It's not the 'letting of little things get to you', but how they responded to those things. A lawful person would NOT just beat up someone and throw them in to the ocean if they don't like what they're doing. That is totally chaotic!
Within Pathfinder, alignment is a tangible thing, therefore, alignment MUST be prescriptive to a certain extent. I would say in real-life alignment would be derived from one's actions, it would not drive them, but we are talking about playing an RPG. Players are taking actions and making choices for a Player Character, so the character's alignment must be a guide to what that character would do in that situation. In real-life, we all make decisions based upon our internal 'moral compass' if you like. In the game, we do not have that luxury, so the alignment table helps guide us as to what actions and decisions are made by our characters. So it is not for the GM to say that you cannot do that, it is for the player to say that their character of this alignment wouldn't do that.
Why not just agree that the Core and Ultimate Equipment version of the "Shepherd's Sling" just sucks for combat beyond a secondary use, and work out what we would like to see in a Paizo released "War Sling" that could be a viable option for those that want it as their weapon of choice? Edited my Ultimate reference.
Granted, it is not how the campaign is handled now, but I think that these cases could be solved with less 'hurt feelings' or 'bullying', if figuring the APL was the second level of tier decisions. The first pass at deciding tiers would be a majority rules per PC level. In the original example a party of 4-4-4-5-7 would be broken down as follows: 5 - between tiers (neutral - no influence on decision)
With 3 characters in-tier vs one in-tier, the majority would rule (no player-induced hard feelings involved) with low-tier (3-4) run through of the scenario. If there happened to be an equal number of properly tiered PCs high- and low-tiered, then go with the APL calcutaions and let the chips fall where they may. It seems that this could alleviate the 'forcing' of players into playing characters they don't want to play, while still keeping some structure and not having a free-for-all let the table decide approach.
I believe that Malachi has the answer spot on! It addresses the issues with spell wording and covers what Jason said AND is very sensible to boot!
@LazarX Please don't bring your personal baggage into a fun and friendly thread. Not everything in the world is about racism! Just because we tend to see things from a predominatly European viewpoint does not mean that there has not been slavery and racism against ALL peoples of all colors throughout history. The way I see the take on 'evil' characters appearing darker is more of a literal manifestation of the idea that evil 'desires' the night and darkness to do its dirty work. Stemming from man's much older fear of the night and what lurks out there. Not any racist 'agenda'.
The taint is long-lasting and persistent, often manifesting at birth or sometimes later in life, as a powerful, though often unwanted, boon. Wouldn't this be cool in a campaign since your parents are often (almost always?) both human, to start as a human character and then have certain things such as 'Daze' not affect your character. They would start to think that they are somewhat different than everyone else but not thinking metagamey 'Oh, I must be an outsider!' Some way into the campaign, the 'taint' manifests itself fullblown and then they take on the Tiefling racial traits and abilities. I could see a LOT of roleplaying fun with that scenario. Obviously the GM would have to know/agree to this change before the campaign starts. Maybe they would be the one deciding when it happens and the player would only be able to start getting clues when things happen strangely for their character.
Why are people still posting in this thread? From the outset, we have seen that the OP has put forth a straw-man bait-and-switch argument. Saying that people post how they are against 'Magic shops' when in fact everyone apart from Shallowsoul (who seems to be against everything magic-related in Pathfinder, yet still plays Pathfinder?!?) uses some form of 'Magic Shop'. What people have problems with are 'Magic Marts' which sells anything the players want, which clearly is not RAW in Pathfinder! The OP is clearly just trolling and baiting people as it took them almost 200 posts to actually define how they handle 'magic shops' and it winds up being almost EXACTLY how everyone else on the thread handle them which is close to a form of RAI by Paizo themselves! And even after deciding that they handle magic similarly, he continues to debate the straw-man argument that he proposed to begin this thread! How ridiculous, so please just stop feeding this troll :)! |
