I just picked up Fiendish Codex 2, which is a great, great book. My favorite thing about it was that it makes a start on adjudicating alignment with "Corrupt Acts", which are basically examples of acts that earn a certain number of "corrupt points" based on their severity. Once you have 9 corrupt points, off to Hell (or the Abyss, if you're chaotic, or whatever) you go, no redemption. I think it's a really good way to handle alignment through the rules without having to deal with the bickering when you say that because the paladin hacked the head off the evil henchman and showed it to his bound and helpless friend in order to get info out of him, he's taking an alignment hit. They've also got a section for lawful acts. It's good for what it does, but I wanted something a little more general-purpose that could handle any kind of alignment switching. Here are my results. Please, great Lords of the Boards, tell me how I can improve/refine it!
Good & Evil:
No character starts out with any corrupt points. (unless it's backstory appropriate, that is.) The scale goes from 0-9 points. When you've accumulated 4 points, you are officially neutral, but can still commit yourself back to the path of good. When you've acquired 9 points, if you die, you go immediately to the appropriate hell for your alignment, no matter how many orphans you rescue or minions of evil you vanquish.
Acts that earn corruption points (with their values):
Using an evil spell 1
Humiliating a companion or underling 1
Use of injury type poison 1
Stealing from the needy 2
Desecrating a good church or temple 2
Betraying a friend or ally for personal gain 2
Use of any non-injury type poison 2
Causing gratituitous injury to a creature 3
Perverting justice for personal gain 3
Use of any poison that deals CON damage 3
Inflicting painful torture for gain 4
Murder 5
Cold-blooded murder 6
Inflicting painful torture for pleasure 6
Murder for pleasure 7
Removing corruption points:
Characters can remove corruption points by undergoing a program of repentance under the guidance of a qualified spiritual advisor (a good-aligned divine spellcaster of some kind).
A character with a corruption rating of 3 or lower can reduce it to 0 through good acts alone.
A character with a corruption rating of 4 or higher must repent through good acts and also receive an atonement spell to ransom his soul back from the underworld.
To remove corruption points, the character must give up all benefits gained from the act of corruption (if possible), offer a sincere apology to those harmed and provide full restitution, and make a donation to either the church of the spiritual advisor or simply those more needy than the character equal to 10% of the number of corruption points the character possesses. In addition, the spiritual advisor must assign an active gesture of repentance such as helping another unrequited, fasting, a period of silent retreat, or a dangerous quest against the forces of evil, depending on the nature of the deity.
Law & Chaos:
This works on a slightly different system. Characters of any alignment will have a certain number of both law and chaos points from 0-9. Your starting alignment determines how many of each you have. If you start as lawful, you have 4 law points and 0 chaos points; as chaotic, you have 0 law points and 4 chaos points; and as neutral you will have both 0 law points and 0 chaos points. At any time, if you have at least 2 more points in one alignment than the other, your alignment changes appropriately. If you have a number of law and chaos points that are within 1 point of variance with each other, you become neutral. If you have 9 points in either alignment, they can only be removed through formal repentance aided by a cleric of the opposing alignment.
Acts that earn law points (with their values):
Swearing fealty to a leader you know 1
Swearing fealty to a leader you've never met 2
Resolving a dispute through lawful process 2
Quitely accepting a legal judgment against you 2
Executing a lawful sentence of corporal punishment 3
Following a rule you consider stupid 3
Aiding a superior, to your own detriment 3
Swearing fealty to a devil 4
Obeying a leader you do not respect 4
Performing a lawful execution 5
Acts that earn chaos points (with their values):
Refusing to swear fealty to a leader 1
Violating an established law 2
Resolving a dispute through personal means 2
Loudly protesting a legal judgment against you 2
Refusal to obey a reasonable rule 3
Disrupting a legal proceeding 3
Failing to aid a superior, to your own detriment 3
Bargaining with a demon 4
Failing to accept a legal restriction placed on you 4
Organizing a protest of an established law 5
Let the criticisms begin!
I suppose that if you must have a codified system for tracking alignment, this isn't a bad way to deal with it. I prefer alignment as the lens a character views the world through, with a shift in alignment being a change in their perspective and attitudes rather than simple statement of "I poisoned the BBEG and then broke his fingers until he told us how to stop the doomsday countdown, so now I'm evil."
That said, I would argue that Good is just as worthy of its own score as any of the other alignments. There's more to being good than just not doing evil things. There are people who never do evil things. We generally call them "vegetables". You can still incorporate the penalty for committing evil acts with little fuss and bother, simply by stating that a Paladin (or exalted character) whose corruption score is four or higher loses their abilities until they atone.
As for specific examples, I'll go ahead and argue on behalf of the poor couatl. He really, really doesn't want to have to go spend weeks working in the soup kitchen every time he smites a bad guy.
Chaos and Law aren't really just X/-X any more than Good and Evil are -- an anarch needn't go out of his way to avoid the crosswalks or muddy his shoes before entering the bar for no purpose other than to reaffirm his contempt for the local authorities. That's an act of idiocy, not an act of chaos.
I don't really see that refusing to acknowledge a leader is an act of chaos so much as a nonaction altogether. Now, actively denouncing a leader could be argued to be an act of chaos, with the denunciation of a leader you know personally being a greater expression of chaos than the denunciation of a distant figure you've never met.
"Failing" to give of yourself to aid a superior (and similarly, "failing" to accept a legal restriction placed upon you) is not an action, but rather the consequence of an inappropriate action -- by doing something in the wrong way, you fail. Perhaps more importantly, it implies that an attempt was made to avoid such an event, in which case it isn't really worthy of an alignment hit. Conversely, a character who knowingly leaves a superior to his own devices or deliberately violates whatever restrictions may have been placed upon him is not failing; he's refusing those who consider themselves above him the right to determine what course of action he takes. In short: those two seem fine in concept, but the wording could use some work.
I much prefer treating alignment as a filter through which the character views the world myself- like the DMG says (somewhere) "alignment is a tool, not a straight jacket." The only problem with that is when a character's class features (paladin being the easiest example, but most divine classes have a similar restriction, to say nothing of monks and bards and such) stop functioning or stop advancing when the character's not of that alignment- I've seen too many instances where PCs just pick an alignment at random, play the character however, and then when the DM calls them on it they say "well, he's still {insert alignment here}- he can still be a {paladin/cleric/whatever}, I'll just not flip off the town guard and torture people for information in the next town we come to." It seems like a more discreet way of handling the discrepancy between a character's actions and his alignment.
I think my thought processes on it were mostly born of the various threads on people playing "chaotic neutral" as "chaotic rips the faces off of children, but I did save the lord mayor from zombies that once, so it balances".
Thanks for the wording revisions, too, I'll definitely change that when I put this into practice.
Oh, on the Good score point: I run good-based campaigns (or, at least, non-evil campaigns) so I didn't work up a Good scoring chart precisely for the reason that IMO, it would encourage stockpiling of Good points so that one could get away with that much more stuff without having to worry about his alignment being in question. Course, I could just put a cap on the points like I did for the others, but that's the same problem on a smaller scale. *shrug* It's a work in progress, that's why I put it up here.
Being a neat and orderly sort of person I love this sort of codefying of the muddled mess that can be PC alignments. My biggest problem with letting players pick an alignment at the beginning of a campaign is that many of my players cannot "play" an alignment. They simply play a character with their own personality inserted.
Example: I have one player who has gone through about four or five different characters, but no matter what class the PC is, it's a Chaotic Neutral alignment. He simply can't help himself. Another player cannot play anything other than Lawful Neutral. He must have structure in all his gameplay and it bleeds right into his characters.
The system of assigning points of good/evil and law/chaos to acts allows players to have a billboard that they can hold their own actions up to and know what the cosequenses of their actions will be. With that held over their heads it falls upon Them, not you the DM to judge whether they want to accumulate a point in one direction or the other.
Unfortunatly for me, I have cut off any material that came after the PHBII from my current campaign. But next campaign...
just my two coppers,
-Roth
Acts that earn corruption points (with their values):
Humiliating a companion or underling 1
My boss is soooo going to Hell!
Have you looked at the Taint rules from Heroes of Horror? They use a similar scoring system.
Yeah, I checked it out. It's an interesting system, but the one suggested in FC2 seems cleaner *rim shot* and has less to keep track of. Plus I think it has the potential to be abused to some extent- you know, "Hmm, I need a higher AC but don't want to spring for a ring of protection, so let me go stare at a dead animal for a couple hours and my skin will dry out. Natural armor bonus, here I come!" I guess it just works better for me in a specifically horror-based game.
Have you looked at the Taint rules from Heroes of Horror? They use a similar scoring system.
The taint rules are definitely more horror themed, as they're intended to reflect the corruption of mind and body that can occur with exposure to evil.
It could be interesting, though, to come up with alignment based "taints" to illustrate more dramatically what forces have shaped a creature. I wouldn't have the first idea where to begin with such a project, but it would be interesting to see.
Vegepygmy brings up an interesting point- anyone who makes fun of or degrades an "underling" nine times goes to Hell, barring clerical intervention. Not only that, but if you belittle seven different people, you're as bad as a psycophathic murderer who kills for sheer pleasure. That seems a little harsh. Sure, someone can be a mean bastard, but that doesn't necessarily merit Hell. And then, think of a drill sergeant. They do a lot of humiliating, but they have the purpose in mind (at least, so it's said) of making better soldiers.
This would lead one to think that certain acts should have decreasing point values for repeat actions. A few incidents of belittling someone, and it just becomes a habit that's hardly worth tracking. On the other hand, certain acts, such as murder, should most certainly not have their point values reduced over time.
Now the system is that much more complicated.
And yes, adding a "good" component leads to the stockpiling of "good" acts to balance "evil" acts, which leads exactly to paladins torturing people, but balancing it with lavish donations. Not good (meaning both the character isn't good, and it's not good for the game).
Additionally, your chart claims that making a deal with a devil is a lawful act. Why not evil? They're both things. What about a deal with an archon?
The Fiendish Codex II does an excellent job of capturing the mindset of the devils, and everything within it is tainted by that "lawful evil" perspective. In order to codify alignment drifts, you need a blank slate which bases everything off of true neutrality (never mind the difficulty of pinning that down).
In the end, I have to voice my opinion that, as much as I love the idea for organization's sake and for the dynamism it could ideally bring to the game, I must say that I think trying to put point-scores on alignments is a bad idea. It most likely won't work the way you want, and isn't worth the book keeping.
Here's an interesting thought. You indicate that you mainly desire this codex of alignments because your players don't act according to the alignments they picked. However, isn't that the exact type of player that will try to manipulate your system for their own gain? "Balancing" good and evil has no precident at the moment; you're giving them approval by creating this system.
Conversly, DMs with players who do not abuse alignments typically don't feel a need to modify the alignment system at all. This leads me to believe that the players are the ones who need "modifying." Simply having a firm DM who says, "No, eating the eyes out of the king's children's heads will most certainly make you evil, not matter how many orphans you saved," will do as much to stop that as anything.
As an afterthought, I do support the idea of spells with alignment descriptors "tugging" people in certain "directions." Considering the supernatural nature of such acts, and their relative rarity, it seems warranted. Mainly, it allows players who are interested in actually role-playing dabble on the borders of alignment change with an actual rules set, rather than arbitrary calls.
|
First, I treat alignment as a purely supernatural attribute (most mortals don't have one). I do this because I find the standard D&D alignment system unuseful for my world and deeply unsatisfying.
That said, if I were to use an alignment system, I think I'd be more likely to categorize sins more like I understand the modern Roman Catholics do -- into venial and mortal categories. No arbitrary number of venial sins is sufficient to damn you, while even a single unrepented mortal sin will do it. There is a qualitative difference, not just a quantitative difference. I think this is perhaps fundamentally incompatible with a numeric system.
Now, if I were to go numeric, I might go with something more like the medieval church and allow "good works" to mitigate or atone for any sort of sins. Whether it would then be reasonable to allow money (the residue of previous works) given to the church to stand in for the works themselves is an interesting question. The result would be rather different than the default D&D system, of course, but it could work.
I would certainly be much more historical; whether that's a good thing or not would depend on the group/campaign/DM/world/whatever.
And yes, adding a "good" component leads to the stockpiling of "good" acts to balance "evil" acts, which leads exactly to paladins torturing people, but balancing it with lavish donations. Not good (meaning both the character isn't good, and it's not good for the game).
It's exactly the same as stockpiling lawful acts to balance chaotic ones, or vice versa. The only difference is in the flavor.
I prefer the aesthetic (and the dynamic) of a single score for each axis. If Neutral is Zero, Exalted/Axiomatic is 9, and Vile/Anarchic is -9, you have a range of 18. I'd prefer something more like a -30 to 30, as it allows for better scaling to suit the varying level of impact different acts might have, but that's another issue. The important part is that committing an evil act will actively decrease your level of goodness, rather than just bringing your evil up to meet it.
If Paladins are required to have a Goodness of 4, and sir Moragaine has a score of 9 before he starts shining sunlight on the vampire's toes to make him talk (thus dropping his goodness to a five, using the originally proposed value) the forces of good are decidedly repulsed by his approach but aren't willing to denounce him just yet. He will be disappointed to learn, however, that by willfully committing an evil act (even one which is not sufficient to change his alignment) he's lost his powers. Lavish donations won't make a whit of difference.
"Balancing" good and evil has no precident at the moment; you're giving them approval by creating this system.
Quoth the Player's Handbook, regarding Good and Evil:
Being neutral on the good-evil axis usually represents a lack of commitment one way or the other, but for some it represents a positive commitment to a balanced view. While acknowledging that good and evil are objective states, not just opinions, these folk maintain that a balance between the two is the proper place for people, or at least for them.
Heroes of Horror shows a more specific precedent when speaking of Dread Necromancers and alignment:
No dread necromancer can have a good alignment. Performing evil acts is a basic feature of the class, but some dread necromancers manage to balance evil acts with good intentions, remaining solidly neutral (most PC dread necromancers fall into this category).
That's not just committing evil acts and good acts, but committing evil acts for good reasons. Good people can do some pretty rotten things, but that doesn't necessarily make them rotten people.
Hmm, good point. Well, if actually handled with a mature mindset and decent role-playing, it's not an issue. Munchkins will be munchkins- that's the root of the problem, to some degree, and as such, it's what really needs to be addressed when alignments are being abused.
Re: committing repeat corrupt acts- I either got the impression from the text in FC2 or simply assumed that they meant "doing this kind of thing is worth this many points, no matter how often"- but it isn't very clear. Possibly there could be an addendum saying that habitual acts of the type described gives you another point- i.e. humiliating an underling is worth 1 point, but if you do it all the time it's worth 2 points- not 1 point per instance.
Re: the chart describing deals with devils as a lawful act, but somehow not an evil one- I pulled that straight from the text in FC2 and left it alone for some reason. I added dealing with demons as a chaotic act simply as the opposing action. It should definitely go in the evil chart (worth about 4 points, I would think), but should it just be taken out of the law/chaos charts altogether?
Re: muchkinism as the root of the problem- yeah, to some extent, but I don't think there are many players who would react well to having their powers stripped from them unless the act that caused it was really, really blatant. Arguments about alignment are no fun in the middle of a game, and usually have the potential to offend somebody- no two people I know have the exact same idea about what is "good" when you get down to the specifics. I think the chart thing, while it does give a DM more to keep track of (yeah, I know), is a decent way of frontloading what's likely to warrant changes in alignment in games where it's likely to be important.
Of course, I've also considered disposing of alignments altogether- maybe no system is better than a somewhat vague, uncodified one.
Director of Sales
|
Vegepygmy brings up an interesting point- anyone who makes fun of or degrades an "underling" nine times goes to Hell, barring clerical intervention. Not only that, but if you belittle seven different people, you're as bad as a psycophathic murderer who kills for sheer pleasure. That seems a little harsh.
This discussion puts me in mind of WoD Vampire's "Humanity" trait.
IIRC, in that system levels of morality were ranked one to ten, ten being Sublime Holiness and one being a mindless beast. Every time a character commits a morally questionable act, a check is made against his/her current Humanity. If the act ranks below the character's current Humanity level, then the character must roll a check using their current Humanity level as a dice pool. Failure meant the character lost a level of humanity. Success meant the character just feels guilty and does not want to perform this act again (in other words, nothing happens). Things like murder for selfish or no reasons were ranked 1 or 2, so a roll was necessary nearly every time. Willingly sacrificing yourself for others was ranked at an 8 or 9, and so it was hardly ever rolled on. The lower on the scale you get, the less often you have to roll but with the smaller dice pool it is much easier to fail when you do.
This system could easily be adapted to D&D using the axes that Toymaker suggests above. If failure on a roll moves a character down the axis and success moves a character up, then a character's position indicates their current alignment. If you use an X/Y axis where the four quadrants are the four alignments, then you know exactly how well a character's actions conform to their stated (or required) alignment. Using their current alignment score as some sort of modifier for the DC of the roll could simulate the loss of dice pool as you get lower and lower.
This system would encourage a much more character-oriented game than your standard D&D campaign, of which I am always a big supporter. HOWEVER this introduces an enormous amount of new rules and added complexity, of which I am mostly against.
In other words, I would never do this in my own game but if it fits for yours... Have fu and come back to tell us how it goes!
cos
There was mention of veniel vs. mortal sins earlier. Combine that with The White Toymaker's comment regarding a scale of -30 to 30 being preferable, and I think you could come up with a workable system if you really want one. You make a good point regarding halting alignment debates right in the middle of the game and letting the players know that the DM took away the paladin's abilities as part of the rules, and not just arbitrary, possibly vindictive, fiat.
But again, you'd need to work up the lists completely free of other books that deal with alignment, as each of them is typically coming from a certain "view" and thus is slanted towards that "view" somewhat.
As a slow-witted Paladin I once knew was fond of saying, "Evil is as evil does."