BACKGROUND INFO:So, Pathfinder decided to redo its
Demonic Obedience into
Fiendish Obedience (and sometimes into
Deific Obedience) and gave a lot of demon lords extra sets of powers for worshiping them. The new Evangelist and Sentinel boons can be obtained through
Damned Disciple and
Damned Soldier feats, as well as through the
Demoniac/
Souldrinker/
Diabolist prestige classes, which all let you choose which set of boons you want. Incidentally, Diabolist has been massively nerfed (Imp companion has been destroyed, 1st level no longer advances spellcasting, and now requires LE instead of LN, LE, or NE) and Souldrinker slightly nerfed (mostly with regard to using soul points for staff recharging and the capstone SLAs, but using it for magic item creation is actually buffed). In addition to that, you can take the regular
Evangelist,
Exalted, and
Sentinel prestige classes to advance Fiendish Obedience, but with a special nerf, unlike the same allowances that are made for Fey Obedience and Monitor Obedience (which do
not elevate the prereqs of those PrCs when used to advance them). Here is what Book of the Damned has to say:
While the Hit Dice at which you gain boons via Fiendish Obedience or Deific Obedience (from Inner Sea Gods) are identical, the prestige classes in Inner Sea Gods (the evangelist, exalted, and sentinel) that allow accelerated boon achievement have lower entrance requirements than the prestige classes in this book. As a result, if you wish to use one of those three prestige classes for a character who wishes to gain the boons presented by one of the fiendish divinities in this book, increase the requirements for entry into evangelist, exalted, or sentinel so that a character must be 7th level before selecting the class, as summarized below.
- Evangelist: Base attack bonus +7, 7 ranks in a skill other than Knowledge (religion), or ability to cast 4th-level spells.
- Exalted: Diplomacy 7 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 7 ranks, ability to cast 4th-level divine spells.
- Sentinel: Base attack bonus +7.
There are a few cases where Deific and Fiendish Obedience give the same reward (like
Asmodeus and
Mahathallah), making this kinda ridiculous, and a few other cases where they have both sets, but with different rewards for each (
Lamashtu,
Mephistopheles,
Moloch,
Geryon).
THE DEAL:So
Sifkesh now has the following Evangelist boon which seems rather interesting:
2: Blasphemer’s Piety (Ex) Your blasphemous soul adapts effortlessly to reflect the convictions of others. When you are targeted by an effect based on alignment or patron deity, you can choose to be treated as having the alignment and faith of the creature originating the effect (you don’t need to know that creature’s alignment or faith to make this choice). You can also be treated as having the faith of your target or targets when using a spell or effect dependent on patron deity. Making this choice does not require an action, or even awareness that you are being targeted (in which case the ability always functions as best benefits the character in that situation). In addition, you can select feats, traits, and other options dependent on worship of particular deities as though you were a worshiper of those deities. Once per week, you can choose to perform the obedience of any lawful or good deity with which you are familiar instead of Sifkesh’s obedience. This still grants you your normal benefits from Sifkesh, not those from the other faith.
In brief: You count as the religion and alignment of any creature that is targeting you (unless you don't want to), and if
you are targeting
them with an effect dependent on deity, you can count as their religion also. Also, you can use any option for any deity as if you worship them. Lastly, you can copy another deity's obedience ritual 1/week and still get Sifkesh's benefits.
Annoyingly, you cannot take options as if your alignment were other than it is (so anything that requires your alignment to match or be within 1 step of deity will still stop you), and a magic item that operates on its own (rather than being used by a creature, which makes for a creature originating the effect) will still expose you (but you can just use
UMD for that, although the GM might also require you to make the appropriate Perception check first).
So, I'm wondering about how to go about taking advantage of this, and if anyone has ideas, by all means feel free to share them. Probably the first idea that comes to mind is probably taking an extra Deific/Celestial/Fey/Monitor Obedience feat, but if you aren't a Cleric (or using Evangelist/Exalted/Sentinel PrCs), nothing is actually stopping you from legitimately worshiping more than 1 deity in the first place (Blood of the Coven, for instance, establishes the presence of people who prefer to worship 3 deities, and there are other feats for worshiping pantheons as well, like
Pantheistic Blessing) so there's no need to fake worship as one of Sifkesh's devoted.
What does stand out to me though, is using this to take advantage of those deities that give classes access to extra spells and other options. That doesn't even take a feat or anything, just worship, and you qualify as worshiping them alright.
