Goblin Squad Member
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With all of this talk about Paladins can't do this, Assassins should be able to do that, Bandits looking to do the other thing.... It has me thinking.
When you look at another player character, you will really have no idea what they are capable of. They won't be dressed in a stereotypical D$D way, and you won't presume to know what class they are.
This is a good thing, because it does not pigeon hole us into a mind set that we can't mix this skill with that skill and have a character concept that makes sense. With this freedom, anything can make sense if it works.
Why couldn't you pick a lock while wearing full plate armor? Well, mabe not the gauntlets.. but you get my point.
There are no Paladins in PFO. You may pick a number of skills and claim to be a Paladin, but you're still not a Paladin. Same goes for an Assassin or a Thief.
These names stop being about class, and become a profession. They are not a preset list of skills, and that is all we have, they are just certain skills that make doing the job easier.
Alignment vs. Class System:
In the way many of us think, or used to think, where alignment and class were woven together, certain classes had to be certain alignments.
In this classless system, you do not lose your skills or are stripped of your powers because of an alignment shift. Or at least that is not how it should be.
In PFO a "Paladin" is anyone who claims to be one, and it will be up to others who claim to be "Paladins" if he or she lives up to that that image. He or she could prefer to wear light armor, and use a staff, rather than the stereotypical full plate armor, long sword and shield. Yet, still behave in a manner consistent with what the consensus is to being a Paladin.
An Assassin can be Chaotic Good, and have no stealth abilities or use of poison. He or she is a vigilante killer of the most heinous criminals, and the rest of the day he or she is healing sick children with Cure Light Wounds and Cure Disease spells. Being a caring person of the young, does not strip him or her of their ability to kill the truly wicked, or vice versa.
I'm hopeful that the Devs also embrace this freedom to conceptualizing characters, not in the old typesets they are supposed to be or have, but in what actions they do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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In PFO a "Paladin" is anyone who claims to be one, and it will be up to others who claim to be "Paladins" if he or she lives up to that that image. He or she could prefer to wear light armor, and use a staff, rather than the stereotypical full plate armor, long sword and shield.
An Assassin can be Chaotic Good, and have no stealth abilities or use of poison. He or she is a vigilante killer of the most heinous criminals, and the rest of the day he or she is healing sick children with Cure Light Wounds and Cure Disease spells.
I don't know the lore of Pathfinder, but I was under the impression these are designated by the gods? Is that right?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with you on this Bluddwolf, but I actually would like it to go a step further. Make reputation the anti-griefing mechanism. Leave alignment a RP tool. That way if the LG Paladin wants to go around smiting evil he can stay LG. Now his reputation may drop to the point where he can't even go to his own city.
Make cities go off a reputation scale. Any alignment can have a high reputation and get all the goodies. Now if you are a bunch of ganking LG that only wish to cause people problems your city will likely be crap. A group of CE players that only kill folks during war or that are flagged could still be evil, but have a high reputation. This CE group with high reputation could have all the perks in their settlement and it would rock.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't know the lore of Pathfinder, but I was under the impression these are designated by the gods? Is that right?In PFO a "Paladin" is anyone who claims to be one, and it will be up to others who claim to be "Paladins" if he or she lives up to that that image. He or she could prefer to wear light armor, and use a staff, rather than the stereotypical full plate armor, long sword and shield.
An Assassin can be Chaotic Good, and have no stealth abilities or use of poison. He or she is a vigilante killer of the most heinous criminals, and the rest of the day he or she is healing sick children with Cure Light Wounds and Cure Disease spells.
Maybe not designated, but empowered, yes. Traditionally, the Paladin must maintain the alignment of their god in order to use paladin-specific abilities such 'aura of good'. If they lose their alignment they lose the powers granted to them by the god of that alignment.
Similarly Druids must maintain some form of neutrality, Barbarians must be chaotic, and Monks must maintain some form of Lawfulness.
I think Bluddwolf is playing things fast and loose, just like any dedicated chaotic should.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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If you are playing a classless system with out alignment, you simply are not playing the pathfinder role playing game. There are plenty of excellent games which do take a skill based development pattern Pathfinder just isn't one of them. The class and alignment system are two concepts deeply interwoven into the role playing game.
My apologies, I didn't realize this was a Pathfinder Online game message thread, where the developers have chosen to use to use a skill based form of character. I don't know much about how the paladin class will be expressed in this game. As was mentioned up thread, traditionally, three defining features of the paladin class are the code of ethics, Lawful Good alignment requirement, and the divinely empowered abilities like Lay on of Hands, Smite Evil, Detect evil, Etc. We shall see how the developers decide to put things together.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Elyas
They will use archetypes and some form of guidelines to let you know how to keep linked to your concept char. So, if you wan't to play a barbarian-like char there will be guidelines to help you to pickup skills and other stuff, same for any other classes. So if you don't cross-class you will end with something very similar to the PnP classes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
They way GW has laid it so far is that:
-Alignment is metaphysics, not ethics
-Archetypes will be represented in the game
-Archetype guidance will be available for training
-Archeypes have dedication bonuses
-Some skills, contracts, items, and spells are aligned
So there really are Paladins in PFO. That archetype is meant to be there, the skills to be a paladin are there, there will be some sort of template to be a paladin to guide newbs. Also, playing an archetype pure gives you a dedication bonus. So for a paladin, if you choose to only slot abilities as a paladin, you get a bonus like the proposed bonus to the paladin ability smite evil.
The devs have said we can mix and match from classes--I could train to be a paladin AND take a break for a while and train up some stealth skills from the rogue archetype, and even lose my paladin bonus and have skills from multiple archetypes active. But there is still a paladin--a martial character with divine power, LG, with skills like smite evil, detect evil, etc.
And you can't have a CG assassin, because alignment isn't about ethics. No matter how you cut it, taking out, accepting or executing an assassination is evil ("assassination" as something mechanically different than PVP killing). Necromancy is evil, so casting create undead is evil, and only evil settlements can offer such skill training.
One of the ways PFO is a "Pathfinder" game is because the 11 archetypes are designed into it from the ground up. They are giving us a lot of freedom to play with and match up those archetypes, but they're still there.
This is like the anti-pvp threads, in that what you're suggesting (get rid of archetypes), is clearly at odds with core design assumptions. Hard to imagine you're going to get them to make Pathfinder Online, in partnership with Paizo, by completely removing half of what makes it Pathfinder.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hard to imagine you're going to get them to make Pathfinder Online, in partnership with Paizo, by completely removing half of what makes it Pathfinder.
I agree. It still remains to be seen how much the proposed archetypes resemble Pathfinder classes given the proposed game mechanics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nice summary, that is informative:
The way GW has laid it so far is that:
-Alignment is metaphysics, not ethics
-Archetypes will be represented in the game
-Archetype guidance will be available for training
-Archeypes have dedication bonuses
-Some skills, contracts, items, and spells are aligned -snp-
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think Alignment has a place in Pathfinder and Pathfinder Online – even if Alignment and to poke into the hornets nest, Paladins – have been the reason for countless debates.
What you have to consider, it what kind ob abilities are chained to Alignment.
So lets look at an evil class – the Assassin. Now the only reason this class requires you to be evil, are the requirements, killing someone for not other reason than to enter the class is evil.
Death attack, sneak attack and poison use aren't evil or even chaotic abilities. Ninjas get them, and they can be LG. The other abilities aren't steeped in evil either, they make it easier for characters to kill and keep them dead.
While this applies to the evil Assassin that just killed the LG King, it does apply equally well to the CG freedom fighter that killed a vile tyrant.
In 3.5 WotC addressed this issue in a variety of way. Book of exalted deeds had some kind of exalted assassin (Slayer of Ragathiel (sp?) IIRC), on their website they had a lawful variant of the assassin that kill for his country. IIRC 3.5 had paladins in a variety of flavors including LG, CG, CE and LE.
We will see how Goblinworks will tackle this issue.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ninjas are essentially assassins and to have them LG is just a facepalm moment for me.
Meh, D&D is really messed up these days with ninjas and androids and whatnot...
D&D were just better in the early to mid 80's without this crap, imho.
And thats probably why I lost interest in it all when the 90's began.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reality often confronts expectation with disappointment.
Where we have only myriad skills to choose from, anyone can be whatever they can qualify for and choose.
There is no reason why an LG character could not choose some of the Rogue archetype skills.
Yeah, LG characters sure likes to pick locks and steal treasure.
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Goblin Squad Member
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| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The SEALs or SAS are no more nor less lawful and good for infiltrating an enemy camp. Your disbelief should be directed rather at an overly narrow prediction of what alignment permits.
I sure am glad I didn't have to suffer with an unimaginative DM.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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@Elyas
They will use archetypes and some form of guidelines to let you know how to keep linked to your concept char. So, if you wan't to play a barbarian-like char there will be guidelines to help you to pickup skills and other stuff, same for any other classes. So if you don't cross-class you will end with something very similar to the PnP classes.
Lord Daeron, thank you for informing me about the Archetypes.
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Goblin Squad Member
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While PFO is "Classless" (a bit of a misnomer as you can train skills to achieve merit badges that equate to class levels), leaving out alignment removes this game from any chance of being Pathfinder. Yes, your GM in PFRPG can choose to ignore alignment if he/she wishes, or at least rarely impose an alignment shift, but since there is no true GM running PFO, only the programming, it is IMHO, important to keep as much to PFRPG as the system can, or Paizo might as well revoke the use of their product's name and support. It wouldn't be Pathfinder Online any more, It'd be Generic FRPG Online, and GW would be forced to design their own game world and lore. That's fine if they want to do that, but I don't think many people financed such a game - they financed PFO, and such a change would likely see many pull their backing and request refunds (and possibly see some even go so far as to file complaints with their State's AG [or if outside the US, whatever their countries' equivalent may be] for "bait and switch" on behalf of GW).
I usually like your ideas Bluddwolf, but I am afraid I can't get behind this one. It would cause far too much unrest and anger, and just look at the amount the last Blog caused. If people see Pathfinder Online further slipping from PFRPG, you'd likely going to see a mass exodus of those already upset, and many more besides.
If this were PFRPG, I can see a GM (and have played in campaigns where the GM has) decided to ignore Alignment and its impact in the campaign for sake of ease of play, but like I said, there is no human running this game (yes it will have staffers called GM's, but they aren't running the game), only algorithms so some rule sets need to match PFRPG exactly. I can't see Lisa agreeing to remove such core things as alignment and still agree it is Pathfinder.
As always I could be wrong, but Paizo doesn't strike me as an inconsistent company, and as CEO, Lisa appears to be in the camp of "in order to be Pathfinder, you need to keep as much Pathfinder in the MMO as possible." Already the class system has been altered to a skill-based system that rewards the training with "levels" rather than gaining levels and getting skills. Fine, that makes sense in an MMO. However, removing a major core item that goes all the way back to the original D&D (which PFRPG is a derivative) just moves this MMO too far from the source material.
Goblin Squad Member
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Being able to freely choose skills without any restrictions or guidance is one of those things that sounds like a good idea, but is very clunky in practice. Guiding people through a useful and coherent set of skills while they learn the game is worth its weight in gold.
And classes are perfect for that. To say nothing of the, quite accurate, point made earlier that they need to at least nod to classes or the game won't feel like Pathfinder. They're close to that edge already.
As far as alignment... it'll be interesting to see that implemented in a consistent way. It doesn't mean much in the pen and paper game, because it's easier to make judgement calls, but it could actually be quite interesting with computers backing it up.
Meh, D&D is really messed up these days with ninjas and androids and whatnot...
D&D were just better in the early to mid 80's without this crap, imho.
By 1983, gamers were already taking their kung fu fighters to Wonderland. To say nothing of fighting robots and androids.
Early D&D was a lot more expansive than most of us give it credit for. It's only comparatively recently that everything has been expected to fit in the Tolkien fantasy mold.
Cheers!
Landon
I think that by and large the paths (skill trees) will be alignment neutral. It will be a players actions that determine their alignment rather then an individual skill within their skill set. There will be exceptions, skills like raise dead, apply poison, but it remains to be seen how the Devs flesh the system out.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The SEALs or SAS are no more nor less lawful and good for infiltrating an enemy camp. Your disbelief should be directed rather at an overly narrow prediction of what alignment permits.
I sure am glad I didn't have to suffer with an unimaginative DM.
I understand, that in order to argue about the infiltation argument (which could apply to "honorable" characters, but thats not the same as LG), using examples from the real world seems like a good idea.
Considering the backgrouns and views of vaious members on these boards, it might be a good idea not to use real life examples.|
Goblin Squad Member
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Why does the infiltrator have to be LG?
LG characters does not infiltrate because that is aginst their A-L-I-G-N-M-E-N-T.
Looks like I won the discussion by default.
Please provide a quote from any Pathfinder RPG source, and if possible prove that this situaition is not expected or suggested in any Pathfinder RGP adventure path.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is a quote here in Brazil that says something like:
" Every generalization is stupid"
Not saying anybody here is stupid, but the act of generalizing as saying: everybody is that way, nobody is another way is a flaw. There will always be exceptions. For the governments having LE alignments I can remember an example that most of people will hardly disagree that it is an exception: Dalai Lama was once governor of Tibet, though I doubt someone could support the idea of considering him LE.
So lets keep real life out of discussion. I had myself a bad experience recently for doing so, and believe me it is not a good road to travel through.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why does the infiltrator have to be LG?
LG characters does not infiltrate because that is aginst their A-L-I-G-N-M-E-N-T.
Looks like I won the discussion by default.
He did not write that he had to be LG, he wrote that an infiltrater could be LG. having the skill of lock picking does not make you evil, it makes you able to pick a lock.
A locksmith can pick a lock. I pick the lock to the bathroom, every time my 6 year old locks herself in.
My argument is that skills do not make the alignment, and in PFO, skills don't make a "class" because it is a classless system they are using.
Perhaps you did not accurately read what others have wrote because you were too busy throwing names around and claiming victory in a debate you did not understand.
These names stop being about class, and become a profession. They are not a preset list of skills, and that is all we have, they are just certain skills that make doing the job easier.
In this classless system, you do not lose your skills or are stripped of your powers because of an alignment shift. Or at least that is not how it should be.
In PFO a "Paladin" is anyone who claims to be one, and it will be up to others who claim to be "Paladins" if he or she lives up to that that image. He or she could prefer to wear light armor, and use a staff, rather than the stereotypical full plate armor, long sword and shield. Yet, still behave in a manner consistent with what the consensus is to being a Paladin.
+1 Well said - Trying to get thread back on track. My char is no more or less than the skills I select - the idea imitates RL. This would be ideal. And not unsurmountable.
I think it will be interesting to see how the devs shape this game. After reading the forums for a few months, I get the impression that a lot of people talk about this game as if it is a pen&paper RPG. Personally, I envision it playing much more like EVE. I don't like to think of players in PFO as assuming the role of a class. Even if archetypes are present, the skill system is so much more diverse than the total sum of all classes.
The central drive of this game is player interaction. And the larger part of that interaction will be PvP; random killing, bounties, large scale organized wars between alliances. The combat and other gameplay mechanics will be developed to make those interaction as balanced as possible.
And whether or not you chose to RP as a particular class; there are going to be a lot of MMO players who come to this game that do not. This game appeals to more than just the PF/D&D niche. Anyone who enjoyed MMOs prior to the WoW era is likely looking for something new that is made for them - and this game might be as close as it's going to get. Players who had the most fun playing games like UO, DAoC, or EVE and desperately want a new game to recreate those experiences all over again will likely be attracted to PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yea to tell the truth I'm not real keen on the whole alignment idea.. it's going to get messy and be a large source of complaints IMO. I think it works great in PnP, not so much here. The same way the low total HP would not work in an online game.
Oh but I do like classes, as some way you gain an advantage over other characters in certain skill-sets.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Alignment is, imho, absolutely necessary for the vision that GoWo has for Pathfinder and I endorse this absolutely!
The problem with FFA PvP has always been that you could easily get away with anti-social behavior because you didn't suffer because of it.
Alignment will put a stop on this and this is crucial for the games success!
So you absolutely can murder an innocent and steal his stuff when out in the wilds, but you will be Chaotic Evil if you do this repeatedly and others, even the ones that never suffered at your hands, will see this.
So you have to make a choice, actions hve consequences. Sounds clever to me.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I see things differently. A paladin who strays too far from his ethos looses his powers because they are gifts from his god, who he has forsaken by doing something outside the ethos. But gods forgive. This is the pathfinder paladin as I see it.
It can be fairly easy to say that those that don't wear metal armor know stealth or spells.
I think the alignment system is a fine addition to the classless system that recognizes archetypes. There is no evil paladin. Those are called anti-paladins or fallen paladins and their skills are different not the same.
Oh but I do like classes, as some way you gain an advantage over other characters in certain skill-sets.
But that's the point. If you want to play a pally, then act like a pally, follow pally skill sets, do pally things, and EARN your special pally powers. Some guy who doesn't make an effort to pray, serve his church or cult, for example never earns palladinal abilities. He stays a fighter.
@Aeioun - in PnP yes, but in the system suggested in this thread I could be an evil paladin by doing things in line with want I want to be. Eg: I protect a caravan, give a beggar a silver, defend my Lord, build a shrine to my god, pray with my priest. Clearly paladinal traits. But if the caravan was transporting bodies for a necromancer, I kicked the beggar on the way back, my Lord was Vlad the Impaler, the shrine was to/for Asmodeus, and my priest was a vampire I would be, in action, a paladin. And my God would reward me with paladin abilities for acting in line with His wishes.|
Goblin Squad Member
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...Perhaps you did not accurately read what others have wrote because you were too busy throwing names around and claiming victory in a debate you did not understand.
Isn't it the most telling clue that he thinks of conversation as something to be won by one and lost by the other, instead of shared constructive discovery.
What a challenge life will be going through it like that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Oh but I do like classes, as some way you gain an advantage over other characters in certain skill-sets.But that's the point. If you want to play a pally, then act like a pally, follow pally skill sets, do pally things, and EARN your special pally powers. Some guy who doesn't make an effort to pray, serve his church or cult, for example never earns palladinal abilities. He stays a fighter.
@Aeioun - in PnP yes, but in the system suggested in this thread I could be an evil paladin by doing things in line with want I want to be. Eg: I protect a caravan, give a beggar a silver, defend my Lord, build a shrine to my god, pray with my priest. Clearly paladinal traits. But if the caravan was transporting bodies for a necromancer, I kicked the beggar on the way back, my Lord was Vlad the Impaler, the shrine was to/for Asmodeus, and my priest was a vampire I would be, in action, a paladin. And my God would reward me with paladin abilities for acting in line with His wishes.
Yep, but evil paladin has different skills than a good one. So in a classless system the decision has to be made whether you want to be a good paladin or a bad one because they have different skills. The paladin is a tough nut to crack.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The above goat-rope is a good example of why these "real world" alignment arguments are so pointless.
There argument here shouldn't be about whether or not alignment should be part of the game--it is. Nor is there value in ethical arguments about what "Alignment X" really through RL examples--they're building a fantasy world where alignment is part of the metaphysics: assassination and necromancy are by their nature evil.
The argument we can profitably have is about how alignment as proposed in the game design will affect play. For example, the devs have decided that killing is inherently evil. I'm concerned about how that would affect paladins because I want to play one, but I'm not going to waste time arguing that they shouldn't do that, or about how killing isn't always evil in RL. The traction here is going to about how that is implemented, how it's balanced, conditions for mitigation/recovery, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The main thing that I'm worried in the alignment system is that, it may be subject to players gamming or exploiting it. Lets see an example:
"Player A" is CG but eventually (like once a day or less) he has the habit of killing someone w/o reason or for robbery. But he knows that if he engage in some NPC quest, or donate stuff to a npc orphanage or something like that, he can reset his alignment to the way it was before he random killed or robbed someone. So Player A keeps doing it frequently, Randon kill and quest, robbery and quest, over and over.
By the end of an entire year he got around 100 randon killings,and same number acts of robbery, but still CG. As he doesn't do it more than once a day or even less, and always does the "attonement mechanism(s)" provided by the game, he will never become CN or CE, but behaves like one.
DEVs must create a system that is able to identify this kind of behavior somehow and deals with it accordingly.
And that is just an example I created form the top of my head just now. Many other may exist.
Are the DEVs taking this kind of exploiting behaviour in consideration?
I hope so...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree with you on this Bluddwolf, but I actually would like it to go a step further. Make reputation the anti-griefing mechanism. Leave alignment a RP tool. That way if the LG Paladin wants to go around smiting evil he can stay LG. Now his reputation may drop to the point where he can't even go to his own city.
Make cities go off a reputation scale. Any alignment can have a high reputation and get all the goodies. Now if you are a bunch of ganking LG that only wish to cause people problems your city will likely be crap. A group of CE players that only kill folks during war or that are flagged could still be evil, but have a high reputation. This CE group with high reputation could have all the perks in their settlement and it would rock.
I support this as I think GW is trying to encorporate 2 VASTLY different things within the same system which is the cause of some of the conflict here. They are trying to to create an "Anti-Griefer" system which influences the behavior of one PLAYER toward another PLAYER. That's an entirely OOC concept.... Bob and I are expected to (and SHOULD) act respectfully toward one another even though our characters may be the bitterest of enemies.
They are also trying to create an Alignment system which, in traditional Pathfinder, is SUPPOSED to be an expression of our CHARACTERS outlook and how they stand cosmologicaly with the different Gods and Dieties within the game Universe.
These 2 competeing goals (both of which are important in thier own right) often lead to counter-intuitive and contradictory results when they are conflated together within the same system.... Joe, the LG Paladin gets whacked with an alignment shift toward CE when Joe goes out to agressively confront Bob, the notorious Necromancer, even though Joe's diety demands such action of him and Joe's characters motivations are clearly in line with the outlook of LG characters as described in the source.
Mechanicaly, we DO need to penalize Joe for being overly agressive toward Bob because Bob isn't actualy and Evil scumbag...he just plays a character who happens to be one and we don't want Joe to be overly disruptive of Bob's play.
By the same toke Bob, the notorious necromancer gets whacked mechanicaly for merely chosing to play a CE character because the system equates CE with "Griefer" and wants to mechanicaly dissuade characters from being so...even though Bob is NOT actualy a "Griefer" he still gets whacked with all the penalties they suffer just for wanting to RP a different flavor of character.
This, however, is completely uneccessary. Reputation already exists as a metric and can easly be used to control a Players interaction with other Players in a manner logicaly consistant with GW's goals in that area. Alignment can be reserved for CHARACTERS interaction with other CHARACTERS in a manner logicaly consistant with the source material.