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It's not something they'd get an alignment infraction for in most cases. Even then, the times when their refusal to act (or the possibility of falling) is warranted tend to be few and far between. There are ways to complete almost all missions without running into these problems. Worst case scenario, why not turn a blind eye? GMs need to give paladins some leeway in PFS. Let them choose to leave the room when unlawful activity is going to occur or if the party needs to do something evil. Nobody will twist the character's arm to make it participate.
In the end though... that's kind of what people sign up for when they go good aligned. They're expected to be held to a higher standard, and that can sometimes be a major inconvenience. I would say PFS is a lot more lenient on them than most home games are for sure.
If being 'good' were easy, the world would be a much nicer place.
We should probably keep the real world out of here though. Not everyone's going to agree with that.
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The game rules currently actively rewards neutral characters.
Holy/Unholy weapon enchantments should probably give negative levels to those darn neutrals.
The neutral mind-control loophole should probably be patched up at some point. In terms of Golarion lore and it's focus on light vs dark, it doesn't make that much sense that the strongest enchanters are the ones that refuse to pick a side.
I still haven't had a chance to play Waking Rune, but currently my opinion on the Lissala boons is that they were poorly implemented. If you are going to slap evil on the wrist, don't give evil the opportunity to choose not to play '4-99 The Wrist Slapping'. Because guess what? They will choose not to play it.
In terms of Season 5, I was surprised to see that a recent awesome magical item was neutral aligned when all the flavour for it seemed to favour good.
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The game rules currently actively rewards neutral characters.
Neutral is the powergaming alignment.
Now the question you need to ask yourself is... What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
In the game, just like in life, "Good is hard mode." It's stupidly easy to be Evil, and not particularly difficult to be Neutral, though it can be a challenge now and then. Being actively Good, however, takes quite a bit of work and passing up on things that would make life much easier.
That being said, modules designed to where you HAVE to torture/mutilate/steal from characters to succeed, despite the plethora of skills, spells, and abilities that exist to all sorts of different characters in the game system that should give you alternative options... yeaaaaah. That's just bad module design.
In the game, just like in life, "Good is hard mode." It's stupidly easy to be Evil, and not particularly difficult to be Neutral, though it can be a challenge now and then.
You state that like its a fact.
I never thought being evil was easy. You always have these good guys beating down your door, killing your henchmen, stealing your stuff. It wasn't easy to get that stuff or hire those men! Now I have to reinstall a new door too, and its very difficult to find someone willing to come all the way out to fix a door in a volcano lair, and expensive too!(the volcano lair was pretty expensive to build too! It didn't just spawn from the pen for me or anything either.)
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I have one True Nuetral PC, that's it. And that is because I see her as a pragmatic type that does what is needed to get the job done. There are things that make her just as rigid and unwavering as a paladin (Cleric of Pharasma, guess what it is) but aside from that she's more concerned on outcome than actions.
Truthfully I prefer good over nuetral PCs. last season I passed on all but one boon and did that one due to a faction mission. And promptly paid the atonement. (And cursed out her faction leader)
I've found Paladins to be generally well behaved, it's usually the other players at the table to go out of their way to make life miserable for the Paladin, even the other 'good' party members who will be as flexible as possible with 'good' in order to screw over the Paladin. As a result I generally tend to NG and N characters myself just to reduce the opportunity of other players acting out their own personal issues in game.
That said I do have a Paladin in play currently who hasn't encountered players being idiots but I suspect that's because everyone loves him.
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I have yet to have a positive play experience with any paladin outside of a small group of people I often game with. Every attempt at gaming with other groups, including paladins mind you, has been met with lawful good crap being rammed down my throat in and out of character at every possible opportunity. This is frequently justified with, "If you do that my character will fall; that is PvP and I do not consent." Note that at no point has anything been going on that would even remotely risk causing someone else's character to suffer repercussions. It was just the "Lulz I'm right because I'm lawful good" cliche being done again and again. I could almost understand it if my character had been raising the dead or something in any of these scenarios, but y'know what? It wasn't. It was a tetori monk that would pin things and deal nonlethal damage till they were unconscious. Or, y'know, put a little hurt on them to get information then choke them out and leave them to the authorities.
Gotta say though that while neutral does have certain advantages, I really haven't seen many times a scenario might cause an alignment shift in a good character. Oh, right, on that subject there appears to be some items of benefit to either good or evil but barely (if) anything for neutral. It's kind of a two-way street. Neutral gets hit in other areas.
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The game rules currently actively rewards neutral characters.
Holy/Unholy weapon enchantments should probably give negative levels to those darn neutrals.The neutral mind-control loophole should probably be patched up at some point. In terms of Golarion lore and it's focus on light vs dark, it doesn't make that much sense that the strongest enchanters are the ones that refuse to pick a side.
I still haven't had a chance to play Waking Rune, but currently my opinion on the Lissala boons is that they were poorly implemented. If you are going to slap evil on the wrist, don't give evil the opportunity to choose not to play '4-99 The Wrist Slapping'. Because guess what? They will choose not to play it.
In terms of Season 5, I was surprised to see that a recent awesome magical item was neutral aligned when all the flavour for it seemed to favour good.
When I played it, everyone at our table but one (if I remember correctly) had some of the boons to backfire. One person was particularly excited by the fact that he was using a character that had every one of those boons on that character. Different people have different motivations and consider different things fun.
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I think it is interesting that this thread has shown up at the sane time as the other thread about paladins wanting to pat themselves on the back for playing their paladins well. I agree that being good shouldn't impose a penalty, but the reward for playing good should be the warm and fuzzies in your conscience that you were doing the right thing. You shouldn't need someone telling you that you're a good boy and rewarding you for it like you're a valued family pet.
Almost all my PCs are neutral, mostly because different judges have different definitions of what is "Good" and what isn't. I find it results in less disagreements at the table.
I don't have too much of an issue with a judge who believes that I'm not roleplaying a 'good' alignment with a character. If a judge informs me that I've been violating my alignment, I'm more than happy to use this as an opportunity to have the alignment corrected, and the infraction recorded on the chronicle sheet.
I'm all for organic alignment changes, due to ingame events.
On the other hand, is it really 'corrected'?
Keep in mind 'corrected' can have dire consequences for a character, and if those changes, especially if unwarranted, are the ones players want least. Dire consequences like loss of class features or worse, a loss of character(to you, not just to society!), and changing every time someone has a different idea on how something could be could be a lot of changes. [/devil's advocate]
Plus do you have any idea how expensive it was to make this phylactery?! Then I had to shell out another hundred thousand gold to stabilize the demiplane I made to keep it safe.
I can't tell you how awful it is to wake up in the extra-deminsional sack that the guy who just impaled you last week was using to hold his junk. I don't think he even cleans that thing!
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Having played most of season 4 with Good-aligned characters, including the Day of the Demon special, I do find that season quite a challenge for good characters.
A number of season 4 scenarios openly rewards players with bonuses for doing evil deeds. Some of which makes story sense, but others are plain bias to good characters.
Possible spoilers*
Giving a story-appropriate reward for doing a bad dead is one thing, but to the point of giving free 4k+ items, ability score bonuses and a free feat?
None of my good characters took the rewards, but I did left those games with a sour feeling...
May be this is meant as a build up or is to be countered with Season 5, but I do wish Good characters are not being handed the short end of the stick at the players expense.
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It is easy to end up with the free feat reward by accident if nobody in the party has spellcraft. Pathfinders often remove unfamiliar magic gear from foes and use it to fill a free item slot. I have seen several people take potions off defeated foes and drink them assuming they will be cure potions. Most of the time they are right.
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The Pathfinder Society is a neutral organization.So your response is that PFS is deliberately promoting Neutral Characters over Good ones?
I think it is pretty clear that the goals of the organization are amoral for the most part - but I think the organization promotes non-Lawful over Lawful far more than non-Good over Good. A chaotic good character can do quite well because the seemingly less good actions can be blamed on being chaotic.
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And last time I checked, Good characters get an entire class to themself (Paladin) while there is no other PFS-legal class that excludes Good.
Firstly, Good characters don't get a class to themselves. Only Lawful Good characters do. How does that compensate CG & NG?
Secondly, while LG gains Paladin it loses Druid & Barbarian.
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We also have scenarios where the PCs are risking their lives to build an army to contend with the Worldwound. That's a lot more good than neutral.
In Year 4 we risked our lives to try to stop an evil cult from resurrecting their long dead high priest. One would have thought that would have been more good than neutral also.
Here's hoping that in Year 5 we don't have to disguise ourselves as demons, infiltrate the Abyss and swear fealty to Deskari.
What I would really like to see is that when an adventure gives you a moral choice that it give you one reward for choosing one way and another reward for choosing the other.
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We also have scenarios where the PCs are risking their lives to build an army to contend with the Worldwound. That's a lot more good than neutral.
In Year 4 we risked our lives to try to stop an evil cult from resurrecting their long dead high priest. One would have thought that would have been more good than neutral also.
Here's hoping that in Year 5 we don't have to disguise ourselves as demons, infiltrate the Abyss and swear fealty to Deskari.
It's quite a pickle: if you go ahead and announce your love of Asmodeus, you're failing to roleplay a good-aligned PC (remember, the CRB says that someone who lacks the conviction to make personal sacrifices to do the right thing is neutral, not good). If you refuse, though, you've single-handedly triggered a nasty encounter—this could easily be viewed as PvP. The third option (which my cleric took) is to announce ahead of time that you're not going to do it, and be willing to let the party leave and face your death on your own.
So your options are:
• Don't roleplay good
• PvP
• Die unless the other players feel charitable
When I played this, my cleric went with the third option. Folks chose to join in the fight, but some of them (even out-of-character, I think) were unhappy about it. That, to me, is an example of an un-fun alignment situation.
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The best answer is that the PFS is not a good organizaiton. Why no evil then, because evil is not trustworthy so no organization that is not wholly evil wants evil members as they can not be trusted. However, in a certain sense good members can not be trusted either as their morals would likely trump loyalty to the organization.
You are confusing evil with chaotic. Chaotic people cannot be trusted. Lawful evil can be trusted to honor their oaths. They will do whatever it takes to do so.
Hence, the reason that many of the good gods work with Asmodeous. They might not invite Asmodeous to parties, but he's a nice ally during tough times.
Truthfully, the society itself would have no problems with LE characters, which is why there is a Cheliax faction. It's player aversion to playing with evil characters that created the ban. You know, LE characters may not be family friendly and all.
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I think it's okay to say it if you are lying.Even if that's the case (which is debatable), that presents a problem if you're also lawful-aligned.
I would argue that the "no lying under any circumstances is the only way to play lawful" is also very debatable. But then, many of us for years have been saying that the alignment scheme in whole is very debatable.
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I would argue that the "no lying under any circumstances is the only way to play lawful" is also very debatable.I think it's okay to say it if you are lying.Even if that's the case (which is debatable), that presents a problem if you're also lawful-aligned.
Good thing that's not what I said, then. (Hint: You can tell what I said by looking inside the quote box in your own post.)
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Good thing that's not what I said, then. (Hint: You can tell what I said by looking inside the quote box in your own post.)I would argue that the "no lying under any circumstances is the only way to play lawful" is also very debatable.I think it's okay to say it if you are lying.Even if that's the case (which is debatable), that presents a problem if you're also lawful-aligned.
No need to be snarky, man.
And I read what's said, and still come away with your implication being that, as a good character, falsely professing your worship of an evil deity isn't necessarily ok, depending on who you ask, and that being lawful aligned under David's scenario presents another problem. Now, ok, I admit I assumed that the problem presented was the lying, so if that wasn't it, what problem is presented under David's scenario for lawful characters?
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Good thing that's not what I said, then. (Hint: You can tell what I said by looking inside the quote box in your own post.)I would argue that the "no lying under any circumstances is the only way to play lawful" is also very debatable.I think it's okay to say it if you are lying.Even if that's the case (which is debatable), that presents a problem if you're also lawful-aligned.
We found out about the password in the mission briefing. My paladin was about to refuse to participate in the mission (ie, I'd play another character) when the GM pointed out that it was just a password.
That let my Paladin decide that saying the phrase was OK. It really isn't a lie, any more than saying "the sun shines in Tibet" would be a lie.
I am firmly of the opinion that a significant amount of latitude has to be given to paladins, especially in PFS, or they're functionally unplayable.
Interpreted too literally the paladins code just can't be followed.
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From a storytelling perspective, challenging "good" characters with moral quandaries is inherently interesting: you force a character to act against his nature or face defeat, and all kinds of literary theory and psychological discussions ensue. There is no equivalent interest or struggle when amoral or "neutral" characters face the same situation. Now, you can argue that this kind of fiction technique doesn't belong in an RPG, but I wouldn't discount its influence.
Also, I think there's a common tendency to equate "neutral" with "amoral", which doesn't seem to fit the alignment descriptions in Pathfinder. I think the work they've done to flesh out the codes of behavior for different deities goes a long way to making these alignments more useful.
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There needs to be clear definition of what and "evil" act is. To be honest Coupe De Gras is an evil act unless you have the racial hatred trait or something that explains serious dislike of a catgory of creature such as Favored Enemy. Also some racial alignment requirements should be instituted, such as Asimar must be good either Lawful or Neutral. Tieflings should have aligment based on there heretige either infernal or demonic. Also as GM's use these traits, Evil outsiders should attack Asimar first unless they have a really good reason not too, play racial hatreds. As mentions why does Holy work for Neutral characters, they are not affected by Unholy.
The society is not a "good" organization, but netral characters should know that for a mission to succeed they need to work with others. Chaotic Neutrel is on the whole the most selfish of alignments and thus act that way unless something really benefits them. PC's should play their characters appropriately and not just use alignment as a beneficial tool.
GM's know what alignments are at your table and keep your players in check. One thing is making Atonement needed for not just good PC's who do evil or "questionable" acts, but for any PC who goes against their alignment.
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From a storytelling perspective, challenging "good" characters with moral quandaries is inherently interesting: you force a character to act against his nature or face defeat, and all kinds of literary theory and psychological discussions ensue. There is no equivalent interest or struggle when amoral or "neutral" characters face the same situation. Now, you can argue that this kind of fiction technique doesn't belong in an RPG, but I wouldn't discount its influence.
Also, I think there's a common tendency to equate "neutral" with "amoral", which doesn't seem to fit the alignment descriptions in Pathfinder. I think the work they've done to flesh out the codes of behavior for different deities goes a long way to making these alignments more useful.
I think moral quandaries are great, I just don't think they should usually be a lose-lose situation. Nobody likes facing a Kobyashi Maru.
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There needs to be clear definition of what and "evil" act is. To be honest Coupe De Gras is an evil act unless you have the racial hatred trait or something that explains serious dislike of a catgory of creature such as Favored Enemy.
Killing a helpless creature is evil unless you hate them, then it's okay? Huh?
Also some racial alignment requirements should be instituted, such as Asimar must be good either Lawful or Neutral.
Blood of Angels makes it clear that aasimar are not inherently good; in fact, it even tells you which heritages are more or less likely to be evil (Emberkin, if memory serves, are the most prone to evil among aasimar).
Tieflings should have aligment based on there heretige either infernal or demonic. Also as GM's use these traits, Evil outsiders should attack Asimar first unless they have a really good reason not too, play racial hatreds.
I'm beginning to think you misunderstand exactly what tieflings/aasimar really are in Golarion. Or maybe it's me; perhaps I'll have another look at the relevant Blood of books later.
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"You... you just killed that guy! How could you be so evil?!"
"I killed him because I hate him. I hate him, and I hate his entire stinkin' race. Hate 'em all."
"Oh, okay, nevermind then."
This is in refernce to Coupe De Gras not just killing, which seems to occur frequently. I take it from your post you are opposed to Coupe De Gras period?
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"You... you just killed that guy! How could you be so evil?!"
"I killed him because I hate him. I hate him, and I hate his entire stinkin' race. Hate 'em all."
"Oh, okay, nevermind then."
After all, if killing someone because you hated their race were wrong we would have laws in the U.S. against it with stiffer penalties for crimes that involve hate.
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@Jason Leonard - No, I'm not categorically opposed to coup de grace. I'm just baffled at the idea that the factor capable of making (in your claim) an otherwise-evil action become non-evil is to hate the victim's entire race.
Regardless of how evil (or not-evil) CdG might be by default, how in the world would racism against the target reduce the evilness level?
EDIT: Ninja'd.
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Also have you ever had a player hold another player accountable for killing soemone? For example a cleric de-selecting a PC for channeling due their action or worship of an opposing deity?
Why yes, yes I have. I had a cleric refuse my barbarian any healing after it saved them from the paralyze + coup combo some rogues are so fond of. It was both the first time I'd seen a rogue NPC succeed at anything and the first time I'd seen someone ungrateful at having their life saved. Their reasoning for this was some BS about Shelyn not condoning the character's actions. Mind you, this was after they had been paralyzed. The rogue's coup provoked an AoO. That is the only thing that saved the cleric; it's hard to coup something if you get dropped to -100 HP.
@Jason Leonard - No, I'm not categorically opposed to coup de grace. I'm just baffled at the idea that the factor capable of making (in your claim) an otherwise-evil action become non-evil is to hate the victim's entire race.
Regardless of how evil (or not-evil) CdG might be by default, how in the world would racism against the target reduce the evilness level?
EDIT: Ninja'd.
Torag actively encourages the wholesale slaughter of dwarven enemies. The reading of his tenets could also be taken to mean the paladin is just supposed to lay waste to any and all of his/her enemies, but it seems people tend to default to only enemies of the dwarves. In any case, I would say paladins of Torag ought to be able to lay down a coup without suffering any consequences whatsoever; it works out either way for the purposes of this discussion. Is it dishonorable to kill a foe you've already crippled? It is not. It could be anything from a mercy killing to finishing the job; neither of these things qualify as a code violation or alignment infraction without certain other factors in play. The meaning of take no prisoners is pretty difficult to misinterpret--kill them all.