What's Paizo's philosophy of alignment? A couple of NPCs I would have classified as evil get ranked as neutral.
For example, Orik Vancaskerkin murdered an alchemist and doesn't even regret it. He's considering murdering Tsuto, and he's hesitating only because killing the guy sleeping with your boss is a bad career move. His one "redeeming" quality is that he kind of regrets that the thousand plus people of Sandpoint all have to die for his boss's scheme to work, but he doesn't regret this enough to avoid participating in the raid.
Similarly, Kaven Windstrike assaulted and robbed an old goatherd as part of a series of "antics" that made his father ready to disown him and send him to prison. He chose to abandon his duty to protect the citizens of Turtleback Ferry (by patrolling his assigned route) and instead spent his time gambling, stealing from friends in order to pay for it. He was subsequently under Lucrecia's magical influence, but after a while she wasn't even bothering. He willingly betrayed all of his fellow guards to their deaths and doesn't care that this means that the several hundred people of Turtleback Ferry will likely die as a result.
If there had only been one example I might have guessed that it was a mistake, but with two I'm wondering if you're using a different definition of the alignments than I had been expecting. The SRD is vague and would technically permit this, so I'm curious about your views.
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You're right, alignment is broken.
in these, quite different, cases it's all about shades of meaning. Is it possible to be selfish without being cruel? Is not caring the same as hating?
In RL is it Evil if somebody takes a long-haul flight, considering the effect on the planet, and thus the entire species, or is it Neutral? Is it Evil - if one of two people has to die - to choose the other guy to die instead of yourself, or is it Neutral?
Right, exactly! And I want to be consistent with which of my created NPCs I declare to be Evil, so that there's one uniform philosophy throughout the setting. Since a couple of Pathfinder NPCs are deviating from the way I usually run alignment I need to learn its system to keep things from hurting suspension of disbelief.
("Wait, the guy who stabbed a begger and took ten silver coins detected as evil, but the guy who betrayed his companions plus an entire town didn't? Is my spell broken?")
I don't have strong opinions about how alignment is interpreted in the setting; I just want to understand it so that I can present it properly to my players.
I noticed that as well. I don't want to instigate a discussion of what each alignment ought to be (we're not going to all agree, so let's just skip the heartburn), but it feels as if the authors don't want to feature evil characters that aren't meant to be killed by the heroes.
Just because someone is evil, it doesn't follow that he lacks redeeming virtues. History books are filled with people who brutally preyed upon their enemies and betrayed their friends with Machavellian abandon, yet were regarded as wise leaders and patrons of the arts. Nazis are regarded by many as the epitome of modern evil, but many Nazi officers were excellent, disciplined soldiers, loyal to their country, good fathers and husbands, snappy dressers...
I think that the authors may have vaccillated about how rotten they wanted some of these characters to actually be, so they described people as neutral, when their actions were rather nasty.
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This has all got me thinking about the value you place on a sentient life.
The Three Musketeers, and D'Artagnan were happy to challenge foes to lethal duels almost on a whim; often knowing that cultural expectations would make it near impossible for their foes to back down - but they're the good guys.
Apart from style points how is that differents from "Pick up the gun" in Shane?
Contributor
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I think alignment issues in Golarion depend greatly on the writer and the person in charge of the product. Pathfinder seems more forgiving of transgressions in its alignment selections than the GameMastery Modules, possibly (and only possibly!) because Pathfinder's developers are more liberal than GMM's developer.
*shrug*
This is all my POV, of course. YMMV.
James will be in to work in the next 90 minutes or so and can give you a better answer. :)
The Three Musketeers, and D'Artagnan were happy to challenge foes to lethal duels almost on a whim; often knowing that cultural expectations would make it near impossible for their foes to back down - but they're the good guys.
They're more like the protagonists instead of the D&D alignment definition of 'good' style good guys. They're probably neutral to good and evil in the D&D sense. The musketeers espcially spend a lot of time trying to make money and occasionally swindling people.
I feel one reason may be for trigger happy heroes that would otherwise use detect evil as an automatic death sentence.
In my games, I personally share the liberal view of alignment in games, and I try to encourage acting true to the character concept as a whole. My player enjoys negotiations when available, and alignment in general has never been an issue for me.
This thread has brought up a good point though with the two NPC examples. Perhaps with the latter we're witnessing a form of Stockholm syndrome, where the character is so consumed with obeying the lamia, that he's "blind" to collateral damage?? Passionate people sometimes do lose all sense and do crazy things.
You also have alignment threads where, say, they discuss the alignment of James T. Kirk only to conclude that his alignment is "James T. Kirk."
I'm curious what contributers' take on this question is, but I won't get overcooked about it.
Creative Director
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Alignment is a fluid thing. It's not something that defines an NPC. It's something that an NPC defines. A character's actions define it, and therefore, when you start making life changes, your alignment changes as well. But there's a delay.
For Orik, he certainly started out his adventuring career evil. The murder he committed was done by an evil person, and at that time he was chaotic evil. But that time has passed. He's starting to regret things, now that he sees what kind of person being "evil" is turning him into, and what kind of plots he's getting involved with. A more exact way of spelling out his alignemnt would be to say he's chaotic neutral (evil); in other words, he just switched out of evil a few days or weeks ago. It's kind of up to the PCs to finish his redemption. If they ignore him and let him live, he'll probably backslide back into evil just because his will is weak.
As for Kaven Windstrike, his acts are more irresponsible than they are evil. He's not very wise, and doesn't make good decisions. If he escapes the PCs' wrath, he'll probably end up being "evil" in very short order. His choice to abandon duty is a chaotic act, not an evil act. Gambling and sleeping around, by extension, is also a chaotic act, not evil. And his betrayal of the rangers was in some part influenced by magical control, so that while that's an evil act... it wasn't one he made necessarilly out of free choice. Sort of. He's VERY close to being evil, in other words, but due to the fact that detect evil is used as a "spot the bad guy" and we wanted Kaven to be more difficult to read than that, we pegged him on the "just barely neutral" side of things.
I've always thought that alignments should have some sort of scale to go with them. Several D&D computer games do this; ranking each alignment on a scale of 1 to 100. Evil = 1, good = 100. So someone who's Chaotic (1) Good (1) would be pretty different from someone who's Chaotic (32) good (32)... even thoguh they're both Chaotic Good. But that's probably too complex a subsystem for a pen and paper game.
What's Paizo's philosophy of alignment? A couple of NPCs I would have classified as evil get ranked as neutral.
Yeah I agree, it seems to me that in Pathfinder, Evil = Vile (demon worshippers, undead monsters, etc), Neutral = Evil Lite, and Good = Everybody Else.
It is not just those two folks,
There is Daviren Hosk (N) who displays humanoid body parts of individuals he has killed, including the body of a goblin chieftien he has had preserved. He also is described as participating in genocide of an entire goblin tribe.
Then there is Erin Habe (LN), who runs the sanatorium, who is willing to let someone die of ghoul fever in order to study the effects. He also is describe as someone that who does experiments with bloody methods.
None of those folks are necessarily vile, but listing some of them as neutral seems to make neutral as evil lite.
He's VERY close to being evil, in other words, but due to the fact that detect evil is used as a "spot the bad guy" and we wanted Kaven to be more difficult to read than that, we pegged him on the "just barely neutral" side of things.
To me this sounds pretty close to saying 'we just made it so your PC abilities won't help you find a bad guy'. It feels like sloppy adventure planning.
Aha! I thought I remembered more examples, but I could only remember two specifics when I wrote the post. Thanks for the backup.
I'm okay no matter where Pathfinder draws the line, as long as a) it's consistent and b) I understand how to draw the line in the same place. My players have experienced other settings where people can be truly nasty and still not evil (eg Arcanis), so they're aware that Golarion might not be the same as my usual homebrew settings. As long as I can duplicate the feel I'm happy.
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It is not just those two folks,
Spoiler:there is also the Scarnetti (LN) family that were willing to commit murder to try to set up the town, as well as possibly causing fires, as well as being described as people it would not be surprising that would hire someone to kill someone.There is Daviren Hosk (N) who displays humanoid body parts of individuals he has killed, including the body of a goblin chieftien he has had preserved. He also is described as participating in genocide of an entire goblin tribe.
Then there is Erin Habe (LN), who runs the sanatorium, who is willing to let someone die of ghoul fever in order to study the effects. He also is describe as someone that who does experiments with bloody methods.
To be fair,
Hosk, too, has an unreasoning hatred of goblins, but we know little else about him, and killing evil creatures is pretty clearly defined in the paladin description in the PHB as a Good thing - it's hardly clear cut, but I think the thing that makes him neutral is the fact that he displays things, rather than what he's done to them, up to and including the destruction of the tribe. The trophy thing is distasteful, but not evil. In fact, though the players haven't met him yet, I plan on playing him as a pretty friendly, generous guy except where goblins are concerned, just to play up the impact his hatred has had on him. (The sin motif, you see.)
Habe, on the other hand, I'm not gong to defend. Frankly, he is evil, and will register as such if the cleric thinks to check when they meet him.
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I don't see a very good argument that Erin Habe isn't the alignment listed for him.
Bloody experimentation? He doesn't torture and vivisect for the sake of inflicting misery and pain. He's looking to discern underlying laws of the mind and of sanity with these experiments, and if there was a less bloody, more efficient way to do this, he probably would. As it is, he knows he's treading the line of the law here and is suitably nervous and unstable due to it.
Erin Habe is the mad scientist who is technically doing nothing illegal but which nevertheless is a threat. Pure LN.
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I don't see a very good argument that Erin Habe isn't the alignment listed for him.
Can I use his own words against him?
Even knowing what he "should have done," Habe chose to watch a man die for the sake of scientific curiosity rather than help him. I'm gong to come down on the side of negative responsibility here: by not saving him when it was in his power, he might as well have killed the man himself.
I don't see a very good argument that Erin Habe isn't the alignment listed for him.
** spoiler omitted **
There is a difference between seeing someone dying in a ditch and leaving them there and ...
You are right, merely letting him die of ghoul fever wouldn't be enough. Keeping him trapped and not letting others see him might be. It is the changing from a passive role to an active role.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16
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Even accepting your arguments, which are persuasive, one evil act does not an alignment shift make! You guys must be hell on Paladins!
I'll agree here Habe is committing an evil act but his alignment isn't gonna shift right away. When the merc finally transforms into a ghoul is when Habe's alignment teeters on the line and falls one way or the other. If he continues to study the ghoul he's clearly evil. If he sends for help from the temple or sheriff Hemlock and accepts the responsibility for his negligence he can atone for his inaction and remain LN.
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Creative Director
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Oh the fun with alignments!
In any case, yeah, the alignment system for D&D doesn't model complex characters well at all is the main problem. That said, it's a GREAT tool for quickly summarizing characters. If I say "He's a lawful neutral bartender," it's pretty easy to figure out BASICALLY what his deal is. It's when you start getting into the grit that things aren't so clear cut.
Honestly, I think that people attach too much weight to alignment, but at the same point, it's too useful a tool to throw out. When you can have two people argue what James Bond's alignment would be in D&D and have the guy arguing for Chaotic Neutral have just as many valid points as the guy arguing that Bond is Lawful Evil, well... it's clear that alignment isn't the most realistic rule in the game.
But then, neither are hit points.
In the end, you should go with the NPC's personality description and if the alignment we give him doesn't sit well with you, change it! It's almost never an actual error, though, when a personality doesn't seem to fit an alignment... it's just the alignment system not working to categorize a complex NPC.
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You know, I just don't think the guy is evil. Not reporting that the guy has ghoul fever makes him less lawful, but studying the guy as he dies from the disease doesn't make him evil, it just makes him twisted. He isn't letting the guy die for fun, or to torture the man. He just wants to study him. And considering that he runs a sanitarium, not a hospital, he doesn't need to hold to some "I'm obligated to help him" thing. He works with the mind, not the body.
On a different note, saying that a single act doesn't shift his alignment, and then going and saying that when the merc turns into a ghoul his alignment shifts is a contradiction. Letting the guy die from ghoul fever to study him is the only act happening here.
You know, I just don't think the guy is evil. Not reporting that the guy has ghoul fever makes him less lawful, but studying the guy as he dies from the disease doesn't make him evil, it just makes him twisted. He isn't letting the guy die for fun, or to torture the man. He just wants to study him. And considering that he runs a sanitarium, not a hospital, he doesn't need to hold to some "I'm obligated to help him" thing. He works with the mind, not the body.
I don't follow your reasoning here. A sanitarium serves many of the same functions as a hospital. He accepted care for a person that couldn't care for himself. Presumably he was paid to do so, although the text doesn't specify. He knows the thug has a dangerous disease. He was responsible for the thug's well being, yet still decided to let him die of a disease that would not only kill the thug, but result in the create of an undead creature with a hunger for living flesh. He knew what was doing to happen, what the result would be, but he still did it just to watch it happen.
"Evil" implies hurting, oppressing, and killing others. Some evil creatures simply have no compassion for others and kill without qualms if doing so is convenient. Others actively pursue evil, killing for sport or out of duty to some evil deity or master.
That is exactly what is happening in this case. He has no compassion for the diseased thug (who is a mental invalid and specifically in his care) and want to watch him die and become undead out of morbid curiosity. He's literally letting his charge die without qualm because it's convenient for him and his curiosity. He will even admit this to player characters.
A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion.
It's not a matter of alignments being a little vague for complex people, like James Jacob said. This is a very spot on description of the guy.
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I don't follow your reasoning here. A sanitarium serves many of the same functions as a hospital. He accepted care for a person that couldn't care for himself. Presumably he was paid to do so, although the text doesn't specify. He knows the thug has a dangerous disease. He was responsible for the thug's well being, yet still decided to let him die of a disease that would not only kill the thug, but result in the create of an undead creature with a hunger for living flesh. He knew what was doing to happen, what the result would be, but he still did it just to watch it happen.
That all depends on 'when' the sanitarium is along the history of psychology. In modern days, yes, the sanitarium is indeed a hospital for those whose minds are ill in the same sense that a normal hospital is for those whose bodies are ill, and his actions are certainly shaded to the evil side of such things.
However, prior to our time, sanitariums were definitely not places where the mentally ill were treated and cared for to return them to health or to allow them to live as comfortably as they can with their troubles. Patients - inmates being the more apt term - might be chained to their beds, or in small rooms, treated like animals and left to dwell in their own filth, or tortured in attempts to 'purge' them. If the view of the insane in Golarion reflects this view, then his behavior may be distasteful, but not evil; his inmates are no longer "people", but mad animals to be kept locked up away from where they might taint others.
If your version of Golarion has had the revolution of psychology our world has, then I do not dispute his evil. I, on the other hand, don't think they've had a Freud born as of yet, much less any of the other branches of modern psychology...
Patients - inmates being the more apt term - might be chained to their beds, or in small rooms, treated like animals and left to dwell in their own filth, or tortured in attempts to 'purge' them. If the view of the insane in Golarion reflects this view, then his behavior may be distasteful, but not evil; his inmates are no longer "people", but mad animals to be kept locked up away from where they might taint others.
[the person in question] begs for the PCs’ forgiveness. He honestly had no idea that the man would react in such a manner, but more to the point, desperately wants to avoid having any bad word of mouth get around about him. [He] admits at this point that he knew [the victim] was suffering from ghoul fever,and that he should have turned him over to Father Zantus in Sandpoint for treatment as soon as he made that diagnosis.
This guy is all set to allow an inmate to die by deliberately withholding medical treatment. Even if his patient dies, he is only worried about his reputation. To me, this passes beyond distasteful and well into evil.
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I think people are forgetting how big neutral is. In a sense, people who only do what is convenient are mostly neutral. A good person will suffer for others. An evil person will often suffer to see others suffer. A neutral person generally doesn't want to hurt anyone, and may even want to help people, but they won't put much effort into it.
I think that most of us are more comfortable thinking that most of our friends and neighbors are good people - and that we are too. But in D&D most people are really supposed to be 'neutral'. The alignment system has some problems and one of the big ones is where intentions and actions diverge.
For example, what alignment would you give a preacher who tries to save souls by preaching against homosexuality? What if he is himself a closet homosexual?
Another way to put it - how much evil can you do with good intentions before you're considered an evil person?
In general, I think the use of the neutral alignment has been appropriate. I'm surprised to see the magistrate in Falcon's Hollow as Neutral Evil (corrupt, but hoping for a chance at redemption). I guess the weight of too many evil acts hangs on him for the time being. But I think he would move to neutral or even good with the right influences.
As both a DM and a player, the game is more fun when the bad guys can't be identified by the color of the aura.
Now, if adventures included more 'normal' townsfolk who were also evil, it wouldn't be such a problem. I think you can do some pretty bad things and keep your neutral alignment. It's a great descriptive alignment for many CEOs. I'm sure they don't want to contribute to global warming, but they don't have a legal obligation to stop it, and they do have an obligation to prdouce profits. Though perhaps millions can die as a result of their actions, they don't feel DIRECTLY responsible since they're only contributing to a problem and even if they stopped, the problem wouldn't go away. So, they don't keep up at night worrying about whether they're good people or not. They just do what they think is best with a weighted interest in their own needs over that of their fellow men. Classic neutral.
I've always thought that alignments should have some sort of scale to go with them. Several D&D computer games do this; ranking each alignment on a scale of 1 to 100. Evil = 1, good = 100. So someone who's Chaotic (1) Good (1) would be pretty different from someone who's Chaotic (32) good (32)... even thoguh they're both Chaotic Good. But that's probably too complex a...
Actually, my husband keeps track of alignment in his campaigns in a very similar manner (from aformentioned D&D computer games). Evil/Chaos=1-33 Neutral=34-66 Good/Lawful=67-100. Rape and torture get the biggest bumps at 10 points each. Murder 5. From there the points are pretty subjective, but he uses stuff like summoning evil critters gets you a tick toward naughtiness. If other PCs make no effort to stop the bad behavior they get an adjustment equal to half of the offending party's total.
To keep people from doing whatever they want and then donating money to the orphanage to balance it out, there is a "dead zone" after an evil act of one week per point (stackable with other evil acts) in which no matter what they do, the good acts don't count.It really isn't as bad as it sounds, since most of our players are mature and will play pretty close to their character anyways. Having to hand out points either way is not a huge record keeping task. There are always exceptions though.
I really have to hand it to you guys. Your definition of alignment might not be the same as mine, but it's a darn good one and it fits the much grittier, savage frontier feel of Pathfinder in a lot of ways better than the old standard. I love how mutable it is, how a neutral or even good person might have done tremendous evil in his or her past but has come around to a different alignment by the experience--where another character might be a champion, but his pursuit of evil ends up bending him into a broken and wretched person who finds himself without redemption. It's an interesting view and I've been using it in the campaign. Let me tell you how much it's got the players on their toes. It's like they're in a cave with a favorite lamp that now only functions intermittantly. It's great. They're also creeped out like crazy by the fact that they've been accruing "sin points". I've let them know also that the door swings both ways--that if they feel like their character has changed enough that it would be reflected in their alignment to let me know, that it's not just NPCs who have fluctuations in their alignment.