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I know alignment gets a lot of discussion but I don't believe this has been suggested before.
How about treating alignment as a birthright - i.e. something which derives from a combination of your ancestry and the (in)auspicious circumstances of your birth. Alignment pre-disposes you to certain behaviour but doesn't force it. It determines how magical effects will affect you, it restricts your career decisions, but ultimately doesn't say anything about who you are.
You could still be a really nice person even though you are Lawful Evil aligned (Paladins take note) since your alignment never changes however you behave. It is probably true to say that in the general scheme of things 70-80% of people / creatures behave according to their alignment (70-80 % of the time) because most people / creatures do not fight against their pre-dispositions, however on an individual case you cannot draw any conclusions on a person's behaviour due to their alignment.
Religious characters, paladins especially, who have a code of conduct to adhere to, are a different matter.
Richard
I know alignment gets a lot of discussion but I don't believe this has been suggested before.
How about treating alignment as a birthright - i.e. something which derives from a combination of your ancestry and the (in)auspicious circumstances of your birth. Alignment pre-disposes you to certain behaviour but doesn't force it. It determines how magical effects will affect you, it restricts your career decisions, but ultimately doesn't say anything about who you are.
You could still be a really nice person even though you are Lawful Evil aligned (Paladins take note) since your alignment never changes however you behave. It is probably true to say that in the general scheme of things 70-80% of people / creatures behave according to their alignment (70-80 % of the time) because most people / creatures do not fight against their pre-dispositions, however on an individual case you cannot draw any conclusions on a person's behaviour due to their alignment.
Religious characters, paladins especially, who have a code of conduct to adhere to, are a different matter.
Richard
Maybe if you add alignment as a subtype rather it would be interesting, though I think most humans should not have a subtype, paladins could come from (a) bloodline(s) that has traditionally thought the dark powers in the land for example.
Elves could be of the good subtype unless they are exiled 'dark elves', same with dwarves and 'duergar', it has some potential. Perhaps high level clerics have the ability to 'cast people out off the faith'.
I think this works best in a setting with few deities, ideally two opposed deities or one organised pantheon recognized as the 'good' deities.
What exactly is alignment for you? Some kind of taint? The powers of the gods like smite evil work on you because you are born with a taint even if you are the nicest guy ever while they spare the BBEG because he is born as chaotic good altough he behaves lawful evil? Doesn´t make sense at all.
(My idea: get rid of alignments once and for all. Alignments are stupid. Let smite evil and other alignments restricted powers affect undead and demons and devils and stuff instead. My characters have a complex personality which is able to adapt and moody, not some "one of nine themes"-personality. Since 4e removed half of the alignments it´s not even typical d20 anymore.)
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Why?
Simply speaking to remove the concept of morality as a game construct.
I'm thinking of it like a taint, indeed. Makes sense to me. This world is full of people persecuted for their background as if they were "evil" even though they can be the nicest people in the world.
PCs, after all, choose their alignment, so if they want to have an "evil" taint that's up to them. NPCs and creatures are too stereotyped by alignment.
I don't want to open a pandora's box here, and I'm sure it's been discussed many times before, but in my opinion good and evil are pretty impossible to define rigidly. Philosophers have tried since the time of Aristotle. I don't know about Law and Chaos but I expect it'll lead to the same problems, and I have absolutely no desire to get into arguments with PCs about whether they are acting according to their alignment or not.
In fact I don't want to get into any sort of morality meta-discussions within the game. I'd love to remove alignment altogether, but I think alignment has got its roots too firmly implanted in the game system for that.
As far as Gods are concerned, I believe they should stand for ideals which are separate from the concept of Good and Evil and Law and Chaos.
Richard
If you don't want to mess with alignment in the game, then I'd suggest an even more radical form of alignment-as-birthright: you're alignment is automatically that of the plane you were born on (or the race you belong to if you're a monster). That means that all PCs are neutral, because the prime material plane is not aligned. Demons are still evil, angels are still good, dragons are still segregated by color, but regular folks like humans and elves are free to behave as they will.
You could also run this concept in a very fatalism/ edict of the gods type campaign. Work with each of your players to ensure their character concept stems from the alignment they were born into and if they ever stray from it, tweak the world around them so their actions turn out to indirectly reinforce their alignment.
Example from the comic strip Goblins. *Warning, spoilers*
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Example from the comic strip Goblins. *Warning, spoilers*
I hate that whole plot point. It nearly ruined the comic for me.
That's an interesting idea.
It does make alignment completely meaningless, while at the same time keeping the mechanical aspects of alignment alive and well.
I suggest if you do this, however, you either eliminate or rework what Paladins are. I'm not sure I'd want to play a Paladin in a world where I'm expected to hunt down and smite "evil" beings who aren't really actively evil... or have ever done anything evil at all.
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''..thank you brave warrior, I thought my pert princess bottom was surely toast! Perhaps there is some.. sexy.. way I can reward you?''
''BAH! It was nothing! Look lass, I was born Lawful Good, and by 'eck, I'm gonna be Lawful Good!''
''Oh.. ok.''
NOTE: Lawful Good characters don't have sex.
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The way I want to do Paladins, and to some extent Clerics and Inquisitors, is to give them God related mandates which they *must* obey at all times or lose their deity related abilities.
This borrows from an old RuneQuest idea which used god related Geases.
Making this stuff unequivocable takes away any possibility of subjective good vs evil arguments.
For example, with Erastil, I have the following:
1 Only attack/kill/harm animals for food
2 Never enter a city
3 Protect the environment
4 Always help small communities
5 Max out a profession skill
Clerics and Inquisitors have to pick one at 1st (character) level, one at 10th and another at 20th. Paladins additionally pick one at 5th and another at 15th.
Richard
