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When creating a new god for PF2e are there any concerns to keep in mind. I want to create a God who's domains include undeath who can sanctify Holy. GIVEN that we can have undead PC's in the game, and thus that would indicate undead can be good people, why not create a god they can follow who doesn't despise them either for being undead or for being not cruel and selfish.
I figure with everything going on with the War of Immortals it might be a good time for a new Undead God to arise.
New deities are fairly simple to create in Pathfinder, I'd say. There are only a few caveats, like "only have this deity add nine Cleric spells if they have magic as one of their domain, otherwise just go for three" or "two is probably the maximum number of alternate domains you should aim for, if any", and I'd avoid edicts or anathema that are overly restrictive to your character (they should also obviously not contradict each other or themselves), but otherwise the method for making new deities is pretty straightforward and can be copied mainly from looking at existing options.
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So I'm thinking its a new godling arising from the surge of divine power going out into the world. I had an idea for a halfling-mummy oracle of bones. Gets risen through "natural" necromatic processes after thrown away in his Chelaxian owner's crypt. Not having the highest education, he believes this had to be done by a God, and the only God he can think of that might do this is Urgathoa. He worships her as a Goddess of generosity, of protection for the downtrodden, and of plenty. He's WRONG, but he tries to spread that faith. It is, however, hilarious to Calistria who grants him magic power, but Urgathoa is still pissed (and thus the source of his oracular curse).
Being the center of these rivaling divine powers is what starts his apotheosis.
He heals where he can, but sees undeath (for the willing) as no less valid a way of preserving life, so long as they are no more predators than any other living creature. In fact he views undeath as something owed to those who were denied true living during their natural lives.
Edicts: Share what you have talent, wealth, and especially food, with those who have less, Free the enslaved, Grant Undeath to those who were denied life, heal who you can.
Anathema: Force undeath against someone's will. Deny food to the hungry, prey on the dispossessed.
Areas of concern: healing, undeath, food, generosity, freedom
Divine Ability: Wisdom or Charisma
Divine Font: Heal or harm
Sanctification: May choose holy
Divine Skill: Medicine
favored weapon: Staff
Domains: Freedom, Undeath, Magic, healing, indulgence
When creating a new god for PF2e are there any concerns to keep in mind. I want to create a God who's domains include undeath who can sanctify Holy. GIVEN that we can have undead PC's in the game, and thus that would indicate undead can be good people, why not create a god they can follow who doesn't despise them either for being undead or for being not cruel and selfish.
I figure with everything going on with the War of Immortals it might be a good time for a new Undead God to arise.
It's worth noting that of the available kinds of Undead that one can become and maintain being a PC (what I'm really saying is the ancestries/archetypes we have rules for) I think the only one that could be good would be Skeletons, Mummies, and Ghost, due to the Undead Hunger that others have*.
Ghost's don't appear to have a hunger, having Unfinished Business and Bound Location.
Skeleton's hunger is collecting bones, which could be done without being evil.
Ghould's hunger flesh.
Lich's creation process for their Soul Cage usually entails incredibly evil acts, although the rules don't get specific.
Mummies don't specify anything.
Vampire's drink blood.
Zombie's east flesh.
*I might have missed one, or missed something in descriptions, but I did try to catch them all.
So like, there is room for a deity of Undead who didn't want to be undead, and maybe for some Undead who are good, but largely Undead are evil.
Whether or not it makes sense for there to be a god of Good Undead...that's for each table decide.
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I would argue that most humanoids have cravings for flesh. Unless you dislike the taste of a nice juicy steak, or perfectly cooked chicken.
Ghouls (RAW which is legacy) crave dead flesh, so simply uncooked, and it is even stated that it doesn't have to be the flesh of sentients (though it is better).
Zombies crave living flesh, but again, it is not specified to be the living flesh of sentients. are you saying there is a moral distinction between eating an animal prior to slaughter than after?
Vampires again don't specify humanoid or sentient blood. Nor does it indicate they need to kill their victim.
All three can have their hungers sated without evil acts.
I would argue that most humanoids have cravings for flesh. Unless you dislike the taste of a nice juicy steak, or perfectly cooked chicken.
Ghouls (RAW which is legacy) crave dead flesh, so simply uncooked, and it is even stated that it doesn't have to be the flesh of sentients (though it is better).
Zombies crave living flesh, but again, it is not specified to be the living flesh of sentients. are you saying there is a moral distinction between eating an animal prior to slaughter than after?
Vampires again don't specify humanoid or sentient blood. Nor does it indicate they need to kill their victim.
All three can have their hungers sated without evil acts.
I guess I can't say those are invalid interpretations, but at my table all of them would require sentient flesh. It didn't even occur to me to make the distinction.
[Minor point of distinction, were really talking about sapience and not sentience.
Sapience - The ability to think, reason, and be intelligent. Sapience is often used to differentiate between intelligent species and animals.
Sentience - The ability to feel, sense, and experience emotions.
Most (if not all) animals fit the definition of sentient. Unless you think dogs are devoid of emotion.
So actually, if you want to make the distinction on sentience, consuming animals is evil, and most humans are evil....which I can't say I'd argue against, it's an evil we (mostly) collectively accept. But we really shouldn't mix real world morality and TTRPG morality.]
Edit: Also I should say I don't find Undead without these kinds of awful hunger/compulsions to be compelling. If you water them down to just be "yeah, the Vampire totally just gets by drinking cow blood" they stop having the inherent aspects that made humanity fear them and keep them separate.
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I was unaware of the exact definitions and used them interchangeably. thank you for that.
And of course, at your table your rules are paramount to my musings, which is all this is.
But yeah, nothing in the rules states that they must feed on Sapience. Do I think a lot of them are very tempted and the curses and diseases they are under influence them to prefer sapient flesh: yes. But That doesn't mean they can't eschew sapient flesh, the way a vegetarian or a vegan does. Or find ethical sources of it.
Each table will interpret things differently, it's just something that's been on my mind with this whole book full of the shake up of the divine realm.
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I agree. The rules don't explicitly state a requirement of harming sapients.
If I had a player who was interested in playing undead and I was going to allow it, and they wanted to try to maintain their good alignment, I would probably implement some sort of Will save (that would increase over time, or perhaps with opportunities not taken) that would present a slow decline into depravity.
Like freshly turned, you probably still have all your moral compulsions from living that would stop you from doing it. But slowly, the dark forces that animate you creep in. You resist it as best as you can. But eventually you will fail. Can you mitigate it by finding willing victims? Will you find some magical way to sate your hunger? Will you just succumb to the cravings?
That's an interesting character arc to me.
I understand in the remaster of PF2 they did away with alignment, for the better overall. But Undead will for me always be evil whether that's simply narrative or mechanical, or at least on their way to falling to evil. Because the energies that provide it are inherently corrupting.
I'm not personally okay with stories that do otherwise.
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Why are they corrupting?
This is not trying to undermine you, but rather the question I find myself focusing on with this line of thinking. Why do we assume undeath is inherently corrupting. As you pointed out, The Mummy, the Ghost, and the Skeleton all require no even remotely evil acts to sustain them.
Why is this break from natural order considered more unnatural than the wizard summoning a massive fire ball? Or forcing animating life into non-flesh based inanimate objects?
Again, If my GM thought your way, I wouldn't argue, not my table, not my place. Just thoughts bouncing in my head.
Consider the goddess Desna, also known as the Song of the Spheres, the Starsong, and the Great Dreamer. Desna was created as a god of night who was not dark and scary, playing contrary to most myths about night creatures. Her holy symbol is the butterfly, bright and colorful rather than black and gloomy.
Likewise, a good-algined god of the undead has to play contrary to myths. What is good about the awakened dead? Some stories tell of spirits of ancestors visiting their descendents in comfort and joy. Other undead, such as revenants, arise for justice. A nickname of this god could be Remembrance, representing that the dead past is not lost.
What symbol could be holy for this god? Skulls are a scary symbol used by pirates on the Jolly Roger, the uniforms of the Nazi Gestapo, and once used as a poison warning symbol, so avoid that one. We Christians celebrate Easter with images of the open tomb. That represents restoration to life, but it could represent that the dead are no longer confined. Or perhaps an extinguished candle, calling out to candles on shrines to the dead.
As for the domains, I added two new gods to my campaign world. In my Ironfang Invasion campaign, a leshy sorceress named Twinning Gold-Flame Honeysuckle Vine achieved godhood for plot reasons (and because the character had a familial bond to the goddess Gendowyn). I let the player chose the domains, and she used the primary concerns and personality traits of the character. Furthermore, the final adventure of the campaign brought in another goddess, Argwyn, Shadow of Fangwood, intended as an adversary but befriended as a third god of the Fangwood. I based her domains on her life story. I wrote up their stats as gods at the end of my campaign chronicle.
And the leshy kineticist Monet in my Fistful of Flowers / A Few Flowers More / Student Exchange campaign has become a Blessed One of Gold-Flame Honeysuckle.
Why are they corrupting?
This is not trying to undermine you, but rather the question I find myself focusing on with this line of thinking. Why do we assume undeath is inherently corrupting. As you pointed out, The Mummy, the Ghost, and the Skeleton all require no even remotely evil acts to sustain them.
Why is this break from natural order considered more unnatural than the wizard summoning a massive fire ball? Or forcing animating life into non-flesh based inanimate objects?
Again, If my GM thought your way, I wouldn't argue, not my table, not my place. Just thoughts bouncing in my head.
Well, allow me to expand. I should say within the context of Pathfinder and DnD, if you look through all the history and lore about Undead it has always been corrupting and evil. Urgathoa was the first Undead in the Pathfinder setting.
Even the writing of the archetypes in PF2 heavily implies evil acts, but doesn't specify it because of the baggage related to the alignment system. While alignment was removed for legal reasons, and also because it mechanically had become mostly irrelevant. And because people used it as a bludgeon to constrain others or justify their actions, instead of a tool to guide how a character might behave without other considerations.
And if I recall written examples correctly, while there have been non-evil examples of Undead they were neutral (I think was one example of a good ghost).
And I can get behind neutral Undead. Perhaps you have a ghoul, afflicted by the condition against their will trying to maintain their humanity as much as possible. They consume the flesh of humanoids, largely by raiding graveyards, but occasionally succumb to hunger and attack the living. To counter these things, the ghoul does as much good and positive things as they can because they know they're doing acts of evil.
Also recall that Negative Energy (Void Energy) kills all living things. I wont rehash all the description of it that are out there, but the short answer is that to me the corrupting part is simply a narrative part of the concept of Negative/Void energy.
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Before I continue I want to say this is a conversation I'm enjoying and want it to never be anything else. If I am coming off as argumentative or rude, please let me know.
Yes, I don't know. I guess I just like the idea that while these are curses and diseases, they don't necessarily make a person good or evil, your choices do.
Before I continue I want to say this is a conversation I'm enjoying and want it to never be anything else. If I am coming off as argumentative or rude, please let me know.
Yes, I don't know. I guess I just like the idea that while these are curses and diseases, they don't necessarily make a person good or evil, your choices do.
You're not being rude at all so don't worry, it can be hard to interpret the tone of people's words on the internet. Sometimes we have say something in our mind and think it sounds fine, only to have it read by someone else in a very different way. I don't find your words or question inflammatory, but genuine curiosity. Hopefully mine come across as my view of this shared setting. It is not necessarily the only way to play in the setting, although I have strong feelings about this specific bit of the game. Some of those feelings are from playing with power gamers who constantly tried to find ways to play in our games back in D&D 3.5 and PF1 when it was huge benefit to be undead, but didn't want to deal with any of the consequences that should have logically followed.But also for narrative reasons. Anyways, going back to the point.
There is absolutely narrative room for plenty of curses and disease that don't make a person evil. In fact that's the default for most curses and disease.
But when it comes to Undeath, what makes it interesting for me is that is is corrupting. It's supposed to change you. Otherwise (in the past) it was just "hey, here are some free super powers". PF2 toned down how much benefit to being undead there is, but for me you can't change the narrative of Undeath being corrupting. For me it's always been a matter of how long can you maintain who you were in Undeath.
Edit: Something I just thought of, to me Aranzi is the perfect representation of this issue. Aranzi was powerful force of good, and at one time the Herald of Aroden. Aranzi was killed by the Tar-Baphon, and later returned to life as a lich by the interference of a ghost necromancer. With the personality of her being very different prior to her mortal life or time as an angle/herald. She is now a divine entity after the events of [redacted].
Claxon, I believe that you are absolutely accurate that in the Lore that Void energy has a nature to it which is corrupting and destructive. It has odd behaviors that can sometimes seem constructing, but most would probably argue its 'constructs' are not actually constructions but generally a form of self-replicating items of destruction/corruption by general nature.
Now... having said all of that. There are things that bring up the question of is all that is touched and even fed by void, destined to be evil/destructive/corrupt? I don't think that it HAS to be. In pathfinder there are Dhampir and their life is tied to void energy, but they are in that weird state of almost neither Alive or Undead, or both. I think it is perfectly valid to have a sanctified champion of a good god whom is a Dhampir, such as Sarenrae who hates undeath. They might suffer from a certain degree of internal self-hate or feelings of inadequacy, but I can still imagine Sarenrae being perfectly willing to help them destroy other truly undead creatures with abandon.
Next you can step into Starfinder where specifically Undeath is being considered even less natively evil, which is none the less a Golarion alternate universe, so definitely within the realm of potential for Golarion. In Starfinder they have Borai which are half-dead/half-alive creatures whom are someone who died, and whom were prevented from 'fully' dying by being inhabited by a weak 'undead' spirit, which between the two, they have enough 'presence' to remain, but had they been separated both would perish. While I think some Borai have trouble adjusting, and one could attribute this to corruptive nature of the void energies now aiding it in life. It also ties into a more Science Fiction/Fantasy setting where this trouble may be sourced more in Society being poorly adapted to the expectations of the person having not simply 'died' as expected, and family and friends failing to adapt to the person's new stage of life since their transition.
You may really want to read up on Borai as I could imagine Zoken44's Deity being very for the creation of Borai for those who are worthy based on their life story.
https://www.aonsrd.com/Races.aspx?ItemName=Borai
I think it is perfectly reasonable considering Void a 'generally' corrupting influence in most lives it touches, but would be willing to consider it to be possible to a life to remain tied to it and still keep from eventually falling completely into an redeemable corruption. Likely always a 'tempted' state of life... but lets be honest with life, in normal life there is plenty of short cuts and various temptations available, this just adds another recurring flavor to the menu.
Personally, I think there is a really good story arc for a person who realizes their life-force appears to be connected in reverse, and they feed off of energies which others are normally harmed from. Are they evil... especially when they bear no ill will to others and would rather help them... what can they do with their differences to help the others as peers? How do they accept themselves, how do they fight their own nature if at all, and how do they deal with others who may be too prejudiced to accept that they are anything but evil?
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But Arazni's personality shift can be more easily explained by the fact that she was betrayed by her followers and forced to take a fight she knew she couldn't win. Then she was enslaved in undeath against her will and married to her enslaver. Worshiped as a queen by the subjects of her enslaver. Her more harsh and angry persona makes more sense, and feels more narratively earned, as result of repeated trauma and betrayal than as a simple "undeath makes you bad".
Same with Urgathoa. She was a selfish greedy princess who thought herself about the rules. It wasn't that she became undead that made her bad, she chose undeath and reckless destructive self-indulgence because she was bad.
Tell me what makes the blood-lords more evil than the House of Thune?
I mean it's not just here are some powers, it's Here are some powers made specifically to get this thing you now crave. It's powerful people giving into an addiction, and cruelly and callously using the people around them to feed their addiction. But there are tons of people who have addictions, who resolve to be better to recognize that addiction and say "you don't control me, I do."
This actually leads back to your example of easy to resist the temptation at the beginning but harder down the road. I would say it's the opposite. The hunger should be harder to control at the beginning, but with ever moment of successful control, it becomes easier next time. Never fully gone, but manageable.
This actually leads back to your example of easy to resist the temptation at the beginning but harder down the road. I would say it's the opposite. The hunger should be harder to control at the beginning, but with ever moment of successful control, it becomes easier next time. Never fully gone, but manageable.
I strongly disagree.
The reasoning that addiction that were familiar with gets easier is because:
1) You stop using the substance (in the case of Undead they're always powered by negative energy, they never get stop using it)
2) Habit - people develop habits after quitting that enable them to avoid the bad decisions they made in the past (but Undead don't get that opportunity).
Ultimately you can imagine scenarios where this isn't the case, but what I'm saying is for D&D and Pathfinder up until the Remaster, the way I have described Undead and Negative energy working was simply how it worked (with some very rare exceptions in spots). That's simply my preference for how Negative Energy and Undead should function in this kind of TTRPG fantasy setting.
I'm not saying you can't have another setup in your games, or other style of games though. Undead (specifically vampires) in Vampire the Masquerade have a very different source of undeath and lore behind it. As a result, those vampires aren't inherently evil, although they do often lose their humanity and become more evil over time. But the Vampire the Masquerade video game kind has you become a hapless vampire who has to make many decisions that can lead you to become a stronger monster but lose your humanity in the process. It's just a very different genre of game.
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Undeath IS inherently corrupting in Golarion. This is established lore. Pretty much all are evil, or at least become evil eventually, with ghosts and revenants being the most common exceptions. According to the Geb in Book of the Dead, creatures like ghouls and vampires are instilled with a hostility and contempt to the living that goes beyond just their need to feed. Even things like ghosts and revenants might technically stay neutral, but they basically lose their minds over time and tend to become threats to the living and/or prisoners of their own tortured existence.
A god could probably ignore some of these rules on sheer power, but... It's a bit hard imagining a holy deity doing so. Pharasma says that the very existence of undead throws the universe out of balance because they are created by a force meant only for destruction. I thiiiiink James Jacobs confirmed this be canon.( IIRC he generally prefers undead be firmly in the bad guy camp in his stories, as opposed things like Twilight or Buffy where you have good vampires running around, so that's how Pathfinder works.)
Pharasma is not herself a holy deity, nor does she allow her followers to sanctify at all. (Which makes it weird to me that undead are unholy. Feels like decision was made so cleric spells like holy light would retain their legacy effectiveness, not because it made sense in the conflict between fiends and celestials.) But plenty of holy deities like Saranrae are also anti-undead.
And even if the god could somehow create undead who weren't unholy and could lead healthy, safe existences, their followers couldn't with basic spells in Golarion. "Grant Undeath to those who were denied life" means "go undermine reality and unleash ravenous monsters upon the world." I'm not sure how it is a determined if a god may/can grant holy sanctification, but this feels like a stretch. Then again, plenty of gods allow both holy and unholy, including Gorum RIP.
That said! You can totally run a version of Golarion where none of this is true and you have Edward Cullen types running around. Just accept it is a major break from the "canon" setting. Don't try and justify it with published lore which you have an incomplete picture of and which stands in the way of the story you want to tell. Make up your own. And be up front with your players about it. Part of why undead are so uniformly evil is so players don't have to think twice about dusting them on sight. If players signed up to play in Golarion under those assumptions it could feel like a real upsetting gotcha.
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I think there are two equally true statements that can coexist here: the first is that, as others said, undeath is normally corruptive, and undead are innately driven towards destruction and consumption due to running on void energy rather than vitality. The second is that divinity is by nature miraculous, and those with divine power get to rise above and beyond their mortal (or in this case, undead) nature. It is for this reason that I think a holy god of undead would be particularly interesting and worthwhile, because rising above one's monstrous nature and aspiring to become or remain a good person is 100% what quite a few undead in Golarion, especially unwilling undead, would want to do.
For starters, we already have Arazni as a patron deity of unwilling undead, and according to the remaster compatibility FAQ she can allow holy sanctification, so having an undead deity that allows holy sanctification wouldn't be unprecedented or out of place. Adding to that, though, given how there are entire real-life religions whose doctrine holds that people are tainted from creation and must work to rise above their original sin, I don't think it would be a stretch to have at least one church in Golarion that applies this principle to undead and encourages undead to do good in the world, with the promise that this deity will stave off their corruption and hunger or potentially even cure it outright. I would therefore perhaps amend this deity's edicts so that "grant undeath to those who were denied life" changes to "grant undeath to the willing who would do good in undeath", and would add the anathema of "harm an innocent when satisfying your undead hunger", so that a follower of this deity wouldn't create dangerous and ravenous undead willy-nilly, and an undead follower would also be incentivized to keep their cravings in check. Of course, not every follower of this deity may succeed, and some may still fall to corruption, but fighting against one's nature is the core tension of many an interesting character, and would work very well as an element of this deity's worship.
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Don't get me wrong, a deity who focuses on undead unwillingly transformed and are trying to avoid the evil of their undead condition could absolutely make for a cool deity. Perhaps they might give special spells that allow characters to sate their hunger for a time. Perhaps even an archetype that gives focus spells, that includes the spell to sate their hunger and hide their undead condition. But the deity would also understand that mistake can happen. That your bound to lose control eventually, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Repentance and restorative justice for your actions would probably be a big deal too for such a deity.
Perhaps such a deity even has a mandate for all followers, that if and when you are able you should seek to undo your state of undeath (and have some sort of high level ritual that would return you to your physical condition before you were turned undead regardless of time passed or anything like that). It'd probably be a rare ritual tuned specifically to the user of the ritual only.