Goblin Squad Member
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How can legitimate kills be separated from illegitimate kills? I think there is no such absolute way. A complex system of intertwining mechanics is needed to discern the line between griefing and playing. The more brightly that line is drawn the more restricted or more meaningless the PVP becomes. The more obscure that line is drawn the more free and meaningful PVP becomes. Why is this so. Because the true line in an MMO between griefing and playing is indiscernible(the devs have stated this also). So the more the mechanics mirror this line that cannot be seen the more efficient these mechanics become.
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.
They could have different skills, but why would they? Suppose they had the same skills. How would that change anything in an alignment free system?
@Mbando "The above goat-rope...". What's a goat rope?
It seems that if we enjoy discussing these things, even conceptualizing and theorizing how things might be different even if they are radical departures from what is known about the game then we should be able to. Mayhap someone says wow, what a great idea and in 10 years they put out a concept found here using voxels for total environmental control and 3D realism, and take RPGMMO's to even greater heights.
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.
You are right, it might be a more profitable arguement is about how game design may affect play. But I feel like you just censured people for discussing ideas. This thread was not about how current game design will affect play, but rather why a classless system is better. A better contribution from you might have been to show why a casteless, err classless, system is bad.
Sorry, not trying to flame or be personal. Something you said just got my goat. :P
Lucky you. You have chosen a class that has no counterpart to the alignment. (All others do) I would like to have been your evil counterpart, but I can't, so I whine a bit about it on the boards hoping someone will notice. (Shameless plug!)
@GrumpyMel - TY nicely said.
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Goblin Squad Member
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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.You are right, it might be a more profitable arguement is about how game design may affect play. But I feel like you just censured people for discussing ideas. This thread was not about how current game design will affect play, but rather why a classless system is better. A better contribution from you might have been to show why a casteless, err classless, system is bad.
Sorry, not trying to flame or be personal. Something you said just got my goat. :P
I'm not censuring you for talking about ideas, I'm pointing out that these particular ideas aren't very good, given the context. You can do anything you want to do--I'm not going to hunt you down and try and stop you or anything. The OP is specifically an appeal to the Dev team to make design changes that don't have a snowball's chance in hell.
Bluud has every right to make suggestions that are diametrically opposed to core game design goals. Other people have every right to spiral into arguments about the alignment of Navy SEALS. I have every right to point out how useful those moves are.
@Nihimon: Yes--I've heard it from Marines and SEABEES.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel: I'm not in the "know" on Alignment so ignore my tangent as you see fit. I see what you are saying about conflating OOC and IC concepts; albeit it's a subtle distinction with a huge difference. But I think it's inevitable that some form of social classification/ demarcation system is used. Is the alignment + reputation combination the best use for alignment? If alignment is purely RP utility how prevalent will it be used as such? It seems possible if it's used in conjunction with social construction, it's prevalence will be wider, but less "pure" RP but if it's not, will not be relegated to the side-lines?
Unfortunately if PFO as with any MMORPG is open access to people who do not agree to RP, on such a huge scale, how does RP become meaningfully incorporated/multiplied?
So here's my perspective on why I think the alignment system SHOULD become incorporated into the social dimension with some hard and fast rules. I look at how PFO simulates player interaction might be in RL human models. If we take a convenient 3-way axis:
1) Power
2) Money
3) Social
(self-explanatory)
(influence, following) eg a religious leader or other moral, ritual figurehead, politician (eg titles, connections), celebrity, intellectual heavy-weight etc.
If we take 1) eg in game, zerg numbers who can then seize all the in-game assets and wealth 2) there's a big problem there.
By adding 3) in some form we are able to fraction that power up and further if ""abusing power"" (this is artificially selected setting by devs) 1) leads to reduction in 3) and therefore 2). If 3) is high-positive there might naturally be a more even distribution of wealth between players from such an organisation - which is a good driver again for activity in 2).
I think as in RL with eg bankers/lobbyists having politicians in their pockets there is going to be conflation/overlap between all these.
In virtual worlds some artificial settings are necessary, to promote 3) is clear from the genre (namely the crudest form is splitting pve/pvp). How that is done, I think there is inevitably some conflation whichever system is used for the social dimension eg Alignment.
As to HOW: good-evil, law-chaos, reputation split the job up. Not exactly sure how those all inter-relate atm. That's my conception of why it fits.
Some further ramblings (my literacy seems to have taken leave atm, sorry).
You could say in this vision for eg a "Paladin" is the ultimate carebear (gets his kicks from helping others AND is equipped to do just that. Or a "Necromancer" justified raising the dead as cheaper than slave labour, therefore the means justifies the ends.
In terms of the player character: Does reputation tell:
1. How reliable they are: Either to you or others
Whereas Alignment might be more along the lines of:
1. Moral identity -> reflected into the character
2. Who they collaborate or conflict with
3. How likely they are to collaborate or conflict with you.
4. Forced partitions
-
I guess it's difficult to arbitrate between IC and OOC while 1. and 4. may clash? Perhaps the only telling way is by who you spend your time playing the game alongside?
@Nihimon - Thanks for the clarification.
@Mbando - Aye, you do. Personally, I find thinking about an alternative way of handling RPG games very intrigueing, while accepting the reality of how PFO plans to handle things. I saw the post as an opportunity to discuss what an alternative system might look like, not that it had any chance of changing the devs minds, or even should change the devs minds. I saw an opportunity to try and teach others about a possible alternative way of considering things and you derailed that discussion and completely invalidated what I was trying to accomplish thru meaningful dialogue.
Ahh, finally found why my goat got roped. Anyways, nuff said. Peace.
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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...
This is one of the reasons I want alignment completely removed from the anti-griefing mechanisms. Make it alignment for RP only but reputation the anti-griefing mechanism.
1. Your settlement upgrade costs and availability is tied to reputation. If you are a bunch of ganking jerks thats fine but you will not have access to things or be able to upgrade as far. Doesn't matter if you are LG or not.
2. Your alignment doesn't hide what type of player you are like being good or evil could. I am sure there will be some LE characters with very reputable players, just as there will be LG players that game the system.
3. Make gaining reputation tied to some serious time sinks. So if you let it dip to far you need to spend hours and hours repairing your sec-status err.. reputation. You can be a pirate err bandit but there is a price to pay. You have the ability to start combat/kill/steal from folks but your settlements will not be better than people who refrain from this. Then again you get PvP on demand and relatively easy loots from fat merchants.
Doing this allows people to RP their "vengeful god" paladin and still have a crappy reputation meaning their settlements and access to towns will be limited. Why would an upstanding settlement want the unforgiving judgment of an inquisition or the murder and stealing of a drug cartel?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am very much in favor of sticking closely to the original Pathfinder alignment system.
The "dumbing down" of alignments and complete removal of alignments that the target market(12 year olds and WoW/SWG/etc players) would struggle with was one of the many factors that killed 4th edition. (I will not go into a detailed discussion of the failure of 4th edition here it is way off topic).
The issue for the 4th ed devs seemed to be the Gygax alignments required an open minded approach to thinking about law and morality. Alignments are something old school D&D players love arguing about ad-infinitum, but many younger players, especially from the FPS world, have a very limitied simplistic view.
What does not help is the Hollywood tendency to present the world in a very black and white simplistic Manicean almost Gnostic worldview with the cosmos being a massive battle between good and evil with the heroes champions of good and the villian of the particular movie all that is evil. The Matrix trilogy tried to play on this with the first movie presenting the traditional Hollywood good/bad view and the following two movies undermining that. Needless to say many people just decided the first movie was awesome and the other two were rubbish as a result :D
Therefore I see at least two reasons the game should maintain the alignment system as an integral part of game mechanics:
1. From a pure game standpoint- it makes a better and more interesting game.
2. From a meta-game/social standpoint you are picking up kudos by forcing people to at least think about their moral/social views and perspective and reflect on it. They may well decide to continue believing what they always have but at least they have relected on things.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I went back and read my OP, based on many of the thoughtful posts here, just to ensure that I still have the same idea.
What I feel I was advocating was that our actions (ie. Reputation) should be a better judge of our adherence to being a Paladin or an Assassin, than a preset class / alignment structure.
No matter how much many want to wish for it, PFO will not have classes. I add to this my belief that being a Paladin or an Assassin is more about actions than they are about traditional skills or alignment.
Just taking what we know already, every attack we make will move us closer towards chaos. So just how is a traditional Paladin supposed to remain Lawful Good?
Then we have the EvE style skill system, where eventually every player could have every skill, over years of playing. So at some point, couldn't we all claim to have been a Paladin, or we would at very least had all of the same skills.
Perhaps I am just over thinking this, or I'm being too cynical in thinking that players could never maintain Lawful Good or Lawful Evil without some game mechanic artificially creating it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just taking what we know already, every attack we make will move us closer towards chaos. So just how is a traditional Paladin supposed to remain Lawful Good?
That's a real issue. I can see them balancing the alignment effects of killing, and "good" moves to restore alignment, so that Paladins are effectively restricted to PVE/Warfare (Ryan already said as much). And I can imagine a different balance where paladins can engage in PvP, but do so very judiciously.
Likely going to take a lot of testing and feedback.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am very much in favor of sticking closely to the original Pathfinder alignment system.
Therefore I see at least two reasons the game should maintain the alignment system as an integral part of game mechanics:
1. From a pure game standpoint- it makes a better and more interesting game.
2. From a meta-game/social standpoint you are picking up kudos by forcing people to at least think about their moral/social views and perspective and reflect on it. They may well decide to continue believing what they always have but at least they have relected on things.
Another reason, it is part of the original core design that made me excited enough to invest significantly. =)
It seems to be an issue of maintaining an alignment. Whether its for a settlement, a role, like paladin or monk. We just don't have enough info on how we will be able to maintain our alignment, or how difficult it'll be.
Maybe some info will be in the Wed. Blog.
I went back and read my OP, based on many of the thoughtful posts here, just to ensure that I still have the same idea.
What I feel I was advocating was that our actions (ie. Reputation) should be a better judge of our adherence to being a Paladin or an Assassin, than a preset class / alignment structure.
No matter how much many want to wish for it, PFO will not have classes. I add to this my belief that being a Paladin or an Assassin is more about actions than they are about traditional skills or alignment.
Just taking what we know already, every attack we make will move us closer towards chaos. So just how is a traditional Paladin supposed to remain Lawful Good?
Then we have the EvE style skill system, where eventually every player could have every skill, over years of playing. So at some point, couldn't we all claim to have been a Paladin, or we would at very least had all of the same skills.
Perhaps I am just over thinking this, or I'm being too cynical in thinking that players could never maintain Lawful Good or Lawful Evil without some game mechanic artificially creating it.
I agree.
Alignment may work for a table-top rpg controlled by a DM, but it will not work for an MMO. What is most important for an MMO will be rules set by the Devs, and player reputation. If the Devs can make rules for every possible alignment, then you might see some approximation of player alignment. This is beyond the scope of PFO in my opinion, as player alignment will shift faster than they can make rules for it.
Did I make the goat rope longer?
...player reputation...
Did I make the goat rope longer?
No, I think you shortened it. Wed is going to look like KS all over again, constantly refreshing the page.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No matter how much many want to wish for it, PFO will not have classes. I add to this my belief that being a Paladin or an Assassin is more about actions than they are about traditional skills or alignment.
Just because the classes aren't permanent, irrevocable, or even mutually exclusive doesn't mean they don't exist in the game. The "dedication bonus" that the developers have outlined pretty much define the classes by enumerating the skills that are valid for enabling a given class's dedication bonus.
Perhaps I am just over thinking this, or I'm being too cynical in thinking that players could never maintain Lawful Good or Lawful Evil without some game mechanic artificially creating it.
Yes, I think you're being too cynical, or perhaps because you think that you personally couldn't do it you assume others could not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The difficulty of a roleplay only enrolment system is:
1. Many people do not really understand even the morality/alignments of the real world. Democracies are neutral for example and modern corporations float between true neutral and lawful evil. The closest to lawful good is likely to be a hypothetical benign dictatorship under some form of religious welfare/socialism. Another significant difference to the real world is there is no doctrine of "one god" or "one true religion" no equivalent of the real world muslim/christian/judaic belief in one omnipotent god. All the gods are real.
2. Roleplayed alignments will be very much open to abuse providing excuses to behave a certain way rather than the other way around with the alignment driving the character decisions.
Personally I would like to see the game enforce enrolments in an even stronger way than proposed by the devs. I would like to see certain actions impossible for certain alignments and possibly even give them an alignment hit for even trying.
In the D&D world your alignment actually makes you behave a certain way, you never have true freewill.
Hence the super lawful cannot tresspass even if they want to, but they are welcome to try and they will get a chaotic alignment hit simply for attempting too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am very much in favor of sticking closely to the original Pathfinder alignment system.
The "dumbing down" of alignments and complete removal of alignments that the target market(12 year olds and WoW/SWG/etc players) would struggle with was one of the many factors that killed 4th edition. (I will not go into a detailed discussion of the failure of 4th edition here it is way off topic).
The issue for the 4th ed devs seemed to be the Gygax alignments required an open minded approach to thinking about law and morality. Alignments are something old school D&D players love arguing about ad-infinitum, but many younger players, especially from the FPS world, have a very limitied simplistic view.
That is kind of insulting to a lot of players, and while I am an “old school D&D” player arguing about alignments is one of the most annoying things about this hobby.
What does not help is the Hollywood tendency to present the world in a very black and white simplistic Manicean almost Gnostic worldview with the cosmos being a massive battle between good and evil with the heroes champions of good and the villian of the particular movie all that is evil. The Matrix trilogy tried to play on this with the first movie presenting the traditional Hollywood good/bad view and the following two movies undermining that. Needless to say many people just decided the first movie was awesome and the other two were rubbish as a result :D
Yeah, that must be the reason all those people disliked the other Matrix movies.... not the huge mass of plot holes.
The difficulty of a roleplay only enrolment system is:
1. Many people do not really understand even the morality/alignments of the real world. Democracies are neutral for example and modern corporations float between true neutral and lawful evil. The closest to lawful good is likely to be a hypothetical benign dictatorship under some form of religious welfare/socialism. Another significant difference to the real world is there is no doctrine of "one god" or "one true religion" no equivalent of the real world muslim/christian/judaic belief in one omnipotent god. All the gods are real.
Arguing about the alignments and the real word is a very bad idea and very useful if you want to insult people. Since this is a forum about a completely fictional world, I would suggest not to use those arguments.
Personally I would like to see the game enforce enrolments in an even stronger way than proposed by the devs. I would like to see certain actions impossible for certain alignments and possibly even give them an alignment hit for even trying.
In the D&D world your alignment actually makes you behave a certain way, you never have true freewill.
Hence the super lawful cannot tresspass even if they want to, but they are welcome to try and they will get a chaotic alignment hit simply for attempting too.
Sorry, but that really makes no sense. Characters aren't restricted by their alignment, they are free to chose their actions. Of course those actions could cause their alignment to change over time.
What you suggest would make it impossible for a lawful character to enter another nation to save some kidnapped kids...|
Goblin Squad Member
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Your government is LE and so is every other government on the planet earth.
chaotic says: "government is the real evil"
lawful says: "anarchy is real evil"neutral says: "lack of balance is the real evil"
ok.. what was the topic again?
oh right, freedom to build your character as you like without class and alignment restrictions.
I would say there is freedom, because you are not pigeonholed by choosing a single class and alignment when rolling a new charcater. However the guiding principle seems to be that "choices have consequences".
If you pledge yourself to Iomedae and then go raising the dead, there are consequences. If you join the Hellknights and then become an assassin, there are consequences. If you are a champion of Gorum but govern your settlement by miles and miles of red tape, there are consequences.
I see this as a good thing: you can play your character any way you want, but your choices shape who you become.
BTW restrictions on learning and using abilities are not just alignment restrictions. You may have to live in a settlement with the right buildings, you may have to accomplish certain deeds, you may have to win favor with a specific faction. Again, i see that as enrichening the game - if you want to become a master necromancer, you better help build the kind of settlement where necromancers are respected.
(If your character concept is a lawful good necromancer of Cayden who is emperor of the river kingdoms, then sorry but NO).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe the problem here is that there is a connection between alignment and reputation which we do not complete understand yet, and probably will not understand until we have some in-game experience.
The alignment/reputation system obviously mirrors the actual playstyle of the person playing the game and brands him with an alignment chosen by the player himself. The game compels people to nurture their alignment and in this way hopefully creates meaningful roleplay inside the game.
For example: Bandits. Killing and stealing would make them chaotic evil, but maybe they have to start making deals with the people they rob in order to stay at certain alignment.
This is how it could be, but I'm sure the devs come up with more mechanics to ease the transition.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe the problem here is that there is a connection between alignment and reputation which we do not complete understand yet, and probably will not understand until we have some in-game experience.
Reputation in PFO still a subject that I'm feeling very confused in relation to. I believe most people are too. We will need a lot of future input to feel confortable to understand the conection beteween alignment, reputation and how you behave in gameplay.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I went back and read my OP, based on many of the thoughtful posts here, just to ensure that I still have the same idea.
What I feel I was advocating was that our actions (ie. Reputation) should be a better judge of our adherence to being a Paladin or an Assassin, than a preset class / alignment structure.
No matter how much many want to wish for it, PFO will not have classes. I add to this my belief that being a Paladin or an Assassin is more about actions than they are about traditional skills or alignment.
Just taking what we know already, every attack we make will move us closer towards chaos. So just how is a traditional Paladin supposed to remain Lawful Good?
Then we have the EvE style skill system, where eventually every player could have every skill, over years of playing. So at some point, couldn't we all claim to have been a Paladin, or we would at very least had all of the same skills.
Perhaps I am just over thinking this, or I'm being too cynical in thinking that players could never maintain Lawful Good or Lawful Evil without some game mechanic artificially creating it.
It's food for thought. But where I see the meaning of "Paladin" is less the skills/alignment so much as those are reflecting the behaviour of the player which coincidentally allows that player to specialize (without contradiction) some of those paladin-like skill choices/bonus.
I completely agree: Classless skill-training system should not be unnecessarily fettered. But if Paladin is reflecting behaviour/social standing + skills associated with the behaviour, defensively driving back evil etc then it's probably got it's place in the wider context of a good/lawful settlement and people eg building that allow worship of gods that allow skill-training due to alignment along with the rules and regulations that govern paladin code of conduct?
If, "To hell with defense, assassination would solve all the problems before they even began!" that would change the alignment and I guess you would get mutually exclusive roles assassin =/= paladin for eg, because the social behaviour is incompatable *either in the eyes of the gods or lawful does not tolerate a loose-cannon running around running amok ganking everyone (potentially)* for game logic reasons (exploit).
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Goblin Squad Member
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It seems to be an issue of maintaining an alignment. Whether its for a settlement, a role, like paladin or monk. We just don't have enough info on how we will be able to maintain our alignment, or how difficult it'll be.
Maybe some info will be in the Wed. Blog.
What we have been privy to is alignment -ve change with respect to attacking/killing another player. What this suggests is that the act of combat itself will unless provoked chip into your social ability (outside of wars of large scale mass pvp). Immediately this may not be a problem:
1) Early on, players may have enough room to achieve their goals with little conflict and more collaboration
2) Smaller number of "ganker mentality" players
But as those change, the requirement for conflict eg competition for space/resources/vendettas/disagreements (I don't like your name/you stink you yellow-belly) and so forth, and "wow, pvp is really fun, I'd like to skill up in this and take every opportunity to pvp that I can..." then that's when I see alignment taking hits - willingly.
I think pvp therefore is an alignment sink mostly. But the type of activities that are alignment faucets is something we don't know about yet. But likely take a fair amount of building up in the first place eg x9 good deeds can be undone by just x1 bad deed sort of deal?
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Goblin Squad Member
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As in real life what you are is in great part a result of what you do. So if you decide to learn skills related to nature, combat, tracking etc you will at some pointe be considered a ranger. If you preffer dedicate to praying, study divine magic and divine lore you will be seen as a cleric, if you dedicate your life to fight evil with divine and martial skills and has a lawfull and good behavior, pople will see you as a paladin etc.
So if you decide to follow strictly an archetype pathway it is natural you reffer yourself as the archetype name of that pathway.
I'm real life I'm biologist because I study biology, isn't that the same?
So we can speak of classes in this game but bearing in mind that they are not as restrict as in PnP game.
Basically, in PnP you choose a class and it determines your role, in PFO you will choose a role and that will determine your class. I like PFO way better actually.
The same way, you choose how to behave and it will determine your alignment.
Just because of that I would like to see all people starting as true neutral aligned.
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.
Clearly, you have no class...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just because of that I would like to see all people starting as true neutral aligned.
The only thing regarding this is that the PC's, just like any PC in any PFRPG, are starting their "adventuring" careers, not just newly born, and so they would already have life experiences and upbringing (or lack thereof). Players will, at least those of us who are well versed in PnP RPG's, almost always have a back-story for their characters, and will have an alignment already in mind. Forcing all players to have to work to become a certain alignment, and then have to work even more to keep that alignment, is taking a lot of fun out of the game for the player as they must meta-game just to get to where they want to have started out and still have to meta-game to stay there.
I strongly urge the Devs at GW along with the people at Paizo working with them to keep alignment in the hands of the players as much as possible. Setting certain actions as hits to the player's PC's alignment, if they are very counter to the ethos that that alignment represents is fine, but constant minor ones, or even forcing us all to be a "Starter" alignment simply removes too much fun - the object of any game, from the player experience. When faced with a choice of "Do I player PFO and have to grind my alignment?" or "Do I play game X where alignment doesn't matter?", most players will choose the latter. End result, a very expensive failure as PFO dies from lack of players as people leave or never even try it. Places like MMORPG will note things like how tough it is to play alignments, and that will include any starter" alignment forcing the player to work to get to where they wish to be (and further pushes PFO from PFRPG), and many, many gamers will stay away. That is a poor business model, and I have some experience in this. In 2003 I started a commercial MUD along with a former friend that is still going. My wife owns part of a miniature making company that specializes in Wargame miniatures (I handle the business duties for her, which are minor to be honest, but I still need to know the business end) and I have a background in both Computer Tech (hardware and software) and Business Law. I am not talking out my rump here. I have seen too many games fail because they made playing them too much of a chore. PFO has to be fun, or players won't come. This isn't Field of Dreams - building it won't make players appear, they need to be enticed and then held onto, and the fun factor, if you will, is the only real way to do that. Let players choose their alignments and keep them so long as they don't actively violate the ethos greatly. Instead of an alignment hit for a LG character (only an example) who kills one "evil" PC, make it five PC's as then there is a pattern.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just because of that I would like to see all people starting as true neutral aligned.The only thing regarding this is that the PC's, just like any PC in any PFRPG, are starting their "adventuring" careers, not just newly born, and so they would already have life experiences and upbringing (or lack thereof)...
Yes, you have a point, having a background story people should already have some sort of alignment choice beforehand.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just taking what we know already, every attack we make will move us closer towards chaos. So just how is a traditional Paladin supposed to remain Lawful Good?
That's a real issue. I can see them balancing the alignment effects of killing, and "good" moves to restore alignment, so that Paladins are effectively restricted to PVE/Warfare (Ryan already said as much). And I can imagine a different balance where paladins can engage in PvP, but do so very judiciously.
Likely going to take a lot of testing and feedback.
The way I'm seeing it is that a LG character engages in PvP outside of a state of war by never starting a fight, only by ending them.
I understand your argument that discussions about what is in-game should be disconnected with RL issues. I understand how you are right in that. I also think that it is not possible to divorce the things we say from what we have come to understand from reality, and wish to suggest that your ideal is an impossibility among rational human beings. What you are trying to argue for doing is only removing one layer of the meta: we still understand language by our understanding reality. Fiction, though it is fiction, still must to some degree be believable.
If you can buy into that, then consider the America of my youth, when we had a noble idea of our country that we never ever started a war with another country, we only finished the wars that were thrust on us.
That was a concept of nobility that prevailed in our culture when D&D was created, and it flowed through our culture in our movies and othr forms of fiction. It is still alive in those of us who were nurtured by that culture, and modern diplomatic 'realism' is relatively cynical and less lawful good than it was then.
So if you haven't already inferred my point I should say it outright: Alignment should rule the behavior of a Paladin and the consequence should be that to engage in PvP outside a state of war should require that the paladin must not attack except in self-defense (where self-defense includes defending the weak and innocent). Pre-emptive strikes are not Lawful Good.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just because of that I would like to see all people starting as true neutral aligned.The only thing regarding this is that the PC's, just like any PC in any PFRPG, are starting their "adventuring" careers, not just newly born, and so they would already have life experiences and upbringing (or lack thereof). Players will, at least those of us who are well versed in PnP RPG's, almost always have a back-story for their characters, and will have an alignment already in mind. Forcing all players to have to work to become a certain alignment, and then have to work even more to keep that alignment, is taking a lot of fun out of the game for the player as they must meta-game just to get to where they want to have started out and still have to meta-game to stay there. -snip-
I think it's more likely a jumping off point might be Neutral + (good, neutral, evil). If most players are expected to distribute along the Neutral + "something" spectrum then it makes sense to use this as the baseline. I think it can be modified by players at the start for eg by choosing which starter town you wish to begin at and which NPC Alliances you wish to join with... and possibly a few other trickle of choices along these lines? That's not to say it will/must work like that, but I posit a guess that stacks up with what we already know.
Where Law-Chaos *might* kick in (and some good-evil points) is along the laws of the land and obviously the pvp (opportunistic or honorable)? I therefore imagine if you are very honorable you will lean towards Lawful (& good) and vica-versa if you are disreputable/dispicable start yawing towards the other side.
So already some Guilds have stated they are an alignment, but I think that is probably within error-margins of adjacent alignments, given we do not have full information on what a "best fit" might be and what guilds might "best" find themselves all agreeing on what they want and do not want their members doing (& how much is permissible to do even without impacting their collective settlement's alignment status)?!
What Neutral might be good for, is players who bounce in and out of alignment changes with less impact on the Settlement membership, for extrapolation (which ties in with the anticipation "most players" will hover around Neutral-something or something-Neutral *grins*?
Let players choose their alignments and keep them so long as they don't actively violate the ethos greatly. Instead of an alignment hit for a LG character (only an example) who kills one "evil" PC, make it five PC's as then there is a pattern.
I'm fairly sure that this is how they will handle a situation such as you describe. Oh it may well show an alignment "hit" on the first kill, but the hit won't be so great as to knock you from our current alignment. In several recent threads on alignment people have suggested several numerical ways to gauge alignment, most of those methods result in players needing to repeat behavior before they are effected by the penalties for such behavior.
I really don't think the system will prevent anyone from playing a role as they see it. Some might have to take an extra step or two to maintain their status, but I don't see it as being an overly trying thing to do. We need some more information, especially on how players can maintain their alignment and what actions might give players +law +good shifts. But being as the LG alignment will be the most difficult to maintain, I foresee no trouble for other alignments being able to operate in the manner they wish.
The way I'm seeing it is that a LG character engages in PvP outside of a state of war by never starting a fight, only by ending them.
I understand your argument that discussions about what is in-game should be disconnected with RL issues. I understand how you are right in that. I also think that it is not possible to divorce the things we say from what we have come to understand from reality, and wish to suggest that your ideal is an impossibility among rational human beings. What you are trying to argue for doing is only removing one layer of the meta: we still understand language by our understanding reality. Fiction, though it is fiction, still must to some degree be believable.
If you can buy into that, then consider the America of my youth, when we had a noble idea of our country that we never ever started a war with another country, we only finished the wars that were thrust on us.
That was a concept of nobility that prevailed in our culture when D&D was created, and it flowed through our culture in our movies and othr forms of fiction. It is still alive in those of us who were nurtured by that culture, and modern diplomatic 'realism' is relatively cynical and less lawful good than it was then.
So if you haven't already inferred my point I should say it outright: Alignment should rule the behavior of a Paladin and the consequence should be that to engage in PvP outside a state of war should require that the...
+1. Well posted!
Let players choose their alignments and keep them so long as they don't actively violate the ethos greatly. Instead of an alignment hit for a LG character (only an example) who kills one "evil" PC, make it five PC's as then there is a pattern.
It will be interesting to watch LGs stumble upon an evil or 2 getting their rumps handed to them by another group of LGs with attacker flags and possibly even criminal flags flying. Sanctity of life vs. elimination of all evil vs doing nothing. (Inaction is still an action, the action of choosing not to make a choice)...Up on the horns as it were. What would happen in your point system if they chose sanctity? would they take a super hit for killing LGs?
Uhh, brain hurt..need coffee.|
Goblin Squad Member
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Here is a quote from me from the the thread Screaming for Vengeance about a mechanical way to use reputation instead of choosing an alignment.
You could use reputation as a measurement of lawful vs unlawful as well as good vs evil.
Being a productive and lawful member of a settlement earns you reputation, even if that means being unlawful in another territory. Acting unlawful would earn you negative reputation in that settlement. Hence, you could be a law abiding citizen in settlement X but an outlaw in settlement Y.
Your moral actions are judged by the deities. Some actions are more appropriate to some gods while other gods would disapprove. You would gain reputation, or as I like to call it favor, with the deities who approve of such actions while losing favor with those that disapprove.
I would also suggest that the reputation, or favor, with the deities could also be used as a type of currency. Someone could use some of their favor from Calistria for instance to pay for a Death Curse or use some of their favor with Abadar to decrease the construction time of a building.
This would encourage people to play certain types of behaviors that are congruent with their character's motives. IE if you gained favor with Abadar by doing activities he approves of which would be focused on cities, wealth, merchants, and law then you could in turn use that favor to improve or gain a bonus to something that involved cities, wealth, merchants, and law.
Another example: someone who wanted to focus on assassination might try to gain favor with Norgorber by using actions that involve greed, secrets, poison, and murder and would then gain a temporary bonus or improvement in those types of activities.
Judgement by the core races will be through law. More chaotic societies are going to be less rigid and less severe punishments. Lawful societies will have more laws and more severe punishments.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am very much in favor of sticking closely to the original Pathfinder alignment system.
The "dumbing down" of alignments and complete removal of alignments that the target market(12 year olds and WoW/SWG/etc players) would struggle with was one of the many factors that killed 4th edition. (I will not go into a detailed discussion of the failure of 4th edition here it is way off topic).
The issue for the 4th ed devs seemed to be the Gygax alignments required an open minded approach to thinking about law and morality. Alignments are something old school D&D players love arguing about ad-infinitum, but many younger players, especially from the FPS world, have a very limitied simplistic view.
What does not help is the Hollywood tendency to present the world in a very black and white simplistic Manicean almost Gnostic worldview with the cosmos being a massive battle between good and evil with the heroes champions of good and the villian of the particular movie all that is evil. The Matrix trilogy tried to play on this with the first movie presenting the traditional Hollywood good/bad view and the following two movies undermining that. Needless to say many people just decided the first movie was awesome and the other two were rubbish as a result :D
Therefore I see at least two reasons the game should maintain the alignment system as an integral part of game mechanics:
1. From a pure game standpoint- it makes a better and more interesting game.
2. From a meta-game/social standpoint you are picking up kudos by forcing people to at least think about their moral/social views and perspective and reflect on it. They may well decide to continue believing what they always have but at least they have relected on things.
The problems here are three-fold...
1) Firstly, automated systems are incredibly inept at making the sort of fine-grained, nuanced and articulate moral/social judgements that are neccessary to arrive at even semi-intelligible. In order to do so you must have some indepth understanding of context, motivation and human nature. Computers are incapable of doing so. The end result is that you very often end up with adjucations that are seemingly arbitray, "wrong" and even more cartoonish then the "Hollywood" view you complain about. This is true even for Themepark games where the decisions that the players make and the conditions/context in which they are made are very tightly controled. In a sandbox game where those bets are off, forget about it. Alignment works or rather CAN work in Pathfinder because there is a human arbiter making those adjucations...and they are often the result of a discussion between the player and the arbiter.
2) GW in PFO is really NOT using the Alignment system purely for it's origional purposes which you describe within the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game. They are using it as a mechanism to influence PLAYER behavior toward what would make PFO a PROFFITABLE game for them. The two goals are not consistant with one another. In other words, if an action would logicaly result in an adjucation for a character that a player would consider rewarding but GW wants to dissuade such behavior because it harms PFO's proffitability, the system will make the OPPOSITE adjucation instead so that they can steer players away from activities that harm PFO's goals for a financialy successfull game.
3) All alignment adjucations are influenced by the adjucators personal bias. Not a big deal in PnP Campaigns as they are usualy played by small groups of friends who at least understand, if not often share it's others biases. A GM can at least style his campaign to allow his players to play characters that they IDENTIFY with, find FUN to play and match the BIAS of the campaign. If not, they are quickly going to find themselves with an empty campaign. After all, these activities are supposed to be FUN for the participants involved...not really a judgement of the quality of thier moral viewpoints. As such, there is very often an involved discussion between player and GM to find characters that are both FUN to play for the player and fit into the campaign world. In a commercial RPG, no such conversation takes place and you are playing to a much wider audience. Therefore you've got to accomodate a much broader spectrum of viewpoints then just 4 or 5 close friends....and any adjucations you make have to be very, very intuitive across that broad spectrum. The danger here is that you are, in a somewhat fundemental way, taking away the players identification with and definition of the players own character...without any input from that player. Do so in a manner they are uncomfortable with...they are just going to walk...and rightfully so, because it ceases being FUN for them. For example if in a Campaign...you are consistantly making Thorak Evil....and Thorak's player doesn't identify with Thorak being Evil and doesn't find playing "Evil" fun.... They are likely just to walk away from the Campaign, as why should anyone do something for entertainment that they don't find Fun?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a major problem is that all attacks are considered chaotic. This makes it very difficult for all of us not to eventually become chaotic.
I like the idea that the intent or the context of the attack should be taken into account. Think of it this way:
If you hit your child in anger, that is abuse. If you hit them with love, that is discipline.
Perhaps Paladins can kill with love?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The difficulty of a roleplay only enrolment system is:
1. Many people do not really understand even the morality/alignments of the real world. Democracies are neutral for example and modern corporations float between true neutral and lawful evil. The closest to lawful good is likely to be a hypothetical benign dictatorship under some form of religious welfare/socialism. Another significant difference to the real world is there is no doctrine of "one god" or "one true religion" no equivalent of the real world muslim/christian/judaic belief in one omnipotent god. All the gods are real.
2. Roleplayed alignments will be very much open to abuse providing excuses to behave a certain way rather than the other way around with the alignment driving the character decisions.
Personally I would like to see the game enforce enrolments in an even stronger way than proposed by the devs. I would like to see certain actions impossible for certain alignments and possibly even give them an alignment hit for even trying.
In the D&D world your alignment actually makes you behave a certain way, you never have true freewill.
Hence the super lawful cannot tresspass even if they want to, but they are welcome to try and they will get a chaotic alignment hit simply for attempting too.
1) Many people don't AGREE on a single set of definitions or categorizations. For example, I suspect that you and I would categoricaly disagree on quite a differnt number of categorizations.
2) RP'd alignments would probably be open to LESS abuse then the current system. With RP'd Alignments people don't have ANY REASON to select an Alignment that doesn't fit how they will play thier character. Under the currently proposed system people DO. They want the mechanical benefits of X but they would much rather play Y for flavor purposes. So they will simply GAME the automated system, which is trivialy easy to do, to gain the mechanical benefits they want anyway. Furthermore, they now have the opportunity to grief other players characters into unwanted alignment changes.
I assure you that if I wanted to do so, I could play the vilest most loathsome and dishonorable Paladin imaginable under the current system. Yet my alignment would show me as the purset LG paragon of virture. All I would need to do was scheme to avoid/circumvent the few activities that mechanicaly resulted in shifts I didn't want. That's trivialy easy to do with an automated system who's quirks, workings and limitations are well understood by the player.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The problems here are three-fold...
1) Firstly, automated systems are incredibly inept at making the sort of fine-grained, nuanced and articulate moral/social judgements that are neccessary to arrive at even semi-intelligible. In order to do so you must have some indepth understanding of context, motivation and human nature. Computers are incapable of doing so. The end result is that you very often end up with adjucations that are seemingly arbitray, "wrong" and even more cartoonish then the "Hollywood" view you complain about. This is true even for Themepark games where the decisions that the players make and the conditions/context in which they are made are very tightly controled. In a sandbox game where those bets are off, forget about it. Alignment works or rather CAN work in Pathfinder because there is a human arbiter making those adjucations...and they are often the result of a discussion between the player and the arbiter.
I agree in principle that computers make poor substitutes for humans in this regard, though I have seen "arbitrary," "wrong," and "cartoonish" adjudications from human DMs often in my 30 yrs+ of gaming.
2) GW in PFO is really NOT using the Alignment system purely for it's origional purposes which you describe within the Pathfinder Role-Playing Game. They are using it as a mechanism to influence PLAYER behavior toward what would make PFO a PROFFITABLE game for them. The two goals are not consistant with one another. In other words, if an action would logicaly result in an adjucation for a character that a player would consider rewarding but GW wants to dissuade such behavior because it harms PFO's proffitability, the system will make the OPPOSITE adjucation instead so that they can steer players away from activities that harm PFO's goals for a financialy successfull game.
*blinks* Alignment isn't a system that influences in player behavior in PFRPG? That is its main function.
I just do not buy that the alignment ideas are being used to make the game profitable. If that was "really" the case they would've made a WoW clone. Either that or we could just say every single thing are doing is in order to make a profit, in which case there is no "teeth" to your argument, we would just back to square one.
Or we could view it from the perspective that GW has presented. They are trying to create systems whereby a player's actions have consequences, and we have an environment that is not a griefer cluster f*k (which given the the last two decades or so of MMO experience is a real possibility).
3) All alignment adjucations are influenced by the adjucators personal bias. Not a big deal in PnP Campaigns as they are usualy played by small groups of friends who at least understand, if not often share it's others biases. A GM can at least style his campaign to allow his players to play characters that they IDENTIFY with, find FUN to play and match the BIAS of the campaign. If not, they are quickly going to find themselves with an empty campaign. After all, these activities are supposed to be FUN for the participants involved...not really a judgement of the quality of thier moral viewpoints. As such, there is very often an involved discussion between player and GM to find characters that are both FUN to play for the player and fit into the campaign world. In a commercial RPG, no such conversation takes place and you are playing to a much wider audience. Therefore you've got to accomodate a much broader spectrum of viewpoints then just 4 or 5 close friends....and any adjucations you make have to be very, very intuitive across that broad spectrum. The danger here is that you are, in a somewhat fundemental way, taking away the players identification with and definition of the players own character...without any input from that player. Do so in a manner they are uncomfortable with...they are just going to walk...and rightfully so, because it ceases being FUN for them. For example if in a Campaign...you are consistantly making Thorak Evil....and Thorak's player doesn't identify with Thorak being Evil and doesn't find playing "Evil" fun.... They are likely just to walk away from the Campaign, as why should anyone do something for entertainment that they don't find Fun?
Using the PnP analogy, GW is the DM. GW is setting up a particular style in which they will approach the campaign. Makes sense.
Some folks will find that the character they want to play doesn't make sense in that campaign. These people may walk away, or they will adjust behavior to fit the style, or, they may create another character that fits the particular style. Makes sense.
If Thorak is constantly doing things that make him evil, and he doesn't like that, see above. Pretty straightforward.
Of course, we are back to where all of these discussions started. If killing is an evil action, will that make certain iconic archetypes obsolete? If so, is the overall benefit worth it?
I am very much in favor of sticking closely to the original Pathfinder alignment system.
The "dumbing down" of alignments and complete removal of alignments that the target market(12 year olds and WoW/SWG/etc players) would struggle with was one of the many factors that killed 4th edition. (I will not go into a detailed discussion of the failure of 4th edition here it is way off topic).
Why the personal attack on SWG players? Most of the kettemoor server has a better grasp of roleplay and alignment then most of the people on these forums seem to.
Very bad sterotyping and generalaztion there bud, and as a former swg player ( which by the way is half the reason i backed this KS and the other half is I have been playing D&D since AD&D and love the pathfinder system) I am some what offended you would insult me like that. I know it was not specificly directed at me, but use more tact in the future when ya post. And don't let a few idiots ruin your view of an entire community. Most of us WoW/SWG/CoH?any other number of game names players are actualy very intelligent, educated, and capable of critical thinking, abstract thought, and higher reasoning than you are giving us credit for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I assure you that if I wanted to do so, I could play the vilest most loathsome and dishonorable Paladin imaginable under the current system. Yet my alignment would show me as the purset LG paragon of virture. All I would need to do was scheme to avoid/circumvent the few activities that mechanicaly resulted in shifts I didn't want. That's trivialy easy to do with an automated system who's quirks, workings and limitations are well understood by the player.
So could I. I just exemplified how in another post before in this thread. Unless the missing info can add something to the way I see the system It looks easy to be exploited.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Of course, we are back to where all of these discussions started. If killing is an evil action, will that make certain iconic archetypes obsolete?
No. It will just make it more challenging: To be securely good the player will have to allow evil to strike first. No pre-emptive strikes on an unflagged player character.
That is, after all, why Paladins wear Plate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being,
There is nothing wrong with the spirit of what you say. The problem is that automated systems are so grossly ill-equiped to make such judgements that it turns things the results into the farce.
For example, if a LG character saw a known multiple-murderer poised to plunge a dagger in the back of an innocent orphan most human GM's would probably adjucate that not only was the LG character justified in taking action to stop said even but probably is COMPELLED to do so by thier alignment (defence of the innocent).
However an automated system is incapable of context of what occured and therefore would allocate a CE shift to the LG character under the exact same circumstances. The automated system is incapable of registering dagger poised as an attack....and therfore the non-evil response would be to stand by and watch the orphan killed before doing anything. It's incapable of understanding a multiple-murderer is likely to repeat past actions because as soon as the murderers flag has worn off the murderer is the same as any innocent passerby....and it's incapable of differentiating the defenseless orphan from a common thug.
As far as the automated system is concerned the above action is no different then the LG character attacking someone out of the blue for no reason. It's incapable of understanding the context that any reasonable person would.
Same in reverse for bounties...an automated system is incapable of differentiating a Paladin who kills in response to a bounty because they KNOW the killer is just about to strike an innocent again from the Paladin who kills in cold blood for proffit...even though the target offered sincerely to repent...through down his weapon and begged for his life in front of his wife and children. To the automated system, the 2 actions are equivalent...because it's incapable of understanding context and motivation.
Goblin Squad Member
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With RP'd Alignments people don't have ANY REASON to select an Alignment that doesn't fit how they will play thier character. Under the currently proposed system people DO. They want the mechanical benefits of X but they would much rather play Y for flavor purposes. So they will simply GAME the automated system, which is trivialy easy to do, to gain the mechanical benefits they want anyway.
This strikes me as a strange argument. The entire point of having the system there and the rewards is to encourage you to "game" it, by following the system's guidelines.
You're "gaming the system" to make your character lawful good by not attacking innocents (even nominally evil but not dangerous bystanders), not robbing people, not casting evil spells, and obeying the law while also, presumably, helping out the downtrodden to "grind faction" with them.
Excuse me for saying so, but that sounds an awful lot like being lawful good. It, in fact, sounds eerily like the paladin in our tabletop campaign.
Now, it doesn't matter if you the player are taking actions "because they'll increase my Good score," your character is still acting in a way consistent with a good alignment. Your "gaming the system" is just playing your alignment by another name.
Cheers!
Landon
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Goblin Squad Member
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With RP'd Alignments people don't have ANY REASON to select an Alignment that doesn't fit how they will play thier character. Under the currently proposed system people DO. They want the mechanical benefits of X but they would much rather play Y for flavor purposes. So they will simply GAME the automated system, which is trivialy easy to do, to gain the mechanical benefits they want anyway.This strikes me as a strange argument. The entire point of having the system there and the rewards is to encourage you to "game" it, by following the system's guidelines.
You're "gaming the system" to make your character lawful good by not attacking innocents (even nominally evil but not dangerous bystanders), not robbing people, not casting evil spells, and obeying the law while also, presumably, helping out the downtrodden to "grind faction" with them.
Excuse me for saying so, but that sounds an awful lot like being lawful good. It, in fact, sounds eerily like the paladin in our tabletop campaign.
Now, it doesn't matter if you the player are taking actions "because they'll increase my Good score," your character is still acting in a way consistent with a good alignment. Your "gaming the system" is just playing your alignment by another name.
Cheers!
Landon
Or I could simply taunt, goad, trick, decieve and otherwise make miserable the life of a character I wanted to target so that they would throw the first strike in frustration...so I could Lawfuly and Goodly kill them.
I could run confidence games...I could conspire with all sorts of nefarious sorts and feed them information about hunting down innocent merchants..
I could openly prey to Rovagug..
I could abuse women and children..
Defile temples to Imodae...
Take bounties so I could kill in cold blood for pure proffit...
I could provoke people in the meanest and hardhearted fashions imagionable...
I could wear the skulls of the innocent as a necklace....
Sound very LG like to you?
In other words it's trivialy easy to play the most evil, vilest character imaginable that the system still classifies as LG..... and a person who actualy WANTED to play such a vile reprehensible character but also wanted the mechanical benefits that came with LG would be MOTIVATED to do just that under the proposed system. Take the mechanical benefits away and they are just as happy placing CE for thier Alignment on thier character sheet because they have no reason NOT to do so?
Is my arguement becoming a little clearer to you?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being,
There is nothing wrong with the spirit of what you say. The problem is that automated systems are so grossly ill-equiped to make such judgements that it turns things the results into the farce.
For example, if a LG character saw a known multiple-murderer poised to plunge a dagger in the back of an innocent orphan most human GM's would probably adjucate that not only was the LG character justified in taking action to stop said even but probably is COMPELLED to do so by thier alignment (defence of the innocent).
Yet this is the sort of situation our law enforcement officers are required to deal with. If an officer has to use lethal force to prevent a homicide he or she still has to face an investigation. We cannot assume you are going to be right, Mel. You have to have checks and balances on you just as everyone else does unless we want this to be just another FFA PVP gankfest.
Because computer systems have limited capabilities you and I will have to make do with the best the system can deliver. That will mean we cannot expect of a machine the ability to deliver an adequately granular judgement. The system will necessarily establish rules of behavior you will not like.You can accept that or not. But I'm not going to sit idly by while you weave the most complex rationalizations why you should be allowed to murder other players and use those complex rationalization to say a simple flag or alignment shift should not stand between you and the ability to murder unflagged player characters.
However an automated system is incapable of context of what occured and therefore would allocate a CE shift to the LG character under the exact same circumstances.
Yes. You have to play by the same rules as everyone else under the good alignment if you want to play a good character. If you need to play evil you should not align good.
The automated system is incapable of registering dagger poised as an attack....and therfore the non-evil response would be to stand by and watch the orphan killed before doing anything.
Yes. That is the burden of the Law: you cannot arrraign someone because they might do something, only if they actually have done something.
It's incapable of understanding a multiple-murderer is likely to repeat past actions because as soon as the murderers flag has worn off the murderer is the same as any innocent passerby....and it's incapable of differentiating the defenseless orphan from a common thug.
Yep. And you cannot predict human behavior either. You have to wait until it is fact, if you are to be good and lawful (which you have said you won't but instead CG).
As far as the automated system is concerned the above action is no different then the LG character attacking someone out of the blue for no reason.
Sorry, but I think you must have left out the 'above action' you referenced: you just had someone holding a dagger over an orphan. That is quite different from an LG PC killing at random.
It's incapable of understanding the context that any reasonable person would.
It is capable of being programmed to conditionally respond to foreseeable actions. Like, if you attack first you take a hit to alignment. If you defend yourself you won't.
Same in reverse for bounties...an automated system is incapable of differentiating a Paladin who kills in response to a bounty because they KNOW the killer is just about to strike an innocent again from the Paladin who kills in cold blood for proffit...even though the target offered sincerely to repent...through down his weapon and begged for his life in front of his wife and children. To the automated system, the 2 actions are equivalent...because it's incapable of understanding context and motivation.
Right: it isn't dealing with a jury trial (or crowdforger opinion poll)where the defendent walks off a 'free man' just because because he composed and delivered an oratory of complex situational scenarios showing his heartrending rationalization of the string of murders he committed on unpopular people.
It can just nail you where you stand.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or I could simply taunt, goad, trick, decieve and otherwise make miserable the life of a character I wanted to target so that they would throw the first strike in frustration...so I could Lawfuly and Goodly kill them.
Yep all that... and btw what an odd string of examples of what you could do... but you see that is exactly why we need the impartial systems of adjudication discouraging you from attacking him first, plus the human interventions of DMs listening for your victim's call for help to relieve them of your gameplay ruining harassment.
So there you have it. You want to play the game you will play by the rules, or not. Just like me. I would have to break down and snitch on you myself if the aggrieved player won't, just because it will be a very regrettable duty.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A low rep character probably won't find many friends in the game, whatever his alignment is. Abusing the alignment system won't bring anyone friends and an army of abusers will probably have a war on their doorstep pretty quickly.
Maybe we've all misunderstood the paladin all these years. Maybe all that praying was for the sake of his alignment in the meta game world. Killing evil was always evil, but all that praying was something we misunderstood, it was meant for atonement to align the soul.
Well, why didn't the chaotic good character ever repent? Maybe we've all misunderstood that also. Did any chaotic good character ever give charity. One did, I can only think of Robin Hood, but he is an extremity.
There are so many ways to look at the alignment system if one looks at the deeds the character does and not one's own interpretation of the words law, chaos, good, evil.