Are undead players unholy?

[Yorick_the_Yester]

I'm playing an Oracle in a 2e remastered game and I want to take the Mummy Archetype. Question is: Would that automatically make my good character unholy?

[NorrKnekten]

It does not, Despite undead's natural tendencies to unholy there is nothing that makes them automatically unholy so a player character that was either holy or neutral in life would remain so in their newfound undeath.

[PossibleCabbage]

Holy and Unholy are more about "your character has chosen to take sides in a battle between cosmic forces to the degree that those forces have taken notice of you" than any actual morality or state of existence of your character. Most people who became undead by accident or through no choice of their own shouldn't be automatically unholy, it's just that the realities of being undead tend to pull people towards various depravities that aren't good for one's soul.

Specifically, the way this is supposed to work is that every undead has a "hunger" something they crave to fill a void they perceive is irksome, and to the extent that an undead person can satisfy their hunger periodically, they possess their faculties and can make choices just like anybody else, but if you are unable to satisfy your hunger the need eventually becomes all consuming and overcomes your rational faculties. A vampire could remain a good person if they only take reasonable amounts of blood from consenting individuals who are compensated for this, but if you starve them of blood long enough they end up tackling strangers and dragging them into alleys.

For a Mummy your particular supernatural need is going to either be extremely inconvenient or absolutely no big deal, depending on how much the story involves traveling. Mummies are tied to a specific type of terrain, like desert for sake of example, and any time you are away from the desert you feel a supernatural urge to return to a desert (not necessarily the same one you came from). This is potentially inconvenient if you have to go on any long ocean voyages, say.

There aren't actually rules for an undead character losing their minds, but it's worth having a conversation with the GM about the downsides of being undead.

[QuidEst]

To unhelpfully answer the question in the title, there are currently no known ways to be an undead player, and any potential unholiness is a matter of theological speculation.

[The Raven Black]

And for undead PCs, they are Unholy if they choose to. Just like all PCs.

For that matter, they can be Holy too.

[Finoan]

The Basic Undead Benefits that come with the Mummy Dedication gives you Negative Healing and some immunities such as to Death effects. It doesn't give weakness to Vitality damage or any interaction with Holy sanctified damage.

So no, your Mummy character will not be damaged extra by attacks with the Holy trait, will not take damage from holding or wielding items with the Holy trait or using spells with the Holy trait, will not add the Unholy trait to any spells or other effects with the Sanctified trait, and will not be prevented from having whatever Edicts and Anathema that you had previously (aside from the Undead Hunger entry which may or may not cause problems).

[HammerJack]

Of course Basic Undead Benefits and Advanced Undead Benefits don't interact with Holy or Unholy. Holy and Unholy didn't exist when Book of the Dead released.

It's only when you adjust the question from "do they have an interaction?" to "would it be appropriate to add an Unholiness to them at my table?" that you get a question worth chewing on. And it could often have some narrative value. Especially for a character who was a good person. But there's no remaster guidance that would strongly prescribe that as an update to those rules.

[NorrKnekten]

HammerJack wrote:

But there's no remaster guidance that would strongly prescribe that as an update to those rules.

In a way there is remaster guidance to assume theres very little in terms of change.

lets rephrase it into Premaster terms then, The Undead Ancestries and Archetypes did not change someones alignment towards evil.

Which translates into the remaster trough the Player Core Review which was meant as a conversion guide between Premaster -> Remaster content.

Core Preview wrote:

Remove the alignment entry

from all creatures. If a creature’s nature is strongly
suffused with the magic of good or evil, the creature has
the holy or unholy trait, and often its Strikes and other
actions do too. Celestials have the holy trait. Fiends and
undead have the unholy trait. (As with most things,
there are occasional exceptions.)

Finishing up with

Core Preview wrote:

Usually, you can follow the

player’s wishes for their PCs and ask them to describe in
the story how their sanctification comes into play.

So if a PC option did not make you evil in premaster, it wouldn't make you unholy in remaster either. But their undead hunger might eventually drive them to unholy.

[The Raven Black]

HammerJack wrote:

Of course Basic Undead Benefits and Advanced Undead Benefits don't interact with Holy or Unholy. Holy and Unholy didn't exist when Book of the Dead released.

It's only when you adjust the question from "do they have an interaction?" to "would it be appropriate to add an Unholiness to them at my table?" that you get a question worth chewing on. And it could often have some narrative value. Especially for a character who was a good person. But there's no remaster guidance that would strongly prescribe that as an update to those rules.

Many / most undead NPCs being Unholy is the equivalent of them being Evil before Remaster.

Undead PCs never had to be Evil in RAW. So they should not have to be Unholy either.

[Finoan]

HammerJack wrote:

Of course Basic Undead Benefits and Advanced Undead Benefits don't interact with Holy or Unholy. Holy and Unholy didn't exist when Book of the Dead released.

Well, Basic Undead Benefits and Advanced Undead Benefits also don't add weakness to Good damage either.

Are Undead creatures normally weak to Holy trait?

Edit: Checking Monster Core specifically for Undead creatures, I'm finding that they have the Unholy trait, but don't have the 'typical' weakness to Holy that the Unholy trait recommends.

[HammerJack]

There's no default of Unholy equaling a weakness to Holy, no. That's a common combination in fiends, but not a standard for the trait.

[Theaitetos]

Yorick_the_Yester wrote:

I'm playing an Oracle in a 2e remastered game and I want to take the Mummy Archetype. Question is: Would that automatically make my good character unholy?

The others have already answered that question, but to expand it a little:

As a Mummy Oracle you can even
a) become Holy by getting a Faith Tattoo and have a deity that allows Holy sanctification;
b) get Vitality healing from Nudge the Scales as if you were a living creature.

[Zoken44]

I had an idea for a Mummy Oracle too. He is a Heretical, blasphemous worshiper of an unholy goddess (meaning he's a good person and is VERY wrong about her) but another goddess found the situation so funny she gives him holy powers to spite the first goddess, while the first goddess is sending his oracular curse.

[Yorick_the_Yester]

My character is a grave robber who was caught and mummified alive as punishment, but in her last moment had the oracle awakening and escaped her tomb to roam the world and heal people with that second chance she was given by the forge of creation.
So, from a purely alignment status, she would have been very much chaotic good. (It was an evil tomb that she was robbing, hence the forced mummification)
Guess I'll talk to my GM about some sort of sanctified sarcophagus to return to as a ersatz-desert. The kind that takes a lot of effort to transport to make being away from it a serious danger.
Anyways, thank you all for the answers.

[Claxon]

HammerJack wrote:

Of course Basic Undead Benefits and Advanced Undead Benefits don't interact with Holy or Unholy. Holy and Unholy didn't exist when Book of the Dead released.

It's only when you adjust the question from "do they have an interaction?" to "would it be appropriate to add an Unholiness to them at my table?" that you get a question worth chewing on. And it could often have some narrative value. Especially for a character who was a good person. But there's no remaster guidance that would strongly prescribe that as an update to those rules.

Absolutely agree, but I would say personally, for my tables there are no "good or even neutral" undead. There are undead who were good in life, grappling with their new existence, who will slowly succumb to the corrupting influence of the Void and Undeath.

Mechanically, your character might start out as Holy or neutral, but over time your going to slowly become "evil" and Unholy. For me as a GM that's just a requirement I have to play an Undead because it fits with how I envision Undeath working.

[moosher12]

I'd say lets wait and see what the Corpsefolk versatile heritage in the upcoming Starfinder Adventure Path does. That might give us an idea what they intend to do with undead player characters in the remaster space.

[Errenor]

moosher12 wrote:

I'd say lets wait and see what the Corpsefolk versatile heritage in the upcoming Starfinder Adventure Path does. That might give us an idea what they intend to do with undead player characters in the remaster space.

I have a suspicion that approach to undeath in Starfinder and Pathfinder was already different before, and that planet with undead inhabitants in not like Geb, for example. So this won't help us much for Pathfinder. But I don't know.

Are there some experts here?

[Ravingdork]

Yorick_the_Yester wrote:

ARE UNDEAD PLAYERS UNHOLY?

Undead aren't real. Players, on the other hand, are needy and self-centered; therefor they are always unholy. Only longtime hardworking GMs are granted holy sanctification.

[moosher12]

Errenor wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

I'd say lets wait and see what the Corpsefolk versatile heritage in the upcoming Starfinder Adventure Path does. That might give us an idea what they intend to do with undead player characters in the remaster space.

I have a suspicion that approach to undeath in Starfinder and Pathfinder was already different before, and that planet with undead inhabitants in not like Geb, for example. So this won't help us much for Pathfinder. But I don't know.

Are there some experts here?

Problematically that's the soonest option we'll get unless you want to wait at least a year for a Pathfinder-side option.

There are a few Undead that are not unholy, that's the Blisterwell Oathrisen, the Briargeist, the Deathless Zealot of Zagresh, the Floodslain Orc, the Moonstalker, the Putrifer, the Revenant, the Ruzadoya Swiftmane, the Shui Gui, the Skinslough, the Torn Quartet, and the Waxen Effigy.

Ghost says in the Monster Core, "Unlike most other undead, ghosts don't have to be unholy, but regardless, they should remain tragic and frightening figures in play." and the instructions only to say to add the Ghost, Incorporeal, Spirit, and Undead traits.

Mummies are unholy.

Skeleton and Zombie tells you to start from a skeleton of the right size and work from there.

Vampire says it gains the undead and vampire traits, and usually the unholy trait."

As far as the classes from Book of the Dead are concerned, we don't have a way of knowing until it gets remade.

From what we can see is this

Only the Ghost and the Vampire have Unholy be optional. Simply put, Mummies, Skeletons, and Zombies do not give such an option, so it is assumed mandatory until proven otherwise. A GM can choose to override this, but there is no way to know for sure.

We'll get the Corpsefolk toward the end of 2025 guaranteed.

We likely aren't getting any remasters of Book of the Dead until the end of 2026 at the earliest, because early 2026 is already taken up by Dark Archive, and very possibly even later than that, so you have to work with what you have.

[Elric200]

In 1E all undead were evil becaue their reanimation process tied them to the negative material plane. Mummies are reborn in a diffrent process so they probably are not automaticaly evil [see Horus] I am not sure if they changed undeads connectuion to the Negitive material plane in 2e remaster.

Raving Dork you a Gem. You made me laugh so hard with your last post.

[moosher12]

Legacy 2E undead lore stated that undead were doomed to eventually develop a disdain and disregard for the living. But it also stated that this was a process that could be staved off. Now whether this took 1 week or 10,000 years, was a matter of the undead's willpower. I always interpreted it as a similar ilk to how a person would just not care about an insect, and that the undead would eventually approach that state if given enough time to survive.

But it's hard to tell how they will change that. And making the unholy trait an actual commitment to evil, instead of like in 1E, where they made the evil trait mean your spirit had that evil tint, but you yourself were not necessarily beholden to being evil, changes things up. And it's hard to tell what Paizo will intend in this regard until Paizo makes an official piece on the matter. That's why I point to the Corpsefolk, because it'll be the first playable proper undead to likely actually grant the undead trait. There was the dhampir, but it does not grant the undead trait to make a call on.