vs chaos stories much: with things like the hellknights, whether or not they're really good at hurting proteans and qlippoth doesn't really change their story much, they're still just going to go around beating up various rebel fighters (I personally quite like the idea of replacing their current "do lawful damage on attacks" ability with something that instead deals extra spirit damage on attacks against creatures you've seen commit a crime--honestly makes more sense out of the options of abilities for them imo). Same with those rebel fighters not being really good at fighting axomites, they'll still punch hellknights in the face either way.
The only real story this effects are specifically campaigns about fighting things like aeons or proteans, and even among people who say they do like stories of that type that are fully disconnected from good/evil, it's hard to argue that they're much less of a staple than "good vs evil". In fact, I'd even argue in that specific case lots of the time you might not want law vs chaos doing their own damage, personally making them distinct in some other way can kind of enhance the feeling of "this is a conflict entirely distinct from good vs evil and not just the same thing in a different coat of paint".
Conversely, I feel that caring about these things is more important to a character now because they aren't stamped with a label that designates which team they belong to. Caring about law or chaos no longer affects what damage types you have and are immune to, and because you don't need to pick a label, you don't have to choose the entire package deal of "I believe in the law and traditions and following orders" or "I believe in rebellion and change and freedom" - you can play a character who feels tension between these ideals--who always follows the law but believes absolutely in the freedom of the individual, and struggles when they see one value clash with another.That is literally just a neutral character.
Fair enough, I could have come up with a better example but I didn't. Even so, I don't think it's so much of a stretch to say that creating a lawful character who yet holds some chaotic values was something that people often argue about what alignment they count as. Drawing the line just doesn't need to happen anymore, you can decide for yourself what tenets of order you adhere to without wondering if you follow enough to be labeled Lawful or if jaywalking makes you automatically chaotic no matter how often you tithe at Abadar's temple.
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In addition to removing anything that referred to Law/Chaos on a PC level, Paizo also said they are not interested in tackling those in their future stories.
It is basically the opposite of what they do for Holy/Unholy.
So, I do not see how things are mostly staying the same.
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Fair enough, I could have come up with a better example but I didn't. Even so, I don't think it's so much of a stretch to say that creating a lawful character who yet holds some chaotic values was something that people often argue about what alignment they count as. Drawing the line just doesn't need to happen anymore, you can decide for yourself what tenets of order you adhere to without wondering if you follow enough to be labeled Lawful or if jaywalking makes you automatically chaotic no matter how often you tithe at Abadar's temple.Conversely, I feel that caring about these things is more important to a character now because they aren't stamped with a label that designates which team they belong to. Caring about law or chaos no longer affects what damage types you have and are immune to, and because you don't need to pick a label, you don't have to choose the entire package deal of "I believe in the law and traditions and following orders" or "I believe in rebellion and change and freedom" - you can play a character who feels tension between these ideals--who always follows the law but believes absolutely in the freedom of the individual, and struggles when they see one value clash with another.That is literally just a neutral character.
TBT that mostly mattered for people who saw alignment as a straightjacket. Which I never did.
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Lawful tends to trust and uphold it. They see the system as the good way to get what they pursue.
Chaotic tends to mistrust and fight it. They see the system as an obstacle, or a threat, to getting what they pursue.
Neutral does not care one way or the other.For me "mistrust and fight it" is still tightly tied to "Law". It's just as structured and rules driven as law is. If your rule is 'do the opposite of what the law says", then you aren't independent of the Law, you're just oppositional.
So to be different from Law, Chaos has to be really different. As in, "random". You don't care what the law is. Sometimes your behavior is in compliance with Law, sometimes it isn't. But whatever Law is, it has no impact on your choices.
I've always played Chaotic as more independent of Law rather than counter-dependent. Oppositional Chaotic is totally predictable. Random Chaotic isn't.
What then is Neutral ?
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This is what I loved in alignment threads and debates, and especially the Chaotic/Lawful ones. Because it helped me both refine and broaden my views and understanding about why RL humans act as they do. Which is one of my deepest drives and passions.
But if they hurt good people, then it's better they disappear. Good riddance indeed.
In addition to removing anything that referred to Law/Chaos on a PC level, Paizo also said they are not interested in tackling those in their future stories.
Is that a significant departure from what they did in the past though?
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In addition to removing anything that referred to Law/Chaos on a PC level, Paizo also said they are not interested in tackling those in their future stories.Is that a significant departure from what they did in the past though?
The difference between the future and the past is hope.
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Also I am not sure we would have had Hellknights if the game had been focused on Holy vs Unholy from the beginning.
I don't see why not. We're only keying on "Holy vs. Unholy" as a "cosmological conflict." There are plenty of terrestrial versions of chaos vs. law that don't need traits or energy types associated with them.
Like what's the basic deal that leads us to Hellknights? Cheliax, the birthplaces of Aroden and Iomedae ends up aligning with Asmodeus at the end of a civil war following Aroden's death. "Aligning with the the literal devil" can't have possibly been a popular thing, so how do unpopular rulers maintain control over societies? Via authoritarianism.
So Cheliax was always going to be a sort of police state/security state. The Hellknights are just the expression of this.
This is what I loved in alignment threads and debates, and especially the Chaotic/Lawful ones. Because it helped me both refine and broaden my views and understanding about why RL humans act as they do. Which is one of my deepest drives and passions.
But if they hurt good people, then it's better they disappear. Good riddance indeed.
One of my favourite character thought experiments was trying to get inside the head of my Liberator of Shelyn's head, trying to figure out how she views the ideal of freedom and independence through the lens of beauty and non-violence. She had to take a prisoner once, so it was a very engaging exercise to figure out what a Chaotic Good person who does not value the impersonal justice of the legal system particularly would do with the competing values of protecting innocents but also a creature (who hadn't done anything we could prove wrong)'s right to freedom.
That said, this conflict didn't come up so much because Solveig was a chaotic good person, but because she was a knight of Shelyn dedicated to the ideal of freedom. Her champion code demanded that she fight for and defend the freedoms of others, but also prevent harm from coming to the innocent, while her deity demanded that she accept non-violent resolutions. Navigating in-character what she thought she must do in that situation is what made the brain teaser compelling.
I will not miss chaotic and lawful damage. I would miss lawful and chaotic conflicts except I never saw one play out in an adventure and the seed for all the law vs. chaos themes I've seen in the setting to date have all been related to planes which have not changed, so Hell still exists, as does a regiment of knights who believe that the unwavering laws and punishments of Hell are the only way to stop the corruption of demonic influences.
We might not have had Hellknights if we never had the nine-point alignment grid, but on the other hand neither would we have had the Outer Sphere as it exists today. Bear in mind the game has always been focused on good vs. evil more than law vs. chaos, but it wasn't the existence of alignment damage that cemented the Hellknights' place in the lore, it was the stories you could tell by taking a shining knight and removing the shining part and add cynicism until you get a character that only cares about obedience, not mercy.
PS, there's been a line of thought in this thread that Paizo is "Not interested in the conflict between law and chaos anymore." I want to run that one down for a moment--does anyone have a source for this, or did it accidentally drum itself up out of miscommunication and misinformation?
At first I thought maybe it was a slightly warped take on James' post in this thread (page 4), but when I look back at what he actually said:
The iconic "Chaos vs. Law" story we've told that comes to mind for me is the "Hell's Rebels" adventure path, but there's plenty more. And those themes will continue, since they'll remain a part of the setting. We don't need a "chaos" and "law" tag to do those stories.
The concept of "good vs. evil" is a much more ancient one than "chaos vs. law" in any event, which is why that side of things is percieved as being more common in a TTRPG (and any) story.
But again... not having a chaotic or lawful alignment in the rules won't impact the setting's stories and tales at all, other than potentially letting us use those two words more freely without a rules implication, I guess.
... it seems more like he said exactly the opposite, that Paizo's interest in chaos vs. law as a theme isn't any lesser than it was before, but rather that they realized that the conflict between law vs. chaos didn't need designated damage tags.
To put it another way, a Hellknight AP could be announced next month and I would expect themes of law and chaos to play prominently but I wouldn't expect the lack of a lawful damage tag to impede the story in any way. Law and chaos don't need to be active alignments to be relevant to the setting or its stories. Proteans and aeons will go on conducting maintenance on their corners of the multiverse and the difference in philosophy between order-loving archons and freedom-loving azata will still speak to the different faces of goodness even if their philosophies don't share a name with devils and demons respectively.
So anyway, if somebody knows when/where a Paizo writer said that Paizo has entirely lost interest in law and chaos, feel free to correct me, else I'll hedge my hopes and fears within what I understood the message to be.
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In other words, we will never again have debates about what Chaotic / Lawful means or should be.
I mean, getting one's politics from the cosmology of really old pulp fantasy can lead to some Jordan Peterson tier takes (CHAOS DRAGONS), with utterly incoherent ideas that aren't built from an understanding of material reality or history but instead from trying to squeeze reality into a taxonomy that was never *made* to reflect any aspect of reality.
I get enjoying it as an evocative prompt and I'm sure people can still make interesting characters by essentially pretending their character is actually one of the nine alignments, but the debates were mostly just people tying their brains up in knots and doing all sorts of mental gymnastics to do extremely bad philosophy. It was like a degree removed from horoscopes.
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Also I am not sure we would have had Hellknights if the game had been focused on Holy vs Unholy from the beginning.I don't see why not. We're only keying on "Holy vs. Unholy" as a "cosmological conflict." There are plenty of terrestrial versions of chaos vs. law that don't need traits or energy types associated with them.
Like what's the basic deal that leads us to Hellknights? Cheliax, the birthplaces of Aroden and Iomedae ends up aligning with Asmodeus at the end of a civil war following Aroden's death. "Aligning with the the literal devil" can't have possibly been a popular thing, so how do unpopular rulers maintain control over societies? Via authoritarianism.
So Cheliax was always going to be a sort of police state/security state. The Hellknights are just the expression of this.
The Hellknights are definitely not (for the most part) just Thrune's stormtroopers. That is what makes them far more interesting.
I don't remember them mentioning that order/chaos conflicts are not going to feature anymore. As far as I remember, they've only said that the underlying mechanics weren't really used, so they got rid of that part.
They just released an entire book about the Firebrands, so that sounds rather unlikely as well.
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In the remaster panel, I think Jason Bulmahn asked James Case about what they learned about the game mechanics of law vs chaos analyzing the game, and James said something about noting that mechanically, the actual ability to do anything mechanically with being lawful or chaotic was incredibly minimal and not featured in their APs.
I think James Jacobs made the aforementioned comments here about the not a planned part of the future, and if you think about it, for Adventure writers, basing APs on morally grey decision making on the part of the PCs, rooted in far more complicated decision trees than “let’s stop this entity/force from doing a lot of harm to the things our characters care about,” becomes difficult to script out past every decision point. AP writing can’t really go too far down the path of choose your own adventure for major plot beats that will change the fundamental motives of future villains and their machinations. Those are stories that inherently have to be the purview of homebrew, because too many plot shattering “what ifs” mean having to write stories that very well may never happen or trigger.
And that is why, if law chaos axis matters to you, just keep using it. It was always going to be space you had to make meaningful in your game if you really wanted to use it and nothing published is being taken away from you.
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The Hellknights are definitely not (for the most part) just Thrune's stormtroopers. That is what makes them far more interesting.Also I am not sure we would have had Hellknights if the game had been focused on Holy vs Unholy from the beginning.I don't see why not. We're only keying on "Holy vs. Unholy" as a "cosmological conflict." There are plenty of terrestrial versions of chaos vs. law that don't need traits or energy types associated with them.
Like what's the basic deal that leads us to Hellknights? Cheliax, the birthplaces of Aroden and Iomedae ends up aligning with Asmodeus at the end of a civil war following Aroden's death. "Aligning with the the literal devil" can't have possibly been a popular thing, so how do unpopular rulers maintain control over societies? Via authoritarianism.
So Cheliax was always going to be a sort of police state/security state. The Hellknights are just the expression of this.
Not only that, but there are situations where the Hellknights and Cheliax's forces are pitted against each other, rarely in outright combat but often in opposed goals.
While it easy to picture the Hellknights as evil first, they were lawful first but many of their forces happened to be evil because it was a "pragmatic" way to achieve their goals. It was possible to be a lawful good Hellknight, although challenging.
I'd imagine that creatures/archetypes/etc that are keyed to "law" and "chaos" will probably still get abilities that work against their rivals/opposites, they just won't be as simple as a specific damage type modifier.
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The Hellknights are definitely not (for the most part) just Thrune's stormtroopers. That is what makes them far more interesting.Also I am not sure we would have had Hellknights if the game had been focused on Holy vs Unholy from the beginning.I don't see why not. We're only keying on "Holy vs. Unholy" as a "cosmological conflict." There are plenty of terrestrial versions of chaos vs. law that don't need traits or energy types associated with them.
Like what's the basic deal that leads us to Hellknights? Cheliax, the birthplaces of Aroden and Iomedae ends up aligning with Asmodeus at the end of a civil war following Aroden's death. "Aligning with the the literal devil" can't have possibly been a popular thing, so how do unpopular rulers maintain control over societies? Via authoritarianism.
So Cheliax was always going to be a sort of police state/security state. The Hellknights are just the expression of this.
Not only that, but there are situations where the Hellknights and Cheliax's forces are pitted against each other, rarely in outright combat but often in opposed goals.
While it easy to picture the Hellknights as evil first, they were lawful first but many of their forces happened to be evil because it was a "pragmatic" way to achieve their goals. It was possible to be a lawful good Hellknight, although challenging.
I think LE Hellknights feel perfectly at home and even prosper under a LE regime. Whereas LG Hellknights only suffer there.
Under a LG regime, the opposite would be true.
But Cheliax is not LG.
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I'd imagine that creatures/archetypes/etc that are keyed to "law" and "chaos" will probably still get abilities that work against their rivals/opposites, they just won't be as simple as a specific damage type modifier.
I am pretty much convinced that we will NOT get PC options keyed to Law vs Chaos.
Which I realized is an important part of what I feel will be missing.
If you are a Paladin facing a Devil or a Demon, you can hurt them more than a Fighter.
But if you are a Hellknight, no matter how devoted to Law you are, you are no more efficient than the same Fighter when facing the pure embodiment of the forces of Chaos you so hate (aka Proteans).
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I guess my question is- why is it important the Hellknights hate Proteans more than they hate criminals and revolutionaries?
The Protean is just acting in accordance to its nature, and should be escorted back to the Maelstrom, but "these things exist" isn't something Hellknights have much impact on.
I am wondering what will differentiate Demons from Devils actually, apart from their adress in the Outer Planes.
I'm pretty sure "how they act, and what they want" hasn't changed for any outsiders.
Material weaknesses will probably be used a little more frequently in the cases of creatures that might once have been chaotic or lawful, so that there will still be general ways to prepare for demon or devil hunting without having to find sanctified power sources. Also fiends have been getting anathemas that players can exploit in encounters since the start of PF2. I imagine that these will be able to easily double down on creatures formally tied to law or chaos that will narratively be even more compelling.
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I am wondering what will differentiate Demons from Devils actually, apart from their adress in the Outer Planes.I'm pretty sure "how they act, and what they want" hasn't changed for any outsiders.
Pretty much. Hell still has a strict hierarchy and contracts, while demons are much less organized and free spirited about their evil. They don't need Law and Chaos to be different populations.
Remember, Law and Chaos don't actually have much in the way of meaning.
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"We are aware that especially if you've been playing this game for a long time, you personally probably have an understanding of what you think Law and Chaos are supposed to mean. You possibly even believe that the rest of your group thinks that Law and Chaos mean the same thing you do. But you're probably wrong."
Edit: *looks up the alignment sections in the CRB* Holy hell, THAT'S what you are upset about being removed? There's practically nothing there!
Like people who know about outsiders realize that Demons absolutely cannot be trusted under any circumstances. You can cow one into fearing you, but that thing is going to be looking to betray you as soon as it possibly can.
Devils can generally be trusted to do what they promise to do, because these are entities that deal in contracts and when they take advantage of you it's because of a loophole, or a hidden clause, or a narrow interpretation of language.
The real tricky one remains telling the difference between Demons and Daemons however, since both are absolutely hostile to mortal life of all kinds.
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Demons want to indulge in the Sin that defines them as much as possible.
Daemons want to kill everything including themselves eventually.
The daemon asks questions first, while the demon goes straight to ripping your eyeballs out to go with the hand they just cut off to make a new kind of hand puppet. And when you don't laugh about it, that's when they kill you.
Demons want to indulge in the Sin that defines them as much as possible.
Daemons want to kill everything including themselves eventually.
That's my general take on it.
Demons want a universe to be around, because if there wasn't they wouldn't be able to set people on fire or eat them for fun.They are more about wallowing in their depravity than the Nihilist destruction that Daemons go for.
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"We are aware that especially if you've been playing this game for a long time, you personally probably have an understanding of what you think Law and Chaos are supposed to mean. You possibly even believe that the rest of your group thinks that Law and Chaos mean the same thing you do. But you're probably wrong."
Edit: *looks up the alignment sections in the CRB* Holy hell, THAT'S what you are upset about being removed? There's practically nothing there!
No need to cast scorn on those who appreciated having the Law-Chaos axis in the game.
And all alignments were wide open to interpretation and would have needed a GM-players clarification beforehand. All the Paladin falls threads were not about differing interpretations of Law/Chaos AFAIR.