In the Golorian setting can a creature meet prerequisites for feats and requirements for prestige classes and traits that mandate the patronage or worship of different deities?
Specifically, can a true neutral creature (probably a halfling but not necessarily) take the religion trait Lessons of Chaldira (q.v. Second Chance) (Inner Sea Gods 22) requiring Chaldira Zuzaristan as a patron deity and the general feat Shadow Dodge (q.v. Shadow Dodge) (Inner Sea Gods 24) which has as a prerequisite being a worshiper of Norgorber?
My limited familiarity with Pathfinder's signature campaign setting's religions means I don't know if a creature can have one deity as a patron and still worship another deity. Are the Golarion deities jealous deities? Are there mechanics that allow a creature to revere—or prevent a creature from revering—multiple deities?
Best Answer
It Depends...
Plenty of examples can be found of characters being described in a non-mechanical ("fluff") context as worshiping, venerating, patronizing, idolizing, or giving offerings or tribute to multiple divine entities. On the flip side, while Clerics (for example) are not required to dedicate themselves to a divine entity, the game mechanics provide Clerics explicit options for the case where the Cleric is dedicated to a deity (singular) and the case where the Cleric is not. These options are implied to be binary:
This leads me to believe that while no rules preclude a Cleric from worshiping multiple deities, any Cleric-specific mechanics that are based on the Cleric's association with a single deity would not apply to a Cleric lacking that one-to-one mapping.
Potentially, any worship-related mechanics involving a character whose class restricts her to the veneration of a primary deity could be subject to that restriction as well, but it's not as clear for characters whose class(es) lack this feature...
What about Non-Clerics?
The trait and feat combination specified as an example, however, is not restricted to Clerics. The rules of which I'm aware make no mention of generic prohibitions against the veneration of multiple divine entities on either a mechanical or a non-mechanical basis, though individual religions might. On that basis, and so long as the character is played in good faith (as it were), I can't see any reason to rule against the applicability of the trait and the feat in question. Note, however, that this may not be the case for all such combinations, and the question of non-Clerical mechanical worship is likely intended by the designers to be up to the discretion of individual GMs.
Note that the dev comments that I have been able to locate on the mechanics of worship all seem to be restricted to the context of divine casting classes, and are therefore not necessarily authoritative in a broader context.
The remark about Oracles in the second quote seems to indicate that not only do these remarks only apply to Clerics (in this case) but that Oracles may be mechanically permitted to worship multiple deities.
Pathfinder Society
Specifically for Pathfinder Society play, the Society rules do impose a blanket mechanical restriction of a one-to-one character-to-god worship relationship for mechanical benefits, but this seems to me to be more for the sake of the way that Society play is structured than an indication of the intentions for the game outside the Society as a whole.