Pathfinder 2's Armor & A Preview of the Paladin!

It was a long bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I sent most of it in the (rare) sun eating BBQ; there were two big Pathfinder 2 blog posts which went up in the meantime. The first dealt with armour and shields; the other was our first look at the new Paladin class!

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• Armor now affects Touch AC; each has a different bonus for AD and TAC.
  • Studded leather +2 AC, +0 TAC
  • Chain shirt +2 AC, +1 TAC, noisy
• Armor has traits, such as "noisy".
• Armor has a Dex mod cap to AC, penalties to STR/Dex/Con skill checks, a Speed penalty, and a Bulk value.
• Potency Runes -- Items can be enhanced with potency runes.
  • Bonuses to attack rolls, increase on number of damage dice (weapons)
  • Bonus to AC, TAC, and saving throws (armor)
  • Example studded leather with +3 armor potency rune gives +5 AC, +3 TAC, and +3 to your saves.
  • Potency runes can be upgraded.
• Shields -- requires an action to use and gain an AC and TAC bonus for one round.
• Other gear -- gear has quality levels (poor -2, expert +1, master +2)
• Interact -- this is a new action, used for grabbing objects, opening doors, drawing weapons, etc.

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• Paladins! Apparently the most contentious class.
• Core rules have lawful good paladins only (others may appear in other products)
• Paladin's Code -- paladins must follow their code, or lose their Spell Point pool and righteous ally class feature.
• Oaths are feats and include Fiendsbane Oath (constant damage to fiends, block their dimensional travel)
• Class features and feats --
  • Retributive strike (1st level) -- counterattacks and enfeebles a foe
  • Lay on hands (1st level) -- single action healing spell which also gives a one-round AC bonus
  • Divine Grace (2nd level) -- saving throw boost
  • Righteous ally (3rd level) -- house a holy spirit in a weapon or steed
  • Aura of Courage (4th level) -- reduce the frightened condition
  • Attack of Opportunity (6th level) -- presumably the basic AoO action
  • Second Ally (8th level) -- gain a second righteous ally
  • Aura of Righteousness (14th level) -- resist evil damage
  • Hero's defiance (19th level) -- keep standing at 0 HP
• Litanies -- single action spells, verbal, last one round.
  • Litany of righteousness -- weakens enemy to your allies' attacks
  • Litany against sloth -- slows the enemy, costing reactions or actions

[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=61148]D1Tremere[/MENTION]

I know nothing about you, your background, your education except what I can take from your posts.

But if you want to know some prominent contemporary moral philosophers who accept the objectivity of morality on non-religious objective grounds, here are some:

Onora O'Neill (Professor at Cambridge, Kantian)

Frances Kamm (Professor at Harvard, Kantian)

John Tasioulas (Professer at King's, Oxford-school Aristotelian)

Peter Singer (Professer at Princeton and Melbourne, utilitarian whose argument for objectivity is a version of RM Hare's)

Frank Jackson (Professer at ANU, whose argument for objectivity is based on his general approach to response-dependent properties)

Michael Smith (Professor at Princeton, a student of Jackson who runs a similar sort of argument for moral objectivity)​

These are just the first six people I thought of. (Seven if you include Hare.) I could mention Pettit, or Estlund (I'm pretty sure he's an objectivist) or Michael Moore and Heidi Hurd (he's a natural lawyer and Hurd's views are fairly close to his, I think), or many many others.

If you're not aware of these philosophers and their views, then you are not across contemporary English-language moral philosophy.

 

[pemerton]

I am not aware of any evidence for an Objective criteria of ethics.

Kant purports to deduce it from the general notion of a universal maxim.

RM Hare runs a similar argument (though to utilitarian rather than deontological conclusions).

I'm not going to actually run through the arguments - Kant's can be found summarised in any introductory text on moral philosophy, and Hare's argument is readily found also.

 

[D1Tremere]

I gave you six names to look into. I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned a couple more. You yourself brought up Kant. You don't have to agree with them -- they certainly don't all agree with each other -- but if you want to be a meaningful part of this metaethical conversation, you do have to take them seriously. I can assure you, the professional philosophers who argue against them do. If you tried this "there is no debate" line on any of them, I can only imagine you would get the same response you've gotten from me and pemerton.

Maybe my question wasn't clear. If you believe there is true debate, maybe you are correct. All I ask is that you provide one example of morality that is objective. Can you?
Kant never provided evidence for Objective morality. He believed a person could not be objective, and that they must rigidly adhere to a set of rules which would be objective. His only evidence for objectivity came from him defining those methods he believed to result in objectivity, but that didn't hold up very long.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Maybe my question wasn't clear. If you believe there is true debate, maybe you are correct. All I ask is that you provide one example of morality that is objective. Can you?

You now have twelve. I have no idea what else you're asking for. Is twelve simply too many? Okay, let's narrow it down at random to, say, Peter Singer. You can, if you wish, go to Princeton right now and challenge him to a formal debate on the objectivity of morality. He's a busy guy, but if he has the time and inclination he might accept. He will enthusiastically defend the affirmative position, and he is vanishingly unlikely to mention a deity in doing so. Ergo, the question is debated in contemporary secular moral philosophy. Ergo, when you said it wasn't, that claim was factually incorrect. Q.E.D.

 

[D1Tremere]

You now have twelve. I have no idea what else you're asking for. Is twelve simply too many? Okay, let's narrow it down at random to, say, Peter Singer. You can, if you wish, go to Princeton right now and challenge him to a formal debate on the objectivity of morality. He's a busy guy, but if he has the time and inclination he might accept. He will enthusiastically defend the affirmative position, and he is vanishingly unlikely to mention a deity in doing so. Ergo, the question is debated in contemporary secular moral philosophy. Ergo, when you said it wasn't, that claim was factually incorrect. Q.E.D.

You guys keep pointing me to the leading philosophers in the field, and i understand what you are trying to say. To be clear, my point is that none of them have ever used any evidence to support their positions. If you make a claim with no evidence, you cannot truly debate it. It just becomes a never ending argument.
So my question was, can you personally produce an objective example of morality?
Is there any action that can be shown to be objectively moral or immoral?

Singer says, for example "I must, if I am thinking ethically, imagine myself in the situation of all those affected by my action (with the preferences that they have). I must consider the interests of my enemies as well as my friends, and of strangers as well as family. Only if, after taking fully into account the interests and preferences of all these people, I still think the action is better than any alternative open to me, can I genuinely say that I ought to do it. At the same time I must not ignore the long-term effects of fostering family ties, of establishing and promoting reciprocal relationships, and of allowing wrongdoers to benefit from their wrong doing."

That is a reasonable code, but hardly objective.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

To be clear, my point is that none of them have ever used any evidence to support their positions.

Just because you don't accept the evidence doesn't mean they're not using it. To take a simple example, Kant's argument is, roughly, a proof by contradiction: if he can show that "It is not the case that P is the right thing to do" is self-contradictory for some P, then it follows that "P is the right thing to do" is true. This is logical evidence. Proof by contradiction has been used to establish many, many facts in philosophy, mathematics, and the theoretical sciences, going back to Pythagoras. The question is whether Kant's particular proof by contradiction is sound. His opponents argue that there are various problems in the logic which make it break down. They may be right. You obviously believe they are. And that's fine. But it's still a debate. Kant offered evidence, the other guys rebutted it.

If you don't like evidence of such an abstract nature as a proof by contradiction, well, first of all, I'd like to know what your opinion is of mathematical truth, but secondly, more sciencey-looking, empirical evidence is a part of the debate too, going all the way back to Aristotle. In fact, it's seen a resurgence in recent decades: check out Joshua Greene, Steven Pinker, or Daniel Dennett (and to a lesser extent the rest of the "Four Horsemen").

 

[D1Tremere]

Just because you don't accept the evidence doesn't mean they're not using it. To take a simple example, Kant's argument is, roughly, a proof by contradiction: if he can show that "It is not the case that P is the right thing to do" is self-contradictory for some P, then it follows that "P is the right thing to do" is true. This is logical evidence. Proof by contradiction has been used to establish many, many facts in philosophy, mathematics, and the theoretical sciences, going back to Pythagoras. The question is whether Kant's particular proof by contradiction is sound. His opponents argue that there are various problems in the logic which make it break down. They may be right. You obviously believe they are. And that's fine. But it's still a debate. Kant offered evidence, the other guys rebutted it.

If you don't like evidence of such an abstract nature as a proof by contradiction, well, first of all, I'd like to know what your opinion is of mathematical truth, but secondly, more sciencey-looking, empirical evidence is a part of the debate too, going all the way back to Aristotle. In fact, it's seen a resurgence in recent decades: check out Joshua Greene, Steven Pinker, or Daniel Dennett (and to a lesser extent the rest of the "Four Horsemen").

You make a fair point. If I am willing to accept a definition of Objective that includes logical evidence then it is so. That said, most of the definition elements of the word objective, and all of the definition elements I must adhere to as a scientist, focus on the "of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers" aspect.
Making a subjective decision that a clause must be logically consistent does not equal evidence for an objective standard. Taking things as a priori is little better than faith unless it leads to empirical evidence. The main reason for my view is that a proposition can be shown to be true or valid via the structure of the argument without being true in reality, and this is greater with indirect proofs such as proof by contradiction.
"A problem. A serious problem. Then the proof is wrong. The proof is invalid, since the contradiction did not follow from the assumption. The whole point of a proof by contradiction is to show the assumption leads to a falsehood. This is the key; if the contradiction comes from any other source the whole proof is in trouble.
Cohn points this out, but does not have an answer on how to avoid it. Nor do I. It seems inherent in the nature of reasoning about proofs. Especially those that use proof by contradiction." -rjlipton

 

[TheCosmicKid]

You make a fair point. If I am willing to accept a definition of Objective that includes logical evidence then it is so. That said, most of the definition elements of the word objective, and all of the definition elements I must adhere to as a scientist, focus on the "of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers" aspect.

This definition seems problematically narrow. Is the irrationality of the square root of 2 an objective fact? I would say yes, obviously it is, anybody.can run the mathematical proof and see that it must be true. That it is an abstract proposition, outside of empical experience and imperceptible with our senses does not impede its objectivity. Indeed, it enhances it. A mathematical fact is a universal truth in a way no empirical fact can hope to be.

Making a subjective decision that a clause must be logically consistent...

Wait, what? Logical consistency is not subjective. If it were, we'd all be in trouble. Logical consistency underpins empirical scientific reasoning just as much as deductive philosophical reasoning.

 

[D1Tremere]

This definition seems problematically narrow. Is the irrationality of the square root of 2 an objective fact? I would say yes, obviously it is, anybody.can run the mathematical proof and see that it must be true. That it is an abstract proposition, outside of empical experience and imperceptible with our senses does not impede its objectivity. Indeed, it enhances it. A mathematical fact is a universal truth in a way no empirical fact can hope to be.


Wait, what? Logical consistency is not subjective. If it were, we'd all be in trouble. Logical consistency underpins empirical scientific reasoning just as much as deductive philosophical reasoning.

Science works by disproving a hypothesis. You create a test for the hypothesis, and if it passes then it is reinforced. If it fails, then it is rejected, and you modify your hypothesis or start over. A mathematical fact is only as true as our ability to test it empirically. Until then it could always be something other than we believe it to be. Just look at the switching of scientific paradigms in physics.
I'm not saying that logical consistency is subjective (though there are certainly areas where it appears to break down), I am saying that the perception that logical consistency within a specific formal logic statement is both necessary and sufficient to prove objectively that something is (or is not) moral is subjective. As the warning on proof by contradiction posits, there are multiple possible reasons for it to be both logically consistent within its own rules, yet still not hold true. Even Kant believed that "There are in the idea of reason obligations which are completely valid, but which in their application to ourselves would be lacking in all reality, unless we make the assumption that there exists a supreme being to give effect and confirmation to the practical laws (Groundwork A 589/B 617).” Kant

 

[pemerton]

Science works by disproving a hypothesis. You create a test for the hypothesis, and if it passes then it is reinforced. If it fails, then it is rejected, and you modify your hypothesis or start over. A mathematical fact is only as true as our ability to test it empirically. Until then it could always be something other than we believe it to be. Just look at the switching of scientific paradigms in physics.

Every one of these claims is controversial. There are plenty of philosophers of science who don't agree with Popper about the role of falsification in science. One reason is because it is hard to see any connection between testing and "reinforcing" on a falsification approach! (And Popper himself didn't use the notion of "reinforcing" as he is an induction sceptic.)

Your claims about mathematics are controversial too. Quine believes some version of them. Dummett doesn't. Frege doesn't. Wittgenstein doesn't.

That physics should be understood on a paradigm model is controversial. And that a paradigm model of physics, even if true, would have bearings on mathematical truth is also controversial.

Claims can be controversial yet true. But given what seems to be your standard for evidence, I'm not sure how you are comfortable putting forward these claims so casually.