Chaotic Good Ur-Priest

[daremetoidareyo]

This is mostly a "Do think this would fly?" style question.

I want to make a CG ur-priest. Theologically & philosophically, one does not need to be evil to siphon powers from the "gods." In fact, this behavior is only evil insomuch as it opposes a sustained heirarchy: humans on the bottom, feeding faith and belief into gods, who then use their powers to cajole the populace and self aggrandize.

Those gods are no more entitled to faith-driven power than mortals are, (Hence the Chaotic part of the alignment) and if you truly interrogate the behavior of those gods, even the good ones, they are selfishly using this faith resource for their own ends, and only politically throw power around to the mere mortals below to foil the endeavors of mortals with guts and opposing gods. This results in a tyranny of sorts: The dominant races of a planet wind up with these arbitrary barriers that other races either have to accept or die. The value judgments of a human god of love therefor diminish the full spectrum of "love" for a minority thri-kreen population.

Seeing as how the gods are invested with the authority to wage their perpetual petty wars, it is reasonable to withhold faith from them, or heck, take away all of the faith they are being accorded, seeing as how after millenia, we still see no true justice in the universe. They had their shot, now let the mortals have a turn.

The character's end goal is to wipe away all faith in external power sources and instead reroute all of that power that is being taxed away and wasted to empower all the mortals of this plane to coexist as peacefully as possible, with all of the mortal's potential remaining in-house, fueling true actualization.


The alignment restriction is the part that I would need waved. The spell focus evil isn't even all that bad, and makes anthropological sense: of course it is "evil" to deny the gods what they feel entitled to, because gods are the rich entitled kids of the planes.

The thing I like about this character is the weird alliances he can make, worshippers of blibdoolpoop would totally be on his side one moment ("Corellan Elfgod oppresses us ALL! Screw him and his elf thralls") and ready to kill him the next ("...So does your highly prescriptive angry puddle god!").

[Vhaidara]

I personally remove all alignment restrictions. If you can sell me on a LG Blackguard, then go for it.

[Psyren]

I think there should have been an adaptation that loses the alignment restriction, yeah. If your power can come from a dead god (or whatever source such gods come from,) why not a CG dead god?

[ZamielVanWeber]

My friend dropped the alignment restriction from Ur-Priest and changed the fluff slightly (they are clerics who don't believe in using power from the gods) and everyone rolled with it fine.

[Malimar]

In my game, Ur-Priest is "any chaotic" instead of "any evil". Makes more sense to me that way.

[sideswipe]

well, its the gods that technically give you your alignment so anyone stealing from any of them would be considered evil.

[atemu1234]

I, too tend to eliminate alignment restrictions, excepting for obviously broken situations resulting therein.

For example, I'm fine with my players running even Lawful Good Ur-Priests. I find fluff mutable, so having to shoehorn someone into playing a single type isn't appealing to me.

[Zweisteine]

well, its the gods that technically give you your alignment so anyone stealing from any of them would be considered evil.
What? I have no idea where you got this idea. People do not become lawful evil by worshipping Hextor. People who are lawful evil worship Hextor because he shares their philosophy.

(Also, Ur-priests are those who reject the supremacy of the gods. If they hold no deities, what gives them their evil alignment?)

[atemu1234]

What? I have no idea where you got this idea. People do not become lawful evil by worshipping Hextor. People who are lawful evil worship Hextor because he shares their philosophy.

(Also, Ur-priests are those who reject the supremacy of the gods. If they hold no deities, what gives them their evil alignment?)

Unless I'm mistaken, they're limited to any non-evil. Though you're right, it's a stupid restriction.

[Judge_Worm]

I think the whole "alignment: any non-good" part is because as an Ur-Priest is literally stealing the divine magic to power their spells.

In addition, Ur-Priest is a pretty powerful class with few restrictions, having to suffer an alignment restriction is a-okay in my book. A cleric without a god is just that, and their are rules for godless clerics, and godless clerics don't cast 9th level spells at level 10.

Addendum to last sentence: They generally don't cast 9ths at 10th, your cheese may very.

[Duke of Urrel]

well, its the gods that technically give you your alignment so anyone stealing from any of them would be considered evil.

I can accept this reasoning. It's really cosmic reasoning, the same as the reasoning behind the [Evil] alignment descriptors of many spells, such as the Animate Dead spell. Certain things may be Evil for cosmic reasons that may have nothing to do with the intentions of the character. If you accept that this is true for [Evil] spells, then you might just as well accept that it is true for Evil character classes.

So if you accept that the Animate Dead spell is always [Evil], then it makes sense to accept that Ur-Priests must also be Evil. On the other hand, if you don't accept that a spell like the Animate Dead spell must be [Evil] regardless of the intentions of the spellcaster, you may also accept Ur-Priests of any alignment.

And of course, in any case, the only really necessary thing is that your dungeon master agrees.