So this is just a general question that comes from a different thread. Thinking about it now, I should have copied the link and put it in here... Anyway, I was wondering what people thought about the idea of characters having an alignment. I think that with the current sets, and with futures sets, it could be a very interesting idea. For instance, Divine spells that have different effects, or items that certain alignments can't use as effectively. Just a thought. I know that it means there are more and more boons, or banes for that matter, that you are less interested in revealing from a location, but it might add another layer to the depth of this game. What do you all think?
I'd really like to see more development of alignment- some kind of restriction on the interaction between characters of a certain alignment and corresponding/clashing deities.
When I started getting into the wider universe backstories / alignments of the characters, the first thing i did was to take all of the Blessings of Lamashtu out of Kyra's deck, and give them to someone less theologically scrupulous.
Something as simple as adding/reducing to a check when playing blessigns that match/oppose your alingment could be quite good.
Alignment (much like gender) shouldn't really matter in a card game. Your objectives for each scenario would be the same*, so it really has no effect other than to add extra rules (read: overhead) to certain cards and situations.
*Note on scenario objectives: since this is a fully-cooperative game, changing the goals of an individual character to be out-of-line with the rest of the party would go against the nature of the game.
If you want to play as a certain alignment, you control the cards in your deck: make the deck fit your character's beliefs. If that's not enough, there's always the RPG, where your alignment plays a much more noticeable role.
I do like to roleplay that my Kyra and another member's Ezren don't get along at all. She doesn't trust atheists.
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I don't see alignment becoming a part of this game as it would royally screw things up with the use of blessings. Then you have character interaction issues. This is a co-op game so throwing that into the mix on top of blessing restrictions, would make it unplayable in its form.
Now I could see that type of thing in homebrew rules. But not from the game designers. It throws too many restrictions into the overall design of play.
Alignment (much like gender) shouldn't really matter in a card game. Your objectives for each scenario would be the same*, so it really has no effect other than to add extra rules (read: overhead) to certain cards and situations.
*Note on scenario objectives: since this is a fully-cooperative game, changing the goals of an individual character to be out-of-line with the rest of the party would go against the nature of the game.
If you want to play as a certain alignment, you control the cards in your deck: make the deck fit your character's beliefs. If that's not enough, there's always the RPG, where your alignment plays a much more noticeable role.
I'd agree with Flat. Even though we will shortly have a wide array of characters, looking at each adventure path individually (and keep in mind some buyers might only buy 1 adventure path) you are already limited to 11 characters. Putting alignment on them* would limit who you'd want to play.
I'm also big for saying "every card should be playable by every character". That is true right now. You can cast an arcane attack spell without the arcane skill. Yeah, you might only roll a d4 for arcane, but you can play it. So anything that wold say "You can't play X cards." would be bad. Imagine the bad luck if half the boons in your location were that card type. Now, granted, you could say on Blessing of Lamashtu "If your alignment is good, you only add a d4", but I don't think that sound like a good option to me.
That being said, Ranzak's powers show that things can be done that are a bit "dirty". So I'd have no problem with a character's powers not being 100% advantageous to everyone. Sort of like the Corrosive Storm spell and other such cards in RotR. I'd have no problem seeing characters more like that. Though not too much more. I wouldn't want to be in organize play with a guy whose character dealt 1d6 damage to every other charcter every time he used it.
*Putting alignment on them would only make sense if alignment mattered in game. Gender matters, even if it never matters in game, because it matters in their artwork.
Add my vote to no alignment. Its too limiting when you have fixed characters to choose from.
Can you imagine going through the blessings to figure out the alignment of the dieties and then figure out if your character can use that particular blessing? A lot more characters would be filling in their blessings with BotG rather than ones like Lamashtu and some others.
Yeah, when I was playing Kyra only filled her deck with the blessings of evil and neutral gods. It would be annoying to be limited to which blessings we have access to.
That being said, I would mind if alignment affected how banes interact with you, since they aren't cards that can go into your deck. For example, an anti-paladin could have +2 difficulty against characters with the good trait.
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Yeah, when I was playing Kyra only filled her deck with the blessings of evil and neutral gods. It would be annoying to be limited to which blessings we have access to.
That being said, I would mind if alignment affected how banes interact with you, since they aren't cards that can go into your deck. For example, an anti-paladin could have +2 difficulty against characters with the good trait.
Like I said, I think it would be an interesting homebrew ruleset. You'd have to apply the alignment traits to stuff. You wouldn't really need Neutral trait; you'd simply leave off the trait. Chaos, Lawful, Good and Evil would become additional traits. Additional rules would be applied if your character is encountering same or opposite alignment boons/banes.
It could work. Just a lot of work to go through to first assign alignment traits and then to come up with a good ruleset to apply the advantages and hinderances.
One idea would be to expand the concept of the Support card (mentioned here) and apply it at an individual character level. Your Alignment card (maybe one for each of the Chaotic/Lawful and Good/Evil aspects) could list out these differences. You could even do this at an individual deity level, depending on how far down the rabbit hole you wish to venture (however, I think that is somewhat covered in each character's role cards in the "when you use XXXX blessing, add 1d12).
Then, simply give each character the alignment card(s) of their choice, have them display it next to their character, and treat it as an extension of their character/role card(s).
For example:
POWERS
When you play a blessing that has the Good trait, add 1d4 to the check.
When you play a blessing that has the Evil trait, increase the difficulty of the check by 2.
Or, since no blessing currently has the Good/Evil traits, you could individually list the deities that apply (knowing this would limit you to current blessings only).
For example:
POWERS
When you play a blessing that has the Good, XXXX, XXXX, or XXXX trait, add 1d4 to the check.
When you play a blessing that has the Evil, XXXX, XXXX, or XXXX trait, increase the difficulty of the check by 2.
I still think most people would be turned off on the fact that it's yet another reference card that provides little value (only balanced trade-offs). However, if you're dead-set on trying, more power to you.
Adding alignment now would create some level of errata on every character thus printed as well as nearly every monster, villain and henchman.
I could see there being some potentially interesting applications, but I'd prefer to see any hints of alignment be applied in the character's powers rather than creating potential issues with compatibility down the road. One of the beautiful things of this system is that as more and more paths get released there will be more content to work with so as to create custom scenarios and adventure paths that could be as thematic or as random as you want. Compatibility is important I think.
I don't think that an errata would be required. I think that you can implement a support card, similar to ships. I think that could add another layer to the game, as I stated earlier. This would just be a card that could be added to any character, and could be completely optional. If you want it, cool, here you go, if not, then don't worry about it. As stated, though, some cards, not even close to all, could have a little different effect based on your character's alignment. I think that this would come most into play in divine spells, but there could be plenty of items and weapons that could have little fun effect, such as add 1d4 to a check your character is making, or increasing the difficulty of a check against X by 2. Ideas like that are pretty fun in my opinion.
I am glad that so many people are giving feedback, however. It is nice to have a discussion like this.
I get where you're coming from and I think the idea has merit, for that matter I think it'd be cool if each character showed different proficiencies with longswords vs. glaives or axes for that matter, but it would be a little strange to have alignment modifiers on items/weapons/spells starting in set X, while not having them in RotR and S&S.
I do love the idea of support cards helping to change the setting or to apply modifiers to the base game and change it up... I'd love to see any wrinkles get added that could add replayability to the game, I just would want to make sure everything would still work as intended across sets.
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If they do alignments similar to the Swashbuckling Trait (effects can be positive or negative), I don't really see a problem. As long as the card still does something without the alignment; then it's simply adding a new trait to cards.
I will say however, that I personally don't see an alignment as adding any depth to the game. At best, it'll just be another trait.
That's why I said that it would be, at best, a homebrew addition to the game. It adds a lot of elements (print-wise and mechanics) that most people would probably not want nor really pay attention to. It would be just another trait. But I think it would be cool to be able to work through that sort of addition to the game.
If anyone does decide to attempt this, remember to keep the alignments balanced, and also remember the neutrals. You don't want to (well, you shouldn't) make any one alignment more or less power than any other, and if someone doesn't want to play with an alignment, they shouldn't be at an disadvantage.
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While I don't want to see specific alignments, I would love to see a Paladin character that actually switches between being a Paladin and Anti Paladin. In the RPG, if a Paladin knowingly commits an evil act, they automatically lose all Paladin levels and gain that many in Anti Paladin, and the reverse for an Anti committing a good act. I think it would be cool to have a character that switched between two character cards with different skills and Powers when playing blessings of good and evil gods.
Instead of going for a rule to impact flavour, why not just impact flavour? I've decided that my Lini is a Lamasthu worshipper, stocked my deck with Blessings of Lamasthu, and claims that all the animals in my deck are deformed versions of their base animals. It has absolutely no rules impact, but is great fun. You don't need the rules to tell you how to play the game!