NPC Child Alignments


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Grand Lodge

Would NPC children have alignments?

Not a specific NPC child, just the general children of a town or city. At what point in an NPC's life -- or a future PC's life (before his or adventuring career) -- would a character gain an alignment,.... keeping this in the context of a Campaign World where alignment is essential to the Outer Plane where a soul goes upon death to become a Petitioner.

It's an engaging question even without the specific campaign being described but, for the record...

Spoiler:
In a small city of approx 20,000 there is a large orphanage. The NPC overseer it is LE and not above selling his soul to Hell. All the young children see of the adults in their world is a life of LE decisions. My gut says that wouldn't make them LE. So the Pit Fiend couldn't make a deal with the orphanage director to get each of the kids to lie or something and them give them all poisoned cotton candy or something, sending them all to service the Pit Fiend in Hell as Lemures.

But... if that's true, then in a generic, "Neutral" city, when a natural disaster strikes (whether global warming sends a tidal wave or a Green Dragon kills everyone), where do the kids go? Does it depend on their NPC parents? the leaders of the town? how any given kid was just behaving???

It seems that if I'm a Pit Fiend looking for souls -- kids are the easiest targets, well, kids and stupid (read: chaotic) people.


all children are born lawful evil. all manifestations of other alignments come at the minimum of puberty, sometimes later. puberty is the earliest that one's alignment changes to something other than lawful evil.

Sovereign Court

Kids should have the same sort of neutral alignment that animals have until they have matured enough to actually determine an alignment for themselves (so, upon reaching "starting age").

As for where such "unaligned" kiddies would go if killed by some natural disaster, well, Pharasma'll take good care of 'em in the Boneyard in Golarion's cosmology. In the Great Wheel cosmology, good aligned deities would likely open their abodes to any such souls that did not just settle in the Concordant Opposition of the Outlands.

This, of course, only if the children did not actively pray at any particular temple... if they are followers of a particular power, they should end up in that power's domain, even if they don't yet have a mature enough consciousness to have chosen an alignment.

Spoiler:
As for fiends tempting the little childrens with delicious cookies and candy in exchange for souls, that is absolutely the way to go, until the angels find you out. It's that last bit, though, that is likely the reason the Pit Fiends would send imps rather than go themselves...


age 0-6 months: Chaotic Neutral (they do what they want when they want)
age 6 months-2 years: Lawful Neutral (they get on a schedule, learn basic rules)
age 2 yrs - 3yr: Chaotic Evil (ie, terrible twos)
3yrs - 8 yrs: Chaotic Good (most learn their lessons and become cute, funny kids)
8 yrs + : they are aware enough of the world around them and to some extent the fact that choices have consequence, so they begin to move towards whatever their adult alignment will be


Shuriken Nekogami wrote:
all children are born lawful evil. all manifestations of other alignments come at the minimum of puberty, sometimes later. puberty is the earliest that one's alignment changes to something other than lawful evil.

I think of them more as Chaotic Evil until about age 6. Then they turn Neutral Evil until their teens, when most turn Lawful Evil.

Unless they are gamers in puberty, in which case all of them appear to want to be Chaotic Neutral...


Lamashan Dalastonor wrote:

Kids should have the same sort of neutral alignment that animals have until they have matured enough to actually determine an alignment for themselves (so, upon reaching "starting age").

As for where such "unaligned" kiddies would go if killed by some natural disaster, well, Pharasma'll take good care of 'em in the Boneyard in Golarion's cosmology. In the Great Wheel cosmology, good aligned deities would likely open their abodes to any such souls that did not just settle in the Concordant Opposition of the Outlands.

This, of course, only if the children did not actively pray at any particular temple... if they are followers of a particular power, they should end up in that power's domain, even if they don't yet have a mature enough consciousness to have chosen an alignment.

** spoiler omitted **

I'd go with a variant of this one myself. Children are true neutral until they have the ability to manifest an alignment, but I'd say that is much younger than starting age. Probably 5 years old is around when most children would begin developing their alignment. Later if they have less opportunity to interact with other individuals, perhaps earlier in large families or open community groups. The ability to recognize the self and consciously choose how to interact with others is a big determinant of alignment in my view. By that reasoning, I think you could argue that younger children should also have a lower charisma score because they have less perception of self-identity, and characters will lower charisma scores would be less attached to their alignment because they have less perception of self.

As for where the neutral (or unaligned) children go when they die, they could go to either the plane of the god of the dead (Pharasma in Golarion), the standard/primary neutral-aligned plane, to good-aligned planes (because they're "innocent" in the sense of some variant Taint rules), to the plane of the god of youth (such as Lathander in FR), or, as said, if they worshiped in a particular faith, they should be accepted as part of that faith and go to that god's plane regardless of actual alignment.


Likely would not have set alignments....
Rather due to a lack of power they respond to the environment.

Do we have time to re-hash nature vs. nurture????


Teenagers are MOODY-evil!

Grand Lodge

I like MacLeod's idea of "Animal Neutral" alignments for generic kids. But it still poses a problem for "accidental" death.

The Pit Fiend in charge would, of course, know what his agents would have to get the kids to do to send their souls to Hell. Now I have to figure out what that would be.

What would a kid, no, lots of kids, have to do to forfeit their souls. The catch is They Can't Be Tricked. Since I rule that a Paladin or Cleric wouldn't need an Atonement if one gets tricked, I would use the same for masses of NPCs.

My gut tells me that the mortal in charge of the orphanage would just "teach" LE behavior by showing it, by being it. And the occassional agent from the Pit Fiend would reinforce LE ideals. Thus, in a few years all the kids would be LE and the Pit Fiend's agents can arrange a natural disaster.

Grand Lodge

KenderKin wrote:
Do we have time to re-hash nature vs. nurture????

I love the idea of having this kind of "D&D/ Alignment" / "Real Life morality" juxtaposition.

Alignment dynamics a far and away the best dynamics of D&D discourse. (Though it's not everyone's cup of tea).

Contributor

Cracked.com: Six Shockingly Evil Things Babies Are Capable Of


And of course this video about
familiars, companions and mounts....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAH-YAhkU9M

For mounts I assume this comes after the mounting....


Sean K Reynolds wrote:


Cracked.com: Six Shockingly Evil Things Babies Are Capable Of

Hardly a new idea. St Augustine was leading the charge on babies-are-evil 1600 years ago.

Quote:
Thus, the infant’s innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind. I have myself observed a baby to be jealous, though it could not speak; it was livid as it watched another infant at the breast...

Chaotic evil, every one of them :D


Children use a different alignment system. Available alignments are.

Quiet well-behaved
Obnoxious Loud
Annoying Loud
Adorable Cute
Potty Trained

Please note the alignment system changes when applying the rugrat template to an existing critter.


Meh. I don't believe True Neutral is even possible, personally. Everyone leans toward chaos, law, good or evil in some fashion. You could not make a decision that influenced the world in any way without leaning toward one or another. One of the few things Kevin Seimbeida had right in my opinion was his alignment system.

As far as kids, I'd say they're chaotic neutral (but with good tendencies) for a good long while. This represents their general selfishness.


Gary, Eat the posts when I'm not posting, LOL! *grumble... gelatinous cubes*
--------------
The short, short version of what I typed before the dungeon cleaner ate my post....

Chaotic Neutral or Lawful Neutral, age is a major factor.

LE Orphanage would probably produce children of many different alignments, much like a school has clicks/stereotypes... rebellious, teacher's pet, follower, day dreamer, etc.

That's not considering extreme punishment(beatings/death) or brainwashing(military school). Children with disabilities wouldn't survive this kind of environment, perhaps making the ones that do even more 'desensitized' or 'uncompassionate'.

Movie references... "TAPS", "Lord of the Flies", "Red Dawn". If you're not ruling out possession of some sort, "Village of the Damned" & "Children of the Corn".


W E Ray wrote:
My gut tells me that the mortal in charge of the orphanage would just "teach" LE behavior by showing it, by being it. And the occassional agent from the Pit Fiend would reinforce LE ideals. Thus, in a few years all the kids would be LE and the Pit Fiend's agents can arrange a natural disaster.

To me, at least among "civilized" races, evil has to be a choice. I don't think you should be damned for living the only way you've ever known. The teacher in this case has to show all of the students the way everyone else lives, and then tempt/lure/mold them into evil anyway. If you're indoctrinated to be a psychopath from early childhood, can you be held cosmically responsible for being just that?

On the other hand, no one ever said that (after)life was fair. It may very well be that evil done through ignorance is still evil.

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