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Please take long discussions to another thread.
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The thing is, that there's no inherent contradiction as far as I can tell in "Champion of the Green Faith" or "Champion of the Laws of Mortality" or "Champion of Shoanti Animism."
When we say "Gods are the only people who can have martial champions" we're sort of saying that deific religions are correct in a way that others are not.
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The thing is, that there's no inherent contradiction as far as I can tell in "Champion of the Green Faith" or "Champion of the Laws of Mortality" or "Champion of Shoanti Animism."
When we say "Gods are the only people who can have martial champions" we're sort of saying that deific religions are correct in a way that others are not.
Not really, I believe you can argue that a hypothetical "Green Faith" champion would still be divine, and/or a warrior who gains primal power should be a new class.
Champion class description:
You are an emissary of a deity, a devoted servant who has taken up a weighty mantle, and you adhere to a code that holds you apart from those around you. While champions exist for every alignment, as a champion of good, you provide certainty and hope to the innocent. You have powerful defenses that you share freely with your allies and innocent bystanders, as well as holy power you use to end the threat of evil. Your devotion even attracts the attention of holy spirits who aid you on your journey.
Asking for a martial which is "not theistic", has primal, occult or arcane powers, is asking for a different class imo. A new class
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There’s plenty of Divine creatures with nothing to do with gods; no reason to assume one of those couldn’t loan you power through a contract other than worship.Links or I'm not convinced.
Kami! We’ve seen them up to level 15 in 2e, and I think all the way up to 20 in 1e.
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Kami! We’ve seen them up to level 15 in 2e, and I think all the way up to 20 in 1e.There’s plenty of Divine creatures with nothing to do with gods; no reason to assume one of those couldn’t loan you power through a contract other than worship.Links or I'm not convinced.
There's also the cuddly Couatls, some work for Deities, but a lot don't.
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One more thing for Barbarian.
Thrown weapons should also be a feature of barbarians, they aren't really as things stand.
I'd love an Occult champion that doesn't follow a god. Druidic champions! To me, the paladin was always more about being Lawful Good than following some deity, so I'd love for that to come back.
We have some sketch about occult champion that's Devotion Phantom Eidolon. It isn't a champion and only "protects" the summoner but it's occult based.
I want cause based Champions. I want more defender classes. I don't like trying to separate divine classes from their gods. It is who they are.
Anyway this is way outside what can reasonably be expected for Core 2.
Me too because I don't like the idea to force a champion to be bind to magical traditions neighter a an aligment or a god but cause based champions makes champions too closer to 5e paladins concept. Once that Paizo want take some distance from D&D to try to prevent unwanted procedural costs probably this is a more interesting exit.
One more thing for Barbarian.
Thrown weapons should also be a feature of barbarians, they aren't really as things stand.
I don't think that Raging Thrower need to be turned into a class feature. Barbarian has option to use this feat or a reach weapon (specially for giant ones). Instead I want that this feat also had Brutal trait to avoid the MAD reduction.
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The thing is, that there's no inherent contradiction as far as I can tell in "Champion of the Green Faith" or "Champion of the Laws of Mortality" or "Champion of Shoanti Animism."
When we say "Gods are the only people who can have martial champions" we're sort of saying that deific religions are correct in a way that others are not.
No. We're saying that gods are actual beings that exist in Golarion (which they are) and that they are capable of doing certain things that those who are not gods cannot.
It's not about "being correct". This is Golarion. The gods actually exist, and this can be trivially proven. Nidal exists as a country because they made a deal with Zon-Kuthon, and Zon-Kuthon protected them from an apocalypses with divine power. The Pit of Gormuz exists because Sarenrae smote the earth in a fit of rage. The gods don't just send signs and portents - they actually walk the earth from time to time, and are capable of being convinced of things.
Now, the other stuff that people worship? For the most part, that stuff also exists. Fae Lords and Greater Spirits and whatnot do exist. They just doesn't generate Priests and Champions, because those are explicitly the remit of gods. That doesn't make them "false" or wrong or bad. It just means that they are not the same manner of being.
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I agree fully with PossibleCabbage. I think this game makes deific-centered worship more fundamental to the game than it has to be, and it kind of comes at the expense of other kinds of belief systems, which are fully locked out of multiple classes and thus treated as significantly less important. You can play a god-worshipping druid, even if they don't get powers from their god, but you can't play a cleric or champion who doesn't follow a deity. That feels silly and more than a little Western-centric to me to me.
In third edition and its relatives, paladins were always more defined by their goodness and their code than their God. I generally saw the god is pretty secondary to a paladin, what really mattered was that day followed the tenants of kindness, compassioned and honor. I miss that paladin.
On a tangential note, goblins will canonically worship anything; they will ascribe religious importance to a rock and consider that rock a god. Why not allow a goblin to play a champion of the rock? Besides the game's logic is inherently tinged by a Christian perspective. To a traditional Christian perspective, a god has to be universally real, rather than being something subjective and personal to the individual who believes in it. Either a cleric gets powers from the god, and it's real for everyone, or a god is false and can't grant anything. That's just kind of a conceit of the setting, so it's too embedded now to really remove (that one living god nation would be kind of ruined if the setting retconned switched to a subjective-belief-based cleric system), but it's good to be aware that this bias is there.
It's fine for cleric. Clerics would be a little messed up at this point if you let them get power from causes or whatever. But champions have always been more defined by their cause.
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It's fine for cleric. Clerics would be a little messed up at this point if you let them get power from causes or whatever. But champions have always been more defined by their cause.
This just simply isn't true. The class description I posted earlier states they're a warrior for a deity. Their causes come from the deity will have champions which are either paladins, redeemers, or liberators. The cause is downstream from the divine source. Broadening this to vague notions of "causes" will bring us to having the very bland 5e Paladins where they just have things as uninspired as "oath of vengeance" and I do not want that. Champion is one of my favorite classes, and to me these suggestions feel like things people want to turn the Champion into because they don't like Champions. They are asking for an entirely new set of classes to replace the class I like with an eclectic mix of disparate abilities and themes
Perhaps the problem is that the "gods exist" position denies equally valid ones like human divinity (e.g., see things like asceticism, taoism, confucianism (to a lesser extent), and generally philosophy) and it spiritual worlds (e.g., as viewed by ancestor worship practices, animism, shamanistic practices, spiritualism, and just about every ancient cultural personal/familial religious practices ever). Examining what we know of actual Roman religious practices makes them appear more similar to equivalent religious practices in China during the same time period. I.e., they resemble nothing like the fantasy cleric-centric...
Warriors who gain their power from spiritual beliefs akin to Daoist stuff like tai ji quan and Buddhist stuff like Buddhist Warrior Monks is already represented in the monk class. The monk is already one answer to this question of "how do we have warriors of faith who are not the champions of a god?" It is not a zero sum game, Champions are not the only divine, magical, or spiritual martials
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It's fine for cleric. Clerics would be a little messed up at this point if you let them get power from causes or whatever. But champions have always been more defined by their cause.This just simply isn't true. The class description I posted earlier states they're a warrior for a deity. Their causes come from the deity will have champions which are either paladins, redeemers, or liberators. The cause is downstream from the divine source. Broadening this to vague notions of "causes" will bring us to having the very bland 5e Paladins where they just have things as uninspired as "oath of vengeance" and I do not want that. Champion is one of my favorite classes, and to me these suggestions feel like things people want to turn the Champion into because they don't like Champions. They are asking for an entirely new set of classes to replace the class I like with an eclectic mix of disparate abilities and themes
Personally, I like more options. Nobody said anything about replacing.
Thanks for the fact-check, though! I should have said that they've always been more defined by their cause since third edition, where they don't get any powers related to their deity and are mainly influenced by a code rather than a deity's edicts. No domains, either. I don't think their stats have ever been dictated by deity, but I'll admit that my flavor perception based on that is just based on my own perspective.
Personally, I like more options. Nobody said anything about replacing.
Thanks for the fact-check, though! I should have said that they've always been more defined by their cause since third edition, where they don't get any powers related to their deity and are mainly influenced by a code rather than a deity's edicts. No domains, either. I don't think their stats have ever been dictated by deity, but I'll admit that my flavor perception based on that is just based on my own perspective.
The class description I posted earlier is from the PF2 CRB
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I agree fully with PossibleCabbage. I think this game makes deific-centered worship more fundamental to the game than it has to be, and it kind of comes at the expense of other kinds of belief systems, which are fully locked out of multiple classes and thus treated as significantly less important. You can play a god-worshipping druid, even if they don't get powers from their god, but you can't play a cleric or champion who doesn't follow a deity. That feels silly and more than a little Western-centric to me to me.
So, first, I strongly disagree with the argument that it's western-centric. If you're talking about Gods, the natural state of Golarion is polytheism. Monotheism is just as factually incorrect as atheism is. If anything, it's closer to Shinto or certain (most? all?) kinds of Hinduism than it is to anything like Judaism/Christianity/Islam. To the best of my (admittedly limited) understanding, the Native American faiths (south and north) would be pretty close too. That's not... "Western".
Second... again, this is Golarion. It's not about belief systems. There are things that are and are not true about the world, and many of them are pretty knowable. Most folks don't much like Zon-Kuthon, and most would never worship him. May oppose him, to the degree they are reasonably able. At the same time, if you refuse to believe that he exists then you are simply incorrect. In Golarion, it's not about what you believe. It's about who or what you worship and devote yourself to.
Now, the priest/champion question? You devote yourself and worship some entity out of gratitude or admiration or appreciation or fear or something similar. Depending on the entity in question, it may respond by offering blessings as it is able. Given that this is Golarion, the entity almost certainly actually exists, so it's not "invalid" in that way. (Admittedly, you could decide to worship something that doesn't actually exist... which, honestly, is kind of on you, given the available options out there.) Now, let us posit that only those who are formally "Gods" can offer the blessings of "make this person into a Priest" or "make this person into a Champion". That's part of what it means to be a God, in the same way that being a ghost means that you default to intangible. Does that invalidate other faiths? Still no. They can (and do) still offer other blessings. Some might make people into druids or witches, or empower Summoners. If you have a tribe of kobolds worshiping a dragon, then that dragon might well offer them protection in a rather more direct fashion. "Well sure - you might have priests and champions, but will your god set people on fire for you if they invade your home and threaten your children? I think not."
Once you conclusively answer the "does it exist" question with a "yes, in almost all cases" then none of them is really more or less valid than the other. I mean, the Gods may claim that they're special and important and more deserving and whatnot, but of course they would. Those with privileged positions will naturally tend to wish to see that privilege protected. They want people worshiping Gods because they don't like the competition. "Person who wants to be seen as important tells you that they're important" isn't exactly a font of validity either.
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The thing I would prefer in the setting to do is to pull the frame back a little and explain that while Gods canonically exist in the setting, Gods are simply part of the picture of "the fundamental nature of reality" and are as much participants in it as anything else.
So it's less "Pharasma keeps your ancestors around for ancestor worshipping cultures, because she's being kind or because of their destiny" and more "the nature of reality itself forces Pharasma's hand when it comes to revered ancestors sticking around, some people getting reincarnated, etc."
After all the Oracle (and the story of Lamashtu and Curchanus) kind of suggests that Domains precede Gods.
But I don't think that "citing the class description of the champion" is really a compelling argument since I've been objecting to that description of the class since the Playtest (since in my pre-PF2 experience, Paladins were never about "One specific God.")
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Uh oh... polytheism broadly may encompass hinduism but it doesn't just boil down to it. Shinto in contrast, is a set of primarily shamanistic practices that is compatible with existing indigenous Japanese polytheistic practices but it isn't in and of itself a polytheistic religion. The manner in which deity-focused clerics and champions are represented are primarily coded to be very close in appearance to the big three: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. And they've been coded this way all along. It's easy to see just looking at the Cleric's iconic. Completing coursework in comparative religion and eastern philosophy is helpful in situations like these.
So, again, I did say "closer to", and I continue to assert that. The idea that the world is full of gods, all of whom exist, and you pick which one or which ones you yourself want to focus on worshipping? That is very not "the big three". Still, yes, fine. It's "existing indigenous Japanese polytheistic practices"... and I imagine a fairly long list of other traditional practices that I cannot personally identify clearly because I have not taken coursework in comparative religion and eastern philosophy. Regardless, I do not think this serves to undermine my stated position.
As for the powers and the iconics and whatnot... well, that's true, and an entirely different topic. If you want to challenge the Priest and Champion because they're too iconically Jewish/Christian/Islamic, that's a reasonable and interesting argument to make (preferably in its own thread because you know that one's going to draw responses) but that wasn't what I was responding to here. It's highly unlikely to have an impact on PF2, but it might affect PF3.
I don't think that's what anyone is arguing about. Again, it's more can't I have a cleric or champion that represents world peace (e.g., like a "moonie")?
But it kind of is. People are being unhappy because the perceive that the fact that Gods can empower Champions and Priests somehow undermines animistic religions. In our world? That would be absolutely true. Being able to empower champions and priests would be a blatant indication that a given deity or group of deities or whatever actually existed and had power, which in turn would be a huge argument in favor of following the associated faith and a nearly insurmountable advantage over those faiths that could not... but this is Golarion. "Does the thing I'm worshiping exist?" isn't even a question. It all exists. "Does the thing I'm worshipping have an actual intellect and personality?" is true in almost all cases as well. Giving the "Gods" something that they can do to clearly and blatantly establish their bona fides... doesn't particularly give them that much of an advantage over most of the rest of the competition. Further, having them establish their validity doesn't particularly undermine anyone else's. The fact that Sarenrae obviously Exists and Does Things doesn't diminish the ancestor-worshiping faiths. They get their validity from the fact that their ancestors are obviously there and obviously helping and worthy of respect. The fact that there's some Sun Goddess over there doing Sun Goddess Things doesn't really enter into it.
Well given that there are entire planes that exist because of metaphysics it isn't too hard to imagine that clerics and champions can easily derive power from abstract concepts. The realism is all about taking the position that abstractions are real and exist. (They're just not made from matter or energy.) So...I'm not sure why clerics and champions can't. And again, this seems to be a wedge among the player base and I can confidently say is one of the things that earlier editions (of D&D at least) got right. I'm not sure why the CRB took the rout it took since it had easily available hooks for these folks. Their divine abilities simply come from ultra-powerful like-minded Celestials, Fiends, etc. who are also championing those causes, philosophies, etc. Not every Celestial, Fiend, etc. has to be in service to a deity. Not unrelated, if abstractions are real (they are), there's no reason not to ascribe deity like abilities to them or to grant divine powers to clerics/champions working in their name/accord.
So... I would totally buy the idea that a cause with enough devotion behind it might spontaneously develop into a deity. Deities get created in weird ways sometimes. Once you go past that, though... well, as far as I can tell, in Golarion, "sole source of priests and champions" is pretty much the only defining feature that deities have left. If you take that away, then claiming that something is a deity doesn't actually mean anything. I'd kind of prefer that the concept of "Gods" as an actual thing that one could either be or not be should actually exist, rather than being a meaningless title that some folks tell us that they are.
So it's less "Pharasma keeps your ancestors around for ancestor worshipping cultures, because she's being kind or because of their destiny" and more "the nature of reality itself forces Pharasma's hand when it comes to revered ancestors sticking around, some people getting reincarnated, etc."
I think that's actually canon? At least, I seem to recall a quote by a Paizo designer type that indicated that they would never publish any evidence that that was not true.
I actually agree with you here. Pharasma having dominion over all souls everywhere in Golarion, and preferring those that worshiped gods? That was ugly. I'd also be willing to accept "and the ancestor worshipers get to hang around and reincarnation gets to happen because that's how the system is supposed to work, and the thing that Pharasma really cares about is keeping the system working the way it's supposed to."
In my little world, Pharasma is actually LN. "The afterlife has rules, dammit."
I don't see that what folks are arguing for, that ideas can be as divine as gods is incompatible with gods existing in the Golarian multiverse. It's a mystery to me how its incompatible beyond some sentences in the CRB. I'm also not certain how philosophies, etc. granting divine powers detracts from deities. For some reason though, that seems to be your position. That if these things granted their clerics divine powers then somehow a deity's schtick has been stomped on. It doesn't make sense to me. The Golarian multiverse is big enough for both.
Okay. I'll ask, then. What other schtick do deities have? What is the qualitative difference that separates "deity" from "not a deity" that isn't "can empower priests and champions"? If I assert that someone or something is a God of Golarion, what am I even saying?
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This is probably not a popular opinion, but why do we need a difference at all? People are constantly trying to define the spirits and figures of non-Western cultures as "gods" here, but that's already a huge oversimplification. I don't get why "can empower certain people" is even an interesting distinction--patrons aren't gods, and they empower witches. The Green Faith isn't a god, but it can empower druids. Oracles don't even have to worship gods to get power from them, which makes one wonder what divine power even means if it's not powered by belief.
I dunno, it just feels kind of like "not all champions are empowered by gods" is a weird thing to see as the Straw that Breaks the Camel's Back.
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I would like any barbarian to be able to get the equivalent of medium armor while unarmored, not just animal barbarians. I just like the idea of a big burly low dex combatant who doesn't wear armor.
Maybe draconic scales for draconic instinct but I don't think that this will be a popular option not even for animal. Usually the players will avoid to use a class feat to have an AC that they can take via medium armor. Maybe work if is a class feature or if gives a heavy armor AC.
I would like any barbarian to be able to get the equivalent of medium armor while unarmored, not just animal barbarians. I just like the idea of a big burly low dex combatant who doesn't wear armor.
You are getting dangerously close to the truth... and the truth is that armor proficiencies in 5E are not entirely well-designed.
Seems to me like the most important thing is the outright proficiency bonus (from Trained to Legendary), and not the type of armor in the first place.
By giving Barbarians Master Unarmored Proficiency... there's not much point in forcing them to max DEX while at it, if you ask me.
DEX to AC feels a bit like CON to HP... I get why it's there, but should it be?
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Secret Wizard, you do you, but I definitely disagree. I just want things similar to Animal Skin for all barbs, because it's fun. Dex to AC works fantastic and so does con to HP in my experience.
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I had a longer post that I took to long to submit and got eaten. I'll post this and maybe go back later to try to recreate that.
This is probably not a popular opinion, but why do we need a difference at all? People are constantly trying to define the spirits and figures of non-Western cultures as "gods" here, but that's already a huge oversimplification. I don't get why "can empower certain people" is even an interesting distinction--patrons aren't gods, and they empower witches. The Green Faith isn't a god, but it can empower druids. Oracles don't even have to worship gods to get power from them, which makes one wonder what divine power even means if it's not powered by belief.
I dunno, it just feels kind of like "not all champions are empowered by gods" is a weird thing to see as the Straw that Breaks the Camel's Back.
It might be... if Champions and Priests were not the only thing that actually remains. Like, it's breaking the camel's back because it's removing the back entirely. I mean, even if it weren't that, I don't think I'd want to sit here while carefully find exactly how much you can pile on before I scream and then take that much minus one straw... but in this case, it kind of is.
For me? I want the world to have an actual cosmology. I don't want it to be a case where the only truth there is about any sort of higher power is a matter of unprovable subjective belief. We already have that here in the real world, and it kind of sucks in some ways. As such, then either we ought to have things called Gods, or not have things called Gods. If we do have things called Gods, then we should be able to tell whether something is or is not a God (or, perhaps, is in some particular near-god liminal state) and if they are a god, then that ought to mean... something. Like, "God" is a pretty significant term to throw around. If we're going to have Gods, I don't want to have divinity itself be all watered down to meaninglessness. There should be some obvious, real difference between Things That Are Gods and Things That Are Not. I don't feel like that's an unreasonable thing to ask.
Now, this is complicated by the fact that Paizo is trying to appeal to gamers. A lot of people want to play priests that look like priests, and Champions that look like Champions. They want to have a God to follow when they do, who's an actual God, and not a Greater Spirit or whatever. So while I personally would be cool with a world that didn't have any Gods in it per se (I've created and run worlds before where "god" was just a shorthand for "spirit who's made the big-time") that's not what this is, and I'm rather opposed to the idea of grudgingly accepting that there are Gods and then asking that it not actually mean anything.
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I had a longer post that I took to long to submit and got eaten. I'll post this and maybe go back later to try to recreate that.
LOL Same here: every once in a while the site slows down and I might end up with no post or 3...
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I had a longer post that I took to long to submit and got eaten. I'll post this and maybe go back later to try to recreate that.LOL Same here: every once in a while the site slows down and I might end up with no post or 3...
If I am going to write something more than a couple paragraphs here I will often make a draft in a google doc XD
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If I am going to write something more than a couple paragraphs here I will often make a draft in a google doc XDI had a longer post that I took to long to submit and got eaten. I'll post this and maybe go back later to try to recreate that.LOL Same here: every once in a while the site slows down and I might end up with no post or 3...
Yeah, if I think about it first, I'll Copy my post so I can Paste it back if there is an issue: the problem is my fingers most times click the submit post button before my brain engages... :P
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Y'know, I'm gonna drop this argument. I'm honestly very tired. I think we've expressed our opinions pretty clearly as to why a godless champion option would or would not be a good idea, and it'll be up to Paizo designers what the future will hold. We're getting in the weeds with talk about Golarion's religious messaging.
All I'll say in closing is this: To me, the most important element of the champion/paladin is the code, not the god. Formerly, it was the alignment, too. The code is the core of the class to me. That's just how I feel, though.
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I think we are getting lost in the weeds when arguing whether only gods can create champions. It's the reverse, the warriors who exalt a god, who becomes a champion for a god, are called "Champions" by the game rules. The class named "Champion" is this kind of warrior. A warrior who exalts some other powers would be something else. If the reason you want a champion who isn't connected to a god is because you want a tank but don't want the paladin flavor of the champion, I think we should let Paizo know that we want different options for a tanky warrior. If it is a different class flavor you want primarily, not the fact they are the main dedicated tank in the game, perhaps consider other martials who do the occult, arcane or primal thing. Barbarians have primal abilities and can be champions of some primal force. Thaumaturge are an occult warrior who easily can be a champion for some sort of esoteric cause. The magus is the arcane answer. If these don't fit 1 to 1, instead of trying to make the champion a different class entirely, just ask for a new class. Make a suggest for your occult martial, your primal martial. Maybe fighters should have the option to choose between legendary weapons and legendary armor so we can have your non-theistic tank class. If you want a warrior who gets their power from something like a Daoist or Buddhist spirituality, that is the monk. If the monk doesn't tank well enough, maybe we should be asking Paizo to make this possible in some way that fits the class
My only problem is that the class called Champion has a flavor and mix of mechanics I really like. Slapping a coat of paint on it and filing numbers off to make it "occult" or fit some other culture's spirituality does a disservice to both. If a warrior who is a champion for their animistic faith is something the game should have, why not do it justice and give it a full class that fully expresses the nuance of what this would mean?
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I think we are getting lost in the weeds when arguing whether only gods can create champions.
I agree that arguing about it is off-topic on a thread that's strictly about stating what you'd like to see. You can just say "I would not like that change" and move on. :)
Just a quick clarification. The section referred to for Deity selection includes philosophies. Thereby philosophies (and by extension, causes) are within the realm of things a Champion can champion and from which their powers derive.
Yes, sort of. The class description mentions gods, but the deities section also includes other forms of spirituality. It also I believe mentions atheism, which doesn't work for what the champion is under any lens. I did say in my original post that a Green Faith champion might be interesting and it would fit into the gender vibe I want champions to have. I assume, maybe incorrectly, there is a still a high power granting divine abilities here. Thinking about it now, I might disagree with myself as a "Green Faith Champion" is a compelling enough idea to maybe warrant an archetype or class. I think what I want is something like the paladin-like Tree Sentinels in Elden Ring, which have a slight natural flavor to them but are clearly still servants of a "god", in this case the Erdtree. I would love a naturalistic god to have a champion which is still divine, but a divine spin on nature. Not necessarily primal in the proper sense we use the term to refer to a tradition of magic
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Don't have much of a horse in the race, but I'll add that even the first 2e Bestiary includes two creatures that are not deities (in the sense that the word is generally used in Pathfinder) but that can grant clerical spellcasting to their worshippers: Gogunta and Treerazer.
Norns can also do it! They're in Bestiary 2, with a Pantheon presented for their mortal servants.
Treerazer's kind of a funny case, as he's kind of a demoted Demon Lord (who 100% can grant divine spells).
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Don't have much of a horse in the race, but I'll add that even the first 2e Bestiary includes two creatures that are not deities (in the sense that the word is generally used in Pathfinder) but that can grant clerical spellcasting to their worshippers: Gogunta and Treerazer.Norns can also do it! They're in Bestiary 2, with a Pantheon presented for their mortal servants.
Treerazer's kind of a funny case, as he's kind of a demoted Demon Lord (who 100% can grant divine spells).
Conqueror Worms can also grant spells, and they are only level 21.
Okay. I'll ask, then. What other schtick do deities have? What is the qualitative difference that separates "deity" from "not a deity" that isn't "can empower priests and champions"? If I assert that someone or something is a God of Golarion, what am I even saying?A better question: why do they need to monopolize it? (FIFY)
Answer: They don't. There's certainly no overarching cosmological reason. I think everyone agrees, monopolies are bad.
I'm just going to stop you here. I ask what Deities get that indicates anything special or notable about them at all other than "can support priests/champions". Your response was "Well, why should they have that thing all to themselves?"
I see no way to interpret this other than a general call for deities to not have anything that makes them particularly special or privileged in any way - to effectively say that the title of "God" is and should be largely meaningless, outside of a vague indication that one is probably powerful.
I am profoundly opposed to that position. I think I've expressed why. If you feel like I have been unclear in my reasoning on that matter, then please indicate. If that's not what you meant, then please indicate that (and also please indicate what you think should be their defining characteristics).
If that is your position, I believe we are at an impasse, and I don't particularly feel the desire to argue it further.
Y'know, I'm gonna drop this argument. I'm honestly very tired. I think we've expressed our opinions pretty clearly as to why a godless champion option would or would not be a good idea, and it'll be up to Paizo designers what the future will hold. We're getting in the weeds with talk about Golarion's religious messaging.
For the record, I respect that. "I would really just like to stop having this internet argument right now" is an entirely reasonable position to take.
For perpetual:
I don't think it's vital from level 1 (although it would be great) but since you are making 1 tier less items, I think it's extremely weird that you get it on 7 and not on 3. Getting it on 3, and making 1 tier less items, should be good enough imo
I'd prefer that there be some sort of T0 bomb (and equivalents for the other fields) that you could have perpetual even from level 1. If I'm a bomber, I want to be able to just throw bombs from the very beginning. Maybe it could be something that you buy by investing reagents? Like, at daily prep you lose 3 of your infused reagents, and in exchange you can make perpetuals at one tier lower.
Obviously it's far too late to be offering suggestions like this, but....
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Please take long discussions to another thread.
I think this is very good advice.
And yeah, SF, I'm trying to learn to just not do arguments sometimes. I don't like always being so confrontational. It's okay if Someone Is Wrong On The Internet sometimes. :P
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Kami! We’ve seen them up to level 15 in 2e, and I think all the way up to 20 in 1e.There’s plenty of Divine creatures with nothing to do with gods; no reason to assume one of those couldn’t loan you power through a contract other than worship.Links or I'm not convinced.
Interesting. I pondered on this and even tried to construct a counterargument, but I just...couldn't. Using my own arguments against me, I suppose I can see how this conclusion would come to pass. I didn't consider that indirect Divinity would still technically count as Divine power, given that the primary source (the spirit) is still from a deity, and the classic term of Divine power would be to send Angels and other celestials to do the God's bidding, and was wholly focused on it being more direct.
In hindsight, Clerics seek direct Divine power via worship, whereas other Divine spellcasters have the opportunity to have indirect Divine power via other means, which I suppose is also acceptable, given how creatures like Kamis are written.
The only real issue I might take with this now is if such creatures are capable of bestowing the power demonstrated in such classes to begin with (Kami might do so via treating such creatures as "Wards," for example, but even that might have its limits, since I believe it sticks more to objects than living beings). Otherwise, I appreciate the brainstorm exercise!
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One more thing for Barbarian.
Thrown weapons should also be a feature of barbarians, they aren't really as things stand.
I kind of wish there were playing facing Brutal options. Give them low damage die, but it feels like something that would make certain types of Barbarian (and a few other things) feel a lot more complete.