If I'm playing a Bard / Razmiran Priest and someone successfully identifies my casting a spell that appears within the Occult tradition but not within the divine tradition (such as soothe), am I automatically outed as a fraud?
Just how much do NPC characters know about traditions, specific spells, and the classes?
Since all of a Razmiran Priest's cleric spells are Occult, could an NPC with enough knowledge discern that the heal being cast is of occult origin rather than divine?
I'm trying to get a better idea of where one should draw the line between mechanics and descriptions; or to better determine just how easy or difficult it is to pass oneself off as a cleric within the campaign world.
Is the idea that Razmir and his priests are false something of an open secret? (With people generally being more afraid than devout.) Or does the vast majority of the local population truly believe in their divinity?
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For your first question, every cleric know that their faith let them cast not only divine spells, but also a few other "choice spells" depending on their god's tradition and portfolio. Therefore, you still have plausible deniability if someone see you cast a few occult spells, "Razmir is great, he let me cast those". It get a lot more flimsy if someone see lots of nondivine spells being cast by "Razmir's clerics", but most people don't have the background to know that much about occult and divine magic, and those that have don't necessarily have the opportunity to observe "Razmir's cleric" long enought to observe the discrepancy.
And for the few who do have the opportunity to notice the discrepancy, a subtil mix of "we can do this because Razmir is that much better than other gods" and "you're lying/mistaken and are amongst those that want to drag our god through the mud" do the trick. I expect "Razmir isn't an actual god" to be a known theory within Razmiran, but that a lot of people think that it's simply conspiracy theory or slander, and for the majority of the population to be in an in-between "lots of people say lots of different things and I'm not sure what to believe in, I mean the town magician oppenly said he wasn't a god, and he's the person that know the most about these things around here, but I did see his priest healing people, so...."
For those outside Razmiran, I expect the "he's a fraud" to be prevalent and often repeated, as people from neighboring countries mock the Razmiran's population for believing such silly thing. But they don't think that because they trully know better, they say that because believing that the king of the country next door is an actual god is rather scary, so they latch on the scholars that (rightly) proclaim that Razmir's priest don't actually do divine magic but are mere occultist. I think that for those people outside of Razmiran that aren't learned in occult or divine magic, seeing a "priest of Razmir" in action would very quickly shut up their mockery, even if they did hear about it all being a sham.
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I would assume that the Razmiran Priest schtick is largely enforced within Razmir due to the machinations of secret police and the like. If all your neighbors believe that Razmir is a real god who grants spells, except for the one neighbor who thought differently who mysteriously disappeared six months ago, and you never hear anything in your day to day life that would question this "reality" then it's a lot easier to pull this particular fast one on you.
If you tried the same thing in Absalom or Rahadoum, you will eventually get called on it.
One of the reason that Razmir's "faith" has been difficult to export is that it sort of relies on the mechanisms of the state to keep it running.
@Scarablob, I think the big issue Ravingdork is concerned about is, if you have sufficiently high level arcane, divine, primal, and occult casters standing about watching the Razmiran priest cast that all decide to try to identify the spell as it's being cast that only the Occult caster will succeed.
Even though a spell might normally appear on a different spell casting tradition, it still counts as whatever type of spell the caster normally casts.
I don't have divine mystery yet so I don't know how the archetype is done in 2e, but in 1e a big part of the archetype relied on using bluff to trick onlooker into thinking you were using actual divine magic, don't the 2e version share that aspect?
If not, yeah, having the archetype use solely occult magic without being able to make it seem divine would give the game away really fast, most magic user would instantly know what's wrong.
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Mechanics and meta are fairly invisible given the cross pollination of classes and options. Organizations might have a more complete idea of the commonalities but can't rule out exceptions definitively. A single character has a much more limited breadth of experience that wouldn't allow them to be absolutely certain of anything but the most obvious of rules.
Any Cleric MC Bard can cast Occult spells. They're still a Cleric.
Even better with a Bard MC Cleric.
The problem here with Razmir's "priest" is that they don't claim to be mixing magic or anything, they claim that all the magic they do is gifted to them by their god (at least, if I got my lore right). So the existence of bard/cleric or other potential "mystic theurge" type of stuff with some people mastering both divine and non divine magic don't help the mascarade.
If I claim that all my power hail from the god Razmir, and someone discovered that one of the spell I cast is just a bard spell, then they know I told a lie. Even if I try to walk back and say "well, alright some of the powers are my own", it throw suspicion over the entire thing.
I expect that quite a few of the Razmiran priest that got caught casting non-divine magic were rennounced (and probably considered criminal) publicly by the church to distance themselves from the "fraud". That way they can claim "he wasn't the priest of a fake god, he was a fake priest of a real god". Altho them all wearing mask must help when one of your member get revealed as a fraud, take them away publicly, declare that you dealt with the impostor that infiltrated your ranks, and then just send them to work in another town, nobody outside the church know their face anyway.
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I think I agree with something that was said up page, if somebody comes in to Razmiran and accuses the clergy of Razmir of being false priests, you don't disappear the priest lying about the source of their powers, you disappear the person lying about what tradition of magic the priests are casting. Do this a couple of times and the people will start to realize that badmouthing Razmir's clergy and doubting his divinity displeases him, and shut up about it. Not like the majority of people would know the difference between occult and divine spells, especially not when Razmiran priests can cast spells from the divine list using occult. Those jealous of that their gods don't hang out and bless them personally by living with them will say anything to badmouth the Living God, you need not pay any attention to their words, and if you've noticed anything amiss yourself... we'll no you didn't, the priests of Razmir are always watching.
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One imagines that within Razmiran the well is completely poisoned as to public animus towards people who even understand the difference between the different Magical traditions well enough to point out when someone is casting "wrong."
It's clear that Razmiran is supposed to be an authoritarian "theocracy" and one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian state is its war against expertise and intellectualism outside the mechanisms of the state.
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One imagines that within Razmiran the well is completely poisoned as to public animus towards people who even understand the difference between the different Magical traditions well enough to point out when someone is casting "wrong."
It's clear that Razmiran is supposed to be an authoritarian "theocracy" and one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian state is its war against expertise and intellectualism outside the mechanisms of the state.
Honestly I'd be suprised if there were many independent spellcasters of note left in Razmiran, if I were taking a country under my control again, this time i'd start by taking out the annoying guys in hats who can blast you with fire.
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Honestly I'd be suprised if there were many independent spellcasters of note left in Razmiran, if I were taking a country under my control again, this time i'd start by taking out the annoying guys in hats who can blast you with fire.One imagines that within Razmiran the well is completely poisoned as to public animus towards people who even understand the difference between the different Magical traditions well enough to point out when someone is casting "wrong."
It's clear that Razmiran is supposed to be an authoritarian "theocracy" and one of the hallmarks of an authoritarian state is its war against expertise and intellectualism outside the mechanisms of the state.
Convert or die is a respected ancient tradition after all.
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Does Razmir priest not evangelize beyond the borders? Sure, within Razmiran, they can just rely on the power of the state to dissapear any scholar (or anyone really) that try to reveal the fraud or question them, and they'd only be embarassed by the most blatant and uncoverable show of incompetency, but I though that there were also "missionaries" that were trying to expand the church beyond the kindgom, am I mistaken?
There are Razmiran missionaries, but they tend to be small independent groups who target smaller communities (mostly in the River Kingdoms, next door.)
Likely when they get found out, and they're not in position to suppress dissent like they would on home turf, they rely on the whole "the church officially disclaims the actions of the 'fraudster'" shuffle.
This probably isn't going to work to really grow the Razmiran faith, but the endgame is probably "Razmir actually becomes a God somehow."
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I think a lot of you are neglecting to take perception into account. the the public's perspectie, you've got this guy out here saying he's casting spells in the name of his god, and people have been feeling it,
Then you've got these outsiders come in who say "no that guy's a fake because all the magic he's casting is the wrong kind of magic... which you can't tell because you don't understand magic enough"
And to be clear, my understanding is the Razmiran cleric may well believe in what he's selling, or be a very convincing person. Eitherway its enough to make the identifying caster second guess their reading, (I could have crit failed) or at least second guess trying to debunk the Razmiran priest.
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I've actually been thinking about this some more, as it's an interesting question, and honestly, I think even among learned scholars of magic, there would still be blurry lines between traditions.
We already know that at a deep enough level of understanding, top scholars of arcana are able to treat everything as the same, so there must be some deep truth linking the 4.
There's also plenty of ways for classes to cast spells from other lists as though they were on their list. Sorcerers, clerics, multiple archtypes all have this ability. So even among people with some knowledge of magic they might recongise the occult spells as weird, but not nessercarily out of the question. Especially since hey, healing is healing, as Zoken44 mentioned.
This also doesn't factor in the social factors in razmiran, where people who would know the difference would either shut their mouths, leave, or be dissapeared by the secret police.
Obviously the real answer is what makes sense for the game this is being done in. I can see a really fun interaction where a "cleric" casts a spell, and you let one of your casters recongise the spell and realise "Hey, this guy is up to something!" (Or vice versa).
A cleric and a druid can both cast healI, but do they follow the same procedures to cast it?
I'm guessing that they don't.
And if that's the case, then what is the occult Razmiran Priest doing to make their casting look more like the divine procedure? Do they even bother; or do they simply rely on ignorance and fear?
I mean, how a cleric of Pharasma, a cleric of Sarenrae, and a cleric of Lamashtu cast Heal is also going to be very different.
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A cleric and a druid can both cast healI, but do they follow the same procedures to cast it?
I'm guessing that they don't.
I’m guessing two clerics don’t follow the same procedures to cast heal. Nor do two druids use the same procedures to cast it. I’d guess every caster has their own idiosyncrasies to their spellcasting.
Even if they don't follow the same procedure, what they do is recognisable as divine/primal magic by those learned in the subject. The same learned people would notice that the Razmiran priest are doing something fishy when all of their "divine magic" definitively follow occult tradition and don't actually appeal to any divine power. Hence the discussion of how exactly can the mascarade be held, especially outside the border of Razmiran were the church don't have the power of the state at it's disposal to dissapear any nosy scholar.
I don't know how the archetype is in divine mystery, but to me the mascarade must still somewhat rely on the 1e "magic trick" show, where the Razmir priest had a fake divine symbol that they used for show to disguise their arcane spellcasting, and used concealed magic item when they had to cast divine magic. This kind of trick must be enought to fool any layman, and even most scholar could be fooled provided that the trick was executed well enought. And then when one of the priest slip up and get exposed, the church can decnounce them as "impostor", and use their annonimity to just pull them away from the area and redirect them somewhere else.
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A few thoughts from looking over the mechanics again:
- Having the spell prepared or known means automatic recognizing the spell, so really common things are probably reflexively recognized without somebody bothering to pay attention to the subtle differences.
- Identifying a spell as an action is a Recall Knowledge check, but using a feat to do it as a reaction is much more specific about always using the skill corresponding to the tradition, with being untrained capping the result at failure. In-world, it's probably a question of how many people are real specialists at recognizing spells- those are the ones who would spot something off.
So, I imagine anyone who is really focused on the identification of spells would be able to spot the ruse quickly without much doubt. There probably aren't many of those, though. As a GM, I'd almost certainly allow the regular Recall Knowledge action to use Religion to ID a spell that somebody is trying to make look like it was cast divinely. So in most cases, I imagine it would come down to the spells themselves.
- Given that Soothe is occult only and really recognizable (lots of occult casters have it, and healing not being recognized as Heal is also notable), Razmir is probably seen as being one of the many deities that gives Soothe as a spell. There are nineteen other deities or pantheons that give Soothe, and that's before any additions in the new book. Throw in some edict about healing the mind as well as the body, and it's not really too suspicious. Illusion spells are another big thing that occult has set apart from divine, but those tend to have the Subtle trait and various protections from detection.
- There are 254 spells overlapping divine and occult, and 307 spells that occult has but divine doesn't. A competent Razmiran priest is going to at least favor the overlap. Soothe is necessary to address the glaring omission of Heal, and most people won't look too closely.
If you're somebody in the setting, it's probably obvious from outside Razmiran that something is up. But that could be "Razmir is just a cover by Norgorberites", "Razmir is an unholy god", "Razmir is a god of deception", or "Razmir is faking being a god". The external evidence is much more in the nature of drug exports, foreign policy, etc. A priest of Razmir having a few occult exclusive spells can be explained away by those being deity-granted, and I understand that the archetype has some built-in fake healing. Since I think you'd need a real specialist to spot it being the wrong kind of casting, the exact nature of the ruse is probably drowned out by all the external propaganda.
Kinda interesting that Razmirans' "pretend Arcane/Occult/Primal magic is Divine" thing is kind of the opposite of the "pretend Divine magic is Arcane/Occult/Primal" thing done in Rahadoum.
Which now makes me wonder if a Rahadoumi would fall for a Razmiran's tricks...
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It is not a satisfying answer, but I think it is probably best to not have static rules-based answers about how people in world generally understand magic, because that creates a lot of narrative restrictions that have to be consistently followed in many different contexts.
"people generally are pretty clueless and believe what people they trust tell them about magic" is probably the best general principle to apply as it allows adventure writers to have many different kinds of communities with different beliefs about magic exist in world, without running into situations like "this type of creature has a nature check bonus of +8, so they are inherently going to be able to identify the type of magic being cast in most circumstances, so that whole kind of story just wont work here."
In other words, I think GMs/adventure writers are best off setting their own localized rules for this that will make their adventures in these settings more fun, instead of having to decide that any level 5 NPC in the setting is going to effectively whistle blow a setting contrivance that is really designed either to be something that limits initial Player Character choices or become a narrative focus of the campaign itself.
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It is not a satisfying answer, but I think it is probably best to not have static rules-based answers about how people in world generally understand magic, because that creates a lot of narrative restrictions that have to be consistently followed in many different contexts.
THIS. The game engine is not the in-universe physics engine that Golarian runs on. It is a useful starting point (gods know I've written a lot using mechanics as starting points), but adhering too closely to mechanics as simulation robs you of narratives.
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Is the idea that Razmir and his priests are false something of an open secret? (With people generally being more afraid than devout.) Or does the vast majority of the local population truly believe in their divinity?
Here's an answer from Lost Omens: Travel Guide's section on the average knowledge of civilians across the Broken Lands.
Most here believe Razmir to be some kind of actual god, but there are general agreements that he seems less powerful than other deities, and his insistence on ruling a nation arouses suspicion.
So presumably no, most people would not be able to just look at some Razmiran priest and go "Pfft, that ain't how it works", and even if someone can figure it out the priest would have an excuse (I remember the one short fiction blog post where the priest actually straight up explained away why so many priests aren't granted spells at all for example)
I remember the one short fiction blog post where the priest actually straight up explained away why so many priests aren't granted spells at all for example
Ooh! Could you please provide a link? I'm quite interested in seeing that.
I remember the one short fiction blog post where the priest actually straight up explained away why so many priests aren't granted spells at all for exampleOoh! Could you please provide a link? I'm quite interested in seeing that.
Took some looking (It's not listed as a Tale of Lost Omens or even a webfiction), but I found it!
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6shesThat said, it seems I misremembered. Outside a brief "Razmir helps those who help themselves" there's not much on justifying those things. That said, it does remind me that the the PF Society guide stated that Narsen likes to boast that the Exalted Lodge (The Society's lodge in Razmiran. Notably people within its walls are in fact allowed full religious freedom) actually has multiple people working there who used to worship other deities but after a fair bit of religious debate ended up legitimately going "Ok, y'know, I think I'm going to convert to Razmir".
Thanks, Eldritch Yodel!
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I like to think most people outside Razmiran mostly consider Razmir a joke until you cross the border and find yourself in an interrogation room, the same way many people dabble in North Korea tourism, except for the people who "ironically" worship Razmir in the same way chuds adopt warhammer 40k slang as a signifier, and then fall down a Razmir rabbit hole that leads from ironic to sincere Razmir worship, if only to find community with other like-minded edgelords. Over time, through self-reinforcement and peer pressure, any doubts about his divinity get buried by the need to performatively demonstrate your membership of the in-group as part of an in-group and as a way of rising the ladder of power.
