Rule and Lore Creative Director
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Hello!
Now that we've finally announced Lost Omens Divine Mysteries, I'm coming to the community for some help. There are a lot of gods in Pathfinder Second Edition and we're doing our best to remaster as many as possible in LODM, bringing their stat blocks up to speed with the updated format and mechanics of the remaster (dropping alignment, adding sanctification, and so on). While I've tried my best to tweak edicts and anathema for gods as part of this, there's surely some I've missed along the way.
What I'm looking for specifically are those edicts and anathemas that make typical adventuring more difficult or nigh impossible, or those that are so vague that ruling from table to table could cause issues.
For example, Qi Zhong used to have an anathema of "Deal lethal damage to another creature (unless as part of a necessary medical treatment)." That sounds fine and all until you run into constructs and undead that are immune to nonlethal damage. What are you supposed to do then? The anathema now specifically calls out dealing damage to living creatures to allow PCs to fight undead without worrying about displeasing Qi Zhong.
I'd love to see any other gods that have edicts and/or anathemas that make adventuring difficult. I can't promise that every god shared here will see changes or even make it into LODM, but I will definitely look every submission to see what can be done about any issues.
Thanks for the help, everyone!
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Lying for is anathema for Sarenrae. That always seemed really extreme, especially given her popularity. Torag is also against lieing. That makes it hard to function in social encounters that require deception.
Calistria's Anathema is don't get consumed by revenge but also don't let a slight go unanswered. They aren't hard to follow except they are contradictory in a lot of circumstances.
Urgathoa's Anathema, don't destroy undead, is hard to follow in any campaign that has undead enemies, which is pretty much all of them.
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On these boards, Keftiu brought up Casandalee having Evil followers while her edicts and anathema are not Evil sounding.
I feel Arazni is a little like this too.
I remember seeing a thread about people interpreting Nethys' anathema of "pursue mundane paths over magical ones" as an obligation for their Clerics to use up all their Heal spells before being able to use the Medicine skill.
Urgathoa, as mentioned above, is hard to follow, especially in Blood lords.
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Two more : Torag (surprise, surprise) and Findeladlara :
I agree you can read some questionable things into Torag's overall presentation, but Findeladlara still stands out to me more because it's so very explicit. Preserving traditional elven culture and looking down on/belittling non-elves are outright stated to be core parts of her portfolio. The former doesn't seem very chaotic and the latter doesn't seem very good.
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Two more : Torag (surprise, surprise) and Findeladlara :
I agree you can read some questionable things into Torag's overall presentation, but Findeladlara still stands out to me more because it's so very explicit. Preserving traditional elven culture and looking down on/belittling non-elves are outright stated to be core parts of her portfolio. The former doesn't seem very chaotic and the latter doesn't seem very good.
Especially for the goddess who is the patron of the Twilight Speakers. A group whose whole purpose is opening dialog with other cultures and peoples.
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On these boards, Keftiu brought up Casandalee having Evil followers while her edicts and anathema are not Evil sounding.
Yeah, her E&A are all about harmony and equity, which never quite squared for me with Desecrator Champions or what would now be Unholy Sanctification. I know she was a build-a-goddess in 1e, but the 2e direction seems to be firmly benevolent, and that’s worth committing to.
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I don’t think gods with bans on lying are unreasonable for adventurers; if you wanna play a liar, choose one of the hundreds of deities or 23 classes that allow it. Very few of those Anathema forbid letting others lie - a benefit of adventuring in parties.
I don’t think gods with bans on lying are unreasonable for adventurers; if you wanna play a liar, choose one of the hundreds of deities or 23 classes that allow it. Very few of those Anathema forbid letting others lie - a benefit of adventuring in parties.
I find them unreasonable but that's also because I find the idea of a god that is so against lying they will strip your magic from you if you do it but is fine if you willfully let others lie for you to be incredibly unbelievable
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With all due respect and not wishing this thread to devolve into arguments about which tenets really are or aren't really incompatible, I feel like half these examples just make sense as written or aren't incompatible in the way the example demonstrated.
I want to +1 keftiu's "a cleric who wants to lie isn't compatible with a deity who values honesty in the first place" particularly a deity once described as 'lawful', and that swearing off lying is an interesting rp hook, not something which is fundamentally incompatible with adventuring. Perhaps the tenet could be rewritten for a little more nuance (and standardized--is it don't lie, or don't tell lies)
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Meanwhile, one I found long ago that seemed too difficult to be true belongs to the Cosmic Caravan pantheon. The anathema '(never) spend the night in the same place twice in a row' seems obviously geared toward a wandering traveller theme, but in practice seems impossible to honour. One might honour the letter of the anathema while violating the spirit by simply alternating between inns (or even rooms at the inn with sufficiently split hairs), but if setting a minimum scale on 'place' to honour the spirit, it becomes impossible for the benevolent traveller ever to stop in a town to deal with a plot of any meaningful scale without resorting to unsatisfying tactics.
If this anathema must stay in some form (and I'm not sure that it must--aside from mimicking the movement of the caravan through the heavens I think Desna is the only travel deity in the pantheon) I would see a minimum duration added, like "(never) stay in one place for more than one month/moon" - but again, with the pantheon supposedly growing in popularity across the continent, either people are suddenly leaving their homes or repeatedly violating what should be an important tenet of their faith.
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Technically, Ng, the hooded fey eldest, also has the same or similar anathema, but fey eldest having bizarre commandments doesn't violate my sensibilities nearly as much as a pantheon based on the in-universe zodiac which is supposedly growing in followers. Still, at minimum obeying this anathema for an adventurer often means going off somewhere on your own without your party while staying in town, which can make overnight events more difficult or much more dangerous to the party.
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I don’t think gods with bans on lying are unreasonable for adventurers; if you wanna play a liar, choose one of the hundreds of deities or 23 classes that allow it. Very few of those Anathema forbid letting others lie - a benefit of adventuring in parties.I find them unreasonable but that's also because I find the idea of a god that is so against lying they will strip your magic from you if you do it but is fine if you willfully let others lie for you to be incredibly unbelievable
More unbelievable than one who forbids violence for followers, but lets them pal around with three combat-hungry heroes?
More unbelievable than one who forbids violence for followers, but lets them pal around with three combat-hungry heroes?I don’t think gods with bans on lying are unreasonable for adventurers; if you wanna play a liar, choose one of the hundreds of deities or 23 classes that allow it. Very few of those Anathema forbid letting others lie - a benefit of adventuring in parties.I find them unreasonable but that's also because I find the idea of a god that is so against lying they will strip your magic from you if you do it but is fine if you willfully let others lie for you to be incredibly unbelievable
I find that as unbelievable yes, I'd also say that such an anathema would match with this thread but I'm not familiar with gods with such an anathema, for ones I do know to compare it with I'd say it's like a cleric of pharasma adventuring with a necromancer and even getting them to raise undead for them
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It's also worth remembering that, currently, the anathemas and edits are (usually) listed in terms of severity and importance, with a few outliers. For example, Iomedae's current anathemas are "abandon a companion in need, dishonor yourself, refuse a challenge from an equal"; only in the direst need (or if a "companion" is obviously trying to exploit the letter of this anathema) would she forgive the abandoning of a companion, but refusing challenges is, while not great, obviously something with a lot more leeway and reasons why you might decline a challenge at a given moment, and it would only become a problem if it became habitual.
Meanwhile, though, you've got something like Cayden's layout, where his anathemas are "waste alcohol, be mean or standoffish when drunk, own a slave" in that order, when one would think that the third one would be a liiiiiittle higher in the priority list.
So, basically, when combined with the thread so far, you see the problem: a lot like the alignments of old, there needs to be language in the books making it very clear that edicts and anathema are generally not straight-jackets, and that, outside of the very top-end E&As or really egregious breaches of faith, your god is not going to smite you for a single transgression, particularly one at need. While I think the move away from the incredibly hard-to-define alignments is a good one that's been a long time coming, the E&As still leave a lot of room for potential behavior policing and table discord if not given clear guidance in a book. Which, probably a bit too late for Player/GM Core if those books lack that, but hopefully there's time to get it into Divine Mysteries or PCore2 if it needs to go there.
As for a specific example I can think of, Pulura has a third anathema of "pollute the skies with smoke or light", so it's not her most severe one and especially given her second anathema is "deny warmth to others" she obviously will forgive lighting a large, warm campfire or similar (and the anathema is far more "don't participate in the large-scale, long-term obscuring of the skies in a way that impacts a wider population") but the current phrasing could still be brought up by a particularly strict or a-holish GM as an argument against a Puluran lighting any sort of campfire or other bright light source that contributes to local light pollution or makes it harder to see the stars in any way.
Also, just in general, it occurs to me that the Pantheons, Philosophies & Spiritualities section in 2E Gods & Magic is a better example of how these should be formatted; the really short E&As of the existing CRB or in the appendix of G&M could be open to misinterpretation (e.g. "be temperate, fight for justice and honor, hold valor in your heart/abandon a companion in need, dishonor yourself, refuse a challenge from an equal" is a bit squiffy in places, but "protect your clan and your people, educate the clan’s children’s in the traditions and histories of the clan’s god, and carefully record the name and image of each new god when they first appear so that they are not forgotten and can continue to watch over the people/make no deals or bargains with demons, as the advent of the Worldwound led to the destruction of many clans and the loss of many gods, some of whom may never be seen again" is a lot clearer about the hows and whys of these E&As and the specific ways you'd violate them and why that's bad is a lot more clear-cut.
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I have yet to see any evidence that the order of importance applies to anything but champion code. I have been looking but not yet found any reason to believe anathema are in any particular order, except maaaybe alphabetical but even that isn't a guarantee.
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Gorum's anathema of "prevent conflict through negociation" has sometimes be interpreted as an obligation to kill any attempt at negociation by other PCs.
A very clear and strong clarification that edicts and anathema apply only to the PC and must never be used as a basis for policing other PCs' behaviour would be immensely helpful IMO.
Together with the usual warnings of respecting every player and GM's sensibilities. So that edicts and anathema are not used to force another player's PC to be in a situation the player does not want.
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Ragathiel's anathema of "Cower from combat" can force a PC to rush headlong into suicidal fights that should be avoided.
It is even worse than Gorum's edicts and anathema on this.
A strong clarification that edicts and anathema are not obligations to behave in a self-destructing way would be great.
Maybe also the same about behaviours that put the whole party at risk or make it explode.
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I feel like there's room for the fine line between "I am not allowed to do this thing, so I'll just have somebody do it for me" and "I am not allowed to do this thing, but it's not my job to prevent my allies from doing it". I don't feel like the point of deity anathema is to police your allies according to your own moral standards; this is a polytheistic world and your deity is not their deity.
A cleric can advocate for their perspective (we should tell the truth; we should fight it out; we should not loot these burial goods) but the can and probably should also acknowledge that they don't have to participate if the party decides to do it anyway - only I would think that the cleric should probably refuse to benefit directly from the activity. The cleric of Erastil will refuse to lie if pressed, and can't just have another character come over and speak their lies for them, but also is under no obligation to volunteer information and can step aside. They're not on a quest to make sure no one tells a lie, they're under a personal prohibition. The Gorumite is invited to sulk whenever a fight is prevented through negotiation, but Gorum also prohibits killing noncombatants (or at least prisoners and surrendering foes) so if nobody is going to fight it out, they can cool their heels unless they want to volunteer to resolve the dispute with combat by champion.
It seems like part of the difficulty applying this logic to various anathema is that some anathema resemble (or are) general applicable laws which we expect everyone to follow or face consequences, while others are more easily readable as a personal code that doesn't require interpersonal enforcement.
There is only one anathema that jumps out at me as arguably requiring buy-in from your allies. I love the RP value of Shelyn's anathema "(never) refuse to accept surrender", but I have to acknowledge that it doesn't make sense to me to 'accept' a surrender while your allies are still giving no quarter to your would-be prisoner. I like when anathema create interesting complications to think through (an Urgathoan doesn't like to destroy undead nor sacrifice their own life, so it stands to reason they would attempt to negotiate with undead or force them to submit to one's will, or find other means of getting past the problem) and I would like Shelyn to keep at least one anathema requiring them to keep nonviolent resolutions open, but if anathema are to be clarified to never apply to your allies, a requirement to accept surrender risks becoming meaningless in a way that refusing to lie or refusing to negotiate don't under similar circumstances. I would even be okay with a sidebar that explains that while anathema don't apply to allies, some tenets (and some followers) may require at least some cooperation among the party, even if the party are still not beholden to the cleric's moral code.
(and mind you, all this remains under the caveat that, even if your party doesn't have to obey your tenets, allies who consistently violate your moral code is probably grounds for leaving the party, which is itself grounds for some table talk about whether to play up the 'teeth-clenched teamwork' as cleric and party agree that it takes all kinds and they must work together and find a middle ground despite their differences, or else decide that one or more of these characters simply don't fit with the party and it's time for a convenient change of faith or new character.)
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As its own topic: As much as I'd like to go through each edict and anathema and rate them myself for adventuring compatibility, it seems like the Raven Black has already begun this same process. While I don't necessarily agree with all his takes, he is catching the few that come to my own mind.
+1 to rewording Sarenrae's "fail" to strike down evil - I feel like I know what it means and how to adjudicate it, but I dislike the wording of punishing "failure" when I take the meaning as "neglect to strike down evil"
This probably doesn't count as too vague or make adventuring impossible, but Mammon's anathema against "leaving the cult of Mammon" should probably either have an explanation (how does one propose to leave the cult of Mammon and not lose powers?) or simply be removed.
... On Findeladlara, has anyone taken a look lately? Is it just me or did she get an errata a while back -- her only anathema are breaking hospitality and knowingly allowing a guest to harm your family.
Luhar's anathema against staying up all night could include a clause for when vigil is necessary for survival - such as holed up with waves of undead bashing down the doors.
Groetus, "artificially extend existence/lifespan" reasonably straight forward, but I feel like it could be clarified whether this refers to any kind of repair or healing, If so, perhaps a secondary anathema against repairing objects is warranted, and if not, perhaps clarification what 'artificially' means in this case.
Sivanah's prohibition against using illusion or shadow to harm creatures is interesting for a deity of illusions, but there's perhaps room for disambiguation what constitutes harm, if at all possible without writing up a dissertation.
Nyarlathotep's Crawling Chaos aspect may be chaotic evil by the old alignment standard, but the edict to "sow discord among allies" could be clarified to refer to allies you encounter, not among your own (on the other hand this could be intended, which is fair enough, you can hardly signpost content as more "not appropriate for player use" than a CE outer god.
A personal pet peeve, I have generally felt that the edict "curse or mutate unborn children" to be unusual for a (formerly) CN deity such as Yog-Sothoth. I'll grant it references the story, and Yoggy doesn't allow good worshippers, but it doesn't seem to have anything else to do with the deity as presented in Pathfinder.
Gravelady's Guard (pantheon) has an anathema against "practicing necromancy" which would be unusual given that healing is also necromancy, but also runs afoul of the changes to magic schools, unless going forward 'necromany' exclusively refers to undeathly magic
Pillars of Knowledge (pantheon) has a particularly challenging anathema. The easy solution to avoiding a prohibition against lies is refusing to answer, but this pantheon prohibits refusals to answer questions you know the answer to. If this anathema isn't intended to require the follower to tattle on themselves and their allies, it could be narrowed in scope toward factual queries or exclude personal queries etc. The Enlightened Scholar's Path has a similar, better worded version of this "refuse to share knowledge"
The Godclaw's anathema, "rest when there is lawlessness to fight" - there is presumably never not lawlessness to fight, so this anathema functionally says "(never) rest", which even if we assume sleep is excluded, leaves little guidance how literally to never rest and what activities qualify as not resting on the fight against lawlessness.
For that matter, the Godclaw's other anathema is a little confusing to me, "believe you know more than the pantheon". As a GM I'm not even certain how to adjudicate whether a cleric believes themselves to know more than their pantheon without somehow characterising the entire pantheon.
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Oh wait I did just go through everything didn't I...?
Well this list probably isn't actually complete, I just picked anything that stood out to me.
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Oh, addendum: while "do not lie" seems like a perfectly viable tenet, it probably still falls under the "clarity/disambiguation" part of this thread, and frankly I wouldn't mind some additional consistency between the various "lie", "tell lies", "cheat or tell lies" anathema that currently exist and some clarity whether any single lie or deveptive omission is a violation etc.
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Ragathiel's anathema of "Cower from combat" can force a PC to rush headlong into suicidal fights that should be avoided.
There's a significant difference between "cowering from combat" and avoiding an unwinnable fight, and I don't think a good DM would quibble over it or Ragathiel would begrudge a follower living to fight another day. He just demands it not be out of cowardice.
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Ragathiel's anathema of "Cower from combat" can force a PC to rush headlong into suicidal fights that should be avoided.There's a significant difference between "cowering from combat" and avoiding an unwinnable fight, and I don't think a good DM would quibble over it or Ragathiel would begrudge a follower living to fight another day. He just demands it not be out of cowardice.
I get that, but IME in any field it's better to be explicit about which interpretation is correct.
PF2 already explicitly tackled the no obligation to be suicidal point in several places of the RAW. There are just a few places left, such as this one, where it can be reiterated.
I think Anathema are supposed to allow for a character to keep them by making an effort even when it's inconvenient. Like a Sarenrite shouldn't straight up state as fact a thing that's untrue, but there are absolutely other ways to deceive someone. Like an Ngian in an intrigue campaign set in one city should be able to follow the anathema by just "not staying in the same inn or safehouse two nights in a row" since that's consistent with Ng's edicts of "Do OpSec."
One I've always found weird is Ra's Anathema of "Avoid Personal Change" it seems like this could be better stated as an edict like "Seek personal growth and accept personal change" since there are absolutely personal changes a character should want to avoid (e.g. curses.) A cleric of Ra should not have to go around thinking "well, I'm not someone who is poisoned, so if I become poisoned that will be a personal change."
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The Godclaw's anathema, "rest when there is lawlessness to fight" - there is presumably never not lawlessness to fight, so this anathema functionally says "(never) rest", which even if we assume sleep is excluded, leaves little guidance how literally to never rest and what activities qualify as not resting on the fight against lawlessness.That honestly feels in-keeping with the Hellknights' ethos to me. You're never perfectly following the laws, you are just getting marginally better at doing so as you absorb the teachings of the Godclaw and the Measure and the Chain. The failure to hold up to the standards the Godclaw demands are personal failings that are meant to be scourged from the body; discipline and reckonings are how this is achieved.
I would say it is lawlessness you are aware of and that you can do something about.
I would say it is lawlessness you are aware of and that you can do something about.The Godclaw's anathema, "rest when there is lawlessness to fight" - there is presumably never not lawlessness to fight, so this anathema functionally says "(never) rest", which even if we assume sleep is excluded, leaves little guidance how literally to never rest and what activities qualify as not resting on the fight against lawlessness.That honestly feels in-keeping with the Hellknights' ethos to me. You're never perfectly following the laws, you are just getting marginally better at doing so as you absorb the teachings of the Godclaw and the Measure and the Chain. The failure to hold up to the standards the Godclaw demands are personal failings that are meant to be scourged from the body; discipline and reckonings are how this is achieved.
Maybe so, in both cases, but this is why I feel it falls under Luis', "so vague that ruling from table to table could cause issues," guideline. It says lawlessness not crime you can see.
Like I said, what constitutes "never resting"? If I take time to sharpen my weapons instead of hunt lawlessness, is that resting? On the surface obviously not, but also that only makes the anathema a game of "what will the Godclaw/GM accept as "not resting" that I can do while the party takes 10 minutes to patch wounds" etc.
I feel like the anathema is more appropriately about being ever vigilant and alert for lawlessness to oppose; metaphorically never resting, but the current wording could frankly be construed a variety of ways at a given table, hence I out it up for review. Even if it comes down that, yes, a Godclaw adherent must deny themselves any rest up to not sleeping while they are aware of laws not being obeyed within their purview, that would at least be clearer (even if I think that would slide into the other reason to review; the impossibility for an adventuring champion or cleric to keep their powers)
I found a subtle problem with an edict of Gendowyn, Lady of Fangwood. The party in my Ironfang Invasion campaign rescued her in Prisoners of the Blight. Gendowyn was a glastig fey who had achieved godhood by caring for the Fangwood Forest and its fey, until in 4062 AR the corrupted dryad Arlantia usurped her throne and imprisoned her until the party rescued her in 4717 AR, 655 years later. Arlantia had gained power from the fungus god Cyth-V'sug and spread that god's Darkblight in the area around the fey court of Fangwood.
Gendowyn is understandably angry at Cyth-V'sug; hence, her Edicts contain, "destroy blighted fey and agents of Cyth V'sug," and her Anathema contains, "Parley or make a deal with fiends." Gendowyn did fight against Cyth-V'sug's spawn Treerazer before her captivity, so she might have had an anathema against associating with fiends early on. But the edict against blighted fey is surely a consequence of her betrayal by Arlantia and the introduction of the Darkblight to Fangwood.
But that edict was not suitable at the end of Prisoners of the Blight. Technically we were roleplaying a follow-through to the module in which the party helped Gendowyn re-establish herself as the queen of Fangwood after Arlantia's death. Most fey in the Darkblight had been born in the Darkblight. They did not chose to become blighted nor did they foolishly risk exposing themselves to blight. Getting blighted when one's home village is in the Darkblight was inevitable except for the fey who were immune to disease. These blighted fey were not Gendowyn's enemy. Arlantia had rewritten history taught to young fey. In the false lore Gendownyn was merely a pretender to the throne 655 years ago, as forgettable as British Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis in the history of the U.S. Revolutionary War.
The party talked Gendowyn into cleansing the blight from the blighted fey who pledged fealty to her rather than destroying all blighted fey. Furthermore, when the rival god Argwyn appeared in Continuing the Campaign at the end of the adventure path, the party negotiated peace between them. Thus, I changed Gendowyn's Edicts to, "Preserve primal areas, protect the forest from corruption especially by agents of Cyth V'sug, protect those who placate you with offerings." And I wrote edicts and anathema for Argwyn, too.
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I have one weird observation about how the Edicts and Anathema of gods unexpectedly interact with our standard notions of good and evil: Lamashtu and her warpriests became allies of the party in my Ironfang Invasion campaign mentioned above.
I had changed the hobgoblin Repral, commander of the Ironfang Legion's warbeast camp on page 37 of Assault on Longshadw from a PF1 neutral evil hunter to a PF2 chaotic evil warpriest of Lamashtu. She trained warbeasts because she loved monsters. And since she did not believe in keeping slaves (Lamashtu's edict "bring power to outcasts and the downtrodden"), she had no quarrel with the antipslavery pro-nonhuman player characters. She even sent a Warmaze minotaur to travel with the party as an emissary. Later I added Krov Thirdmother (CE female orc warpriest of Lamashtu 5) from page 69 of The Nesmanian Plains article in Trail of the Hunted to the campaign, though she became older, more settled, and 11th level. She, too, was willing to work with the party.
After all, the party was a mixture of chaotic neutral and chaotic good individuals. They had more in common with Lamashtu's chaotic evil goals than the lawful evil Ironfang Legion did. Lamashtu appeared in person to the party and complemented the party on stopping the Ironfang Legion from taking slaves. Slavemasters kept their slaves weak and docile, which was against her plan of a world of strong and vicious monsters.
I consider that a point in favor of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. I can roleplay the gods was having individual goals and personalities that work with the plot, rather than reducing the goals of the gods to advancing their alignment and their personality not mattering directly. Lamashtu wants a world of monsters rather than any other kind of evil. Gendowyn wants to tend a forest and its fey. Desna is an eternally patient force of disruption who hides in mystery to reveal the beauty of the universe. Alseta welcomes people and societies as they transition to a new stage in their existence. Brigh loves technology, but she loves discovery even more, so she leaves her followers to discover advances on their own. Grandmother Spider is trying to weave a fairer relationship connecting gods and mortals. All these gods have shown up in my campaigns as non-player characters, not just as plot elements.
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Ragathiel's anathema of "Cower from combat" can force a PC to rush headlong into suicidal fights that should be avoided.There's a significant difference between "cowering from combat" and avoiding an unwinnable fight, and I don't think a good DM would quibble over it or Ragathiel would begrudge a follower living to fight another day. He just demands it not be out of cowardice.I get that, but IME in any field it's better to be explicit about which interpretation is correct.
PF2 already explicitly tackled the no obligation to be suicidal point in several places of the RAW. There are just a few places left, such as this one, where it can be reiterated.
Other deities with the Cower from combat anathema : General Susumu, Sobek, Angazhan, Gravelady's Guard, Falayna, Sorrow's Sword.
Note that avoiding a combat through any means (diplomacy, stealth, deception...) could be seen as Cowering from combat.
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Tsukiyo has an anathema of "inflict harmful mental effects on others as punishment".
I hope mental damage used in combat does not fall under this.
Honestly, I took Tsukyo's anathema to be quite explicit: No using harmful effects with the 'mental' trait on others as punishment. "As punishment" is not here defined. but imho the choice of words have to mean something or else any anathema can be misconstrued in any impossible-to-prevent ways. Whether one counts attempting to kill a creature in combat as 'punishment' is worth discussing, but it seems clear to me the ban applies to all harmful mental effects.
I don't find this debilitating because there are many other ways to harm foes without using mental effects, even with the Divine tradition, and it makes sense for a benevolent lunar deity of delirium to look down on using mental attacks to punish creatures.
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Also in the category of 'words that mean something', I take the cower anathemas to mean, "hide from or avoid a combat already happening, esp out of fear." Interpreting 'cower' to mean 'avoid in any way' stretches plausibility to me. Cowering means crouching down or shying or shrinking away. This is just me, though, so if it needs clarification so be it - certainly less ambiguous passages have been argued from both sides before.
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Tsukiyo has an anathema of "inflict harmful mental effects on others as punishment".
I hope mental damage used in combat does not fall under this.
Honestly, I took Tsukyo's anathema to be quite explicit: No using harmful effects with the 'mental' trait on others as punishment. "As punishment" is not here defined. but imho the choice of words have to mean something or else any anathema can be misconstrued in any impossible-to-prevent ways. Whether one counts attempting to kill a creature in combat as 'punishment' is worth discussing, but it seems clear to me the ban applies to all harmful mental effects.
I don't find this debilitating because there are many other ways to harm foes without using mental effects, even with the Divine tradition, and it makes sense for a benevolent lunar deity of delirium to look down on using mental attacks to punish creatures.
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Also in the category of 'words that mean something', I take the cower anathemas to mean, "hide from or avoid a combat already happening, esp out of fear." Interpreting 'cower' to mean 'avoid in any way' stretches plausibility to me. Cowering means crouching down or shying or shrinking away. This is just me, though, so if it needs clarification so be it - certainly less ambiguous passages have been argued from both sides before.
If mental damage is forbidden to Tsukiyo's Clerics, they will have trouble not killing people with spells, since Daze, the staple for nonlethal spells, deals mental damage.
I really really hope casters will have an equivalent in Remaster to the martials just taking -2 with their attack roll to deal nonlethal damage. Without needing to multiclass in Wizard just to get the specific class feat.
There are currently only 7 spells with the nonlethal trait. Only 4 are accessible in PFS. Of these 4, only Daze is available to Divine.
A widely available feat to make Spirit damage nonlethal could do the trick, mind you.
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The Wards of the Pharaoh pantheon has an edict of "refuse to use your magic to help those in need who ask you". What if a wounded opponent asks a Cleric of this pantheon to heal them ?
Come to think of it, this edict sounds like a nice way to force a Cleric to spend their spell slots early for the benefit of everyone but the party.
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The Enlightened Scholar's Path pantheon has Anathema of "keep silent when faced with false information" and "refuse to share knowledge" which can be pretty harmful to the party. The second is similar to that of the Pillars of Knowledge mentioned above and I feel the first one is flat out worse than the anathema against lying.
Interestingly, Ashukharma's tenets on AoN are different from those listed on Psthfinderwiki but I don't see an errata for her.
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The anathema of Pharasma against robbing a tomb makes taking loot from undead enemies in a tomb-like dungeon awkward.
More deities with this anathema or similar : Anubis, Ashava.
Anubis, like Gravelady's Guard, Pharasma, Selket and Osiris, also has the anathema of "desecrate a corpse". It should not apply to destroying undead, even if these are corpses in a way.