Clerical Problems

[WeissAllein]

I was asked to make a secondary character for situations in which my primary would not be available.
I asked about class and received an OK on Dread Necro. After building the character I was then informed that there was someone in the party who might take issue with what I wanted to play.

Apparently one of the party is a secret Priest of Pelor, hidden since the land we are in does not allow his religion, and while the DM would allow him to travel with a Dread Necro so long as my alignment is not evil he draws the line at me being a Necropolitan, even though the willing undead are excepted members of society in this land.
I talked to the player in question and he told me he would be fine with the character so long as there was no mechanical issues for his character. The way he sees it is that I am not evil and if I am traveling with them then I am helping people and so long as I don't do anything evil he has no problem with me or my methods.

The DM is looking into the Dogma of Pelor to see if the Priest would lose his Priesthood for traveling with an Undead and I was wondering if there was anyone who could clear up if a follower of Pelor can travel with a Neutral Undead?

P.S. I also have a slaymate however I was willing to give this up if need be. The other player was of the mind that so long as it was with me and did nothing wrong he also saw no reason as to why he would have to destroy it on sight. He was incredibly sympathetic as to my reason for having one and believed that even his character would understand.

[tiercel]

This is tricky... while it’s good that the other player is on board, this is something you definitely want to clear with your DM as to how the Church of Pelor, to say nothing of Pelor himself, would react. Pelor is certainly famous as pretty much the most anti-undead god/faith. From the Wikipedia page on Pelor (emphasis added)

Pelor is wrathful against the forces of evil, corruption, and darkness, and is especially opposed to the undead. However, Pelor urges his followers to remember that excessive attention to things of evil can blind one to the truly important things: compassion and goodness.

With the right mindset, this could be an interesting RP situation... but I can’t help but think that a Pelorite, much less at Pelor’s urging during praying-for-spells time, would at minimum find himself urging your character into full-on Good, much less offering to “fix” your undead status. Additionally, if your character is actively creating undead and your cleric buddy just accepts that, I’d imagine sooner or later he could be looking at some deific nightmares.

(For classic Pelor, I’d imagine a living, possibly Tomb-Tainted Soul DN, who only creates undead for specific purposes and then destroys/allows his undead to be destroyed once their purpose has been served, is probably more likely to get by than a necropolitan, much less with a Slaymate.)

This really depends, however, on how your DM intends to RP Pelor, and how much Pelor will take an active hand in his cleric’s conduct (and what constitutes a Significant Violation of Pelorite faith in your game), so very much into “check with your DM territory.”

[GrayDeath]

Ask your friend if he is AOK with palying a Cleric of the Burning Hate Interpretation of Pelor? Its bound to be fun^^


Jokes aside, Pelor as a classic "want undead destroyed because he hates them" is probably the most problematic God for this, and a Dread necromancer without an army of undead is a bad choice, so: did you thinka bout mayhap going with another concept? After all, it IS a "for special situations" Character, its not as if you will be playing them a lot, right?

If fixed casters are your thing, maybe a beguyler?

[WeissAllein]

I have stated I am open to making changes if they need to happen. I have not been demanded to change class the DM has only shown hesitancy with race and the slaymate.

He thinks the necropolitan is ok so long as I am not evil but he isn't sure, he also began telling me that I wouldn't get the lich feature. I mentioned that at the point that was relevant my character would have a whole "Should I bring myself back just for this power that I may or may not want?" moment.

He then fed me some BS of True Resurrection reducing my character down to the level they were when they were alive. Currently discussing how that does not make sense.

He likes the idea of the slaymate but thinks for purposes of party cohesion that she should just be a commoner. I questioned people letting an Undead, even an Intelligent one, care for a little girl and further more bring her to dangerous locations, since I can't trust anyone currently.

The worst part is I have been working hard to break an old habit of only caring about the numbers on a sheet and this is the first non-NPC I have made where I truly feel like I breathed "life" into them, in a creative sense, and the same thing that happened in the past that created my habit is happening again.

[Aotrs Commander]

I think this is a classic example of how hard "[this thing] will not associate/must destroy [this other thing]" very often leads to closing off a lot of interesting storylines, and most especially makes the first thing - which is usually something supposedly Good, like Paladins or Pelor, look like a decidedly intolerant zealot. Because it essentially makes Pelor literally a fantasy racist if undead are not, in fact unilaterally evil. If, in any given DM's game or any campaign world, non-Evil Undead exist, then Pelor's demand for their destruction because they are Undead and not for their actions should likewise only exist if he's the Burning Hate.

See also "paladins must not associate with Evil creatures," nonsense. As beautifully proved by Pathfinder Kingmaker's companions, it obiviates the chance for a story for redemption for said Evil characters.

Now, I will be among the first to say that is not for every game; I myself have a rule that Evil character are required to be confined to Evil parties (it's not like we don't have enouigh for those for everyone to do that in!) and coversely, in evil parties EVERYONE is required to be evil. But a top-down blanket Rules-Just-Say-No (which is nothing more than an artefact of earlier editions, where the emphasis was on "open-door-kill-monster" gameplay rather than potentially on character exploration, does the game a disservice, because it suggests it should be for no game, rather than not every game.



My advice would be directly to your DM, rather than you; which would be in this case to say "bugger what the offical sources say about Pelor, this is my world, so he doesn't have to be a Sun Nazi (*cough*like the United clergy of Orun from Unexplectables*cough*) about non-evil (and maybe not even evil) Undead." (Again, unless he's supposed to be the antagonist?) Especially if the player doesn't have a problem with it. It's your game, WeissAllein's DM, you don't have to slavishly keep to the official flavour if you and your players come up with and interesting and fun character narrative that the official fluff stymies.

[Saint-Just]

Now, I will be among the first to say that is not for every game; I myself have a rule that Evil character are required to be confined to Evil parties (it's not like we don't have enouigh for those for everyone to do that in!) and coversely, in evil parties EVERYONE is required to be evil. But a top-down blanket Rules-Just-Say-No (which is nothing more than an artefact of earlier editions, where the emphasis was on "open-door-kill-monster" gameplay rather than potentially on character exploration, does the game a disservice, because it suggests it should be for no game, rather than not every game.

My experience is rather limited, but why would Neutral characters in Evil parties would be a greater problem than Neutral characters in Good parties? Some characters may be inappropriate (e.g. Lawful Neutral in a party of criminals) but that's not something unique to evil parties (Chaotic Neutral steal-from-the-comrades is not unrealistic but most parties - whether good or evil - would be unwilling to put up with that).

[Aotrs Commander]

My experience is rather limited, but why would Neutral characters in Evil parties would be a greater problem than Neutral characters in Good parties? Some characters may be inappropriate (e.g. Lawful Neutral in a party of criminals) but that's not something unique to evil parties (Chaotic Neutral steal-from-the-comrades is not unrealistic but most parties - whether good or evil - would be unwilling to put up with that).

Bit of an aside, but:

Basically, because we don't run an Evil campaign in which a random group of random adventurers just happen to be Evil; it's always will be explictly an Evil campaign, and almost always it's the PCs being part of some larger Evil organisation (the Galactic Empire, the Dark Lord's dirty black ops, the Army Of The Red Spear and so on), so the PCs will explictly have to be doing Evil things¹. And having a PC not 100% on board with that (which means you have to be Evil) has always, in my own experience, caused problems. If we're playing Evil, we're playing Evil, and I expect to be done to the hilt (in, typically, an LE, not CE fashion). If someone wasn't comfortable playing an Evil character, then they likely would really not going to want to play that particular party in the first place. (Hell, they probably wouldn't want to be near ME at any point at the best of times, come to that...!)

In general, we have only played Evil parties for day quest groups and while I am nowhere near in position to run it, I would like to run the Way of the Wicked AP one day, but before I even considered that, I did ask my weekly group whether they would want to do it. (They were all quite happy, but about 75% of them are in common with our day-quest players.)



Having said about the rule though, if someone came to me with a really strong (and specifically appropriate for the campaign) evil character concept for a non-evil party (e.g. someone on some sort of redemption story of something), I might be prepared to be flexible, if I was convinced enough and I considered them good enough at roleplaying to be able to pull it off. (Which would probably have to be better than most of us, we are, self-included, on the scale of hack-and-slash to pure RP, generally as a group more interested in the Things Being Done than Who Is Doing The Thing, if you follow my meaning. The sort of deep character stuff they do with, the the Unexpectales or Role With Me series is well beyond even the best of us!)



(As a group, we also don't have unlimited tolerance for someone that deliberately wants to play against type to be contrary, when restrictions are set; if I said we're playing an all dwarf partahahahahahahahaha! I'd never say that. If I said we're playing an all... magical talking small equine party (I'd totally do that if I thought I could con them into playing it...) and someone immediately said "I want to play a human!" it wouldn't go down ever-so-well (and with me least of all; it's not like I don't usually provided a MASSIVE list of options for people to pick stuff from, especially with 3.5/PF/3.Aotrs.) You want me to DM for you, you gotta meet me at LEAST half-way.)




¹Technically, I suppose, the one sort of excpetion would be the Aotrs-does-Stargate-SG-1 party, where, in general, the emphasis is placed on exploration. However, that being an Aotrs quest, that ABSOLUTELY requires the PCs to be metaphorical Lawful Evil (it's Rolemaster, alignment isn't actually a thing in those rules though, so there's that latitude as well) for the very simple reason that under no circumstances would someone who wasn't that be recruited into the Aotrs proper, much less seconded to a secret project, regardless of how skilled they were. The Aotrs recruits on the right type of person over the right skills, because as Liches, they can afford to spend, like, a century training someone up to the right level of skill. (If in some bizarre sort of incident that had to use some sort of specialist that 2700 years of Aotrs skill-base could not provide, it would essentially be with a minder who would be SIGNIFICANTLY higher level to railroad all over them - so not a suitable thing for a PC to play.

[GrayDeath]

In my experience, if a DM says keep the class but dont do this the class can, and dont aim for that the class aims for" they are actually telling you to paly something else, and dont want to step on your feelings.

Playing a Dread Necro with a DM that wants to houserule true Ressurection aside, which would be a Red Flag for me anyway, does your ehart hang on the characters Class, or the style youa re aiming for?

As, for example, a Cleric with the Death Domain will allow you to do a lot of what a Dread Necro can, but not aim you totally towards Must create and lead undead to really shine".

Can you talk to the Pelor CLeric playing palyer directly? Mayhap he can switch his concept to a merely Pelor worshipping noncleric? (even a Favoured Soul would work, as they cant fall, if he wants a divine caster)
Would still offer him a plothook to "redeem" your Dread NEcro, but not force him to fall if he goes along with some of your stuff?

[Quertus]

Apparently one of the party is a secret Priest of Pelor, hidden since the land we are in does not allow his religion,

he draws the line at me being a Necropolitan, even though the willing undead are excepted members of society in this land.

Um… honestly, I think your character is fine, but I think that the other player needs to pick something other than MUST KILL ACCEPTED MEMBERS OF SOCIETY FOR THE BURNING HATE!

Just saying.

Now, if he's an established character, who somehow hasn't gone murderhobo on undead civilization, then you need to talk to him about what makes those NPCs more undead and less dead than your PC's prognosis, because something's not adding up.