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So... I was just re-reading a bit on Rahadoum for random reasons, and it occurred to me that the sort of "swearing to extradimensional entities" thing that the new alignment system is based on is pretty much exactly what Rahadoum is so virulently opposed to.
So now I'm imagining the Pure Legion walking around with some sort of "detect evil/good/chaos/law we don't actually care which one it is" items somehow.
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Ooh, good point, yeah. They're still gonna be ticked off if you worship Nethys or Pharasma, though, so it's not just the deities with strong moral components.
... The real question is, what's the fastest and least troublesome sequence of actions that would violate at least one anathema of every core deity, like a sobriety check for priests?
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Contract with a mental health clinic to deal with some ghasts desecrating an art gallery, then change your mind and decide to deescalate the battle without using charm. You ignore the ghasts' insults and persuade them to reconvene at the local brewery (the bartender's been depressed lately, and the business will really cheer them up even if the ghouls can't appreciate the drink). You don't drink, of course, even though you want to. You're on the clock. You eventually convince them to go take their destructive rampage to the nice, peaceful woodland glade that houses a rare collection of history books.
On your way home, you luckily remember to cast your ballot to vote against Walkena's new bill to decriminalize sex work.
I think it’s a little silly the nation is neutral solely because nooone follows gods there
You don’t need to follow a god to be a good person or to be an evil one, or to believe in law or to be chaotic
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I think it’s a little silly the nation is neutral solely because nooone follows gods there
You don’t need to follow a god to be a good person or to be an evil one, or to believe in law or to be chaotic
It's not, it's lawful neutral.
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Impressive! An alignment thread was closed just to another rise it again!
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The old one was honestly fine until people started bringing up a specifically upsetting topic. We were just talking about undeath and philosophy and stuff. I hope the old alignment thread just gets trimmed and not locked for good.
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Ooh, good point, yeah. They're still gonna be ticked off if you worship Nethys or Pharasma, though, so it's not just the deities with strong moral components.
Oh, sure. I'm just noting that it's not just the god-botherers. Like, under the new system, people who swear to good/evil/law/chaos are almost explicitly the thing that Rahadoum is opposed to, god or otherwise. It's all just folks who signed up for the wars of extradimensional entities and intend to drag them onto the prime material.
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I don't get people assuming this is an alignment thread. It's clearly about how Rahadoum's lore interacts with the new mechanic, not alignment itself. If anything, this new thread is explicitly about edicts, not alignment. I thought we were happy about edicts leading to better discussion topics, or whatever? Well, this is one of those topics.
Besides which, "IBTL" isn't a productive contribution to the thread. By the rules, I'm pretty sure it's considered baiting.
Ooh, good point, yeah. They're still gonna be ticked off if you worship Nethys or Pharasma, though, so it's not just the deities with strong moral components.Oh, sure. I'm just noting that it's not just the god-botherers. Like, under the new system, people who swear to good/evil/law/chaos are almost explicitly the thing that Rahadoum is opposed to, god or otherwise. It's all just folks who signed up for the wars of extradimensional entities and intend to drag them onto the prime material.
Ah, I see, yeah. Just because it's not a god doesn't mean listening to the angel telling you what to do is accepted.
Interestingly there is a history of any alignment thread on this forum descending into chaos. Probably because of the sheer breadth of the topic, even when it starts out specific it easily starts to grow.
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It feels a little weird that you're so sure this thread is going to go downhill, considering that the last thread went downhill specifically because of a topic you initially brought up. I'm not saying it was your fault, but it might be a sign that these threads go downhill because people aren't careful with the tangential points they draw in.
This isn't a thread about alignment. Edicts are a wholly new system. Assuming it's going to fall apart, and spamming the thread with comments about that, unintentionally gives the impression that you're trying to derail it before it's even left the station.
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Interestingly there is a history of any alignment thread on this forum descending into chaos. Probably because of the sheer breadth of the topic, even when it starts out specific it easily starts to grow.
Yeah, but as Kobold Catgirl points out, this isn't about old-style alignments in any way. It's about the edict system that replaces them. Edicts are a lot more straightforward, and involve a lot fewer judgement calls and grey areas.
- Some powerful extradimensional being or group decides that it wants to achieve something, and that it wants to try the idea of empowering mortals to make that happen.
- Said powerful extradimensional being lays out a set of rules, and says "Mortals! Bind yourself to follow these rules, and there might be soem power in it for you eventually or something." Different rulesets have different social implications in different places.
- Your character decides for themselves whether or not they wish to do that thing.
- Rahadoum specifically says "Screw every bit of that noise."
- Rahadoum-native Druids say "Every bit?"
- Rahadoum says "Well... you people might be okay. Having someone to fight back the ever-encroaching desert is awfully nice... but don't push it."
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I wonder if we'll see the laws of mortality fleshed out the same way as diety edicts.
It feels a little weird that you're so sure this thread is going to go downhill, considering that the last thread went downhill specifically because of a topic you initially brought up. I'm not saying it was your fault, but it might be a sign that these threads go downhill because people aren't careful with the tangential points they draw in.
This isn't a thread about alignment. Edicts are a wholly new system. Assuming it's going to fall apart, and spamming the thread with comments about that, unintentionally gives the impression that you're trying to derail it before it's even left the station.
I just commenting because for some random reasons 3 topics about alignment was closed in a row.
In my defense wasn't me that brought up that topic was AestheticDialectic commenting about a clip that I put in a 3rd thread about other thing (but related to alignment too) but releated to that thread and another forum member that becomes offended from another unrelated subject that anyone had even talked about. Anyway it was a confusion from another thread.
About Edicts and Anathemas there's nothing new here. They already are a part of the game. Even Laws of Mortality already have them:
Edicts: challenge religious power and the spread of religion, expose and eradicate hidden worship, provide a peaceful and autonomous society in which the people are cared for through social infrastructure
Anathema: worship or swear an oath by a deity or religion, solicit or receive divine or religious aid, take a side in conflicts between religions
Without the Alignment (that was never a thing for Laws of Mortality and Pure Legion) the Anathemas will be the only thing that will restrict these Philosophies and Deities specially those who are already neutral. Also I'm not sure if we will have some way to magically detect outsiders.
I would think Rahadoum druids are desert neutral or even positive. Deserts are natural environments too. :)
my understanding is that there are specifically a group of druids in Rahadoum who follow both the laws of nature and the laws of mortality, and who put a fair amount of effort into fighting back the ongoing desertification of that country. Like, I'm sure that there *are* druids who'd be cool with it, but these druids are not.
...and yeah, it would be interesting to have other systems of edicts/anathema/whatever that work like the core four alignments do. Like, something for the druids in general might make sense, as might the laws of mortality themselves. The general thing of "swear to follow this set of edicts/anathema, and then do it, and you unlock these character options" has a *lot* of potential flexibility. It'll be interesting to see how far they take it and in what ways.
I feel like druids are going to be a bit of a litmus test here. Like, if the druids do have some sort of baked-in edicts/anathema about treating nature well, then that doesn't necessarily stop them from pushing things further in some later book, but "more dedicated than a standard druid" is a pretty high bar... and even if there would be *some* druids that might opt out, if it's a "most druids do this thing", then that's the sort of thing that should be making it into the class description, no?
Impressive! An alignment thread was closed just to another rise it again!
It was locked to deal with flags, not locked permanently
At least I think
Yeah, some deserts are natural, but desertification is this whole thing.
It's unlikely. As far I understand in currently interview and posted responses they will just use the currently Edicts and Anathemas and some deities will receive the new holy/unholy damage. But probably nothing will changed for Philosophies and Druids.
And about edicts they probably will keep more for lore than mechanic. What will matter still anathemas.
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About Edicts and Anathemas there's nothing new here. They already are a part of the game. Even Laws of Mortality already have them:
Without the Alignment (that was never a thing for Laws of Mortality and Pure Legion) the Anathemas will be the only thing that will restrict these Philosophies and Deities specially those who are already neutral. Also I'm not sure if we will have some way to magically detect outsiders.Edicts: challenge religious power and the spread of religion, expose and eradicate hidden worship, provide a peaceful and autonomous society in which the people are cared for through social infrastructure
Anathema: worship or swear an oath by a deity or religion, solicit or receive divine or religious aid, take a side in conflicts between religions
I'm going to call BS on that "there's nothing new here". There was a bunch of stuff that was associated with the old alignment system, and a lot of it isn't going away. So it needs to get folded into the new system, which (incidentally) makes heavy use of edicts and anathemas. We don't actually know how the new system works, so we're speculating. We don't quite know what to call it, so we talk about "alignment" (at which point unspecified individuals call this an alignment thread and claim that it's doomed to be horrible and needs to be shut down) and we talk about "edicts and anathema" (at which point unspecified individuals assert that those already exist, that there's nothing new here, and perhaps implying that the thread is pointless and ought to be shut down).
Still, we can speculate, right? Just like everyone else who's talking about the remastered version? So I'm going to assert that we're going to have something reasonably beefy here for Good/Evil/Law/Chaos to work with. It'll be opt-in rather than mandatory, but it'll be a situation where certain character decisions require it, and you might want to opt in regardless - where "Do you want to swear to X?" is going to be an interesting question when you build your character, in a way that many of these religious edict/anathema sets aren't in the same way right now.
...and thus the question - because if the edicts/anathema of the old core alignments are going to turn into more interesting crunchy decisions to make during chargen, then are we going to have any other such decisions that do the same on other axes?
As for detecting outsiders... I don't believe that they're going to get rid of the Detect Alignment spell. Of course, since there is no "alignment" out there to detect in the same way, the thing it would detect would be the thing that's replacing it - being formally aligned with one of the sides. Effectively, you get information on fewer people, but the information you get is going to be more interesting, and, often, more actionable. As for whether an angel-blooded who's minding their business and mostly trying to avoid the wars of their lineage is going to ping good or not? Well, that's yet another interesting question to speculate about.
Edit: And now that I think about it, it might be likely that shaman actually shows up here (in Tian Xia) as a class archetype. Which is fine. Not my preference, but it's fine. It's probably an easier lift than trying to shoehorn in something novel class wise just for the sake of fitting in a shaman class. I'd like a full class, but if wishes were fishes...
Highly unlikely. They've already said that they want to make sure that the Shaman (when it comes) is a full spellcaster so as to not be insulting in comparison with druids and clerics. Making it an archetype would be worse.
Now, the Tian Xia connection is a reason to imagine that it might be announced at Gencon and/or Paizocon, but I'm pretty sure that "archetype" isn't going to be the answer here.
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Is Tar-Baphon a god? Is the whispering way a religion?
Tar-Baphon tried but to date has not achieved divinity, as far as that is a discrete state of existence. The Whispering Way is an ancient philosophy that is far older than TB and could be described as a religion in certain tenses, but is not inherently divine in nature. Most religious adherents follow Urgathoa or another God if undeath.
In the context of Rahadoum... that's a more interesting question, but I feel like the fact that the Whispering Way is not inherently theistic is not the primary concern a Rahadoumi would have with the undeath cult.
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Well, being undead could be an interesting way to ensure you're not beholden to a deity. And that you will never have to submit to Pharasma's judgement.
Rahadoum is a nation of living people with almost no channeled positive energy. Undead are probably dealt with very severely or at best watched very closely, otherwise Rahadoum would have been overrun by now. Throw on Urgathoa's involvement with a lot of undead, too.
Plus, followers of the Laws of Mortality already aren't subjected to Pharasma's judgement, insofar as their souls aren't forced into a conscious afterlife on one of the other planes.
Historically speaking, the northern part of Garund has had undead issues going back at least to Ancient Ossirion.
Plus, followers of the Laws of Mortality already aren't subjected to Pharasma's judgement, insofar as their souls aren't forced into a conscious afterlife on one of the other planes.Aren't they? Since when does that universe itself and its gods care enough about mere beliefs to not judge souls according to their alignment? I haven't seen that they changed that lore. Yes, there are kind of exceptions, but they are connected with stealing/destroying souls or other intrusions from various entities and still mostly related to alignment/conduct in life. Not to what a creature believed in life what should happen to them in aftelife.
It's the Graveyard of Souls in the Boneyard. People who strongly reject the gods and the cycle of souls are buried there. I guess it's only particularly passionate cases, rather than all followers of the Laws of Mortality, but we're talking about the hypothetical of someone willing to become undead to avoid submitting to the system. The Graveyard of Souls makes an appearance in the Death's Heretic series. The Astral Plane is also mentioned as one of the possible destinations for those who reject deities.
As for why, outside of the many meta reasons, what would happen if such accomodations didn't exist? You'd get places like Rahadoum throwing their lot in with Geb, copying Galt's soul-trapping methods, or something of the sort. Plus, this whole thing has to run as long and as smoothly possible. Forcing souls vehemently opposed to the system through the system regularly might cause larger long-term problems.
That, and, as much as people often don't care for Pharasma and despite Geb's personal opinion on her, she's not really supposed to be some power-tripping evil tyrant. It's not just nine-sizes-fits-all.
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Yeah, some deserts are natural, but desertification is this whole thing.Just deserts are their own just desserts, and it turns out that alignment flame wars were really just the friends we made along the way or something like that.
Oh Great! Thanks a lot Themetricsystem! Now I've got "Dessert Druids" in my head, and thinking of Dessert themed spells. "Wall of Cake", "Ice Cream Cone"...*sigh* I'm not getting anything done today, am I...
Whispering Way vs Rahadoum is effectively oil vs water.
Rahadoum is a nation of humans who value being human and want nothing to do with gods, demigods, or any of that outside of their god.
Whispering Way wants to destroy everything to make an undead utopia. That includes Rahadoum and all they stand for.
Rahadoum might be a cult, but we're not a death cult, not like those other guys, right? I mean they. They're not. Hail, (insert local deity here)!
*look around nervously for clerical symbols*
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A blue-scaled kobold in doctor gear hops onto a wooden crate.
"I am quite curious as to what happens here, and hope we will no longer be treated like villains for not wanting divine interference in our lives. There a a significant number of nations for people to go to if they want to bind themselves to that sort of belief.
Tee El Dee Arr; Stop preaching at us for 'doing it wrong'"
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I haven't read too much into the laws of mortality recently, but their beef is not that the gods exist, or that souls go to aligned planes after death. Their beef if that powerful outsiders empower people to fight ideological wars on their lawn and they don't want it anymore.
Its my best understanding that Rahadoum isn't anti-afterlife or anti-river of souls. They are anti-cleric, anti-Champion, and anti-oracle. And I suppose all divine tradition casters.
Now, what I do not relish is the loss of Rahadoum's N alignment, because then we might get to hear about how the fascist nation who trains a cadre of soldiers called the "Pure Legion" and persecutes its own people for believing in something other than the state mandated quasi-religion doesn't make them bad because look at what they're doing for science.
...and you were doing so well before that last paragraph, too. Come on. I was just talking about how this wasn't an alignment discussion in the way that makes all fo the alignment discussions turn toxic. Please don't try to turn it into one.
You have no idea how much I hope you are right. But sometimes it very much looks, to me anyway, that the design team painted themselves into a corner with regards to what they can and can't do when developing new classes.
I look at the progression of classes and I see exactly the opposite. They've got some pretty hard lines on overall effectiveness in various ways that they are unwilling to cross, but as the game progresses and they refine their understanding, classes have been getting more interesting and complicated, rather than less.
Basically, the actual numbers are not going to go beyond a certain point, but how you get to those numbers is getting more and more flexible as we go.
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I haven't read too much into the laws of mortality recently, but their beef is not that the gods exist, or that souls go to aligned planes after death. Their beef if that powerful outsiders empower people to fight ideological wars on their lawn and they don't want it anymore.
Its my best understanding that Rahadoum isn't anti-afterlife or anti-river of souls. They are anti-cleric, anti-Champion, and anti-oracle. And I suppose all divine tradition casters.
It can be both. "The gods' power doesn't mean they deserve mortal obedience" is the philosophical underpinning, while "no more wars on our doorstep" is the practical underpinning. Some people just want to live their lives, and some people care deeply that the gods not interfere with them even after death.
The anti-oracle thing got dropped between editions (which is part of why the iconic oracle changed), but it'd be a hard time using those powers and proving its not in service of some extraplanar power.
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More on topic... I suppose I could use a little more clarification on why druids would be fighting the desert in Rahadoum. From what I've read on it, along with examining various maps, it looks like the dominant natural environment is, in fact, dry sandy desert or salt waste. Even here on Earth, those are natural environments. I'm also not seeing where something that's already a desert gets further desertified. Can someone explain what I'm missing?
Basically Rahadoum looks like a fantasy equivalent of Morocco + Algeria + Tunisia. Those are pretty arid locations. Rahadoum seems to traditionally be an arid place, so what have I missed that druids would be trying convert the natural landscape into something it isn't?
They're not fighting the desert so much as fighting desertification. A formerly non-desert area is becoming desert, and plenty of druids with a focus life or plants would consider stopping that to be promoting their aspect of nature in a way that doesn't violate anathema. If they wanted to rapidly magically terraform a long-standing desert into a lumber forest, there would probably be fewer takers.
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Oh Great! Thanks a lot Themetricsystem! Now I've got "Dessert Druids" in my head, and thinking of Dessert themed spells. "Wall of Cake", "Ice Cream Cone"...*sigh* I'm not getting anything done today, am I...Yeah, some deserts are natural, but desertification is this whole thing.Just deserts are their own just desserts, and it turns out that alignment flame wars were really just the friends we made along the way or something like that.
I guess you can desertify an area by pouring salt on it, or dessertify it with sugar instead.
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They're not fighting the desert so much as fighting desertification. A formerly non-desert area is becoming desert, and plenty of druids with a focus life or plants would consider stopping that to be promoting their aspect of nature in a way that doesn't violate anathema. If they wanted to rapidly magically terraform a long-standing desert into a lumber forest, there would probably be fewer takers.
Huh. Cross-referencing this with a different topic, it occurs to me that water kineticists are literally living portals to the elemental plain of water... and, by extension, should be able to just create water, pretty much without limit. That seems potentially pertinent to tasks such as this... and Rahadoum wouldn't have any real objection to kineticists in general. Of course, they might not really have any kineticists, but I wouldn't see them objecting.