Goblin Squad Member
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Seems to me like all paladins would have to be PvEr's, as the only listed way to actively gain Lawful and Good past +5000 would be PvE (the example given is an ability requiring +7000 of both). Hope this isn't the case, and some solution is found where people can be LG paladins crusading against the Evil players instead of the Evil NPC's.
I doubt that the lists for reputation gain/loss, and alignment gain/loss are comprehensive. I would sincerely hope that this is the case, at least.
I'm curious about the Reputation repurcussion scaling based on the target/victim's reputation and ability scores (the latter as proxy for 'character level' or experience since all Feats boost a keyed ability score). Is this independent of the Attacker's own Reputation/Ability Score? In other words, newby characters starting the game will be extra penalized for Attacking other newbies that are non-Hostile? If so, is that the reason for having the starting Reputation be above zero, rather than starting it exactly in the middle, since doing so counter-acts the disproportionate Reputation loss applied to the PVP actually viable at low levels? Otherwise, I'm not sure the point of Reputation starting above zero.
Killing random NPCs, like farmers or merchants, reduces your Good vs. Evil.
Attacking players who are not Hostile reduces your Good vs. Evil by a small but fixed amount (essentially, if you lose Rep, you also become more Evil).
Curious, why is attacking players denoted as a "small" amount, but doing so to NPCs is not?
Is this Alignment shift keyed to the target's own Alignment score in some way?(in that an Evil act will always be Evil, but the amount of s~+! varies depending on target's Alignment)
Some abilities, like Paladin feats and skills, are only available to characters of certain alignments. You can only learn and slot those abilities if both your Active and Core Alignment match the Alignment requirement. Also some of these abilities may require abnormally high or low Alignment scores, such as a Paladin ability that requires 7000 in both axes.
YESSS...
Would these sorts of things also have some 'lock out timer' so they can't be used if you have committed a (Prohibited ALignment) act in the last X hours/days/etc, regardless of current alignment score per se?We've talked about having some sort of debuff when your Core and Active Alignment do not synch up, but we're not sold on it yet.
Sounds great to me, and certainly with all this 'free alignment drift' stuff (scaling the longer you can temporarily act proper), something that rewards NOT relying on 'free alignment drift' seems like a good idea. If somebody wants to act bad, they either lose their normal 'Alignment Sync' buff OR quickly decide that this IS their new alignment, they won't fight it, and will embrace it as their new Core Alignment, forgoing 'free alignment drift' to their old COre Alignment (and actually gaining drift towards the center of their new alignment).
Perhaps even make this buff's specific form uniqe to each Core Alignment element that is in Sync? I think tracking each Alignment axis is important, if somebody is just out of Core Alignment in one axis, it should be less serious than in both, and if they are out in both they might decide to adjust their Core Alignment in just one axis... All choices are meaningful, though.
Higher end structures, like tier 2 and 3 training and crafting facilities, require the settlement have its minimum Reputation set to certain levels to function.
As I understood, a settlment needed 2 of 3 of Good, Law, High Reputation to be successful. This sounds like it is no longer any 2 of those 3, but Low Rep characters will simply not be able to Train High Tier Feats. I'm not against consequences for Low Rep characters, but the idea of there effectively being no High Tier Low Rep characters doesn't seem to be a very interesting game. Will there be some means for them to counter that? I had the impression that even if Low Rep/Chaotic/Evil Settlements (or 2 of those 3) were less efficient/etc than others, the characters could still pay cold hard cash to willing sellers of Training... Yet that seems to be impossible by this announcement...?
Corruption: Corruption measures how much inefficiency there is in your settlement, decreasing income from taxes and other fees. Corruption starts high for Chaotic settlements and low for Lawful settlements, but as laws are broken in the settlement its Corruption increases. So a Lawful settlement that enforces its laws poorly can end up with more Corruption than a Chaotic settlement (which is required to set fewer laws).
Wow, so 'Trespassing' (and other crimes) by banned players/groups may be a relatively low-cost means to debuff an opposing Settlement? If they don't criminalize Trespassing, that just makes it easier to commit other Crimes, and you don't necessarily need to carry gear of any significant value to pull that off (re: worries of being killed for committing crimes).
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Definitely still interested in what actions would cause Good or Lawful alignment or High Reputation shift on their own, everything so far seems to be about negative consequences for 'improper/bad' acts, but positive consequences seem important to have too... Of course, those will be things that e.g. Anti-Paladins and Evil Clerics would want to avoid doing, at least doing alot of them in any one short span of time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have two concerns with the alignment system, assuming that I read it correctly.
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
Secondly, linking Reputation to alignment access goes even further to prevent people from making evil characters. It I am playing an evil necromancer in the woods and have a low reputation/evil alignment for all of my dastardly deeds, people could assume that I got that low reputation for being abusive/racist/misogynist in the chat window. That’s enough that I wouldn’t make the character.
I foresee a game populated by Paladins in my future.
1) I would say this mirrors real-life. A social structure with good order and a population that engages with each other on mostly benevolent terms is going to excel.
2) The balance to LG being powerful by default is that it is only powerful if done right. LG settlements are setting a high expectations bar in order to reap better rewards. CE settlements are setting a low expectations bar in order to improve the odds of reaping those rewards. A settlement that is LG in name only can find itself worse off than the CE settlement.
3) You can be evil without having low reputation. Evil is to Rectangles as Reputation is to Squares (not exactly, but close enough). Not all evil acts cause rep loss. But most rep loss actions cause an evil shift. The idea is that practically nobody will WANT a low reputation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Definitely still interested in what actions would cause Good or Lawful alignment or High Reputation shift on their own, everything so far seems to be about negative consequences for 'improper/bad' acts, but positive consequences seem important to have too... Of course, those will be things that e.g. Anti-Paladins and Evil Clerics would want to avoid doing, at least doing alot of them in any one short span of time.
+1 to that. Was hoping to get some of that in this blog post, as we won't likely have another alignment blog post for a while, but oh well.
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My concern is for the roleplayers who actually care about alignment. Pax can't have Chaotic Good players within Pax lands with this system. They can hang out, and we can sell them training maybe, but they won't be under our direct protection. We can pawn them off to an ally, sure. But that sucks for them.
This system doesn't encourage alignment to be used as a roleplay tool. It cripples the people who actually want to use it in their ability to play with their friends.
Let me get this straight. Your group, which you want to carry over from outside the game context, all joins PFO. Some players make the conscious choice to orient their character alignment in a different way than how others of your group do. And you are mad that the game has a consequence for that conscious choice of differentiation?
I'm not sure of the relevance of the term "ally" here. If there are multiple settlements all controlled by your out-of-game-context group, those are not allies, those are the exact same entity occupying multiple game-world constructs. Yes, in game there is certain differentiation, to match the differentiation chosen by the players involved, but nobody's roleplaying is being impeded, it's the same consequences for everybody... Unless GW's entire conceit is to be dropped, and Alignment becomes meaningless, Chaotic/Evil/LowRep characters have no meaningful difference in training, etc.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I have two concerns with the alignment system, assuming that I read it correctly.
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
Secondly, linking Reputation to alignment access goes even further to prevent people from making evil characters. It I am playing an evil necromancer in the woods and have a low reputation/evil alignment for all of my dastardly deeds, people could assume that I got that low reputation for being abusive/racist/misogynist in the chat window. That’s enough that I wouldn’t make the character.
I foresee a game populated by Paladins in my future.
1) I would say this mirrors real-life. A social structure with good order and a population that engages with each other on mostly benevolent terms is going to excel.
2) The balance to LG being powerful by default is that it is only powerful if done right. LG settlements are setting a high expectations bar in order to reap better rewards. CE settlements are setting a low expectations bar in order to improve the odds of reaping those rewards. A settlement that is LG in name only can find itself worse off than the CE settlement.
3) You can be evil without having low reputation. Evil is to Rectangles as Reputation is to Squares (not exactly, but close enough). Not all evil acts cause rep loss. But most rep loss actions cause an evil shift. The idea is that practically nobody will WANT a low reputation.
1, My concern was not realism, rather that this will lead to people to play only good characters.
2, I would prefer it that an excellently organized and active LE town could fight equally with an excellently organized and active LG town. The current system puts the LE town at a disadvantage regardless of how much work they do. Thus, people will be active, dedicated players will only start/join LG settlements.
3, Its the other half of the 'most' that is concerning. If you can have a evil character that does not have to take reputation losing actions then I have no issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Quandry
The vast majority of my group will be capable of playing whichever alignment we tell them will be mechanically optimal to play. Alignment doesn't matter to those people. They can literally play whatever alignment they want by adjusting their playstyle. There are a few people (mostly roleplayers, some not) who want to play a particular alignment not for it's mechanical implications, but because their character happens to be that alignment.
This system doesn't influence the former. It does the latter. Players who want to pick an alignment for roleplay reasons will be segregated away from the larger group that is capable of picking an alignment for mechanical benefit. If you want to play with Pax, you pick this alignment. No excuses.
And in this particular discussion, allies are literally allies of Pax. Any group that joins the Empire of Xeilias but don't join Pax Gaming.
To be clear, I am not asking for a consequence free... desegregation? I want settlements to be specialised such that they primarily cater towards particular groups. Golgotha focusing primarily on providing 'evil' training and services is expected, and to be aimed for. But shutting down their ability to house good characters completely, even those who make the decision to live with the consequences of not having immediate training seems like a mistake to me.
For example, I would be fine if an evil settlement having too many good characters under it's name caused additional unrest, or corruption, or whatever. I would just like to see that decision put in the hands of the players, rather than having a hard cut-off where I don't feel there needs to be one.
(It's extremely late for me, I apologize if I missed the point)
Uh... I think the Blog just directly described reasons why LG settlements may end up NOT most powerful by default, because if they can't maintain absolute control against Crimes and Heinous Acts, their Settlement Stats start to degrade and can go beneath what Chaotic/Evil Settlements will have. If everytime an enemy settlement-allied PC 'trespasses' your Settlement Stats go down, LG doesn't look like the default most powerful anymore.
And further, I see nothing to suggest that LG+HighRep is needed to achieve the highest Settlement Status regardless of those factors, GW has seemed consistent in saying that LE Settlements will certainly be up there with LG, and High Rep CG should also be fine, by their previous statements.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Yeah so this brings us back to where we started: Alignment is the genre changing aspect of Pathfinder and in it's core it is an attempt to make players roleplay.Not all PvP is the result of feuds, wars and faction alliances. How can a player role play a bandit or a raider and still maintain a decent reputation? How about role playing a duelist?
How can a character who is a bandit or raider or person who challenges random strangers to a duel to the death for no reason maintain a decent reputation?
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Goblin Squad Member
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For anyone panicking over LG getting an auto-win, this is from 2 weeks ago--likely still very relevant:
My thinking on this is that LE will likely be mercenaries. They will have a lot of pressure towards the Evil axis and there will be a lot of value to them in worshipping Evil gods. But they will want to have access to advanced Settlement structures so they'll want to maintain a fairly high reputation, and will therefore likely avoid the kinds of things that would drive them from law to chaos. Plus they'll want to be known as groups who are scrupulously honorable - nobody wants to pay a mercenary and then have them turn on the client.I think the LE mercenaries will be who you call when you need to go to war against the LG knights and their vassals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That in particular is a balance discussion, and as such isn't one that we really need to be having. Balance will be adjusted during play. It's one of the reasons we will be playing in EE (we might not be testing, but they will still be gathering information). If Evil is deemed underpowered, Evil will be buffed. Those are numbers, and numbers can always be changed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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people wont only play good characters. the thing you have to remember is that being good comes with some restrictions. Part of that is that you need your alignment to be part of a settlement/company. This means that someone who starts a good character will have to walk a tight rope. For example, they will probably not want to attack very many unprovoked targets since thats causes alignment shifts to evil. If they do too much they stand to lose being able to be a part of their group. So they are now limited to only attacking people who are legal targets. That juicy merchant you saw walking all alone without any guards, well time to pass him up unless you want to take the hit.
Not only that but i imagine many LG settlements will require relatively high reputation to go into. What does that mean? That means that while your alignment may be able to take some hits your reputation cannot. have fun being barred from your settlement and unable to use its facilities.
So why be evil? You are not concerned with your evil alignment. meaning you have more targets of opportunity than good folks have. You can initiate actions with less penalty than good folks. Evil settlements will likely have lower reputation limits than good settlements (if they even have any) thus making doing things that low reputation less of an issue than for good settlements.
Not only that but could you imagine the reputation hit the leader of a LG settlement would take if they found out he was using CE mercs to harass a evil settlement before he went to war with them? While a evil settlement can do that without any issue, i mean its expected they would pull stuff like that.
how about evil settlements hiring assassins to take out important good characters under contract? The good folks cant do that, their rep would plummet and they wont even be able to be part of their settlement.
so yes a LG settlement might be rather powerful but they are restricted in ways an evil settlement is not.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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The vast majority of my group will be capable of playing whichever alignment we tell them will be mechanically optimal to play. Alignment doesn't matter to those people. They can literally play whatever alignment they want by adjusting their playstyle.
I think this is a cart before the horse argument.
If the way you play the game places your character in a segment of the alignment graph, your play encapsulates the alignment system neatly.
There won't be a generic "mechanically optimal" alignment. There might be such an alignment for certain careers or certain objectives, but it would be bad design for that alignment in one case to overlap with the "mechanically optimal" alignment of many others. So we will endeavor to avoid making that mistake.
In other words, don't roleplay. Play an actual role.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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1. What is the impact of raiding outposts, caravans and POIs?
I think we're trying to set it up so if we can detect that it's a raid (rather than just a bunch of guys killing other guys at a location) then they can be turned into sort of a lightweight feud, such that there are ways to do it without risking rep loss. But I can't remember exactly where we landed on that, so I'll try to get Tork to weigh in tomorrow.
2. Is the only reputation free raiding conducted as a part of a feud, war or faction warfare?
See above.
3. How do you plan on preventing players from using naked noobs as reputation bombs?
We're doing some complex things with party hostility inheritance and tagging yourself into fights by trying to heal or buff a target. Basically, either your newb shields are in your party (in which case they probably quickly pick up hostility to your targets such that they are also rep-free targets), or they're outside of your party and you have as much risk from hitting them with AoEs as your opponents. Either way, as others note, they won't be able to do a whole lot without tagging themselves in. So our goal is to make ignoring them as easy as possible (with the normal caveat that AoEs are a sometimes food; we're balancing them around the idea that you always want to be very careful about deploying them).
That said, we are seriously interested to know any obvious newb shield tactics that spring to you guys' minds so we can make sure they're not problems.
I am curious about how they see metagame organizations coming into Pathfinder dealing with that. Obviously Pax is one of those organizations, but there will be others in the future larger than we are, and some clarity might be nice for them as well.
While we haven't talked much about them lately, nations as a group of settlements are still in the design (they're just a little further out than settlements). I believe the expectation is still that you can link several differently aligned settlements within one step of a nation. We may or may not let you make a true neutral nation, though, so there may be two corners of the grid that you can't get in a single nation.
You can also be part of a company that's friendly with a settlement and thus allowed access and training without being sponsored.
In general, though, we want to make it challenging for you to balance players at either end of the alignment spectrum, because if it's not giving you meaningful, hard choices, there's not a lot of reason to have alignment.
What about dsiguises? Hard to be banned from a settlement if they don't know who you are.
Disguises will probably break a whole lot of rules, but they're a good ways out.
So, it's the Attacker Flag itself that lasts thirty seconds? How longs does the Hostile Flag last?
Hostile isn't a flag, it's a relative state and is usually reciprocal (i.e., if I see you as hostile, you see me as hostile). If we're in settlements that are at war, we see each other as hostile, but someone in another settlement may see us both as neutral.
The flags (criminal, attacker, heinous, etc.) are non-reciprocal. If I'm a criminal, everyone who doesn't have an overriding "ally" relationship (e.g., in a party together) sees me as hostile, but I see them as whatever their relationship suggests (probably usually neutral, but possibly hostile if we're at war, in enemy factions, etc.).
If someone attacks me while I'm a criminal, he doesn't suffer any losses for it but he does suddenly appear as hostile to me so I can now defend myself with no loss. This may also wind up tagging in our respective party members (it's complex, and I'll leave it to Tork or Lee to try to explain how that works ;) ). He doesn't appear to change to hostile vs. anyone else, though, because he didn't get the attacker flag.
These temporary hostile states, including the Attacker flag (once you've attacked twice), probably last a little bit past when you leave combat. But if we're hostile because of a war, it lasts for the duration of the war, and if we're hostile because we're highly ranked members of enemy factions, it only ends when one or both of us quit our factions.
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’.
We expect, given previous experience with MMOs, that without some kind of weight on the other end of the scale the trend will be incredibly lopsided toward Chaotic Evil. Thus we are trying to incent (i.e., shamelessly bribe ;) ) people toward the other side of the spectrum, in the hope that the pulls of natural inclination and incentives will result in a reasonably even alignment field. If it turns out we were overly cynical, and the incentives overcorrect and result in a majority landing on or near LG, we can easily reduce the penalties for Corruption and Unrest until equilibrium is restored.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Uh... I think the Blog just directly described reasons why LG settlements may end up NOT most powerful by default, because if they can't maintain absolute control against Crimes and Heinous Acts, their Settlement Stats start to degrade and can go beneath what Chaotic/Evil Settlements will have. If everytime an enemy settlement-allied PC 'trespasses' your Settlement Stats go down, LG doesn't look like the default most powerful anymore.
And further, I see nothing to suggest that LG+HighRep is needed to achieve the highest Settlement Status regardless of those factors, GW has seemed consistent in saying that LE Settlements will certainly be up there with LG, and High Rep CG should also be fine, by their previous statements.
Is there any reason to suspect the same shenanigans wont be perpetuated against LE settlements? Both will have the same issue maintaining their Law stat. Also, without more specific information about these actions work we cant really cite them as a balancing force. Its seems a mite silly if someone can run backwards and forward over a corner of your hex to break your settlement.
The paragraph in the blog about corruption and unrest implies that chaos/evil are never going to be on equal footing with good/law.
As soon as any faction is giving a mechanical advantage, however slight, over another, you are going to skew the player base in that direction.
EDIT:
Branel wrote:
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’.
We expect, given previous experience with MMOs, that without some kind of weight on the other end of the scale the trend will be incredibly lopsided toward Chaotic Evil. Thus we are trying to incent (i.e., shamelessly bribe ;) ) people toward the other side of the spectrum, in the hope that the pulls of natural inclination and incentives will result in a reasonably even alignment field. If it turns out we were overly cynical, and the incentives overcorrect and result in a majority landing on or near LG, we can easily reduce the penalties for Corruption and Unrest until equilibrium is restored.
And that quite neatly solves my issue. My main concern was that it appeared that the game was being, deliberately, skewed towards good. Ill shut up and go away now. :P
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think what he was saying is that if you play a role, then the alignment you end up as is the appropriate alignment for you.
So if you go around hacking at people without cause you will end up evil and that evil is appropriate for your character because thats the role/function that they were doing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Branel, specific laws are optional, and I hope for nearly every settlement that trespassing is not illegal because you don't want people skirting your borders to break your Corruption, as you mentioned. Each settlement decides its own laws.
I really do hope that that is something that gets a lot of development time, and is pushed to be as comprehensive as possible. Say we do get a well designed, player focused road system, for example. As a military minded settlement leader, I would love to have the ability to set a law that says that anyone found OFF the roads in our territory is trespassing. That is the degree of control that I would love to see. The ability to set specific portions of my territory off limits would be incredibly valuable.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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In other words, don't roleplay. Play an actual role.This semms to be an unwise thing to expect from players of a game that is based on a pnp rpg.
Do you actually expect the majority of players to have characters with goals that 100% align with their own?
Yes. I expect that almost no players will choose to play characters with goals that are incompatible with the player's goals.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No one is going to set their core alignment to CE, the bias against that alignment is too strong in GW. The players wishing to play Chaotic characters will roll CG or Can and then occasionally comit CE acts, and let the drift take them back to core.
Alignment is a mechanic in PFO, and not a meaningful system for social structures, or role playing. Factions will pan out the same way. They will be seen as an access to the most targets, and not as intended by Paizo.
Aren't you forgetting about me, oh fearless leader? I fully intend to prove CE is possible and doable, maybe with some work but definitely doable. Mind you, I won't be chaotic stupid, but I will pull it off. And still be an assassin to be feared. Just watch....
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you do not act contrary to their Core Alignment, you will eventually return to it. This does mean if you have 7000 in Good, it will slowly trend down towards 5000 Good.
How fast is this trending going to be i.e. if you are playing a paladin and need to keep you're alignment above 7000, by doing good deeds you are acting in accordance with your alignment, therefore will start trending down... and if feats/slots are linked are they even going to feasible over a long patrol etc?
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I'm talking about goals not actions. No reason to be obtuse, Ryan. :(
"Decide upon a goal" is an action that your character takes. Why would you have your character decide to have a goal if you don't want to play a character that has that goal?
I'm not quite at zero percent belief that characters won't take actions their players direct them to do, both because that's bad Bayesian Epistemology and mostly because of the phenomenon of Tulpas.
There are certainly people who believe that characters that exist only within their mind are capable of independent action, and that's enough to blur the definitions enough for me to question whether someone 'directs' their character to have a goal. However, that applies to a tiny minority of cases, and if any of those players have a problem with it I suggest that they seek qualified medical assistance.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Decide upon a goal" is an action that your character takes. Why would you have your character decide to have a goal if you don't want to play a character that has that goal?
Sure, but what i'm saying is that while the character and player are doing so dependent on each other they must not always 100% align. This is why I felt saying that one should not roleplay but play a role is not a wise thing to expect.
Say, someone is egoistic but wants to explore the concept of selflessness (or vice versa) by roleplaing it. The players and characters goals are not incompatible, as you put it, but they most certainly will not be identical.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We may or may not let you make a true neutral nation, though, so there may be two corners of the grid that you can't get in a single nation.
That's the sort of solution that really elegantly captures the spirit of alignment. We might have a true neutral settlement (a druid haven), but maybe not a true neutral nation (because at that level you can't really continue to be non-aligned). I like it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What about making the values of the alignments accept either Good or Lawful, but not require both?
For example, if there is an advantage to Development Index, building tiers, or whatever else, call the advantaged end 100% and the disadvantaged end 0%. Very strong Good or strong Lawful influence would cap the scale at 100%, so Chaotic Good and Lawful Evil could both get there by different means. Lawful Good may have strong social stability in both axes, but the scale caps at 100% of what's available. Their advantage is that they can soak more slippage if they were the target of an enemy organization that sends packs of necromancers and thieves just over their border in order to cause unrest and corruption. A True Neutral settlement might only have median score on both axes, but 50% Good and 50% Lawful are together enough to reach the 100% DI-advantaged state. Chaotic Evil would be the only alignment truly disadvantaged, but that's to be expected in a society where you can't trust anyone at any time.
~
Also, are the reputation and alignment systems expected to exist in the beginning of EE? I've heard some saying those systems may not be MVP. I'm concerned that if we have a period when there are no settlements to build or defend and no PvE besides wandering mobs, then consequence-free PvP may set the game culture on a path it doesn't recover from. If people get too accustomed to gang warfare with clubs, you might never convince them that more limited honourable conflicts with well-forged gear is really worth trading away the freedom which comes with not giving a $#!+. If the majority of groups are functioning at CE, it doesn't matter that they aren't getting the advantages at the other end of the spectrum, they'll be like a herd of zeds pushing down the fences of any would-be Lawful or Good groups.
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We may or may not let you make a true neutral nation, though, so there may be two corners of the grid that you can't get in a single nation.That's the sort of solution that really elegantly captures the spirit of alignment. We might have a true neutral settlement (a druid haven), but maybe not a true neutral nation (because at that level you can't really continue to be non-aligned). I like it.
Well, within the logic of that approach, a TN nation would be legit if comprised of solely TN settlements.
That said, I'm not sure if your original 1-step context of TN nation should be illegal.
There would be pros/cons for each national alignment, and TN may have downsides alongside it's 'broadness'.
Flavor-wise, plenty of nations in Golarion are 'Neutral' and have a range of alignments within their borders.
As long as the pros/cons balance out, and you are giving up something to gain something else, I don't see a problem.
Oppositely Aligned allies (in one axis) are going to face repurcussions for allying that far/broad from their own Alignment.
Both mechanical repurcussion from the National Alignment mechanic, and natural repurcussions from the other members of the Nation's actions which reflect on them and open them up to reactions from other parties.
EDIT: And note, even disallowing TN as a Nation Alignment doesn't really address the broad variability allowed by the system as described: A TN settlement may have just one or zero TN members, and all the rest NE, or NG. So a 1-step rule Nation centered on NG would still allow TN Settlements... some of which may be 99%+ NE. Thus, I don't see much benefit/difference in disallowing TN Nations... It seems preferrable to allow them and simply provide relevant pros/cons which enable meaningful choices for a 99%NE population Settlement to be declared NE in a declared TN Nation vs. the same population Settlement declare to be TN in a declared NG Nation (pros/cons and choices both from the perspective of the single 99% NE populations settlement, and the largely TN/NG/LG/CG Nation joining with them).
Also, I believe that GW once broached the idea that there would be more organizational schemes than just the 1-step rule, groups could be MORE restrictive than that, i.e. TN settlement but only TN/NG/LN allowed. Or less restrictive, i.e. No Evil but everything else except CN. Presumably there would be a mechanical difference between all of those. There could be a fairly broad array of exclusivity, with more open-ness tending to have less mechanical benefits, and less open-ness having more mechanical benefits - those can be tuned per alignment combo to address balance/server population issues. I would hope that the issues of settlements with majority population distinct from their declared alignment (per the 99% NE example, above) would also have specific repurcussions at a mechanical level.
Beyond that topic, I'm curious what GW's take is on groups breaking apart, amicably and not. Settlement or Nation...
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Goblin Squad Member
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We're doing some complex things with party hostility inheritance(....)
I'll try to stretch the limits here and offer some scenarios:
* 3+ friends with alpha strike builds power-rage-pounces a noob, doing only one strike each (but likely killing him). As written it seems they would not take a rep hit. Correct?
* same as above, but attackers are deliberately not grouped.
* formation of 40 archers fires one volley / one arrow each at random traveller.
It certainly seems city guards can fire first and ask questions later - as long as they fire only a single arrow.
I was also going to post on the topic of exploits avoiding more than 1-hit per attacker to evade any Rep/Evil repurcussion,
but realized that GW already covered it in their blog, it's just a few paragraphs below the part that prompted me to consider that issue:
We created the temporary Attacker aspect of the system to account for accidental attacks (like catching an ally in a Fireball); if you mistakenly hit a target and don't follow up, you can avoid Rep loss. However, if you have the Attacker flag and your target dies by another means before it expires, you still lose Reputation. This is to prevent players from attacking targets and then leading them into monsters to avoid Reputation loss, or getting a large group of players together and having each person attack the target once.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For those of you who missed it...
Question: Which is more powerful, as Chaotic Evil settlement or a Lawful Good settlement that can't effectively combat crime and heinous deeds within their borders?
Answer: The Chaotic Evil settlement.
Question: Who commits the chaotic and evil deeds inside someone's Lawful Good settlement that makes it weaker than a Chaotic Evil one?
Answer: Chaotic and evil players.
Question: Where will chaotic and evil players live?
Answer: Chaotic and evil settlements.
Question: When would a Chaotic Evil settlement suck?
Answer: When the players who live there suck.
Question: When is a Lawful Good settlement awesome?
Answer: When the player who live there are awesome.
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My only question is why would a settlement go CE over NE or CN. I'm sure there will be an answer for that though.
@Andius: Sounds like 1 CE Settlement might be able to cut down to size a roughly equivalent-size LG Settlement, but if there's more LG Settlements (and/or larger ones) they couldn't erase the net advantage. Of course, NG/LN/LE/CG/NE/TN Settlements are one step closer to being 'equalized'/surpassed by such CE sabotage tactics. So I would say that such CE Settlements might thrive when all/many groups are engaged enough that they are sapping their mutual forces and the CE Settlement can focus on any one that may be safe from the fray, or is most vulnerable to them. In a more stable environment, multiple Settlements able to focus on productive development would be more than this one CE Settlement could focus on sabotaging, and the net productivity advantage would flow to those other Settlements. So I'd say it sounds like the CE Settlement can even the odds or turn them in it's favor with 1 roughly similar power LG Settlement, but without broader events conspiring to keep most Settlement in heavy conflict, they can't turn the broader tide in their favor. Of course, if there were enough CE Settlements to match the others 1:1 (with non LG Settlements counting partially) they very well could turn the tide to neutralize LG/LE/LN advantage "in general".
I like that Heinous Character have a special role to f%~* with non-Evil settlement and 'disturb' their loyal NPCs, debuffing those Settlement's productivity Stats.
EDIT: That kind of ties into my previous take on the possibilities of things like Heinous Evil NPC Cult Factions getting Thief Hide-out-like hidden redoubts 'impregnated' within the normal territory of other Settlements (independent of terrain owner). A war against that faction can remove the Hide-out, but it's a process to achieve.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Quandary
On the flip side, if there are more CE settlements spreading their corruption beyond their borders than LG settlements enforcing order and justice, LG will be overtaken unless they fight like lions.
It may be to their advantage to ally other groups spreading order and justice. But what if they have an ally who only cares about order who is drawn into conflict with one that only cares about justice?
Maybe it would be to their advantage to make peace with CE groups rather than fighting them off as long as those groups respect their borders. But that could lose them the support of other groups with similar alignments.
It will be complex, it will take skill, and only one thing is certain. PFO's story will be written by players, and your actions will help determine the form that story takes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every four straight hours the character earns Reputation, the amount earned increases slightly
So.. the intended way to grind rep is by leaving your character logged in stealthed in a safe spot while you go to sleep/work/dinner?!?
Even if the server kicks inactive characters, I could see someone running PFO in the background while working/studying and alt-tabbing every X mins to move the character one step forward and back again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I was also going to post on the topic of exploits avoiding more than 1-hit per attacker to evade any Rep/Evil repurcussion,
but realized that GW already covered it in their blog, it's just a few paragraphs below the part that prompted me to consider that issue:We created the temporary Attacker aspect of the system to account for accidental attacks (like catching an ally in a Fireball); if you mistakenly hit a target and don't follow up, you can avoid Rep loss. However, if you have the Attacker flag and your target dies by another means before it expires, you still lose Reputation. This is to prevent players from attacking targets and then leading them into monsters to avoid Reputation loss, or getting a large group of players together and having each person attack the target once.
thanks, I missed that on first read-through. My bad.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My only question is why would a settlement go CE over NE or CN. I'm sure there will be an answer for that though.
The obvious first answer is that they want to have both CN and NE member.
On a separate note, I chuckled at the idea of stealth-necromancers sneaking into NG territory and raising dead to cause unrest. (There should have been a pun here about un-restless dead, but it fizzled).