Goblin Squad Member
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But the complaint seems to be from people who want the right to gang-bang anyone with an evil descriptor even if they are out collecting flowers in the garden near their own house.
I can picture it: "that guy is the one who robbed me two years ago! Lets kill him! Ops he is not evil anymore he changed alignment through charity and attonement he is just a new man right now! I'm doomed!"
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can picture it: "that guy is the one who robbed me two years ago! Lets kill him! Ops he is not evil anymore he changed alignment through charity and attonement he is just a new man right now! I'm doomed!"
But the complaint seems to be from people who want the right to gang-bang anyone with an evil descriptor even if they are out collecting flowers in the garden near their own house.
Well yes.
Or what if the guy is married with 11 kids and even though he is marginally evil and occasionally beats his wife when drunk, he is all she has, and now he was randomly smacked down on their front door step by a passing paladin she and the kids will starve.
It is simply not paladin like to take on bounty or vengeance quests NOR is it paladin like to kill everyone they meet with no cause (which in some cases may well be entire townships) just because the EVIL needle wobbles a smidgeon left of center.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So here's the problem: that player has every bit as much right to role play a ce character as any paladin has to role play an LG character. It is just as evil to try and force that player out of alignment or ruin his gameplay experience as it is for him to force you out of yours or ruin your gameplay experience.Whether his character is evil or not. Period. End of story. If you are going to terminate him expect the same negative consequences to accrue to you as they do to him. And if you continue doing that sort of thing you will find yourself a CE character and make do with being the content for other players.
Did I get that right or not?
The problem here is the CE character actualy WANTS to be CE...and they are GETTING TO...by doing the things that are expected of CE. Being shifted toward CE is not a punishment here it's a REWARD. Nor is anyone trying to shift the CE player out of his alignment or ruin his gameplay experience for him, at least I'm not. I WANT CE players to be able to play CE and have FUN doing it. In fact if you'll recall I argued AGAINST the kind of mechanical penalties imposed on CE settlements because I thought that was unfair to the player who wanted to RP that Alignment.
However in this case, the mechanics ARE punishing the LG for trying to play LG and do the things LG logicaly would and should do and minimizing the content availble to them. Because LG players don't WANT to be CE. Remember this is primarly a PvP focused game. GW was pretty explicit about that in the early blogs. Frankly if I only wanted to do PVE, there are games with much content availble there. As someone who is primarly interested in playing LG...I WANT to be able to PvP....and I want to be able to PvP against CE characters as LG is really SUPPOSED to DO....and both I and the CE player can have FUN doing it. The problem is the current system really minimizes my PvP potential. As I'm not really able to initiate engagements against CE characters. CE characters ARE able to initiate engagements against me....but are only likely to do so when convinced the odds are overwhelmingly in thier favor. So where exactly is the FUN in that?
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Goblin Squad Member
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what does being jailed have to do with alignment, specifically good/evil alignment?
The point is you are just bringing the criminal to justice, not killing him. It is an act of mercy, a good one don't you think?
paladins can easily run into problems on law/chaos issues, regardless if it is good or not.
i don't understand why you're bringing up 'actions have consequences'...
at minimum, you have one more person who wants to kill you.
players who want to go around randomly killing EVERYBODY will move to chaotic evil.
players who don't do that, but only seek out evil forces to combat
(murder and necromancy/slavery is the only evil causing actions we know of so far)
...should have the exact same consequence? even though they are pursuing different actions/goals?
How can you (or the computer) distinguish a griefer killing ten evil chars for "fun" from a player commited to RP killing 10 evil chars that were robbing caravans in the last week? Both are killing evil people but the motivations are different and unless you have any idea of how we can tell the computer who is the grieffer, we have a problem here.
well, that sounds very lawful.
so what about chaotic good, for whom formal declarations and legal statuses should be less important to their dedication to good?
What the problem for a chaotic good group to issue war asgainst their enemies? It is not against CG alignment to make your enemies to know that you are at war with them.
The point is you are just bringing the criminal to justice, not killing him. It is an act of mercy, a good one don't you think?
i don't expect CG characters to subsume their fight against evil to a beaurocratic, legalistic justice system.
having chaotic repurcussions for this type of thing makes more than alot of sense.saying that there is no way to proactively pursue evil in a good way without following the law is blurring the alignments.
How can you (or the computer) distinguish a griefer killing ten evil chars for "fun" from a player commited to RP killing 10 evil chars that were robbing caravans in the last week? Both are killing evil people but the motivations are different and unless you have any idea of how we can tell the computer who is the grieffer, we have a problem here.
off the top of my head... imagine if attacker flags never disappear, or have a very very long duration.
but there is little difference between that and just saying attacking evil people doesn't cause evil alignment shift.to have an evil alignment means you did the things that have evil alignment repurcussions.
why does it matter if you did that 1 minute ago vs. 1 week ago?
What the problem for a chaotic good group to issue war asgainst their enemies? It is not against CG alignment to make your enemies that you are at war with them.
sure, they could do that... but then they are acting exactly as LG types would act, right?
so where is the case where CG types can proactively pursue a CG fight against Evil in a way that LG types would not due because it's not lawful?|
Goblin Squad Member
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The point is you are just bringing the criminal to justice, not killing him. It is an act of mercy, a good one don't you think?i don't expect CG characters to subsume their fight against evil to a beaurocratic, legalistic justice system.
having chaotic repurcussions for this type of thing makes more than alot of sense.
saying that there is no way to proactively pursue evil in a good way without following the law is blurring the alignments.
[sarchasm mode on] Congratulations, you just convinced me that the death squads who kill criminals here in my country (what is obvioulsy against the law) are CG organizations... [sarchasm mode off]
Kiling someone when there are other ways to deal with him is INVARIABLY an evil act.
so declaring war and doing things legally means violence is good,
but CG who don't go along with the Law must only use nonviolence?
(it's been mooted that there is some non-death outcome of winning battle that could be more good compatable, that would go towards addressing this concern)
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you issue a war against every evil group around your settlement you can still keep you charted company concept IMO. Just do it through war.Wow. Not sure what to say. There goes my whole chartered company's concept.I think this is likely true but certainly not absolute.
-A paladin will mainly be a pve content player. As it is hard to do pvp and stay within the alignment requirements.
I dunno. He just said that likely paladins will be mainly pve content players, and didn't qualify it. Be very interested to hear Ryan expand on this.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I dunno. He just said that likely paladins will be mainly pve content players, and didn't qualify it. Be very interested to hear Ryan expand on this.If you issue a war against every evil group around your settlement you can still keep you charted company concept IMO. Just do it through war.Wow. Not sure what to say. There goes my whole chartered company's concept.I think this is likely true but certainly not absolute.
-A paladin will mainly be a pve content player. As it is hard to do pvp and stay within the alignment requirements.
Well he did say that, if ignored, there will be so much CE content in the way of NPC monsters etc building up it will become a huge problem. The impression I had was that Paladin types are going to be kept relatively busy just "mowing the grass" :D
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Goblin Squad Member
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...As someone who is primarly interested in playing LG...I WANT to be able to PvP....and I want to be able to PvP against CE characters as LG is really SUPPOSED to DO....and both I and the CE player can have FUN doing it. The problem is the current system really minimizes my PvP potential. As I'm not really able to initiate engagements against CE characters. CE characters ARE able to initiate...
Okay then it looks like IF the game is built using the current description as the model THEN you will be well advised to re-evaluate what you want your role to be.
It isn't by any means set in stone yet what the end result will be, but if the environment is not going to let you gank evil aligned players with impunity then you will need to evaluate whether your alignment will have to change, or else the way you choose to express you alignment will have to change.
Different games have different rules.
If it were me with your set of 'wants' I would probably try LG Fighter rather than Paladin because I don't want to lose my powers if actions I must dutifully perform may occasionally require that I am temporarily forced into CG or LN.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Violence is never good. This is a direct statement from Pathfinder description of good alignment.
Just because you take a small evil hit for killing someone who is evil doesn't stop you from doing it. All it does is make it so if you are always killing evil people without doing anything else then you eventually shift to CN and then maybe eventually CE.
I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on you get evil alignment for killing someone? It's not saying you are evil it's saying you commited an evil act, if you keep killing people you become more evil.
Without something like this, what is going to stop all the griefers simply picking LG and simply griefing all the evil players who are trying to provide meaningful content for the good players?
My main is going to likely be LN, but I plan to also have a LE or NE character I play just as much for the sole intent to be opposition and make some meaningful RP for all of the (large amount) of good companies/players out there. It's not going to be very fulfilling being a meaningful evil player (I'm not even talking about PvP) if anytime I go anywhere I get griefed with no real consequences to the LG griefers who run around PKing evil people.
and it's also been stated the PvP and player-driven content is the by-far primary focus of the game.
i don't know how to reconcile those, unless certain alignments will be pushed to the marginal/less interesting sides of the game.
but with lisa's comment here, and the amount of time until the game is actually created,
i feel like there is alot of scope for adjusting this...
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Goblinworks Lead Game Designer
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Hey guys,
I haven't read this whole thread, but Stephen, Ryan, and Lisa keep me updated as to the highlights. Trying to follow this whole conversation would mean I don't get any work done.
A few points I wanted to clarify:
*Next week we'll have a new blog post about long term alignment-oriented PvP flags players can set on themselves that let players better be assassins, champions of good, etc, but the price is being bigger PvP targets. Basically if you want to be a Champion, an Outlaw, an Assassin, etc you can flag yourself as one, announcing your intentions but giving yourself some bonuses to your chosen role and opening up your PvP options.
*Settlement alignment will determine what structures can be built and what those structures can accomplish, but this does not necessarily denote a power differential. For example any settlements of any alignment can build a wizard tower for training, but only evil towns will be able to get Necromancy training in their wizard tower. Meanwhile only Lawful Good towns will have Paladin training facilities, and only Lawful settlements can have Monk training facilities, but in turn cannot have Barbarian training facilities. Also a Chaotic settlement can't have a Hellknight outpost, nor an Evil settlement have a temple of Iomedae, but a good settlement can't have a temple of Lamashtu. These options aren't necessarily better than the other, but they are different.
*Reputation on the other hand have a major power effect on settlements and what they can build. Low Reputation will mean your town is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, not the sort of thing that attracts high end trainers, scholars, merchants, etc. Reputation is generally lowered by more grief oriented PvP, which also often will trend a PC towards CE, so if a settlement has a low Reputation it will most likely also be CE. This is not necessarily true, but likely. If you have a town full of CE people who are bloodthirsty barbarians who don't do a lot of griefing but instead are declaring war all the time, they can totally have a high Reputation, max level Barbarian trainer, etc (but not a Monk trainer since they are Chaotic, a only CN/NE/NE temples, and inefficient upkeep costs). One of the reasons for settlement Reputation is to discourage pointless griefing on a social level; if someone from your town is out ganking new players and tanking his Reputation that affects the whole town's Reputation and you don't want him to do that.
*Settlements cost money to upkeep; if they run out buildings begin shutting down and are eventually destroyed if the money is not paid. Settlement's can levy taxes on various interactions such as posting goods on the auction house, training costs, etc. The less lawful a settlement is, the more of these taxes it loses to graft and disorganization. So a Chaotic settlement will require more work to keep it funded while a Lawful settlement will be easier to keep funded.
*For settlements to really prosper and grow, they have to be open to PvP. You can build a LG settlement of PvE and crafting players that keeps its PvP availability small, but it won't be a very impressive settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The way some people want the alignment mechanism to be is just good players having a free-pass to kill evil ones.
So if I was a griefer I would just do a good aligned char and start to kill EVERY player I met that is evil, over, and over, and over and over as I would get no alignment shif and no flag.
/It won't be a long way to evil be the oppressed side, so evil players would face two logical choices: quit the game or move to a good or neutral aligned char to be safe.
You cannot give any alignment a free-pass to kill anybody of an opposite alignment without consequences, or people will just abuse your system, period.
NO ONE is talking about no consequences. I've specificaly talked about divorcing the ANTI-GRIEFER mechanics from the Alignment Mechanics.
The game needs ANTI-GRIEFER mechanics to influence PLAYER behavior so that one PLAYER doesn't ruin the experience for another, regardless of Alignments. I'm on board with that. Death Curses and bounties and perhaps some other penalties seem reasonable.
The game however should also encorporate an ALIGNMENT system that is FUN. Achieves reasonably intuitive results and allows each alignment to fully participate in the game and be played the way players will typicaly EXPECT them to be played. It should allow players to reflect what they reasonably believe thier characters cosmologiocal outlook is or harm the players identification with thier character or how that character is RP'd. It shouldn't be a STICK to beat players over the head with our ruin thier fun. It should try to resemble what most players expectations are of High Fantasy are. The current Alignment system, IMO, FAILS on those accounts....and it's mostly, imo, by linking it with the Anti-Griefer mechanics that is causing it to fail.
It's not Evil for Good to go seek out and fight Evil...whether that Evil is a Drow or an Evil Elven Sorceror. That's kind of page 1 of the Good playbook. More importantly its not FUN for Good not to be able to fight Evil....Nor is it FUN for Evil not to be able to fight Good OR be gimped in terms of training simply because it's Evil.
This game is still supposed to be about FUN right?
I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on you get evil alignment for killing someone?
I'm hung up on I don't see any proactive way for CG to fight evil, that isn't a way that LG would also use. I don't care what that way is, but I haven't seen one communicated yet from GW.
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Goblin Squad Member
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*Settlement alignment will determine what structures can be built and what those structures can accomplish, but this does not necessarily denote a power differential. For example any settlements of any alignment can build a wizard tower for training, but only evil towns will be able to get Necromancy training in their wizard tower. Meanwhile only Lawful Good towns will have Paladin training facilities, and only Lawful settlements can have Monk training facilities, but in turn cannot have Barbarian training facilities. Also a Chaotic settlement can't have a Hellknight outpost, nor an Evil settlement have a temple of Iomedae, but a good settlement can't have a temple of Lamashtu. These options aren't necessarily better than the other, but they are different.
Thanks Lee.
Where does that leave Neutral organisations ???
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on you get evil alignment for killing someone?I'm hung up on I don't see any proactive way for CG to fight evil, that isn't a way that LG would also use. I don't care what that way is, but I haven't seen one communicated yet from GW.
Banditry against evil characters/groups.
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Goblin Squad Member
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so declaring war and doing things legally means violence is good,
but CG who don't go along with the Law must only use nonviolence?
(it's been mooted that there is some non-death outcome of winning battle that could be more good compatable, that would go towards addressing this concern)
Are we speaking of viable game mechanics or discussing morality of actions? Bear in mind it is impossible for the DEVs to make a perfect mechanism that perfectly match real life evil x good fight.
If you allow good people to openly kill any evil char w/o severe consequences it will lead to abuse. A simple attacker flag isn't really a big consequence, it is transitory.
On the other hand, the war mechanism allows good organizantions to kill evildoers w/o incur in so much risk of abuse. It is just game mechanics, not a discussion about morality of war. The final result will be the same: You can go out and hunt down those vilans at will, they are flagged as war enemies!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hey guys,
*Settlements cost money to upkeep; if they run out buildings begin shutting down and are eventually destroyed if the money is not paid. Settlement's can levy taxes on various interactions such as posting goods on the auction house, training costs, etc. The less lawful a settlement is, the more of these taxes it loses to graft and disorganization. So a Chaotic settlement will require more work to keep it funded while a Lawful settlement will be easier to keep funded.
Though the chaotic evil can presumably offset this by taking on more profitable banditry and pirate activities.
but there is little difference between that and just saying attacking evil people doesn't cause evil alignment shift.
Attacking an evil player does not cause an evil alignment shift. It causes a chaotic alignment shift. It's killing them that causes an evil alignment shift.
It strikes me that this argument is the same as the Necromancer summoning undead argument. Many we're trying to rationalize that the act of summoning undead was not an evil act. But Pathfinder judges it an evil act. I don't know if the argument was ever settled.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The point is you are just bringing the criminal to justice, not killing him. It is an act of mercy, a good one don't you think?i don't expect CG characters to subsume their fight against evil to a beaurocratic, legalistic justice system.
having chaotic repurcussions for this type of thing makes more than alot of sense.
saying that there is no way to proactively pursue evil in a good way without following the law is blurring the alignments.[sarchasm mode on] Congratulations, you just convinced me that the death squads who kill criminals here in my country (what is obvioulsy against the law) are CG organizations... [sarchasm mode off]
Kiling someone when there are other ways to deal with him is INVARIABLY an evil act.
You are mixing Real World (a thousand shades of grey) with Classical High Fantasy.
In Classical High Fantasy there USUALY IS no other way to deal with EVIL then DESTROYING it. You, MAYBE, under VERY RARE circumstances be able to imprison it or drive it away...but that just risks it coming back in future to do more harm to the World ( ...Hi Sauron...).
Again that's kind of the core of the narrative of Classical High Fantasy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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However in this case, the mechanics ARE punishing the LG for trying to play LG and do the things LG logicaly would and should do and minimizing the content availble to them. Because LG players don't WANT to be CE. Remember this is primarly a PvP focused game. GW was pretty explicit about that in the early blogs. Frankly if I only wanted to do PVE, there are games with much content availble there. As someone who is primarly interested in playing LG...I WANT to be able to PvP....and I want to be able to PvP against CE characters as LG is really SUPPOSED to DO....and both I and the CE player can have FUN doing it. The problem is the current system really minimizes my PvP potential. As I'm not really able to initiate engagements against CE characters. CE characters ARE able to initiate...
I get that that is one interpretation, and if that is the case we definitely need to tweak things. Hopefully the next blog can address this situation.
great stuff
Awesome to hear, my question would be about these "Alignment-oriented PvP flags, given the stated importance of PvP for settlements to grow/prosper, would a higher proportion of citizens opting to choose these PvP flags give some advantage to the city, possibly in the areas of efficiency that you mention?
For the case of CE settlements, they already can freely PvP against everybody, so what purpose would choosing this PvP flag have for them? Would it even be available for them, or only for alignments otherwise more 'limited'/ less comptable with some PVP scearios? Or perhaps for CE people, the CE PVP Champion flag would give certain benefits to them for pursuing PVP vs Good or Lawful, but especially Good AND Lawful characters/groups?I get the impression that neutral settlements may miss out on some of the 'peak' benefits of the alignment extremes, but they would also not have the 'peak' penalties of either end, and they would have more flexibility in having types of buildings, etc, albeit perhaps not the 'highest level/rank' of those types...???
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Wow. Not sure what to say. There goes my whole chartered company's concept.I think this is likely true but certainly not absolute.
-A paladin will mainly be a pve content player. As it is hard to do pvp and stay within the alignment requirements.
You could easily assemble a group of lawful good characters that spend their lives chasing down evil PCs and forcefully deterring them from returning to whatever area they infest. You might find that your PCs drift, over time, away from Lawful Good - although if you pick your fights well, the drift may be very, very slow, and since there will be some system for shifting alignment towards good and law, you may have to spend time doing whatever that system demands to atone for whatever minor evil or chaos you've engaged in.
But if you are one of those people who wants to have an unstained, unblemished record of never, ever, ever doing anything that moves your alignment away from good or law, you probably won't be able to pursue a career as a character killer.
RyanD
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Goblin Squad Member
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It strikes me that this argument is the same as the Necromancer summoning undead argument. Many we're trying to rationalize that the act of summoning undead was not an evil act. But Pathfinder judges it an evil act. I don't know if the argument was ever settled.
but there is little difference between that and just saying attacking evil people doesn't cause evil alignment shift.
There seems some DM variance in PF as to whether channeling negative energy, basically casting ANY spell at all with the evil descriptor (inflict wounds etc) is an evil act.
Personally, if playing a Paladin i would not be comfortable with any negative energy spells even if they came from using an item like a cloak.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really not a rules-lawyer type person. I would appreciate/hope someone who that sees a major fault with the latest info (e.g. Grumpy, Quandry, Andius, etc) could offer up a succinct version of the issue (s) and a solution (s). I know I would be thankful. :)
There is now a lot of noise/snipping in this thread and it is starting to become difficult to follow the arguments.
Thanks!
The major fault is that it seems to be relegating good to the role of reactionaries and pacifists. This isn't good. There are several of the gods who are both good aligned and who encourage their followers to do battle with the forces of evil. Their portfolios contain words like "war", "justice", "vengeance", "hunting evil", "battle", and "uprisings."
These gods are just as much part of the pantheon as the gods whose profiles include words like "peace" and "redemption." Good aligned players who support these values shouldn't be denied their character concepts simply because some of the developers have a bias toward good also being lawful, and pacifism.
And even if you don't agree that the purpose of paladins is to dish out justice how does one explain away good aligned inquisitors???
Grim and determined, the inquisitor roots out enemies of the faith, using trickery and guile when righteousness and purity is not enough. Although inquisitors are dedicated to a deity, they are above many of the normal rules and conventions of the church. They answer to their deity and their own sense of justice alone, and are willing to take extreme measures to meet their goals.
If dealing out justice to those who you have no social connection with is evil shouldn't that class be locked to good aligned players?
This to me is a CLEAR INDICATION that Pathfinder is a world where good aligned characters seek out and destroy evil. The pro-actively deal out justice whether YOU agree with that morally or not. This should be even MORE the case in a game built around interaction and conflict between players as content. Not less so.
Why would we consider killing evil characters who COME BACK FROM THE DEAD evil when killing NPCs who really die is considered good or at worst neutral?
A character who rides around and does NOTHING BUT wage war on the forces of evil should be GOOD ALIGNED. So it doesn't matter if the hit is -100/100 alignment or -.0000000001/100 alignment.
But beyond the fact this is total crap in terms of roleplay, it's a terrible game mechanic. Every Open World PVP game out there aside from EVE, which just has a huge sector of space where alignment doesn't apply at all, has it set up so that if you cross a certain threshold people can kill you without any penalties. And that threshold usually only takes a few minutes of RPKing to reach.
The reason that they do this is because if you are running around killing random people, the forces of good and justice should be able to deal with you whenever they see you. It's also because there is no take you alive options in most MMOs. There is no way to deal justice short of killing.
When you run around killing people all the time. That is an indication you like PVP. That should make you a target for people who want to fight. It shouldn't make you a target for the duration of a flag that is supposed to wear off before someone can find you in the wild. It should make you a target 100% of the time until you stop killing random people on a frequent basis.
Being an outlaw is a perfectly valid way to play the game. I'm not knocking being an outlaw or saying this game shouldn't allow it. But outlaws live on the run, they don't sit in the middle of the road and thumb their nose at the army when it shows up, unless they have the military strength to do so. If you want to have low reputation, if you want to be chaotic evil, then you should be living in a hideout, or somewhere that like-minded individuals have banded together to dwell.
Good aligned players want to PVP too. We don't want to spend all day babysitting merchant caravans, or a single hex. The idea of good hunting evil is firmly established in the lore so why shouldn't it be in this game too?
As was posted here earlier:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -Edmund Burke
Players who participate in evil acts with any regularity need to be open to attacks without good-evil axis penalty 100% of the time.
Players who participate in chaotic acts with any regularity need to be open to attacks without lawful-chaotic axis penalty 100% of the time.
Players who do things that lower their reputation with any regularity need to be open to attacks without reputation penalty 100% of the time.
Also in addition to this system, you could easily implement non-lethal ways to prevent people from harming others for at least awhile. Maybe you would make it so only the absolute most depraved individuals can be openly attacked and the rest can be combated with a lesser mechanic.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In Classical High Fantasy there USUALY IS no other way to deal with EVIL then DESTROYING it. You, MAYBE, under VERY RARE circumstances be able to imprison it or drive it away...but that just risks it coming back in future to do more harm to the World ( ...Hi Sauron...).
Again that's kind of the core of the narrative of Classical High Fantasy.
I see you have been playing with groups that roleplay very differently that the ones I'm involved with...
I remmember that boring and righteous paladin trying to convince my CN fighter to spare the life of that thief who tried to pick pocket him, and bring him to justice instead...
Edit: just changed the alignment of the fighter to CN
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Goblin Squad Member
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I get the impression that neutral settlements may miss out on some of the 'peak' benefits of the alignment extremes, but they would also not have the 'peak' penalties of either end, and they would have more flexibility in having types of buildings, etc, albeit perhaps not the 'highest level/rank' of those types...???
I really hope there is some balance applied to give neutral settlements an advantage somewhere.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just because you take a small evil hit for killing someone who is evil doesn't stop you from doing it. All it does is make it so if you are always killing evil people without doing anything else then you eventually shift to CN and then maybe eventually CE.
I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on you get evil alignment for killing someone? It's not saying you are evil it's saying you commited an evil act, if you keep killing people you become more evil.
Without something like this, what is going to stop all the griefers simply picking LG and simply griefing all the evil players who are trying to provide meaningful content for the good players?
I think this describes where I am at currently. From what has been described, I'm not sure what stops folks from being LG or CG. But again, there is a lot of missing pieces.
Either way, if there is even a chance that Good cannot be Good, then that definitely needs a serious looking at, same with evil.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Didn't mean to be pointing it at you personally Ludy.I understand you want CE settlements to have equal training facilities with LG settlements. I don't think it will happen and I think it is for good reasons. However there may be something that has not been said.
It is possible if you get that advanced that other opportunities may open up for the veteren CE player that are not dependent on your poor settlement. For example the gates of hell have just opened up fairly near the region we will be inhabiting and it is conceivable that certain 'other' training opportunities could become available to the CEs. I don't know if that is in the cards or not. Just recommending to not limit your horizons.
But currently last word I heard is that there is little reason to play CE unless that is what you enjoy, because you will be the game content for other alignment players.
My worry is even deeper than that what happens when it is found out that being N gives your settlement access to rogue skills and to healing magic skills. Everyone should have access to standard fighter skills anyway. Does this mean that the smart settlements will all be N to take advantage of this. So instead of having a diverse section of settlements we have 100 copies of the optimum build.
I am not saying get rid of the anti griefing mechanisms. In fact I like most of what I have seen. If I start combat with a "bandit" and kill them I should get all flags, death curse, and bounties that the bandit wanted impose. Just make alignment a RP tool instead of something that will effect game play. Give all alignments full access to everything or limit it to reputation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I really hope there is some balance applied to give neutral settlements an advantage somewhere.
I get the impression that neutral settlements may miss out on some of the 'peak' benefits of the alignment extremes, but they would also not have the 'peak' penalties of either end, and they would have more flexibility in having types of buildings, etc, albeit perhaps not the 'highest level/rank' of those types...???
A true neutral settlement should have access to nearly everything. With very few negatives. Healing and death magic can both be cast by a true neutral caster I believe. Rouge skills and even the "law" domain both in same spot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You could easily assemble a group of lawful good characters that spend their lives chasing down evil PCs and forcefully deterring them from returning to whatever area they infest. You might find that your PCs drift, over time, away from Lawful Good - although if you pick your fights well, the drift may be very, very slow, and since there will be some system for shifting alignment towards good and law, you may have to spend time doing whatever that system demands to atone for whatever minor evil or chaos you've engaged in.
But if you are one of those people who wants to have an unstained, unblemished record of never, ever, ever doing anything that moves your alignment away from good or law, you probably won't be able to pursue a career as a character killer.
RyanD
Thanks for the clarification--that's very helpful. Does this include warfare? Will participating in warfare, specifically killing enemy combatants, move my alignment towards evil?
My worry is even deeper than that what happens when it is found out that being N gives your settlement access to rogue skills and to healing magic skills. Everyone should have access to standard fighter skills anyway. Does this mean that the smart settlements will all be N to take advantage of this. So instead of having a diverse section of settlements we have 100 copies of the optimum build.
It seems pretty simple to say Neutral can access both sides of the spectrum in terms of lower level stuff, but they can't access the peak level stuff... or even the lower level stuff they can access is worse than the normal (but better than nothing) and at best they can achieve the normal function of the lower level stuff by a building on-par (cost, etc) with the high level stuff available to the alignment extremes.
Plus, being Neutral, they are that much closer to slipping over the line into an alignment opposed to the other side of things (due to random variance/fluctuation in members' alignments/actions/etc), probably causing some sort of problem of that end of things... But 'the door is left open' for a Netural settlemen to decide to go the other way, abandoning their openness if not dedication to one alignment extreme, to dedicate themselves further to the other (and gain the benefits of that).
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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A true neutral settlement should have access to nearly everything. With very few negatives. Healing and death magic can both be cast by a true neutral caster I believe. Rouge skills and even the "law" domain both in same spot.
Yup that is the way I see it. The hard part for neutral will be actually staying neutral.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really not a rules-lawyer type person. I would appreciate/hope someone who that sees a major fault with the latest info (e.g. Grumpy, Quandry, Andius, etc) could offer up a succinct version of the issue (s) and a solution (s). I know I would be thankful. :)
There is now a lot of noise/snipping in this thread and it is starting to become difficult to follow the arguments.
Thanks!
The major fault is that it seems to be relegating good to the role of reactionaries and pacifists. This isn't good. There are several of the gods who are both good aligned and who encourage their followers to do battle with the forces of evil. Their portfolios contain words like "war", "justice", "vengeance", "hunting evil", "battle", and "uprisings."
These gods are just as much part of the pantheon as the gods whose profiles include words like "peace" and "redemption." Good aligned players who support these values shouldn't be denied their character concepts simply because some of the developers have a bias toward good also being lawful, and pacifism.
And even if you don't agree that the purpose of paladins is to dish out justice how does one explain away good aligned inquisitors???
Grim and determined, the inquisitor roots out enemies of the faith, using trickery and guile when righteousness and purity is not enough. Although inquisitors are dedicated to a deity, they are above many of the normal rules and conventions of the church. They answer to their deity and their own sense of justice alone, and are willing to take extreme measures to meet their goals.If dealing out...
Thank you Andius!! I'm going to ponder.
I hope that settlements can be taken over without totally destroying them, an evil guild taking over a good settlement may end up with many buildings that they can't really use, but some of the basic buildings would still be useful. and unless the evil guild spends the time/money/effort to destroy the good buildings, if the settlement is retaken by a good force, they will be immediately usable by the good guild.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This to me is a CLEAR INDICATION that Pathfinder is a world where good aligned characters seek out and destroy evil. The pro-actively deal out justice whether YOU agree with that morally or not. This should be even MORE the case in a game built around interaction and conflict between players as content. Not less so.
In the Pathfinder world yes, and they will ignore the thousands of evil but petty criminals and wife bashers and pursue relentlessly with extreme prejudice the "big fish" the PFO equivalent of mob bosses and drug cartel bosses.
However in PFO the Game it's highly likely to devolve into players harassing whatever other players they can beat up and running away from the anything else.
You will basically have created the real world equivalent of a third world country where the police harass tourists, bash prostitutes and drug users and meanwhile let the real criminals go free (either becasue they are bribed or afraid of them).
I really hope there is some balance applied to give neutral settlements an advantage somewhere.
I get the impression that neutral settlements may miss out on some of the 'peak' benefits of the alignment extremes, but they would also not have the 'peak' penalties of either end, and they would have more flexibility in having types of buildings, etc, albeit perhaps not the 'highest level/rank' of those types...???
well, that flexibility even if it doesn't reach the 'peaks' IS sort of it's own advantage...
but i there could be neutral-specific benefits as well (even if not as many, since they are getting the low level benefits of each side),i think i mentioned it makes sense to have them for druids for instance...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Violence is never good. This is a direct statement from Pathfinder description of good alignment.
Just because you take a small evil hit for killing someone who is evil doesn't stop you from doing it. All it does is make it so if you are always killing evil people without doing anything else then you eventually shift to CN and then maybe eventually CE.
I'm not sure why everyone is so hung up on you get evil alignment for killing someone? It's not saying you are evil it's saying you commited an evil act, if you keep killing people you become more evil.
Without something like this, what is going to stop all the griefers simply picking LG and simply griefing all the evil players who are trying to provide meaningful content for the good players?
My main is going to likely be LN, but I plan to also have a LE or NE character I play just as much for the sole intent to be opposition and make some meaningful RP for all of the (large amount) of good companies/players out there. It's not going to be very fulfilling being a meaningful evil player (I'm not even talking about PvP) if anytime I go anywhere I get griefed with no real consequences to the LG griefers who run around PKing evil people.
As a counter what is to stop a CE from killing LG whenever they feel like it? I see this as a way to give people playing evil even more cover from the repercussions of their actions.
You want to stop evil good. Just don't attack first and don't kill them. Oh ya CE can attack you at anytime and kill you when they want with no alignment shifts.
If you remove the good vs' evil shifts you still have death curse, bounties, and flags. People are just free to RP their good vs' evil parts out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Andius
Hey guys,
.
A few points I wanted to clarify:
*Next week we'll have a new blog post about long term alignment-oriented PvP flags players can set on themselves that let players better be assassins, champions of good, etc, but the price is being bigger PvP targets. Basically if you want to be a Champion, an Outlaw, an Assassin, etc you can flag yourself as one, announcing your intentions but giving yourself some bonuses to your chosen role and opening up your PvP options.
Sounds like they may have a solution to present us next week, don't you think? A champion flag (if i'm imagining it right) looks like the mechanism people want, to have a way to fight evil proactivelly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Andius
Sounds like they may have a solution to present us next week, don't you think? A champion flag (if i'm imagining it right) looks like the mechanism people want, to have a way to fight evil proactivelly.Hey guys,
.
A few points I wanted to clarify:
*Next week we'll have a new blog post about long term alignment-oriented PvP flags players can set on themselves that let players better be assassins, champions of good, etc, but the price is being bigger PvP targets. Basically if you want to be a Champion, an Outlaw, an Assassin, etc you can flag yourself as one, announcing your intentions but giving yourself some bonuses to your chosen role and opening up your PvP options.
Sounds to me like good will need to flag but the evil or bandit will not need to do a thing. So once again evil would get more cover while good need to take risks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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[These "Evil" groups, by the way, create a ginormous amount of content for everyone else. They're the dynamo that drives the action in the game.]
This helps me understand your prior comments about Chaotic Evil (or just Evil) characters being our content in a context which is more compatible with the idea that killing Evil is still Evil. Thanks.
Wow. Not sure what to say. There goes my whole chartered company's concept.-A paladin will mainly be a pve content player. As it is hard to do pvp and stay within the alignment requirements.I think this is likely true but certainly not absolute.
It's a bit of a pickle. I'm hoping we'll find a saving grace in the Unit Combat system, and declared wars.
*Next week we'll have a new blog post about long term alignment-oriented PvP flags players can set on themselves that let players better be assassins, champions of good, etc, but the price is being bigger PvP targets. Basically if you want to be a Champion, an Outlaw, an Assassin, etc you can flag yourself as one, announcing your intentions but giving yourself some bonuses to your chosen role and opening up your PvP options.
Excellent solution, sir! Very glad to hear it :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find it kind of ironic that some of the people most upset over the flag / alignment system are the same who were so concerned about "Random Player Killing" and now what they are upset about is that if they RPK, they will drift towards CE.
This is the slippery slope that I tried to warn you about. Now what you have is Crime Watch from EvE. Where no one responds to someone under a criminal flag because they don't want to risk the consequences.
The simple solutions are the obvious ones: 1. Hunt down criminals in the open pvp zones. 2. Wait for criminals to be flagged in a settled hex and respond to them accordingly. 3. Take the CE alignment hit and then do enough good to balance it out. 4. Declare war against the company or settlement that is annoying you. 5. Ignore what other PCs are doing unless they do something to you.