Gods are characters, and thus they're allowed to have preferences, even strong ones. But Gods don't have that much input on the material universe. Like sure, Pharasma hates undead and doesn't want you to become a vampire, but she's not in any position to do anything about it. It's not like Zon-Kuthon goes around turning off the lights, or Milani has been able to do away with oppressive government. You can destroy so much art and Shelyn can't do a thing about it.
The preferences of these deities exist to frame their role in stories, not to constrict player agency. If your GM is throwing Achaekek at you because you want to take the Test of the Starstone, that's a GM problem not a setting problem.
Gods are characters, and thus they're allowed to have preferences, even strong ones. But Gods don't have that much input on the material universe. Like sure, Pharasma hates undead and doesn't want you to become a vampire, but she's not in any position to do anything about it. It's not like Zon-Kuthon goes around turning off the lights, or Milani has been able to do away with oppressive government. You can destroy so much art and Shelyn can't do a thing about it.
The preferences of these deities exist to frame their role in stories, not to constrict player agency. If your GM is throwing Achaekek at you because you want to take the Test of the Starstone, that's a GM problem not a setting problem.
Dude, Pharasma has an cosmic scale organization that polices mortals everywhere.
She had a birth to death prophecy on every single mortal, for the sake of policing and controlling them. If the mortal didn't show up at their time of death, her minions would pursue and kill them. You cannot write an entity more capable of constricting player agency.
We don't know how much this "death dodger" system still functions post death of prophecy, but we have no reason to think the motives, goals, and methods have changed. Only Phar's means have become less efficient now that prophecy is unreliable. She absolutely is willing to send agents to kill any mortal who dares commit the heinous offense of living longer than they were supposed to.
Phar is absolutely in a position to mess with the PCs, it's a matter of priority, threat level, and local means. As the PCs gain more power and notoriety, any direct defiance of Pharasma's rules would logically invite her agents to notice and outright attack the PCs. Once the PCs get powerful enough to gain the attention of foes that can teleport and use divination magic, good effing luck. They are kinda just screwed. If you don't give the PCs plot armor, the setting as written is crazy powerful.
A single L18 Phar agent can teleport around and "commit justice" on a party of adventurers each day without any real risk to their life.
Every major city in Golarion would have organized and informed pharasman agents that would make a Pharasma kill-order one of the most dangerous things a PC could possibly be marked with.
Not only because of her being the blatantly most influential and powerful god, but because everyone in the city would shrug and presume that anyone who angered Pharasma would deserve to be killed.
The non-Pharasmans would be actively aiding her assassins, telling them that the saw the party down by the docks just half an hour ago, etc.
It really seems that you have a soft spot for Pharasma here.
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If your GM is throwing Achaekek at you because you want to take the Test of the Starstone, that's a GM problem not a setting problem.
I really think you have this backward.
If the setting has written that a god of assassins actively, ya know, assassinates targets who attempt to gain godhood, it's expected that said god actually follows through with that premise. Any character in that world trying to "steal a god's divinity" would need to expect and deal with a possible hit by RM Assassins, because that's exactly what the setting wrote down happens.
To imply that the GM should ignore the setting and pretend all of Achaekek's agents are on vacation when the PCs make their attempt at the Starstone is to blatantly acknowledge that the setting is the problem. For the sake of fun, the GM has to go against the setting and give the PCs plot invisibility cloaks.
It really seems that you have a soft spot for Pharasma here.
No, I'm just the GM and I understand that I control all the NPCs and so a read on Pharasma like the one you're suggesting doesn't either help me tell fun stories or enhance the player experience, so I wouldn't run Pharasma or her people anything like what you're suggesting.
If anything, I would run her as "way too busy to worry about anything like that". Like she had a birth to death prophecy on every mortal not because of any effort on her part, but because of how the universe worked. This is not "against player agency" it's a meta-commentary on how any story that predates the influence of Player Characters is entirely decided by the GM.
Now that the Omens are too lost, her people are too busy trying to keep the ledgers balanced than to go around harassing a handful of extremely powerful people. Like read the bit in Lost Omens Legends with the conversation between the morrigna Tosof and the alchemist Artokus Kirran (the guy who invented the Sun Orchid Elixir)- it's above all polite. That's how I choose to portray Pharasma's people. They are a bureaucracy and Pharasma is just an extremely busy manager.
"The Setting" is not a list of instructions for a GM to follow, they're a series of prompts to take whatever inspiration you can from. Like the fact that Achaekek has failed to prevent the apotheosis of Aroden, Norgorber, Cayden, Iomedae, Nethys, Irori, Nocticula, Arazni, Casandalee, etc. etc. ad nauseum suggests that the idea his job is "stop people from becoming divine" is incorrect, which is way more interesting to me ("What, then, is his job?") than "sending him against PCs."
So you are actively twisting/rewriting and ignoring huge swaths of "how the world works" for the sake of running a fun game.
That's exactly what we are trying to tell you is a "problematic setting" that GMs have to deal with.
Once again. Outliving your destined death is an offense that carries the death penalty to a Pharasman.
She can and does remotely curse mortals to become infertile, etc. The curse before that, she will flip your die to become a natural 1, right when you really needed that roll to avoid your imminent death.
Simply stealing from a tomb is enough to get cursed if you're unlucky enough to be noticed.