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Jason Bulmahn, Logan Bonner, Mark Seifter, Stephen Radney-MacFarland : Pathfinder Player Core (2023, Paizo Inc.) No rating

Some deities sanctify their clerics and similarly devoted followers. This gives the follower the holy or unholy trait. The holy trait (page 456) indicates a powerful devotion to altruism, helping others, and battling against unholy forces like fiends and undead. The unholy trait (page 462), in turn, shows devotion to victimizing others, inflicting harm, and battling celestial powers. Deities that list “must choose” mandate gaining the trait and those that list “can choose” give the devotee the option to choose the trait or not. You can have the holy trait, unholy trait, or neither, but can never have both the holy and unholy traits.

— Pathfinder Player Core by , , , and 1 other (Page 36)

As the #Pathfinder 2E #ttrpg no longer uses alignments, the "holy" and "unholy" traits are the closest substitute (since blasting demons with "holy power" is just too much fun).

But I wonder about the social and religious context for religions where the clerics can choose to have these traits. Is a cleric of Sarenrae who doesn't become sanctified as "holy" seen as insufficient committed to the cause? And what about priests of Abadar? They can choose to be "holy", "unholy", or neither. Does this correspond to different factions in the temple hierarchy, and if so how do they view each other?

I'm not criticizing here - I am genuinely curious how this works out from an in-setting perspective. #worldbuilding

replied to Jürgen Hubert's status

@juergen_hubert I think yes, those represent the different factions and interpretations of the faith. Like the different alignments before.

I don't think unsanctified cleris would be seen as insufficient commited. Just a different approach. A holy Sarenite might see smiting fiends more important while a Sarenite that sees redemption as more important would not see sanctification as neccesary.

replied to Jürgen Hubert's status

@juergen_hubert Even gods know that SOMEONE has to work in the administration for the Church and having a holy (or unholy) compulsion to do things which are a significant distraction from looking after Church business is no way to be successful.

This applies even to evil Churches.

Logically, then, when there is a choice the number of those who choose the trait has to be significantly less than those who don't. That's not to say elements of those traits aren't important social elements within the group, but they aren't compelled. Those churches are probably among the larger and more successful, from an organizational point of view.

The deities which don't have choice in the matter probably are less interested in running centralized, controlled Churches and more perfectly happy with cell-oriented cults-of-personality, where zealotry comes before Church organization. Unless that Church has a significant external support from …