So... exemplar exist because Gorum died and his power was spread all over the world. A godspark hits a random creature and boom, they're an exemplar.
So how can you have exemplar in scenarios before Gorum's death?
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One obvious suggestion is to emphasise that gods are not linear entities, with uncomplicated relationships with spacetime. When Gorum blew, not all godsparks landed in the present--a few blasted through the near past, and maybe a few into the future, too. They're not common enough to have generated any note, if anyone even recognised what they were as belonging to a set group and not one of the million idiosyncratic individuals that inhabit the world, but there's no saying that none ever existed.
... But then I'm one who loved the idea of the Exemplar class folk hero archetype enough that when I run, I pretty much decouple Exemplars from the Godsrain entirely. No weirder than being born with or unlocking a kinetic gate in your soul, some people just happen to find an extremely rare spark of true divinity left somewhere in the world... or perhaps know nothing about why they are the way they are, but simply do what they do.
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I could swear I read dev commentary that Gorum's death made Exemplars less rare, not that they didn't exist prior to his death. Let me try and find jt.
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As the war god died, his power rained through the many planes of creation, sparking conflict and instilling divine energy in those previously without it. Whether you were directly touched by this power, claimed it from an ancient being or artifact, or whether it awoke something long dormant in your lineage, a spark of the divine now blazes within your soul, granting you abilities, sacred weapons, and divine signifiers that reach into the realm previously reserved for gods and legends.
It's a bit vague, but "claimed it from an ancient being or artifact" and "awoke something long dormant in your lineage" certainly suggests that Exemplars can exist outside the context of the Godsrain if a mortal were to obtain a divine spark in some other way.
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The exemplar is inspired by mythological heroes like Achilles and Cu Chulainn, right? Well, since Earth exists in Golarion and it can be presumed those heroes somehow existed within Earth's version of the Pathfinder-verse, it could be assumed that exemplars before Gorum likely were possible because the character was of divine origin, be it because they descend from divine beings, outsiders (so pretty much a nephilim), or mythic characters.
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Yes, the exemplar is the folk hero class. I also think that the text from WoI aslyr quoted means that Gorum is not the only source. It's just that the Godsrain created several exemplars in a short timespan, making them less of a rarity.
After that, the exemplar is the occasion to have a bit over the top origin stories for your character. The one I created for the PFS owes her powers to swallowing very special monkey hair as she stumbled in the middle of a battle between two cultivators in Quain.
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It's a little unusual that the writers decided to explicitly mention a specific in-universe event in the class description like that, especially when they didn't really do it for other classes. Maybe they intended the class to be specifically tied to the Godsrain as a bit of flavour for Golarion specifically, but I doubt they'll mind at all if we create Exemplars with other origins.
In that spirit, here's another possible origin story: Gods can bleed even when they don't die. One god gets into a scrap with another god and while neither kills the other they do get some good swings in that spray blood all over the metaphysical battleground. The Exemplar gains their power when they bathe in a river or pool that had been (unknowingly?) contaminated with a drop of that deific blood. For bonus drama, the deity might be of the less-friendly variety and sends their servants to retrieve their missing bit of divinity from the Exemplar.
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Oh look. We are enforcing lore as though it is mechanics rules again.
That sounds dangerously close to running contrary to your perspective in The Myth of Flavor Text thread.
Pathfinder2e doesn't have non-mechanical flavor text. It does have flavor text. But the flavor text in the PF2 rules is important. It does help to give a framework of how to interpret the rest of the mechanical rules.
Oh look. We are enforcing lore as though it is mechanics rules again.That sounds dangerously close to running contrary to your perspective in The Myth of Flavor Text thread.
The official flavor is there to help people understand the intent behind the rules and therefore understand the rules text better, and to provide a narrative description for people who don't want to have to create their own.
The official flavor is not a set of shackles intended to prevent people from creating characters that have the flavor that they want them to, or from playing the game the way that they want to.
Does that make my position on the matter more understandable?
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As a rare class, it is a decision the GM has to make.
One of my GMs is like no way, the class is banned as we play before the gods rain.
Another is like whatever, your Kholo Hunter has eaten the heart of a mythical creature he bested in combat, you have a divine spark, lets go.
You probably should not populate your game world with hundreds of them before the gods rain, but there won't be Pinkerton storming your residence if you do.
Counter question from me would be: If a settlement mentions 90% humans, would at least 3 of the 4 player characters have to be human?
In my games, that would be a clear no, player characters are special.
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I'd use the approach of a personal blessing from a god, like in the event of Wrath of the Righteous. Think of it as a deluxe level Champion or Oracle. You can also probably call it a freak over-injection of otherworldly energies in what would be a geniekin or a nephilim, such that your lineage is tied to a particularly potent entity.I can see Exemplar as like a Martial equivalent of a witch, where they're like... laundering divine agents.
I see them more as the Martial equivalent of the Sorcerer.
Your family got too close to eldritch energies and you have extraordinary martial (rather than magical) abilities as a result.
Some people might even try to absorb an Exemplar's blood/lifeforce to try and become one.
For an oddball option, perhaps something like the mantling that shows up in TES: Morrowind? Golarion's got enough occult stuff that "walk like them until they walk like you" doesn't feel any more implausible than, say, a thaumaturge's weakness thing. And that sort of thing has a heck of an inbuilt plot - are you echoing a legend on purpose? By complete chance (at least at first)? Or by the agenda of someone else?
(Showing up to a higher-level adventure with a character who's done the whole "mantling a local legend" thing already and is now trying to figure out what to do next could be fun, too - new PC for 11+ AP idea, I guess!)
It's a little unusual that the writers decided to explicitly mention a specific in-universe event in the class description like that, especially when they didn't really do it for other classes.
Well, it is the game's only rare class, and an established purpose of rarity is to denote a thing isn't appropriate for all games-- be it for thematics or mechanics.
That said, I agree with the group that adapting Exemplar to use other origins is perfectly reasonable.
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Some people might even try to absorb an Exemplar's blood/lifeforce to try and become one.
Don't give a certain lich in a certain lake any ideas...