Pathfinder 2E Chaotic Clerics

[Dannyalcatraz]

Champions are supposed to be the living embodiment of the deities. They are in effect living idols, representing the deity in the world, and in religious festivals they are expected to play that role, standing in to a large extent for the deity as his personal ambassador or seneschal or even taking possession of his or her champion and speaking through their body. Of course, it may take some time for the community to actually recognize that they have a champion in their midst, particularly if their is no cleric in the community that can identify the signs or the champion isn't yet comfortable claiming the title.

Either that, or at the very least, someone the divine has specifically chosen to do his bidding. Almost anyone can decide to join their faith’s priesthood, but only a (literally) Chosen few can say their deity picked them.

That’s one of the reasons why I loved Green Ronin’s Book of the Righteous so much.

 

[Celebrim]

I know your a history buff. Is there historical precedence for champions in polytheism or is it just so you could have a paladin niche? And how is the class distinct from a melee spec'ed cleric?

Well, I did want a Paladin niche. And in particular, I wanted a class that could be 'the Paladin' but didn't require me to create a different class for every alignment and every deity that might come into play.

There is precedence in both animism and early and even late polytheism though. In animism, the role of the Shaman is to be this intermediary between the spirit world and the mortal world. When a Shaman puts on say a wolf's head or a bison head, he's inviting the animal spirit to take possession of him. He's effectively becoming the spirt of that animal or whatever other spirit he's trying to get to communicate with the tribe. You can see this develop in early polytheism, most notably in West African polytheism and its diasapora offshoots. A west African priest or a Haitian Voodoo doctor is again inviting the God to come among the worshippers by possessing his body, using it as a conduit to make the spirit world accessible to the mortal world. As polytheism develops further and begins to revolve around narrative and heroic ideals, the same idea starts appearing in a new but related form - the incarnation of the divine. For example, in Hinduism you see this idea of the incarnated Vishnu appearing and reappearing in new forms. You see what I think is a related idea in Greek polytheism with the 'demigod' or 'hero', who by virtue of his divine blood is essentially bringing the divine among the people. Heracles for example could be understood to be a champion of Zeus, or Jason as a sort of champion of Hermes.

Of course, this isn't a perfect one to one with the idea of Champion as it exists in my game. I'm still mostly trying to have a paladin niche.

Playing a Champion is rather different than playing a Cleric, or even a melee spec'd cleric. You don't get really notable spell casting ability until your level is in the teens. I think at 10th level you have something like 4 spell slots. It's not even a half-caster like a bard, although it shares with Bard that it's often a support class. What you are instead relying on in the early game is your potent class abilities and the boosts you have in particular skills related to your theme. Early on it actually plays more like a fighter than it does a cleric, but instead of relying on your feats you are relying on a few innate magic powers. You're if nothing else a full BAB fighter and you don't need buffs to make an impact early game. If you do buff in some way, it typically doesn't cost actions the way a low level cleric tends to need to trade off. In the later game, it plays more like a fighter that has dipped into shaman for some buffs and an animal companion. That said, it's possible to build a Champion to be a cleric replacement, focusing on healing and turning undead (Compassion + Righteousness for example).

 

[Eltab]

A Chaotic deity's scriptures would look more like the Book of Proverbs than the Book of Leviticus.
You would have general principles, tidbits of advice, sometimes contradictory statements. You have to figure out for yourself how to apply it. You have to let experience guide you which of two opposing tidbits might best work for the matter at hand.
The most-strongly-worded material would be instructions to AVOID doing things that, time and again, draw overwhelming hostile forces down on the Church. (No 'Robin Hood' as a lark.)
The deity might even state outright, "in these fields - A, B, C - laws and order and patterns predominate naturally; don't try to be an exception to them because life / existence doesn't work that way." (Ex: Planting seed at high summer because you happen to have some spare time won't get you a good harvest, nor will it alter winter's effects on the plants.)

There would be more emphasis on individual action than collective action; "See what free men can do! This I learned on Crusade," over the common Primal appeal to the Elders or the Tribe.

 

[Farealmer3]

Playing a Champion is rather different than playing a Cleric, or even a melee spec'd cleric. You don't get really notable spell casting ability until your level is in the teens. I think at 10th level you have something like 4 spell slots. It's not even a half-caster like a bard, although it shares with Bard that it's often a support class. What you are instead relying on in the early game is your potent class abilities and the boosts you have in particular skills related to your theme. Early on it actually plays more like a fighter than it does a cleric, but instead of relying on your feats you are relying on a few innate magic powers. You're if nothing else a full BAB fighter and you don't need buffs to make an impact early game. If you do buff in some way, it typically doesn't cost actions the way a low level cleric tends to need to trade off. In the later game, it plays more like a fighter that has dipped into shaman for some buffs and an animal companion. That said, it's possible to build a Champion to be a cleric replacement, focusing on healing and turning undead (Compassion + Righteousness for example).

How do you handle the flavor issue of caster focused clerics and melee focused champions with gods of portfolios that focus on classes or concepts different from those types of characters? For example strength gods like Kord having caster focused classes like clerics serving them. Or magic based deities like Boccob having a melee focused class like champion.

 

[Celebrim]

How do you handle the flavor issue of caster focused clerics and melee focused champions with gods of portfolios that focus on classes or concepts different from those types of characters? For example strength gods like Kord having caster focused classes like clerics serving them. Or magic based deities like Boccob having a melee focused class like champion.

Well, for one thing I don't particularly like the concept of "gods of strength" or "gods of magic". That smacks too closely to having a "god of fighters" and a "god of magic-users".

Right off the top of my head, the aforementioned Jord is the closest I have to a god of strength. But he's really the god of games, athleticism, rest, idle pursuits, self-improvement, enjoying life and singing lustfully but badly. If I was detailing a temple of Jord, that is, a gymnasium dedicated to Jord with his shrine in some prominent place. First, I'd take care to have both clergy and laity in the temple, where the laity was retired athletes or perhaps even gladiators. I'd have his Templars - the lay brothers that defend the place - be focused on things like grappling and athleticism. Even the laity that just sweeps the floors would be Brutes. And I'd make his clerics have domains like Strength and Competition, and probably multiclass a few of them with Brute or Fighter or Fanatic. If I had a Champion of Jord, I'd probably make sure they had the Body portfolio. Jord's clerics don't have a strict hierarchy, and aren't even necessarily 'in charge' of his temples. They are basically a meritocracy where each cleric's opinion is respected in the fields that they excel in, and clerics achieve respect by proving themselves in competition. The temple staff is essentially coaches and trainers (or though they wouldn't use the term 'life coaches'). The actual person running the temple might be a brute or a fighter, and he'll take the opinion of the cleric if the cleric seems like someone worth listening to. You go to Jord's temple, work out, have a beer, spend some time in the sauna, and that is worship. Along the way, you might tell your troubles to the grizzled, tough, one-eyed guy that still deadlifts more than anyone else in the place, and that guy might be a cleric of Jord.

If I was doing a temple for a more knowledge focused deity, say Nilet or Karophet or Celestian, then there would be lots of scholars and wizards among the laity, and I'd probably have some of the cleric multi-classed wizards. If you read my Champion write up, Champions with knowledge based portfolios can multi-class as wizards and get benefits for doing so. I'd have to get into how multi-classing works, but suffice to say you could have a Champion-Wizard that was mostly a spell-caster with a melee sideline. In practice, PC champions of such deities would probably have the color of being tasked with hunting down those that misuse knowledge for evil purpose (or in the case of Karophet hunting down knowledge so that it can be used for evil purpose). The clerics would have domains like Knowledge and Magic, and I'd try to stat them up with spells appropriate to their profession. Note that clerics in my game have a known spells list; they can't just use any clerical spell whatsoever, so this makes it easy to ensure NPCs at least are thematic in what they can and can't do.

The point being, not everyone serving a temple is necessarily a cleric and both cleric and champion are reasonably flexible classes.

 

[Farealmer3]

Well, for one thing I don't particularly like the concept of "gods of strength" or "gods of magic". That smacks too closely to having a "god of fighters" and a "god of magic-users".

Right off the top of my head, the aforementioned Jord is the closest I have to a god of strength. But he's really the god of games, athleticism, rest, idle pursuits, self-improvement, enjoying life and singing lustfully but badly. If I was detailing a temple of Jord, that is, a gymnasium dedicated to Jord with his shrine in some prominent place. First, I'd take care to have both clergy and laity in the temple, where the laity was retired athletes or perhaps even gladiators. I'd have his Templars - the lay brothers that defend the place - be focused on things like grappling and athleticism. Even the laity that just sweeps the floors would be Brutes. And I'd make his clerics have domains like Strength and Competition, and probably multiclass a few of them with Brute or Fighter or Fanatic. If I had a Champion of Jord, I'd probably make sure they had the Body portfolio. Jord's clerics don't have a strict hierarchy, and aren't even necessarily 'in charge' of his temples. They are basically a meritocracy where each cleric's opinion is respected in the fields that they excel in, and clerics achieve respect by proving themselves in competition. The temple staff is essentially coaches and trainers (or though they wouldn't use the term 'life coaches'). The actual person running the temple might be a brute or a fighter, and he'll take the opinion of the cleric if the cleric seems like someone worth listening to. You go to Jord's temple, work out, have a beer, spend some time in the sauna, and that is worship. Along the way, you might tell your troubles to the grizzled, tough, one-eyed guy that still deadlifts more than anyone else in the place, and that guy might be a cleric of Jord.

Note that clerics in my game have a known spells list; they can't just use any clerical spell whatsoever, so this makes it easy to ensure NPCs at least are thematic in what they can and can't do.

The point being, not everyone serving a temple is necessarily a cleric and both cleric and champion are reasonably flexible classes.

I forgot you mentioned somewhere you didn't like gods of things that are too close to class niches. But it's interesting you address a few of my key problems with divine classes, mainly they don't properly match up with their deities focus. Incidently I remember before you said you use the shaman book as a base for your magic users. Does that include clerics too?

 

[Celebrim]

Incidently I remember before you said you use the shaman book as a base for your magic users. Does that include clerics too?

I think either I misled you or you are misremembering something.

I have four "full caster" classes in my world: wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and shaman. Each represents a different source of magical power and a different relationship to that power and (usually) a different niche within the society the caster is a part of. While no one in the campaign world could say, "I'm a fighter" or "I'm a rogue" to identify themselves as a member of a class of being, there is intended to be a close correspondence between the meta-game idea of a class like "sorcerer" and something existing within the fiction. No one is a sorcerer unless they have some sort of magical heritage that grants them magical powers. No one is a cleric unless they have some special relationship with a deity (however the deity conceives that relationship), and no one is a shaman unless they've made a bargain with multiple greater spirits who are capable of sharing some of their power with the shaman. Anyone can dabble in magical theory in order to gain understanding of it independent of any source of power external to themselves, but only a wizard pursues this body of knowledge full time.

What I have said a few times is that if I had to simplify things further, and cut down the number of spell-casting classes to just one, it would be shaman, because I think shaman both best approximates the other three and best represents magical tradition as it existed in myth and story (at least, pre-D&D itself). Shaman can approximate cleric by assuming that the relationships are exclusively with the deity according to the deities preferred model of relation to their clerics. Shaman can approximate wizard by noting that historically, wizards were believed to get their power by invoking the power of spirits according to various formula. And Shaman can approximate sorcerer by the fact that it is a short distance between having a magical heritage that lets you invoke magical power, and having a relationship with your magical ancestors that lets you invoke magical power.

I keep all four classes both for reasons related to the expectations people have about D&D (wizard and cleric are a thing) and because there are flavor elements that Shaman doesn't fully capture about the other three that I like.

 

[Farealmer3]

I think either I misled you or you are misremembering something.

I have four "full caster" classes in my world: wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and shaman. Each represents a different source of magical power and a different relationship to that power and (usually) a different niche within the society the caster is a part of. While no one in the campaign world could say, "I'm a fighter" or "I'm a rogue" to identify themselves as a member of a class of being, there is intended to be a close correspondence between the meta-game idea of a class like "sorcerer" and something existing within the fiction. No one is a sorcerer unless they have some sort of magical heritage that grants them magical powers. No one is a cleric unless they have some special relationship with a deity (however the deity conceives that relationship), and no one is a shaman unless they've made a bargain with multiple greater spirits who are capable of sharing some of their power with the shaman. Anyone can dabble in magical theory in order to gain understanding of it independent of any source of power external to themselves, but only a wizard pursues this body of knowledge full time.

What I have said a few times is that if I had to simplify things further, and cut down the number of spell-casting classes to just one, it would be shaman, because I think shaman both best approximates the other three and best represents magical tradition as it existed in myth and story (at least, pre-D&D itself). Shaman can approximate cleric by assuming that the relationships are exclusively with the deity according to the deities preferred model of relation to their clerics. Shaman can approximate wizard by noting that historically, wizards were believed to get their power by invoking the power of spirits according to various formula. And Shaman can approximate sorcerer by the fact that it is a short distance between having a magical heritage that lets you invoke magical power, and having a relationship with your magical ancestors that lets you invoke magical power.

I keep all four classes both for reasons related to the expectations people have about D&D (wizard and cleric are a thing) and because there are flavor elements that Shaman doesn't fully capture about the other three that I like.

Yeah, sorry I must of misunderstood at some point. Because as I was thinking about it after I posted I remembered the magic shop thread and how you explained you have hedge wizards that make minor magic items on commission. Which wouldn't be explained by shamans alone.

Though I wanted to ask about the magical catastrophe that occurred in the past of your setting. You mentioned it before and with the info you gave prior in this thread about clerics with knowledge based domains suppressing dangerous knowledge. Is the magic the ancient wizards used that caused the disaster part of the suppressed knowledge? And with Karophet is that knowledge something that deity tries to spread?

 

[Celebrim]

Though I wanted to ask about the magical catastrophe that occurred in the past of your setting.

The Iconoclasm. Not to be confused with the real world Iconoclasm, which was a completely different thing over a completely different issue.

That's deep deep lore of the setting.

You mentioned it before and with the info you gave prior in this thread about clerics with knowledge based domains suppressing dangerous knowledge. Is the magic the ancient wizards used that caused the disaster part of the suppressed knowledge?

So, way back in the pre-history of the setting, their were four families of deities. They mostly got along and they dallied as deities do and made a bunch of children with each other. Then at some point the youngest but most numerous of the families had an internal feud that ended up creating all sorts of evils and horrors and getting gods actually killed, and that quickly spilled off into the God's War. The gods eventually decided on a truce to avoid spilling more immortal blood and to avoid wrecking the universe completely. During this mess, the last three families of deities were born (in what many suggest was an untimely premature fashion). After the truce, they were sitting around figuring out how to put the world back together, and arguing over the fact that none of them trusted the other ones to go back into the world for fear they'd set up fortresses their and claim it, and various other things beyond mortal ken, when Maglubiyet the Flame Eyed god put forth the idea that they should create servants, fashioned after the 'least gods' or fairies, to perform their will in the world and serve as their proxies. This led to more arguments over what exact form those servants should take, which ultimately led to a compromise that each family leader could submit their own design but with the caveat that each design should be free to choose which ever deity it wanted to serve and in its own way.

Thus came the six free peoples to join the seventh older race of fairy.

The children of Uman who had started the feud, still mourning their father and mother and the greater losses, submitted their design late and in the most desultory of fashions.

After a bunch of other events not pertinent to the story, the children of Uman finally sort of woke up and started paying attention to their hitherto largely neglected construct - the humans. During this period, the humans were a bunch of savage sorts, mostly living in caves, and generally not thriving very much except when they were serving one of the other groups. Deciding to rectify the situation, the gods decided to start tutoring their charges to see what they could learn.

The result would terrify the gods forever, for reasons that go into the deep dark lore of the campaign. The humans proved to be prodigious learners - vastly more prodigious than their creators had ever intended. Although none of the gods talk about it, all the deities had long observed that their was something wrong with their creations - namely they were able to grow vastly more powerful than they should have been able to. All their other servants had a fixed nature. A deity couldn't create a servant without pouring a bit of their native power into it, which would lessen their own power. The gods each pour a little bit of themselves into the mixture, but they hadn't poured much power into their new creation at all. The result should have been a minor servitor race with not much power. But that's not what had happened. The new mortals could demonstrably vastly exceed the power that had been given them with no apparent limit. The deities were already freaked out about that. Some thought that maybe one of the other deities had sabotaged the whole thing. Some thought they had discovered some sort of secret that would tip the war in their favor if they could just recreate it with a more useful servant. Some thought something scarier had happened. Nobody was absolutely sure what had happened, but when the makers of the humans started tinkering with their hitherto little loved creation, they found that the otherwise unremarkable race with no well thought out gifts could explode with power. Several of the deities started trying to see just how much they could learn. The result was 'The Age of Wonders', when humanity started to master magic to the point that literally everything that they did was magical. The 'Art Mages' as these group of wonder workers came to be called refined every skill to the point that if a potter cast a pot, or blew a glass vessel, or smithed a tool or implement, the result was magic. Bakers baked magic. Singers sung magic. Dancers danced magic.

The humans decided that they were the new gods, and decided further they didn't want to be ruled by the old gods. They went to war. And, on a lesser scale, it was basically the 'God's War' all over again. Things got wrecked. The humans launched assaults on Heaven and Hell. The gods retaliated. Eventually, when it became clear that they couldn't win, the humans started trying to create 'doomsday' weapons and threatened to blackmail the gods. Apparently the humans set one of them off, and to prevent it destroying the world, the gods for the last time acted jointly to rip a whole continent off of the planet and throw into the astral plane. The thing went off, wrecked the continent, but didn't spread. The mortal survivors of that wreckage founded what would more or less be the present races and political order, and the deities set out to make sure that no mortal would ever again spread knowledge that would be a threat to the gods themselves.

Meanwhile, the wiser gods are pondering what all of this could mean.

And with Karophet is that knowledge something that deity tries to spread?

Karophet is basically the god of technology, although certainly not the only one that could claim that title. Good aligned people would describe him as the god of knowledge and craft turned to evil purposes. He's the god of secrets, traps, weapons, engines, and forbidden knowledge. As such, yes, if you wanted to learn how to practice 'Art Magic', he'd be the guy you'd want to bargain with. The thing is Karophet is Lawful Evil. He doesn't want to destroy everything, he wants to rule it. And he's only going to risk the ire of the other gods if he thinks he can win. And further, he's not going to break the letter of any truce with other deities - even if he has no problem violating the spirit of the agreement when it suits him. And mortal that tried to bargain with Karophet would quickly learn why you don't enter into a bargain with fiends.

 

[Farealmer3]

The Iconoclasm. Not to be confused with the real world Iconoclasm, which was a completely different thing over a completely different issue.

That's deep deep lore of the setting.

Interesting the gods would keep the humans around after such an act of rebellion. What with 5 other free peoples to act through.

And with Karophet being a lawful evil fiend god. Does that mean you use a different structure to the Hells than D&D's Great wheel does?