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Alignments, alignments, alignments. These troublesome, complicated, undefined points of view that often seem to do far more damage than good. I know some of you might like the current alignment system - whether you like it because it comes naturally to you, because it's classic, or because you don't care to find something more suitable for you, it feels right to you. This thread isn't for you. The goal of this thread isn't to debate whether the current alignment system is fine as it is or not. The goal of this thread is for those of us who aren't satisfied with the current system to create something better. It's to analyze the different parts of the alignment axises, and to analyse the issues of the system, and to try to come up with a solution.
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The problems with alignments RAW, as I see it, are:
- They are too abstract. While many things are abstracted, and should be for ease of play, thoughts of ethic or morals shouldn't be this vague. Yes, good and evil are forces of nature in these fantasy worlds, but it doesn't have to be this boringly simple. These aren't numbers that need to be refered to tenths of times per battle, like hit points are, so they don't need to be as abstract.
- They can't decide what decides alignments. Sometimes, it seems as if actions themselves are good or evil. Othertimes, it seems it's all about the intent.
- They are too undefined. We don't know what constitutes for example evil acts; recently there was a lengthy discussion if casting [Evil] spells is an evil act.
- They seem too wide. They encompass too many different aspects; a monk must be lawful because his disciplined, but that should mean he approves of collectivistic measures or lots of bureochracy.
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One thing that can be seen is that each alignment axis is a collection of ideals and ideas. Not all good characters love every living thing, and not all evil characters are bent on destroying every living thing, though these are certainly part of the alignments. These, I think, are part of the scale:
Chaos vs. Law:
Indivudalism vs. Collectivism. Chaos focuses on individual liberty and freedom, while law focuses on unity, "what's best for all" and so on (Generic-CG-Rogue vs. Paladin).
Intuition vs. Analytic. Chaotic characters go by intuition - what they feel is right at the moment. They are creative minds, more focused on feeling than thinking. Lawful characters are more calculating, and also often more disciplined. They take things more slowly. (Bard vs. Monk)
Change vs. Conservation. This one seems strongly connected to the intuition vs. analytic, actually. Chaotic characters often seem to like when things change around them - they are very flexible and creative (connected to intuition). Lawful on the other hand, stands for tradition and order. If something has to change, it should change slowly and under careful consideration (connected to the analytic part too). (Bard vs. Paladin)
Informal vs. Formal. Chaotic seems to prefer informal "rules", if any rules. They aren't fond of the bureochratic. Lawfuls on the other hand, seem to love when things get formal. Clearly laid out rules, strict and obvious hierarchies and so on. (Demons vs. Devils)
There's also the "honor" part, but that's much harder to define without going into the realms of good and evil rather than chaos and law. Anyone got any ideas?
Good vs. Evil:
Altruism vs. Egoism. This one is the most obvious; Good beings are altruistic, and care for others. Evil beings are egoistic, and care more for themselves than others.
Respect for life vs. No respect for life. Hard to put in a single word, that one, but basically, good creatures don't willingly harm innocents, evils couldn't care less.
Creation vs. Destruction. Good beings tend to be somewhat focused on creating stuff. Evil beings tend to be somewhat focused on destroying stuff. I say somewhat because this doesn't always seem to be true; I've seen a lot of paladins more interested in smiting evil than planting crops, and evil clerics more interested in creating their own undead menagerie than killing innocents. Thus, this seems to be a loose rule if anything.
What more could be said about good vs. evil?
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One way to "solve" the alignment issues is to simply remove alignments. I've done this in most of my campaigns, but that too is unfulfilling. It's nice to have morals on the character sheet; not only does it make the characters actually feel like the good guys, but it also makes it easier for both players and GM's to think "what would this character do?" more quickly. It also makes it easier to create beings that are representations of ideals, like angels and demons. So for me, simply removing alignments won't do.
The solution I'm having in mind is breaking down what constitutes the different alignments into separate "values". These are much more defined; instead of the lawful/chaotic axis, there might be collectivist/individualist, calculation/intuition, and conservation/change axises. The above mentioned monk might be in favor of conservation before change (being a monk), and of calculation before intuition (being disciplined) but this has no effect on his view on collectivism before individualism (evil monks might very well be very individualistic).
It seems this would at least to a part solve most of the problems. Any thoughts on the basic premises? If one should break them down into smaller parts, how many and which?
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My basic interpretation was similar to yours, but I usually pick out the alignment by tallying up how many of these lean one way or the other.
For chaos/law, the conclusion is obvious. Balance is balance, leaning one way is leaning that way. If it's gray, let the player choose.
In the case of good vs. evil, even one element leaning evil is (for many) an argument for them being evil, but I call that neutral. More than one leaning evil is evil. If several are neutral, but none outright evil, that is also neutral.
I treat it much the same way as those political compass things. You may be democratic in one aspect, republican in another, etc and end up either balanced or leaning one of the ways depending on how many of those factors lean which ways.
Sure, it's abstract and subjective, but any morality will end up that way no matter how you slice it. If the rules try to define an absolute morality then people who don't agree with that morality will outrage at it. There's a reason the book leaves it ambiguous. Either you leave it ambiguous or abandon it entirely.
Personally, I like the idea of two (distant) cultures having different qualifiers for how their alignment is determined when things we find appalling (such as cannibalism) are accepted as good (say, a society where resources are minimal and cannibalism is necessary to survive).
EDIT: The idea of breaking the alignments down further (into collectivism/individualism, etc) is interesting, but needlessly complex for most campaigns. I'd consider it an alternate for extremely morally centered campaigns.
I disagree that the alignment system needs reworking.
My thoughts are as follows.
Alter the monks, allowing them to be neutral as well as lawful, but not chaotic.
Take the alignment and assign INTENT as the main deciding factor.
The gods decide INTENT is the deciding factor, not action. Thus the players or philosophers have no damned say what is right or wrong. Why, the gods already decided.
As for.. what was the other problem, oh yeah, evil spells.
They are dark, forbidden magics, Just make them sort of.. Taboo, they don't necessarily have to add evil points, but they can if you want them to.
There, alignment system is no longer vague, and it works out. Simple.
It seems to me that you just did a very nice break down explanation of the existing rules more than redefined anything. There's nothing really wrong with that, you did it very well, but you did the exact same thing.
Personally alignment shouldn't really mean that much except for a few specific classes, and when dealing with outside members of those parties. While to 99% of the population of the world doesn't really think much on alignment in the overall scheme of things just the direct consequences of their actions, because that's what everyone else mostly cares about. Paladins however do care and should care, as should clerics. They should be alignment based and think about how most actions will affect their soul, and think the same about the actions of others.
Your character shouldn't even actually know his alignment unless a cleric or a Paladin or Druid. After all are you casting detect law or good on yourself every day to make sure you have stayed on the straight and narrow, or are you just assuming that if you aren't in prison and you still have friends and family willing to talk to you, your actions aren't really that bad. Now when you first meet that Paladin, he will cast detect good on you, that doesn't mean that he will outright refuse to have you in his sight, in fact he should decide that the best place to have you is right in front of him so he can watch what you do.
If characters in your campaign do evil things, you should let society judge them honestly. Have an encounter where the character is on trial for murder, theft, crimes against humanity. If he says "I'm aloud to do this because I am Chaotic Neutral" you should ask him if that is really a defense he expects to hold up in court. However overall you should just look at the behavior of the characters in general and take note of important decisions, most should be fairly neutral unless they are trying to be something else.
I think that the most common problem with the alignment system is that people are concerned about there alignment changing, primarily characters worried about turning evil.
My group is working on an alignment scale based on alignment points ranging from 100 being exulted -100 being vile and 0 being right in the middle neutral, we have yet to completely break it up and figure out where each alignment stops and starts but every time you do something it may move your score and so the idea is that good actions can balance against evil acts so you as a player have a finer control over where you stand on alignment.
This is still a work in progress but I think once its done we will fell better about what our characters do, and that we have an idea of how far our characters can act out of alignment before they shift.
First time commenter here -- just discovered Pathfinder, but have been playing D&D since AD&D 2e. Allow me to offer my 2 cp:
You have a point: The alignments are very broad, which can be problematic when alignments have specific consequences for certain characters (eg. paladins). But I'm not sure that further breaking each axis down into further sub-axes is the solution. For one thing, some of the ones you mentioned straddle both of the old traditional axes. For another, all of them are open to the same criticism of being broader than someone wants that you have of the original alignments. Also, the more you break alignment down into all these different axes, the more it becomes a mere game mechaninc to be gamed, and not an aide in better roleplaying. The alignment system, whether as written or one you Houserule up, is meant not to dictate the characters every action, but to raise questions that the player answers in how s/he plays the character: Is my character good or evil? Who decides that -- the character? Society in general? Their deity?
Let me give you an example using one of your suggested axes:
Indivudalism vs. Collectivism. Chaos focuses on individual liberty and freedom, while law focuses on unity, "what's best for all" and so on (Generic-CG-Rogue vs. Paladin).
Individualism vs. collectivism may be seen as much as a good vs. evil issue as it is law vs. Chaos. Let's take some answers to the question "Does the individual matter?" and see how they can be applied to almost all of the different classic alignments:
"Yes, the individual matters -- we want what's best for the individual, and we KNOW what's best for the individual, and so we're going to enforce what's best for you, whether you like it or not" Lawful Good (bear with me, I already see the flags going up, I'll address it in a minute.)
"Yes, the individual matters. Each individual has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The purpose of the law is to protect those liberties, and must be enforced as long as it accomplishes that, and abolished when it fails to do so (When in the course of human events...)" Neutral Good
"Yes, the individual is ALL that matters, noone should ever tell anyone else what to do ever" Chaotic Good
"Sure, I'm all for individual liberty, as long as that individual is me!" Chaotic Evil
"Individuals and collectives are human constructs, neither one can exist without the other." True Neutral
"An individuals right to liberty and success is entirely dependent on each individuals ability to take for themselves that which they desire" Neutral Evil
"Individuals are nothing more than worker drones to be exploited by the collective, whose only function is to further my ambitions" Lawful Evil
Now, as I said, I already can see people objecting to my assignment of each alignment to each response. That's because our view of each response is going to be based on our OWN response to the original question. Someone whose beliefs are lined up with what I gave as Neutral Good might see the Lawful Good response above as being as abhorrent, and maybe just as evil, as the evil responses. That's because they see the RESULT of such modes of thought as being as good or evil as the motivation behind them.
Or take your altruism vs. egoism axis. Are the two as mutually exclusive as good vs. evil? Can I not very much be greedy to succeed in my personal endeavors, yet still be willing to help the less fortunate? And how do we go about putting altruism as good into practice? If altruism becomes a standard for good, does that mean Lawful Good characters believe that altruism should be mandated by law? Again, that will grate very harshly on a chaotic good character who believes that true altrusim must be voluntary to be good. What you see as lawful good, he might see as Lawful Evil.
We could go on for hours. Hwll, most of the history of Philosophy and ethics and politics and religion focus on such questions. And that's what they SHOULD be - questions, something a good DM and a good player or group of players will explore in the course of gaming. Alright, your character's LG. What does that mean? What constitutes good? How lawful? Where is her loyalty when the law and her sense of good vs. evil conflict? These are the questions that make for good roleplaying. But as another commenter said, while I wouldn't codify your comments as a new alignment system, they certainly are good food for thought when playing within the alignment system as it stands.