The Infamous Dr. Blelyj

Image Credit: Lee Colagiacomo

I've recently been having a fair bit of fun in Pathfinder playing one Dr. Blelyj, a tiefling witch who behaves in an emphatically Good way (usually Lawful, but with enough Chaotic moments that his sheet says just Good), but who is absolutely convinced that he's actually Evil. He calls the rest of the party his "minions", and he gets offended whenever anybody says detect spells say he's not Evil. Also, he laughs maniacally all the time (The fact that they made maniacal laughter a class feature is perhaps the biggest reason I decided I'm okay with Pathfinder). He justifies everything he does on Evil grounds.

Donating to the orphanage is "investing in potential future minions". He helps defeat the goblins who are harassing the townsfolk because nobody gets to harass the townsfolk but him, plus the townsfolk exist to serve him. He declares surrendered foes his "minions" and just lets them go (it helps that the only foes to surrender so far have, with maybe one exception, been the most hapless of mooks).

He always coöperates with the rest of the party as much as possible, often giving up his share of the loot (usually when it involves coppers or silvers, so he doesn't have to carry it) and using most of his wealth to craft potions and wands for the party's use, on the grounds that such trivial matters as wealth are beneath him and that making his "minions" more effective is a more efficient use of his resources.

Killing, too, is beneath Dr. Blelyj: he's never defeated an enemy himself, has only cast maybe two damaging spells in his life, doesn't even carry a weapon, and he usually only debuffs the foes and buffs his "minions".

If there's anything morally questionable -- or just funny -- that I can't think of a specific eeeeeevil reason why he would oppose, I fall back on the catchphrase, "_____ is beneath me." A not remotely exhaustive list of a few other things that Dr. Blelyj has declared to be beneath him: jaywalking, theft, racism (though he did announce himself to be "racist against cops"), alcohol, prostitutes (but not in the literal sense), piracy, and deities.

Custom Pantheon 4: Probably Not Final Thoughts

After I "finished" the new pantheon, I had one god for each alignment, with two exceptions: I had no Chaotic Neutral, because it's the dumbest alignment known to man and screw you if you want to be CN or worship a CN god; and I had two NEs, because of Inglip.

Inglip was problematic. I didn't want to just merge him with Mirk, because then the Mind Flayers and Aboleths would be worshipping the same thing. I didn't want to just make Inglip more of a monstrous aberration, as that would start treading more upon the schtick of the Burning Hate. I didn't want to make Inglip more mysterious, as that would infringe upon the schtick of the Exciting Mystery God.

Then, after some hemming and hawing, I decided upon a solution: Inglip can be the Chaotic Neutral god. To wit: I adapted some of the actual teachings of the church of Inglip, in particular the bit about interpreting cryptic messages in captchas things like candle wax, tea leaves, and fire ashes. I'm aiming for a bit of ambiguity between "not actually meaningful", "meaningful but with no long-term plan", and "meaningful and with a long-term plan which is incomprehensible to mortals".

Side note: I've never been entirely clear how to map Blue and Orange Morality onto the D&D alignments. Depends on how you do the blue and orange morality, I suppose. Could be just about anywhere. Even Good: imagine a hypothetical celestial who simply has no comprehension that something so terrible as killing is even possible. It draws a spectrum of morality between the ultimate good of standing there swaying slightly to the music of the spheres, and the ultimate evil of, say, jaywalking. Clearly good (depending on what it thinks the proper punishment for jaywalkers is. "Killing jaywalkers" is pretty evil, but if it has no comprehension of killing, then the proper punishment for jaywalkers is probably something like "more jaywalking").

Anyhow, Inglip's morality is Blue and Orange, and his plan is not knowable to mortals. The best a mortal can do is interpret each individual edict to the best of his ability, which winds up with inconsistent and probably occasionally psychopathic behaviour. If Inglip tells you "overthrow toronto", you overthrow Toronto. If Inglip tells you "watch Pony", you watch My Little Pony. There's a balance between good and evil, is what I'm saying. (Yes, yes, obvious joke that "kill bieber" is an even more Good thing to do than "watch Pony". But I try not to advocate killing real people, even in jest.) The Chronic Backstabbing Disorder this gives you is the kind of thing that earlier editions called True Neutral, but that's one reason we don't play earlier editions. And yes, an argument can be made that following Inglip's commands to the letter is Lawful, but when those commands are so Chaotic and lead to such gibberish behaviour, I think it's at best Neutral.

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Also, Magg and Mirk start with the same letter and have the same number of letters and syllables. That's no good, no player will be able to keep them straight. It's as confusing as Ehlonna and Erythnul, or Vecna and Valkur, or Sauron and Saruman, or Tywin and Tyrion, or Asha and Osha, or Jesus, Judas, James, and John, or Eli, Elijah and Elisha, or... you get the idea.

Despite the fact that there are so many aversions in so many well-respected works of fiction, this is actually a really good rule to pay attention to. Never have two characters with similar names, or even names which start with the same letter, if you can help it.

So, let's rename one of them. I kind of like Mirk, and I'm okay with Magg losing touch with its acronym origins entirely. As I was walking home from D&D just before writing this bit, I turned over a bunch of variations in my head. Not Kromagg. Robot-Magg? No, though that just gave me the brilliant idea that maybe he's a Construct, not an Outsider. (Numiel and the Burning Hate are Dragons; Mirk is Undead; the others are pretty much Outsiders. Construct is pretty weak, though; their main selling point is their laundry list of immunities, which mostly overlaps with the immunities that deities get by virtue of having divine rank. Oh well.) Then I was rolling something like Earth-Magg around in my head, and came upon Urmagg. Even though "ur-" indicates something original or prototypical, and this god's one of the newer ones. Hm. It's still missing some touch. Urmaggr? Yes, there we go, I think I like Urmaggr.

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Also, the domains were all crazy. Some gods had like seven domains and some had like thirty. I evened them out so every god has the same number of domains. 26 is probably definitely kind of a lot for one deity, but there are a lot of domains and I want to cover all of them. I guess if a player really wants a combination of domains not offered, they can just be a cleric of the entire pantheon, so I could have trimmed each list even more, but meh, whatever.

And We Wonder Why People Think D&D Is Satanic

The joke that always goes around this time of year is that Jesus is a zombie and will eat your brains. But if you actually read the Gospels, you'll notice that Jesus does many things a zombie cannot do. He continues to speak, cast spells, fly, lead followers, and do all sorts of crazy things. Jesus is clearly not a zombie. Jesus is clearly a lich.

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To qualify for lich, Jesus needs to have been caster level 11, which is pretty ludicrously high, so we'll assume he's level 11 and no higher.

Of course, to cast Raise Dead (as he does in Matthew 9, Luke 7, and, most famously, John 11) he'd have to be at least a level 9 cleric (or archivist or favored soul) anyway, so at least that fits.

He should have only been able to use Create Food and Water to feed 33 people per casting, then. Maybe he managed to get it up to 5,000 (as he does in all four Gospels, and then to 4,000 again in Mark 8 and Matthew 15) with some sort of crazy metamagic shenanigans, or maybe he homebrewed a higher-level version of the spell.

At first, I thought the spell Jesus casts in Matthew 21:19 is clearly Blight, a druid/sor/wiz spell which Jesus, as a cleric, wouldn't be able to cast -- unless he has the Decay domain (or is an archivist, or took some obscure feat just to get this spell, neither of which seems very likely). Except, while the tree "withers", the wording of the passage leaves open the possibility that it isn't actually dead, and will simply "never bear fruit again". Which is to say, he might have cast Bestow Curse -- except that Bestow Curse targets a creature. Trees are living objects, not creatures. So unless it was secretly a fig treant, this was probably Blight, and YHWH offers the Decay domain -- which is, of course, completely in keeping with YHWH's personality, albeit not quite so much with Jesus's.

Jesus heals oodles of blind people, deaf people, mute people, lepers, dropsy, withered hands, paralysis, and so on. It seems to be his very favourite thing to do. Luckily, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Remove Disease, Neutralize Poison, Restoration, Remove Paralysis, and so on, are all perfectly within his capacity to cast as a cleric 11. Not to mention the entire Cure line, which he can cast up through Mass Cure Moderate Wounds. He can even do so spontaneously, if you think he's Good or the nicer side of Neutral; but even if he isn't, he can still prepare them just fine.

And he drives out a number of demons. Dismissal serves this purpose just fine, though he does have the capacity to cast the higher level Banishment for the tougher demonic infestations.

One of Jesus's most famous spells, of course, is Water Walk. No problem there.

He calms a storm in Mark, Luke, and Matthew. Uh-oh: Control Weather is a level 7 spell! Jesus would have to be level 13 to cast it, which is just not within the realm of reason. So he must have done it with the lower-level Control Winds! As a storm god, it's perfectly reasonable for YHWH to offer the Air domain, so obviously that's how he did it. (The Air domain also gives Air Walk, explaining any situations in which Jesus flies. Not that he needs the domain to cast the spell, it's also a basic cleric 4 spell. But what's he going to prepare in that domain slot instead, Enervation?)

So that's that: Jesus is probably a level 11 cleric with the Air and Decay domains (and, of course, the lich template).

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Notice that Jesus was, of course, not high enough to actually cast Miracle. None of his so-called "miracles" were actually Miracles, nor, as I have shown, did they need to have been. Jesus could cast every spell he is shown to have cast without resorting to Miracle. Indeed, just preparing Miracle every day and using it for every purpose would have been less impressive than showing the foresight involved in preparing the right spells on the days he'd need them. (Not to mention, the things Jesus did were pretty weaksauce and unimpressive if we postulate access to 9th-level spells. This is the spell level at which casters can start creating their own mini-universes. Withering fig trees and multiplying bread and fishes is a little impressive for a level 11 cleric, a trifling waste of time for a level 17 cleric. But this is getting a little bit into the "handicap argument".)

Obviously Jesus has the Leadership feat. Or else he's a Thrallherd, which would be more plausible except a psion can't do most of what Jesus did. So leadership it is. Probably chained leadership, even, his cohort had leadership, too, as did the cohort's cohort, etc. That's relatively unproblematic.

Ah, but when he actually became a lich, all the dead came out of their graves and started wandering around. Animate Dead is single-target. I thought for a moment Summon Undead was a possibility, but the whole line is limited to at most four at once. I seem to recall a spell in some obscure book that animates every body within a radius and can be extended or persisted, but that'd be an awfully high-level spell. So I guess I dunno about this one.

The obvious, burning question: what is Jesus's phylactery? And the equally obvious, burning answer: the Holy Grail.

Obviously, Jesus turned the Grail into his phylactery either at the Last Supper or while he was on the cross, depending on which version of the myth you go with (i.e., whether the Holy Grail is the same artifact as the Holy Chalice).

Which explains how Jesus "escaped" from the cave in which he was interred: his original body just disintegrated, and a new body formed next to his phylactery. It's so obvious!

This also throws Arthurian legend into a new light: rather than seeking the Holy Grail for glory or because their deity told them to, Arthur and his knights sought it to destroy it, so that the world could finally be rid of the menace of the lich-god Jesus.

I leave as an exercise for the reader the consideration of whether the Knights of the Round Table succeeded or failed.

Blasphemy Rights

So I was mildly amused by this post on the Center for Inquiry website. You know why I was amused, right? Yeah, it's because a cleric can't cast blasphemy until level 13. Of course he's not amused! Blasphemy cast at a caster level of 13 weakens and dazes the level 12 cleric, no save!

But it did get me to thinking seriously about blasphemy as a vitally important component of free speech, and how it kind of gets shafted in D&D, saddled with the [evil] descriptor and only affecting nonevil creatures, just like the ur-priest gets saddled with evil as an alignment requirement. Not all gods are good! And even the good ones can be opposed on legitimate, non-evil philosophical grounds!

Anyway, let's fix it. My first inclination was to simply turn it from an evil spell to a good spell, but no, turns out that already exists (so do Lawful and Chaotic versions). We could just make a Neutral version (which turns out to also exist: word of balance in the Spell Compendium), but instead, let's make an antitheist version.

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Righteous Blasphemy
Evocation [Sonic]
Level: Ur-Priest 7, Paladin of Freedom 4
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 40 ft.
Target: divine spellcasters in a 40-ft.-radius spread centered on you
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None or Will negates; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes
Any creature capable of casting divine spells (or which have spell-like abilities that mimic divine spells) within the area of a Righteous Blasphemy spell suffers the following ill effects.

HD	Effect
Equal to caster level	Dazed
Up to caster level -1	Weakened, dazed
Up to caster level -5	Paralyzed, weakened, dazed
Up to caster level -10	Killed, paralyzed, weakened, dazed

The effects are cumulative and concurrent. No saving throw is allowed against these effects.
Dazed - The creature can take no actions for 1 round, though it defends itself normally.
Weakened - The creature’s Strength score decreases by 2d6 points for 2d4 rounds.
Paralyzed - The creature is paralyzed and helpless for 1d10 minutes.
Killed - Living creatures die. Undead creatures are destroyed.
Furthermore, if you are on your home plane when you cast this spell, extraplanar divine spellcasters within the area are instantly banished back to their home planes. Creatures so banished cannot return for at least 24 hours. This effect takes place regardless of whether the creatures hear the righteous blasphemy. The banishment effect allows a Will save (at a -4 penalty) to negate.
Ur-priests and creatures whose Hit Dice exceed your caster level are unaffected by righteous blasphemy.

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Additionally, here, have a feat (intended for Defiants, but any nontheist can take it):

Blasphemer [General]
Prerequisite: Must not worship any deity, character level 13th
Benefit: You gain righteous blasphemy as a spell-like ability at a caster level equal to your hit dice, usable 1/day.
If you are evil, you may choose to cast blasphemy instead. You may make this choice each time you use the spell-like ability.
Special: You may select this feat multiple times. Each time you do, you may use the spell-like ability one additional time per day.

Fun New Items: Goblet of True Mind Switching and Greater Helm of Opposite Alignment

Goblet of True Mind Switching
If this jeweled silver cup is filled with any liquid, and two creatures drink from it in succession, the minds of the two creatures are swapped, as with a True Mind Switch power. Neither individual loses a level. This ability functions once per week. If one of the bodies later dies, that body's current occupant dies, and the other immediately loses one level.
Moderate telepathy; ML 17th; Craft Universal Item, True Mind Switch; Price 200,000 gp.

Helm Of Opposite Alignment, Greater
As Helm of Opposite Alignment, but functions 10 times before running out of charges, and save DC is 17.
Strong transmutation; CL 12th; Craft Wondrous Item, creator must be 12th level; Price 50,000 gp; Weight 3 lb.

Alignment: Restriction Or Guideline?

Many people pooh-pooh the D&D alignment system as too restrictive, but I think that partially results from a misreading.

It's not that a monk must be Lawful, it's that a non-Lawful character wouldn't become a monk. It's not that a paladin must be Lawful Good, it's that only a Lawful Good character would become a paladin. It's not that a cleric must be within one step of their deity, it's that a person wouldn't devote their life to serving a deity with whom they substantially disagree. It only entails restrictions if you're looking at it from a game perspective rather than a character perspective.

That said, the "alignment is too restrictive" argument can be sound in rare cases. Especially if you read alignment as motivation-based rather than action-based, as Immanuel Kant and I do. A Lawful Neutral contractarian will wind up behaving in exactly the same way as a Chaotic Good utilitarian 9 times out of 10; the difference is in why they act the way they do: contractarianism is born of self-interest, while utilitarianism is supposedly born of legit altruism.

If I say "I'm a good person because I want everyone else to be good to me", that's selfish and clearly not Good. If I say "I'm a good person for the sake of being a good person", that's Good. The behaviour is the same, it's the mindset that's different.

On the other hand, in traditional D&D cosmology, the best reason to behave in accordance with a given alignment is that you want to go to your favourite afterlife. I wouldn't necessarily want to wind up in Mechanus, as it may be somewhat too rigidly structured for me. I'd probably be okay with most of the Good planes. So I would pick whichever afterlife I thought best (probably taking into account its neighbors; for example, Ysgard isn't terrible, but it borders on Limbo, which is, so I wouldn't aim for Ysgard, because if I miss Chaotic-Chaotic-Good and hit Chaotic, I wind up in Limbo, which is bad).

But that gets into the John Constantine problem: if you do good to get into a good afterlife, and alignment is motivation-based rather than action-based, you go to a bad afterlife because you're selfishly motivated, no matter how well-behaved you are. So that's an argument in favour of treating alignment as action-based rather than motivation-based.

All of that said, if you consider alignment too restrictive, or you treat it as motivation-based rather than behaviour-based, I made a feat for you. Along the lines of Monastic Training and Knight Training, which allow you to multiclass with Monk and Paladin without penalty, here is Versatile Alignment:

Versatile Alignment [General]
You’ve picked up enough habits outside your alignment that you are able and willing to behave in ways that conflict with your true alignment, and can take levels in classes you otherwise wouldn’t due to your alignment.
Prerequisite: +5 Base Attack Bonus
Benefit: Choose one class or prestige class. You may take levels in that class even if your alignment is one step different on one axis than the requirement.
For example: You may take levels in the barbarian, bard, or druid class with this feat if you have any alignment.
You may take levels in the monk class with this feat as long as you are not chaotic.
You may take levels in the cleric class if you are one additional step from your god. For example, a cleric of a lawful good god may now be chaotic good, neutral, or lawful evil, in addition to lawful, good, or lawful good. When doing a god’s work, you must still adhere in practice to that god’s alignment or risk losing your cleric powers.
You may take levels in the paladin class if you are good or lawful, but you must still adhere in practice to the paladin's code of conduct or lose your paladin powers.
If you take this feat after losing your class powers due to a change in your alignment, you must still undergo atonement before you can regain your powers.
Special: You may take this feat more than once. Each time you do, it applies to a different class.

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An additional, even more optional option. For those campaigns which ignore experience penalties for multiclassing (or which, like mine, allow one extra free class before experience penalties start accruing), the Racial Favored Class winds up doing absolutely nothing. Every race has one, but it doesn't do anything. So consider this:

Every character gains the benefit of this feat applied to their racial favored class. For races whose favored class is "any", choose which class to apply this feat to at character creation. After that, it may never be changed.