Pathfinder 2E "Everything I've Said So Far About the God Who Will Die" - Creative Director Luis Loza on Setting Shake-Ups Coming to PF2E in "War of Immortals".

[ProfessorDetective]

Posted on r/Pathfinder2e today:


Bullet Points from Loza's post:

• One (and only one) of the core deities (the twenty deities featured in Player Core, Abadar—Zon-Kuthon) will be dying.
• After this god's death, Arazni will be filling the empty slot in the core 20. Arazni is not taking over the dead god's portfolio or anything. There is simply an empty space that she will happen to fill.
• This god's death has been planned for a long time, as far back as summer 2022. Though, I recall discussion about it with some key staff even earlier. Thus, the ball was rolling for this death before any OGL/ORC considerations.
• Starfinder canon has no bearing on whether a god will live or die. If a god exists in Starfinder, it does not guarantee that they will live. If a god doesn't exist in Starfinder, it doesn't mean they are among a "short list" of gods who could die.
• Feature among the selection of the Gods of Lost Omens minis has no bearing on whether or not a god will die.
• We will not be bringing back Aroden just to kill him off again.
• We will not be cheating and bringing the dead god immediately back just to say we technically killed a god. The god's death will have repercussions for the setting and the god remaining dead is part of these developments.
• I mentioned that Divine Mysteries has an in-setting narrator in the form of Yivali, a nosoi psychopomp-in-training. Her writing is presented as a report on faith and divinity for Pharasma, focusing on the Inner Sea region specifically. This in-progress report started decades ago and has no bearing on whether or not Pharasma will die. That is, just because the report is for Pharasma, doesn't mean that she's safe.
• The core deity is not the only god dying as part of the WoI event. Other gods will die, but only one god from the ranks of the Core 20.
• There have been hints setting up some kind of development with Torag.
• There will be at least one orc deity dying.
• There will be at least one herald of a deity dying. Players will have a chance to witness this death "in-person."
• Major changes will be occurring as a result of the death. Some will be seen in WoI, some in adventures, some in additional material in the future.
• Some pantheons (the mechanical term referring to the likes of the Godclaw or the Cosmic Carvan) will be changing.
• The Prismatic Ray will be changing.
• Shyka will survive.
• The cover of Divine Mysteries does not hold any clues to the identity of the dying god.
• Divine Mysteries will feature new gods.
• There will be new Arcadian gods detailed in Divine Mysteries.
• Razmir has an entry in Divine Mysteries.
• There will be some gods we won't mention ever again due to their OGL connections.

The Prismatic Ray (Shelyn, Desna, and Sarenrae) is my go-to pantheon, so I'm personally TERRIFIED. Who else is sweating bullets? Who do you have your money on to bite it?

 

[payn]

I’ve been out if the loop, I’ll be keeping an eye on this.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Posted on r/Pathfinder2e today:


Bullet Points from Loza's post:

The Prismatic Ray (Shelyn, Desna, and Sarenrae) is my go-to pantheon, so I'm personally TERRIFIED. Who else is sweating bullets? Who do you have your money on to bite it?

I feel like Sarenrae is the easy bet, even if I would honestly disagree with it. I feel like Irori would be my choice since they don't do much with him anyways and maybe he could matter more in death than he did in life. I think the outside wild shots would be Asmodeus or Zon; watching Cheliax and Nidal suddenly get tossed into a civil war between rival devils would be honestly cool and interesting. Bonus points for also killing off one of the last connections to D&D if they did it, too.

 

[the Jester]

I'm not a Pathfinder player, but this kind of stuff is maddening to me.

Major shake ups in a setting should be for dms and home games to implement, not imposed from above. That kind of metaplot nonsense is just terrible. Don't invalidate home campaigns. This is one of the reasons I just don't use published settings- I run long term campaigns that span long enough periods of real time and that have enough evolution of the setting that this kind of stuff is really likely to make future setting materials less and less useful to me.

It reminds me of how the original Dark Sun setting was this awesome bleak world... and then TSR immediately published novels that reset major components of it and made a bunch of characters who weren't your pcs into the world's big heroes. No thanks.

 

[payn]

I'm not a Pathfinder player, but this kind of stuff is maddening to me.

Major shake ups in a setting should be for dms and home games to implement, not imposed from above. That kind of metaplot nonsense is just terrible. Don't invalidate home campaigns. This is one of the reasons I just don't use published settings- I run long term campaigns that span long enough periods of real time and that have enough evolution of the setting that this kind of stuff is really likely to make future setting materials less and less useful to me.

It reminds me of how the original Dark Sun setting was this awesome bleak world... and then TSR immediately published novels that reset major components of it and made a bunch of characters who weren't your pcs into the world's big heroes. No thanks.

This is really surprising since PAizo has had a mostly hands off approach to changes in Golarion over the years. Even in Starfinder they just vanished a lot of stuff so they could not make decisions on happenings.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm not a Pathfinder player, but this kind of stuff is maddening to me.

Major shake ups in a setting should be for dms and home games to implement, not imposed from above. That kind of metaplot nonsense is just terrible. Don't invalidate home campaigns. This is one of the reasons I just don't use published settings- I run long term campaigns that span long enough periods of real time and that have enough evolution of the setting that this kind of stuff is really likely to make future setting materials less and less useful to me.

It reminds me of how the original Dark Sun setting was this awesome bleak world... and then TSR immediately published novels that reset major components of it and made a bunch of characters who weren't your pcs into the world's big heroes. No thanks.

To be fair, Golarion is one of those settings for those people who DO like to see metaplot slowly change the setting over time.

Not everyone likes that, of course (it's not my preference as well), but there is absolutely an audience for it.

 

[payn]

To be fair, Golarion is one of those settings for those people who DO like to see metaplot slowly change the setting over time.

Not everyone likes that, of course (it's not my preference as well), but there is absolutely an audience for it.

I mean, slowly is a key word here. Golarion hasnt changed much in the 15 years I've been reading/using it.

 

[Staffan]

I mean, slowly is a key word here. Golarion hasnt changed much in the 15 years I've been reading/using it.

Golarion has changed quite a lot, but mostly locally. After all, the setting is built on the concept that there will be one or two epic world-changing and/or world-saving quests done every year (since they're releasing two APs per year and the setting moves ahead in real time). Recent changes so they're doing more 1-10 APs have changed that a bit, but still.

I think something on the scale of a War of the Gods needs to be treated with care. I could see the whole thing being set off by one god killing another, with a few APs set during the ensuing chaos. You can't really have the PCs be the ones who may or may not kill a god in a published setting, because that kind of thing needs centralized control. What you could have is something like Asmodeus being killed, and then have an AP where Cheliax falls into turmoil and the PCs can fix it up without the diabolic influence.

 

[payn]

Golarion has changed quite a lot, but mostly locally. After all, the setting is built on the concept that there will be one or two epic world-changing and/or world-saving quests done every year (since they're releasing two APs per year and the setting moves ahead in real time). Recent changes so they're doing more 1-10 APs have changed that a bit, but still.

I think something on the scale of a War of the Gods needs to be treated with care. I could see the whole thing being set off by one god killing another, with a few APs set during the ensuing chaos. You can't really have the PCs be the ones who may or may not kill a god in a published setting, because that kind of thing needs centralized control. What you could have is something like Asmodeus being killed, and then have an AP where Cheliax falls into turmoil and the PCs can fix it up without the diabolic influence.

I was under the impression the APs, at least in PF1 era, all happened concurrently? So, it wasn't like the results of Carrion Crown would effect the results of Kingmaker etc... I sort of lost track in the change over to PF2 which of all those stories became canon forward into PF2 era.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I was under the impression the APs, at least in PF1 era, all happened concurrently? So, it wasn't like the results of Carrion Crown would effect the results of Kingmaker etc... I sort of lost track in the change over to PF2 which of all those stories became canon forward into PF2 era.

I don't think they are all concurrent, but they all did happen. They all result in a victory for good (or evil, in the case of those evil party APs).