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Like we all know that post OGL, runelords are not tied to D&D OGl wizard schools anymore now that they are removed, but I find it funny they had the thing with "we are ignoring 8th school because its not REAL school fo magic since we all know real school of magics are themed around seven deadly sins"
...When there actually is eight deadly sins depending on christian tradition and funnily enough sin of Sorrow kinda matches with Divination school? x'D Like in orthodox christianity its considered greatest of deadly sins because the whole point of deadly sins are that they are things that lead you down to temptation of damnation and worst of them is despairing at false belief you are beyond redemption? So that funnily enough matches with typical "I can see into future" villains' flaw at future being unavoidable?
(that said I do think seven runelords is much more manageable than eight of them(for example siheidron as seven pointed star is cooler), plus it was fun subversion of "wizard per spell school" symmetry. I mostly find it funny that when you think about it, you could easily justify one more one even if its apocryphal in a way x'D)
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I think the Runelords not considering divination a true school of magic was a sort of meta callback to ADnD, when divination was in a bit of a weird place. It was split into "lesser divination" (spell levels up to 4th) and "greater divination" (5th level and above). Any wizard could learn and cast lesser divination spells, even if Divination was one of their restricted spells.
Also, the restricted schools for 1e Thassilonian specialists matched up with the restricted schools for ADnD specialists (unlike PF1e, ADnD didn't let you choose your restricted schools), which is what makes me think the Runelords discounting divination was an intentional callback.
Obviously that doesn't impact the in-world lore, but I think it's a fun Easter egg!
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I think the Runelords not considering divination a true school of magic was a sort of meta callback to ADnD, when divination was in a bit of a weird place. It was split into "lesser divination" (spell levels up to 4th) and "greater divination" (5th level and above). Any wizard could learn and cast lesser divination spells, even if Divination was one of their restricted spells.
Also, the restricted schools for 1e Thassilonian specialists matched up with the restricted schools for ADnD specialists (unlike PF1e, ADnD didn't let you choose your restricted schools), which is what makes me think the Runelords discounting divination was an intentional callback.
Obviously that doesn't impact the in-world lore, but I think it's a fun Easter egg!
Yeah, that was my thought, that even as early as 2nd edition, Divination was sort of a half-school afterthought, with some spells like read magic and detect magic and identify being 'too important' and sort of necessary class features of *any* wizard, while the higher level stuff was really kind of few and far between, and not 'enough' to really count as a big eight school.
That said, I've always been jazzed by the idea of offensive divination spells that open up an enemies mind to unwanted information, like that moment at the end of the Dark Phoenix saga where Jean Grey shows Mastermind the universe, which blows his tiny mind, or the end of The Crow movie, where Eric Draven does the same thing with psychometry, 'gifting' the baddie with the memories of trauma he'd caused. "I have something for you. I don't want it anymore. Forty hours of pain. All at once. All for you!"
All sorts of divination 'attacks' could work this way. You enhance a foes memories selectively to make them relive their worst wounds / fears / humiliations. Or a horrible trauma you've endured is projected to their mind. Or just a horrible event that you've experienced vicariously through your own traipsing through other people's memories or scary futures you've seen or traumatic past events you've scryed. Either way, it's a debuff. Or link their minds to yours when you're fighting them. Every time they hit and damage you, they suffer the same penalties, if not the actual damage, possibly disrupting their own concentration, etc. Just a dozen options, based off of offensive applications of psychometry (someone with great weapon skill once used this weapon, I can tap into the psychic echoes of that and use it with the same skill!), precognition (here, see images of the fifty most gruesome deaths you could suffer in the next year, most likely none of them will happen, but they are sure to be distracting!), etc.
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I do wonder how are new sin magic schools going to be themed with wizard school removal. Like are they going to introduce bunch of new spells or are they still keeping around basic "lust is control mental spells, pride is illusion, greed is polymorph, gluttony is necromancy, sloth is summoning, envy is defensive spells and wrath is damaging spells" just without the schools themselves?
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I do wonder how are new sin magic schools going to be themed with wizard school removal. Like are they going to introduce bunch of new spells or are they still keeping around basic "lust is control mental spells, pride is illusion, greed is polymorph, gluttony is necromancy, sloth is summoning, envy is defensive spells and wrath is damaging spells" just without the schools themselves?
We haven't figured out the mechanics yet, but my goal is for them to be as invisible in-world as possible, so that an OGL Runelord should be pretty similar to a remastered one and in-world there wouldn't be a super noticeable difference.
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Personally, I think it's simply divine.
On a more serious note, it makes a lot of logical sense, at least using real-world logic. Runelords specialise in sinning, while divination is a portent from on high. It actually makes perfect sense that the biggest thing God would want to tell them is "stop sinning, guys, it's gonna screw you over in ways you really don't want". And if that's what you get from your divinations, when runelords really don't care if they're screwed over like that or not, shunning divination would make a lot of logical sense.
Y'know how the Bible mentions people hardening their hearts, and thus not being able to hear God's voice? That's what happened here. Runelords hardened their hearts, and now they can't hear their gods' voices anymore. And if you can't hear their voices, then you can't receive divine messages from them, and thus don't get any divinations.
/nerdglasses
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Also, divination in the game is not divine revelation. So while it is funny that the Runelords only learned about the coming danger from the school they didn't count as important enough to be a part of their tradition, it's not actually them being unable to heard the word of the gods.
Folks interested in learning more about the intersection of Runelords and divination should find Pathfinder #200's "Seven Dooms for Sandpoint" to be extra intriguing...
Aha! Does that mean the Remaster rules for the runelord archetype will be revealed in that book?
Anyway, the OP's statement regarding the Runelord of Sorrow sounds very interesting. I didn't even know there was the eighth sin at all! Not sure whether James Jacobs and other writers knew about this eighth sin, but I'm really sad that they didn't include it into the setting in the first place.
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Folks interested in learning more about the intersection of Runelords and divination should find Pathfinder #200's "Seven Dooms for Sandpoint" to be extra intriguing...Aha! Does that mean the Remaster rules for the runelord archetype will be revealed in that book?
Anyway, the OP's statement regarding the Runelord of Sorrow sounds very interesting. I didn't even know there was the eighth sin at all! Not sure whether James Jacobs and other writers knew about this eighth sin, but I'm really sad that they didn't include it into the setting in the first place.
No. We currently don't have the runelord archetype scheduled to appear in any books at this time. Certainly won't be revealed in Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, which is not a remastered adventure; it's the last OGL adventure.
There is no runelord of sorrow, but there are certainly more traditional sins than the seven we've currently associated with the runelords. Which sins are the seven deadly ones differ depending on the culture you're looking at. We only included seven with the runelords because the trope of "seven deadly sins" doesn't work if it's eight sins.
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Well to be clear, its theology so of course its not exact science, the amount of capital sins has fluxated over course of history as they have been combined (vainglory got combined into pride because somebody thought it was redundant, yet didn't think greed and gluttony needed to be combined ;P if you ask me, considering "lust" is often defined as uncontrollable desire of anything, you could combine lust, envy, greed and gluttony easily into one sin.).
Like the way theology defines sloth means its pretty much apathy. So sins of sorrow and "sloth"(to be accurate, it used to be sin of "Acedia") got combined, just like pride and vainglory did. (sin of sloth is often less about being too lazy to do your job and more about lack of caring towards others and your own well being. Yeah as said "sloth" sin is pretty much just "apathy")
There is lot of interesting philosophy on what a deadly sin actually is (pop culture often misunderstands them, they aren't called deadly sins for being super bad sins, they are called that because its an attempt to classify the most common temptations that lead you to ruin when you let yourself be ruled by them.)
The predecessor of deadly sins is the concept of logismoi (aka patterns of evil/assaultive thoughts) which in Orthodox christianity got over time defined into eight types (gluttony, lust, greed, sorrow, wrath, acedia, vainglory, pride. Yeah in this version envy wasn't listed. In versions where envy and vainglory do co-exist vainglory is considered to be source of envy)
TLDR: there are traditionally about 9 different deadly sins(gula, luxuria, avaritia, tristitia, acedia, ira, invidia, vanagloria, superbia) that often get combined or presented as group of seven or eight. I think if you wanted to, you could get it down to 5 or 4 easily by combining them further. There is reason why vainglory almost never gets used in fiction as separate from pride/hubris.
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^I'm not a Christian at all, but even so, the Runelords' magic being sin magic looks very interesting to me (and disturbingly prophetic about our own world and its technology). I wouldn't want to see it dropped -- not only that, I'd like to see it fleshed out even more.
As for a sin to associate with Divination, if you've been in or at least looked in on the worlds of StarCraft and WarCraft, you'll see that Treachery actually makes sense. Think of Maphacking . . . .
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Oh, to be clear - I don't mind the concept of 'sin magic', and tying the sins to magic schools is cool. It's just when the specific sins are coming from a specific cultural tradition, one that's somewhat omnipresent in our culture, it can be distracting. It can feel like those are the relevant sins simply because that's what the author is used to, like they're just considered the 'default' framework for good and evil. Changing the specific sins, or finding a way to justify why those specific ones are mirroring magic schools, would help.
I do not mind the pop version of Christian sins being used in one specific area of Golarion that kinds of map to medieval Europe.
In a way, the Runelords schools in Remaster being tied to these cultural sins and not to an universal classification of magic spells feels much more wholesome.
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There is reason why vainglory almost never gets used in fiction as separate from pride/hubris.Stay tuned...Twins ?
Or even triplets ?
That's way too many Xanderghul's.
If he came back as an undead though, would it be a Xanderghoul? Or Xanderghast, really... I digress.
It'd be nice if the Runelords rewrite actually ditched the seven deadly sins idea - since it is so heavily Christian in our world and our pop culture, it always feels off to me when a fantasy world has the same framework. Other cultures on Earth don't even use that framework, so why should Golarion? It's hard to overcome the 'the author is Christian or culturally Christian and takes it for granted that this is THE way to think about sin' feeling that that setup makes. So varying up which sins are there, or what they mean to characters, and in general just varying it from that assumed Christian framework, would be nice.
Considering how heavily many of the evil outsiders/fiends have been influenced by Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) and Dante, especially the demon and devil lords, this is something that was probably decided originally to 1) prevent having to invent a bunch of material from scratch and 2) use literary references that gamers would probably be more familiar with.
The same way various real world myths and societies get re-used with various levels of adaptation. It's really hard to create something completely original; especially since real world adaptations, combining/layering different pieces, etc. often have much more "depth" and support a greater amount of detail.
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Actually, the original version of the setting is IMO very much grounded in American pop culture.
Seeing it everywhere in the first areas they detailed does not bother me as much as seeing staples of my culture deeply misrepresented. For example, I really hope the Remastered Ankou will be far truer to the original myth from Brittany.
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Yes, it's grounded in American pop culture that's been extremely heavily influenced by cultural Christianity. It can certainly also be appropriative/misusing of other, non-American or more folkloric beings from other branches of Christianity, but that doesn't make it not very Christian.
And yes, I'm aware that this is not something that bothers everyone. Many people are actually Christian, and so aren't alienated by seeing Christian concepts taken for granted, or they don't care in the first place. That's why I phrased my posts as 'it feels off to me' and 'to me as a fan'.
And, also, I do hope that Paizo also represents the Ankou more accurately. The original legend sounds interesting,
Thank you.
I definitely hope we see more non-Christian concepts in the setting.
I do not remember what other places Azlant strongly influences, but having them use a different take on the virtues/sins than the Thassilonian one would be interesting IMO.
With Christianity essentially lifting the entire Old Testament (to include many of the names/descriptions for angels and fiends; such as Asmodeus, the nemesis of King Solomon and a subtle corrupter of the righteous/manipulator that causes eventual ruin from "good" beginnings) from Judaism and Islam following the teachings of Mohammed (who is believed to be a more recent prophet than Christ; similar to how the Church of Jesus Christ and Later Day Saints [aka, Mormons] believe in more recent prophets), there is a substantial overlap between the three.
Without getting into minutiae that 1) primarily matter to theology experts (I am not) and 2) are probably counterproductive to a discussion about a game setting/system, trying to categorize which specific game system fiend interpretations are "primarily" influenced by their Christian, Islamic, or Judaic "versions" is probably a can of worms that doesn't need to be opened. Especially considering real world religion is a sensitive topic (unless there is a specific interpretation that someone finds offensive).
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I think I'll try to shift topic from "abrahamic influences" back to sins theology in clumsy manner by commenting on historical shuffling and combining of the sins:
I still find it funny regarding vainglory and pride that they decided that "boasting and being arrogant prick are kind of same isn't it? They are both opposite of being humble" when four of other sins are basically "overwhelming urge to obtain your desire, consuming what you desire, hoarding what you desire, coveting what others have" :p
Like yeah, you can justify lust/greed/gluttony/envy being separate from each other with "lust is what you do to obtain your desire, greed/gluttony is what you do after you have what you desire, envy is what is happens when you can't obtain your desire", but by same logic you could keep vainglory and pride as separate or even split wrath into multiple other sins.
(it does kinda still make sense to me to keep envy as separate from lust/gluttony/greed since envy often manifests as desire to take down a peg people you envy and ruin them somehow rather than just stealing what you want from them. At very least it doesn't make sense for me to keep gluttony and greed as separate, gluttony is explicitly about you overindulging in consuming resources that you don't need, but others do. Greed is basically same except resource isn't consumed. Like if you really want greed as sin because of all the sayings about "mankind's greed", they could have just folded gluttony into greed)
I didn't even know there was the eighth sin at all!
Not only are there more than seven sins (in most versions of Christianity), there are so many more than seven sins. The list solely of Catholic "mortal sins" on Wikipedia does not even try to be comprehensive and is currently thirty-seven entries long; any attempt to list what the Catholics call venial sins would probably become near endless. As far as the "deadly" or "capital" sins go, it's a bit of an Especially Serious Sins list, and there is also sometimes an argument that they are deadly because they are sort of root-cause sins that lie behind and have some role in causing all of the countless other sins, but even sins that have been very important in Christian theology and culture, such as despair (OP's sorrow), are often left out of the list for little apparent reason other than keeping the number to seven.
(okay, in a very Christian type of setting you could say that the sin of despair springs from the deadly sin of pride - as with for example Faustus in Marlowe or, more explicitly, Denethor in Tolkien - but that link seems much more debatable in a setting like Golarion)
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I'm kinda bummed out that I don't know much about latin language's context because it would give more context on the words for deadly sins. Like according to what I know sin of tristitia can be translated to sorrow, despair, despondency, etc, but I think based on dictionary its literally just "sadness" and that word itself implies more melancholy than straight up absence of all hope. Its why I personally prefer translating it as sorrow, since despondency is bit of mouthful word.
But yeah, I do kinda agree that I feel like some versions of theology seem to just try to keep it as seven for "it sounds iconic as term" factor, but I do kinda also feel like its also part of theology itself forgetting what was point of "deadly" part and sometimes it cuts off tristitia because they start to think it from "bad things to do" perspective and not the "root of issue" perspective. Granted, I think we are all here more likely hobbyist on subject than experts so maybe theologian would have different answer on why it keeps being left out in some versions and still left in in others