why alignment (for characters) needs to stay


Prerelease Discussion


TL;DR: Earth and Golarion are different places.

On happy old Earth, morality can be deemed as subjective and relative - we can't say for sure that there are gods, so we can't say for sure what they think about our actions. Therefore there's no moral authority on Earth.

On Golarion, the gods are very very real. They have very static opinions on acceptable behaviors. The alignment system determines how you ALIGN with the different gods.

Without that system, the gods become much more gray, bland, and indistinct - or unimaginably complex to deal with, capricious even. Some people prefer that. And those players and GMs are free to chuck out the alignment system (as SF has mostly done), and play a morally gray game.

For the rest of us, the alignment system is an important tool to interact with the gods, to remind us that they are real, and our actions are being judged by them.


Sure why not? /signed


I think of alignment as cosmic forces you can align with, in a Moorcockian, Planescape way, not a personality straight-jacket, so I can dig where you're coming from.


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OP cannot deal with being rejected on one thread so he goes and creates another.


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It literally does not matter that alignment/morality is supposedly objective in the in-game universe when it is not objectively defined by the rules and thus cannot be adjudicated objectively or consistently between games.


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I like Alignment, but I also prefer it in the 'form team with' sense.

I think it should be loosely, if at all, connected with personal morality, beyond perhaps requirements to maintain your team status.

It seems to me that you should be able to be evil without being part of 'Team Evil' and good without joining 'Team Good.'

Of course this would also work best if their were more benefits to being aligned than the specific class ones that currently exist. A fighter being able to call on the lords of chaos once in a while for something special because he was aligned with them would be a cool thing.


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no it doesn't need to stay. it either needs fixed or it needs to go

or have it with pcs only get good, neutral and evil alignments where as everything else gets both alignment spectrums


I agree. As I said before, I wouldn't even sit to play a PF game without said system lols.


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Eh, I am not a fan of alignment. But it is super easy to ignore when creating a campaign, so I don’t really mind them keeping it in. I do think they are moving in the right direction with anathema for the different gods, so it is really easy to have no alignment but still have cleric’s (and potentially Paladins) with very little effort needed to convert. Them also including the form of channel energy being defined by the god Not alignment is another great step.

The fact is that very few classes have mechanical functions tied to alignment, and removing them before wasn’t super hard, but seems to be getting easier.

In other words, as long as alignment is less relevant to actual class abilities, they can keep it in all they want and I will just ignore it.


I never thought there was any danger of alignment going away.

The Exchange

There needs to be at least some aspect of alignment for a society to function. Even if you are not modeling deities from the Abrahamic ethos of western religions you need to have some generally accepted societal norms. I would not consider any of the Greek deities to be solidly on Team Lawful Good but the Gods were angered by evil mortal deeds. Zeus created the first werewolf when a king tried to serve him cooked human flesh as a meal. Hercules had to complete 12 epic labors as atonement for slaying his family even though it was Hera who drove him Mad and caused him to commit the atrocities.
IF alignment is an issue with your game than you should discuss it with your DM and work out a mutual idea of what that alignment means. Nothing has to be written in stone but a general agreement on what is good and what is not. I think the anathemas previewed for clerics is a step in the right direction


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Star Dragon Caith wrote:
On Golarion, the gods are very very real. They have very static opinions on acceptable behaviors. The alignment system determines how you ALIGN with the different gods.

Not true. "opinions on acceptable behaviors" doesn't equal "The alignment system determines how you ALIGN with the different gods". Deities are as multifaceted as PC and can have opinions that DO NOT neatly conform to the alignment system: they would have acceptable behaviors that could be defined as different alignments because of that.


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Morality can be objective in Golarion all it wants. The people sitting around the table will only ever be able to subjectively interpret it according to their own understanding and values. And if that is not the case, it can only be because what you have isn't an RPG core rulebook but rather something like the Necronomicon.

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