Goblin Squad Member
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There is some difference between being born into a system and forming one from anew, yes, but I still don't think things would be as homogenous as far as alignment goes. The puritans weren't all good people any more than those prisoners forced into the Carolina's were bad. One was forced and the other was semi-voluntary, true.
I'd like to see the system where there was a certain percentage of deviation from the one step rule allowed if the one step alignment rule stays in place.
Alright let's dial this back to what alignment was originally designed for. It was made back in the day as a rudimentary mechanical system that pretty much introduced the concept of creating a character persona that was more than a set of stats (the battle simulators that D&D came from). Over time the players got better and better aat creating more and more complex personas and that is what we call today "hard core roleplay". Today's dedicated roleplayer scoffs at alignment because our characters are much deeper and layered than 9 archetypes.
And this is exactly why GW has struck gold with the idea of bringing back alignment as a rudimentary system to teach a new breed of battle simulator players how to roleplay...Online PvP'ers.
Meanwhile modern day Roelplayers who moved beyond the alignment system years ago are going to use PFO alignment the same way they use TT alignment. It's nothing more than the behavior patterns that your DM will force you to adhere to. Same in PFO.
So as an example let's take the classic modern day DnD trope: The tortured Paladin
In table top, the tortured paladin sets his alignment to LG, even though the player knows that the character has deep seeded desires for women and violence. At first the Paladin does not succumb to his evil self so he stays LG. Eventually as the plot thickens the Paladin falls for his vices. First he takes hits to his alignment score (active alignment) before finally falling for a Succubus and slaughtering an orphanage thereby losing his LG alignment (core alignment). He is banished from Goodcity and because he is a traitor (low reputation) neutral city doesn't want him either. He settles for training as a mercenary in scumcityand continues to fall down the spiral until he finally starts his long road back to redemption (regaining reputation and alignment). Then he gets back to goodcity and finds that his peers are no longer as pure as they say they are (LG core, LN active), so he takes it upon himself to restore goodcity back to LG.
All of this is codified into the game in PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the more likely scenario then the holding company since PFO is based on a more wide then deep progression scheme is that characters will "behave" until such time as they have already obtained sufficient training to achieve the objectives that they want....say Tier2 as most RPKers (from my experience) are generaly focused on attacking lowbies.... and then go out and do what they wanted to do in the first place.
So you might have "seed" settlements that act as breeding facilities for the bad actors to "level up" to the degree desired....and then the extended community of bad actors who are either settlement less, because they've already obtained what they reall needed from membership or are members of thier own meta-game affiliated settlements that provide the basics of what they now need given they've already obtained thier training.
You could also have a scenario where you have Good aligned/High reputation characters acting as "protectors" for bad aligned/poor rep low level alts. Basicaly if the bad boys can manage to hide, hold off until their own flag comes off...anyone coming in against them for "payback" would get flagged themselves. Normaly this wouldn't be such a huge hit to rep/alignment if the "payback" was against someone with a really low rep/alignment themselves...so might be thought to be worthwhile. Of course the person coming in for revenge is now the "attacker/criminal" so a legal target for the High Rep/High Alignment "protector" to rush in to engage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd say that the only counter to leveling up to Tier two skills and then tanking rep on a pvp spree is to make the skills have the same type of reputation requirements to equip as a paladin's alignment requirements.
If you go below a certain rep threshold, poof you cant use your nice gear until you restore your rep.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So: this idea that you can train at a Settlement not your own?
Makes no sense.
If we allowed that mechanic, then a True Neutral settlement would be created with a really high rep, would open its doors to everyone and charge fees for access to the Settlement, and there would be no mechanical correlation between your reputation and your character abilities.
Assume you train skills at the Settlement you are a member of. Settlements are not universities.
You train at a settlement as a "visitor" and then get a kick back on the higher training cost, because you are in fact a member in the meta game. This is to get around the one step alignment, not the reputation.
Example: if I'm CN, in a NE settlement, I'm more than 1step but I could still train any neutral based skill offered by that settlement as a visitor. If that settlement had me in their meta game group, they would just reimburse the cost. I would, in return, defend the settlement as if it were my own in game (use feuds or mercenary contracts).
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Goblin Squad Member
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So: this idea that you can train at a Settlement not your own?
Makes no sense.
If we allowed that mechanic, then a True Neutral settlement would be created with a really high rep, would open its doors to everyone and charge fees for access to the Settlement, and there would be no mechanical correlation between your reputation and your character abilities.
Assume you train skills at the Settlement you are a member of. Settlements are not universities.
You can also be part of a company that's friendly with a settlement and thus allowed access and training without being sponsored.
?
You guys need to talk more.
Also I did the math, and it may not be correct but Im sure its close enough.
It would take 443 days of passive rep gain to go from -7500 to 0. That of course is if you did nothing to increase your rep through play.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have two concerns with the alignment system, assuming that I read it correctly.
The first, is that is appears that Lawful Good characters are going to be inherently more powerful than all other characters thanks to their settlement being ‘more powerful’. This will potentially reduce the game to having the majority of the player base be LG. From a role-play point of view that seems fairly dull. Also, why are these Lawful Good towns all trying to kill each other?
Secondly, linking Reputation to alignment access goes even further to prevent people from making evil characters. It I am playing an evil necromancer in the woods and have a low reputation/evil alignment for all of my dastardly deeds, people could assume that I got that low reputation for being abusive/racist/misogynist in the chat window. That’s enough that I wouldn’t make the character.
I foresee a game populated by Paladins in my future.
The thing is you can be a high reputation Evil character and live in a high reputation Evil settlement with full access to tier 3 training facilities. Just as powerful as any paladins. Don't play the stabbing game at starter towns but rather be Evil through roleplay, wars and feuds, or being attacked first. I bet (hope) faction quests would get really really Evil and plunge your GvE rating if you were dedicated.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So: this idea that you can train at a Settlement not your own?
Makes no sense.
If we allowed that mechanic, then a True Neutral settlement would be created with a really high rep, would open its doors to everyone and charge fees for access to the Settlement, and there would be no mechanical correlation between your reputation and your character abilities.
Assume you train skills at the Settlement you are a member of. Settlements are not universities.
Ryan, unless you put in some sort of ability atrophy or check of reputation upon ability usage (sorta like Paladin powers) there is a decent chance it might not....since obtaining an ability is a single point in time even and using that ability would be a seperate point in time event.
All having trained X ability would really determine would be at some point in time the character had sufficiently high reputation to have belonged to a settlement which could teach it. Unless some other control is put in place, what happens after that would be completely open
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Xeen
Don't forget to factor in this part...
"Every four straight hours the character earns Reputation, the amount earned increases slightly (currently by .25), up to a limit of something like 10 points per hour. So if a character behaves for four hours, he'll start earning 1.25 Reputation per hour instead of 1."
So essentialy after 1.5 days of inactivity you start gaining at 10 per hour....end up being around 7200 per month given the cited figure...assuming nothing done positive or negative to effect that.
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Goblin Squad Member
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"Every four straight hours the character earns Reputation, the amount earned increases slightly (currently by .25), up to a limit of something like 10 points per hour. So if a character behaves for four hours, he'll start earning 1.25 Reputation per hour instead of 1."
So essentialy after 1.5 days of inactivity you start gaining at 10 per hour....end up being around 7200 per month given the cited figure...assuming nothing done positive or negative to effect that.
Every 4 hours the rep gain increases by .25, so it would take 16 hours to get +1 rep/hour, wouldn't it? To go from 1.00 rep/hr to 10.00 rep/hr would take 9 * 16 = 144 hours, or 6 straight days of no rep loss? It's still pretty insignificant compared to the huge increase in rep gains.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Every 4 hours the rep gain increases by .25, so it would take 16 hours to get +1 rep/hour, wouldn't it? To go from 1.00 rep/hr to 10.00 rep/hr would take 9 * 16 = 144 hours, or 6 straight days of no rep loss? It's still pretty insignificant compared to the huge increase in rep gains."Every four straight hours the character earns Reputation, the amount earned increases slightly (currently by .25), up to a limit of something like 10 points per hour. So if a character behaves for four hours, he'll start earning 1.25 Reputation per hour instead of 1."
So essentialy after 1.5 days of inactivity you start gaining at 10 per hour....end up being around 7200 per month given the cited figure...assuming nothing done positive or negative to effect that.
Right, thanks for the correction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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So: this idea that you can train at a Settlement not your own?
Makes no sense.
If we allowed that mechanic, then a True Neutral settlement would be created with a really high rep, would open its doors to everyone and charge fees for access to the Settlement, and there would be no mechanical correlation between your reputation and your character abilities.
Assume you train skills at the Settlement you are a member of. Settlements are not universities.
So, this idea of a magical academy that puts politics aside and teaches various types and styles of magic to whomever can afford tuition and manage not to get expelled? Yeah, that makes so little sense that no one has ever come up with such a crazy trope before. When Absalom was approached with the idea of building the Arcanamirium, the city leaders told those old guano-flingers to shove off. Such an University is Unseen within the pages of Terry Pratchett's satire of fantasy tropes, and that series of novels about a wizard's boarding school failed horribly.
It's really starting to sound like the PFO theme song might be "I've Been Workin' on the Railroad". I mean, who would want to build a diverse, complex, and quirky world when we can just get down to the business of making a new Murdersim Online?
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CEO, Goblinworks
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that series of novels about a wizard's boarding school failed horribly.
Great example.
Hogwarts teaches a selected group of magical arts. There are considerable arts it does not teach (the Dark Arts). There is a wide spectrum of wizardry apparently not Dark and not taught at the school, being things potentially segmented by race (Gringotts) or profession (creating moving newspapers, etc.)
If you're an evil wizard and you show up at Hogwarts, they won't teach you. If you're a good wizard and you figure out where the Dark Arts are being taught, you have to corrupt yourself and sell your soul to get access.
Within Hogwarts you have to declare your allegiance to a House. Your House's reputation rises and falls with your actions. Everyone in your House is affected to a greater or lesser degree by the House's standing. Hurt your House, you're a goat. Help your house, you're a hero. Hogwarts as an institution reflects the sum of the behavior of its faculty and students.
[This of course all falls apart after Harry re-founds the Order of the Phoenix, but I digress]
In our game, Hogwarts would be a player Kingdom, the houses would be Settlements, the social circles by age would be Companies, and occasionally you and your friends would nip off to the village for a drink as an ad hoc party. They're all bound together by some shared assumptions about the ethics and reputation of the collective.
But that collective is not universal. There are all sorts of people excluded from participation - by age, by ethics, by nationality, by wizardly pursuit, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the issue you see in most of these games that I would like to avoid in PFO is groups that identify themselves by character race, alignment, etc. don't really exist unless you are forced into them by the game.
For instance, in Darkfall there were no major groups exclusive to the good or evil alignment, and the only racial groups ended up relaxing their policies because they were losing potential members.
I think what I would like to see is a system that doesn't prohibit groups from accepting all players of all races, alignments, etc. but offers certain perks to groups that do follow a theme.
For instance a dwarf only settlement might unlock some exotic dwarf item recipes, and a good aligned settlement would have the best training for good clerics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan I like the idea of selling training. It makes sense. Why wouldnt a neutral city sell this training? Would a LG city allow an evil person to train there, of course not. However perhaps they have a NG neighbor with which they draft a treaty and as part of their end they allow the NG settlement's paladins to train their high level paladin skills at the LG settlement?
It creates another commodity and interaction that settlements and kingdoms can bargain with. How much of our training can we sell and how much do we need to keep for ourselves?
Perhaps you have to invest extra resources/upkeep to change your own training slots to slots that other people can be used.
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Goblin Squad Member
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For instance a dwarf only settlement might unlock some exotic dwarf item recipes, and a good aligned settlement would have the best training for good clerics.
I would expect either of these to be true, but the settlement in the cleric's case would only cater to certain deities. Not all good aligned clerics would find their Gods represented, Worshipers usually don't share churches / temples / shrines.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan I like the idea of selling training. It makes sense. Why wouldnt a neutral city sell this training? Would a LG city allow an evil person to train there, of course not. However perhaps they have a NG neighbor with which they draft a treaty and as part of their end they allow the NG settlement's paladins to train their high level paladin skills at the LG settlement?
In your example, the prospective student meets the settlement's requirements for citizens. High enough rep and alignment only 1 step away from the training city's alignment. So that seems legit.
What if the LG city is selling fighter training and a CG fighter wants to buy training? I've always thought the trainers were NPCs and they'll be sticklers for alignment; the trainer isn't interested in helping the CG.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that something like that should be left to the settlement. I can fully see a LG settlement allowing CG people in and allowing CG people to use facilities as long as they can control themselves at least while they are in the city.
Without control-via-mechanics, what's to stop them selling training to anyone at all? Given that alignment isn't readily visible, it won't be obvious--especially to city resident-characters who might object--that that's what's happening; it becomes a powerful incentive to ignore alignment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What if the LG city is selling fighter training and a CG fighter wants to buy training? I've always thought the trainers were NPCs and they'll be sticklers for alignment; the trainer isn't interested in helping the CG.
This would lead to the issue of some alignments not being able to train anywhere, unless there are all 9 alignments represented in at least 9 of the 15 EE settlements.
You could also end up with NG, CN, NE, LN settlements being the most useful, and everyone has to go to two different settlements to get their training, one for each axis.
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Goblin Squad Member
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it becomes a powerful incentive to ignore alignment.
Isn't ignoring alignment, an alignment? Isn't a sand box flexible enough for individuals who reject alignment, deities or other social structures that they don't believe in? Can't that belief system be role played?
I can see a Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral holding to an atheistic view point and fighting against all organized, and in their view oppressive, religions.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Atheistic would be a hard stretch in Golarion, but non-practicing I could definitely see. It seems to me like it'd be hard to not believe in any gods when those gods grant people spells, send physical divine emissaries to the world on a regular basis, etc. Then again, I suppose there are people who sincerely believe this sort of stuff happens in our world too...
IMO you should be free to ignore other people's alignment, but your own alignment should be something you are highly concerned with. Even if you ignore your alignment and become CE, that should have significant impact and not be something easily ignored.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan,
what kind of role skills do you envisage being alignment bound? I would imagine Paladin and necromantic skills to be, and therefore mutually exclusive. Would I be right in guessing that a CG barbarian couldn't join a LG settlement, but even if they could, wouldn't be able to get training?
Am I right in thinking that this will not only mean players are segregated by playstyle, but there will be classes (roles) excluded from certain settlements?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Atheistic would be a hard stretch in Golarion, but non-practicing I could definitely see. It seems to me like it'd be hard to not believe in any gods when those gods grant people spells, send physical divine emissaries to the world on a regular basis, etc. Then again, I suppose there are people who sincerely believe this sort of stuff happens in our world too...
IMO you should be free to ignore other people's alignment, but your own alignment should be something you are highly concerned with. Even if you ignore your alignment and become CE, that should have significant impact and not be something easily ignored.
It is not a given that if you ignore alignment, you will become Chaotic Evil. There are different variations of ignoring alignment.
I could be a healer that ignores the alignment of those I heal. Although the alignment system might make me Neutral Good; it could equally make me True Neutral or even Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Good.
How would a game mechanic treat this dilemma? The action of healing anyone in need can be viewed in many ways.
Would it make a difference if I were a cleric healing, or an herbalist healing?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the word Bluddwolf meant to use was Anti-Theistic. As in Against Believing, instead of Not Believing.
Or as someone that does not buy into the authoritarianism of a religion, or a God for that matter. Perhaps a stupid act of defiance, but could certainly fall within role playing.
If you think about it, what would the potential psyche be of individuals that are Twice Marked be?
* Some may be grateful and devoted to the Gods.
* Others may become delusional and think themselves Gods, or at least quasi deities.
* Others might reject the Gods, feeling they have no further need for them.
EVE Reference Alert:
Look how cloning and other Jovan technology changed the psyche of the capsuleers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wasn't trying to imply that CE is the only way to slide if you ignore alignment, it's just the alignment shift that people need to watch out for the most, and the one with the most consequence if you ignore it. It should have been more like "If you both ignore your alignment and become CE, then X." I parsed the sentence poorly, my apologies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you think about it, what would the potential psyche be of individuals that are Twice Marked be?* Some may be grateful and devoted to the Gods.
* Others may become delusional and think themselves Gods, or at least quasi deities.
* Others mat reject the Gods, feeling they have no further need for them.
EVE Reference Alert:
Look how cloning and other Jovan technology changed the psyche of the capsuleers.
Glad you brought that up. I've been working that into the backstories I'm creating. Something along the lines of being called to the "war of the marked by Pharasma". I think everything you mention there is good material to launch off of.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being an atheist in a world where gods walk the land and priests channel holy power is foolishly stupid.
It's encouraging to see that you know the setting so well.
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/AtheismThe iconic wizard Ezren is an atheist, and in his case the term just means the literal 'without god(s)' as in non-worship, rather than non-belief.
Rahadoumis are not atheists. They do not worship gods, which is different than believing the gods do not exist.Atheism
1.
the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2.
disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.
That first definition is misleading. Real-world atheism is only an absence of belief in god(s), not a belief in the absence of god(s). There are some who actively believe there is no such thing, but they are necessarily a subset of the wider definition. Really, atheist only says one thing which an individual is not, and should be no more relevant than calling oneself a non-astrologer or referring to your father as "not the mama".
For now, for where I live, I do still use the term in order to express my dissent with the erroneus assumption that everyone believes in god(s) or even that 'faith' is a rational form of epistemology. I'd rather the term wasn't culturally relevant, but for some people you have to explain why 'off' is not a TV channel.Being an atheist in Golarion is similar to being an Athar from Planescape. You probably recognize the existence of extremely powerful beings but not worship them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being an atheist in Golarion is similar to being an Athar from Planescape. You probably recognize the existence of extremely powerful beings but not worship them.
For the purpose of PFO, though, Golarion atheists would still have alignments and be subject to any alignment restrictions? So a atheist barbarian, for example, would still need to be non-lawful?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being an atheist in Golarion is similar to being an Athar from Planescape. You probably recognize the existence of extremely powerful beings but not worship them.For the purpose of PFO, though, Golarion atheists would still have alignments and be subject to any alignment restrictions? So a atheist barbarian, for example, would still need to be non-lawful?
Alignments are objective facts of the setting, not philosophical concepts, but both horns of Euthyphro's dilemma are represented.
The dilemma basically asks "does god command something because it is good (divine relay), or is something good simply because god commands it (divine fiat)? The first horn means that god is basically a messenger relating what is good, while the second horn means that following orders given by god is 'good', regardless of the context, the harm the action may cause, or any other consideration.On Golarion, alignments are above the gods (divine relay); if Sarenrae starts torturing people that would turn her evil, it wouldn't redefine torture as good.
However, the GM of a game (the dev team & their code in this case) are above alignments (divine fiat). If they code the game so that torture earns Good points, that would just be the reality of the setting we find ourselves in, as stupid as it may be.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being an atheist in a world where gods walk the land and priests channel holy power is foolishly stupid.It's like choosing not to believe in gravity. But even so, your character (not labeling the player here) would still have an alignment: chaotic-stupid.
Again, that's a mischaracterization of what the term means on Golarion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Being an atheist in a world where gods walk the land and priests channel holy power is foolishly stupid.It's encouraging to see that you know the setting so well.
http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Atheism
The iconic wizard Ezren is an atheist, and in his case the term just means the literal 'without god(s)' as in non-worship, rather than non-belief.Rahadoumis are not atheists. They do not worship gods, which is different than believing the gods do not exist.Atheism
1.
the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
2.
disbelief in the existence of a supreme being or beings.That first definition is misleading. Real-world atheism is only an absence of belief in god(s), not a belief in the absence of god(s). There are some who actively believe there is no such thing, but they are necessarily a subset of the wider definition. Really, atheist only says one thing which an individual is not, and should be no more relevant than calling oneself a non-astrologer or referring to your father as "not the mama".
For now, for where I live, I do still use the term in order to express my dissent with the erroneus assumption that everyone believes in god(s) or even that 'faith' is a rational form of epistemology. I'd rather the term wasn't culturally relevant, but for some people you have to explain why 'off' is not a TV channel.Being an atheist in Golarion is similar to being an Athar from Planescape. You probably recognize the existence of extremely powerful beings but not worship them.
Agnosticism is the absence of belief in a god, atheism differentiates from agnosticism in believing in the absence of a god. Although sometimes agnosticism and atheism are lumped together, and only in such a broad generalizing way can it be said that atheism is just the absence of belief (ie when you really mean to say agnosticism).
In the Pathfinder setting though, it's really not even worth discussing for any character with an intelligence score above 2.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Again, that's a mischaracterization of what the term means on Golarion.Being an atheist in a world where gods walk the land and priests channel holy power is foolishly stupid.It's like choosing not to believe in gravity. But even so, your character (not labeling the player here) would still have an alignment: chaotic-stupid.
If the term is defined that much differently in golarion, and you're not simply confusing agnostic with atheist, then I'd suggest the publisher need to review whatever source material defines it in that way. And it won't help to move a rational discussion forward to keep misusing the term, if it is in fact misused in the source material in that way.
Then again, look what we're discussing - so forget rational discussion, I guess.
*Edit* I've looked at your link. Simply looks like the writer misusing the word. "Agnostic" wouldn't even apply there, nevermind the more critical "atheist". That is clearly a misnomer, and will will not help a rational discussion to perpetuate such semantic abuse.