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In an attempt to balance the fun of alignment with the practicality of avoiding moral/ethical arguements, I'm thinking of changing why a creature has alignment.
Core Change: A creature/object/spell has alignment if and only if it has planar energies of the appropriate type infused into it, and retains that alignment regardless of its behavior (where applicable). All others are true neutral.
Examples:
- Aasimars count as good, while Tieflings count as evil.
- Undead are still evil. (Basically Fiat declaring that negative energy is an evil planar energy.) This means Dhampir also count as evil.
- Characters with the Aura class feature count as the alignment of that aura. For example, Paladins still count as good. Clerics of a CG god would count as good and chaotic. Etc. (Note that such characters are presumed to have a code of conduct still, but alignment change is a consequence of violating that code, not a tenet of it.)
- Outsiders and any other creature with aligned subtypes are still aligned as appropriate.
- Dragons do not count as aligned, but retain their reputation. The same goes for other creatures with strong alignment associations but no planar connection.
- Monks count as Lawful once they either gain the ability to strike as Lawful, or DR/chaotic. This rule extends to other classes that grant alignment DR bypassing or aligned DR.
- Certain bloodlines based on extraplanar creatures also grant alignment, such as Abyssal or Celestial. The alignments granted should be obvious.
Other Changes:
- Most abilities that affect only one alignment instead have partial effect on neutrals, typically half damage and no conditions. If it's only a condition, it's instead half duration (minimum 1 round). Smite, for example, functions against neutrals but adds half the normal damage bonus (other aspects remain unchanged). Only applies to the abilities of creatures or things that act like them, not to items like Holy/Unholy weapons.
- Feats and classes lose their alignment pre-requisites, but might grant you alignment if you take them.
- You cannot take 2 divine classes that gain power from alignment-opposed deities or that would grant alignment-opposed Auras without special DM approval. I recommend bribes.
- Detect <Alignment> spells no longer detect intent, as intent is no longer aligned.
Possible Fun Changes: A cleric of the seperatist archetype can shift their god's alignment by one step for the purposes of what Aura they receive. They use this new Aura to determine eligibility for selecting alignment domains.
Weird Consequence: It's technically possible to be both good and evil at the same time. I'm not sure what to do with this other than treat the person as neutral. It might also make sense for some things to treat them as aligned still, like the ability to hold a Holy weapon without incurring negative levels. (Such a character could hold neither a Holy nor an Unholy weapon.)
Feedback: I'm looking for any thoughts on weird consequences this rule could have and parts of the system that may have non-obvious patches. And, naturally, if there's anyplace where something might cause a huge game issue.
Ah, the 4th and 5th Edition approach to things. Why call them good and evil if morality has nothing to do with it? Call them "celestial" or "fiendish."
I've also never been crazy about tying positive and negative energy to alignments.
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The problem is that alignment has a lot of mechanical meaning to the system so I didn't want to ditch it entirely. The only reason to to continue calling them good and evil is to avoid having to mentally rephrase things every time I come across a rule that interacts with alignment. Well, that and most other terms (e.g. celestial and fiendish) have different meanings. In the aforementioned example it would be the simple templates.
I was not aware that 4e/5e removed morality from alignments. I played 4e a couple times and recall nothing of the sort...
As for positive/negative being tied to alignments.. Yeah, I'm not 100% on that one myself. I only did that because switching undead to neutral would be switching a very large chunk of the bestiary over. I might simply say that undead must be animated with a combination of evil planar energies and negative energy in order to function, which also justifies keeping the [evil] tag on animation spells.
I was not aware that 4e/5e removed morality from alignments. I played 4e a couple times and recall nothing of the sort...
4th Edition stripped out half the alignments and basically made it a 1-dimensional spectrum of good versus bad. Most powers worked based on creature type rather than alignment. It's also possible to play a paladin, remorsely violate your god's tenets, and keep all of your powers. 4th Edition also combined positive/negative energy with holy/unholy to create radiant and necrotic damage.
5th Edition has alignments, but they have almost no mechanical effect in the game. The paladin and cleric classes don't even mention alignment, despite the fact there's class features that relate to moral codes and ethics.
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Ah, so it's completely different from my proposal then. On both counts.
With what I propose there are still tenets for paladins and clerics, and they can still lose powers from violating them, the difference is that instead of Alignment Change -> Tenet Broken -> Lose Powers, it's Tenet Broken -> Lose Powers -> Alignment Change. At that point it's up to the tenets themselves to define their behavior. For example, I would assume that unjustified homocide is going to be on the "Don't do it." list for any good god. It requires more GM adjudication, but at least you have a specific personality to judge against (the god) rather than an abstract idea.
Positive/Negative remain separate from Holy/Unholy. Though I'm fine with it being a fancy coincidence the Unholy + Negative => Undead, and leaving undead evil because of the Unholy part rather than the Negative part. This leaves it open for other creatures with negative alignment to be considered true neutral, and one could theoretically come up with something undead-like made with other energy combinations.
Alignment still has mechanic effect. It would dilute a hair for balance reasons (e.g. 90% of enemies being neutral makes for less fun as a paladin), but still definitely there.
I do recall 4e's simplification down to LG->G->N->E->CE, and it was one of the things I disliked about it. I'm keeping all alignments, just changing their basis.
Lots of planar energies types, though: Good, evil, lawful, chaotic, earth, air, fire, water, shadow, astral, ethereal, negative, and positive. That I can think of.
I'm confused. I thought the point of this was to divorce morality from alignment and reduce alignments to only mean a planar affiliation? To remove the concept of a multiverse with creatures and planes of existence that embody philosophy and belief? Because that's what 4th Edition did. It divorced philosophy and morality from game mechanics and simply labeled creatures based on planar affiliation.
I'm also not a big fan of creating a bunch of energy damage types for some world building reasons that are complicated to explain.
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I'm confused. I thought the point of this was to divorce morality from alignment and reduce alignments to only mean a planar affiliation? To remove the concept of a multiverse with creatures and planes of existence that embody philosophy and belief? Because that's what 4th Edition did. It divorced philosophy and morality from game mechanics and simply labeled creatures based on planar affiliation.
I'm also not a big fan of creating a bunch of energy damage types for some world building reasons that are complicated to explain.
Oh, I thought they just reduced the number of alignments, not also divorcing them from philosophy and belief.
Honestly, separating alignments from philosophy and belief is a good thing for most tables. The last thing I need is another alignment argument. In fact, that's the kind of thing that prompted this rules idea. The planes themselves are still filled with creatures soaked in philosophy and belief, but that can be considered a happenstance rather than some objective force at work. Angels will still be angels, and the way they act is why people call the planar energy that powers them "good".
At the end of the day my goal is for any "alignment" dispute to come down to the view point of someone OTHER than the player/GM (e.g. the gods, or agathions as a culture, etc) or something that can actually be objective (got evil planar energy? you're evil, and we're done here). Still some subjectivity in there, but at least you're not arguing personal beliefs, which always gets people up in arms.
The list of energies I gave is NOT a list of damage types! It's just a list of possible planar energy affiliations, and is a concept that already exists. I just put them out in a list so I could see them in one place.
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Honestly, separating alignments from philosophy and belief is a good thing for most tables. The last thing I need is another alignment argument.
I'm not sure about that. Pretty much every major alignment argument I've seen came down to a problem with the player or GM, not the alignment system itself. In fact, the worst alignment argument I experienced came result from a guy who argued for abolishing alignments from all games. Other than that, I've had nothing but positive experiences with alignments. And I absolutely love the Planescape setting.
But don't get me wrong. I do really like your idea. I came from liking the idea that law and chaos energy shape reality. Chaos warps reality whereas law keeps reality stable. (And I'm glad your list isn't merely energy damage types. It made me cringe to see 5th Edition use 4th Edition's Pokemon-style damage types).
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Honestly, separating alignments from philosophy and belief is a good thing for most tables. The last thing I need is another alignment argument.I'm not sure about that. Pretty much every major alignment argument I've seen came down to a problem with the player or GM, not the alignment system itself. In fact, the worst alignment argument I experienced came result from a guy who argued for abolishing alignments from all games. Other than that, I've had nothing but positive experiences with alignments. And I absolutely love the Planescape setting.
But don't get me wrong. I do really like your idea. I came from liking the idea that law and chaos energy shape reality. Chaos warps reality whereas law keeps reality stable.
While it is a problem between player and GM, that's not the "root cause" as it were. While what you see is two people disagreeing, what you don't see is that such disagreements will happen so long as the two people must agree on something which is fundamental subjective but also held close to the heart. The design effectively encourages such arguments by highlighting differences of opinion that cannot be reconciled except to agree to disagree, which is not and cannot be a satisfactory long-term resolution to a game rule dispute. Finding a group where this does not happen is just a combination of avoiding deeper analysis of alignment and luck (with some helpful bias because you tend to hang out with people you agree with).
And yeah, that's about how I would view the Lawful and Chaotic energies as well. In raw form, anyway. When in creatures the effect is a bit muted.
It is an interesting proposal. I also find most alignment debates in game usually revolve around a problem player, or an over controlling GM.
A lot of games remove alignment, while others have some version of a morality system (1st edition White Wolf vampire had "humanity", the original marvel super hero game had "karma" - which doubled as your experience points, etc.). All mechanical alignment systems have flaws. Removing alignment isn't a big deal for experienced groups, yet really aids some groups (particularly when a GM wants to know what to expect from a group).
It can sometimes help new groups. If players don't know each other and begin a campaign, the rule of "no evil alignment" may make players groan. It also sometimes helps players to avoid making rude, obnoxious, or team destroying characters. It's no guarantee, yet it is still a tool to help players make a good impression on a new group.
For a 3.5 variant that eliminated alignment, you can check Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. It had an alternate magic system that removed alignment dependent spells. Alignment simply didn't exist in that gam world. As a 3.5 third party book, it takes minimal work to transfer it to Pathfinder.
I'm confused. I thought the point of this was to divorce morality from alignment and reduce alignments to only mean a planar affiliation? To remove the concept of a multiverse with creatures and planes of existence that embody philosophy and belief? Because that's what 4th Edition did. It divorced philosophy and morality from game mechanics and simply labeled creatures based on planar affiliation.
I'm also not a big fan of creating a bunch of energy damage types for some world building reasons that are complicated to explain.
They also got rid of the CG and LE planes. They are worse and not getting better.
I don't like your idea because an expert who starts to vivisect children to satisfy their curiosity would not radiate evil. As soon as they die they would rise as an undead or get nabbed by a night hag, maybe both. One of the cool things about this game is detect evil will tell you if someone is starting down that slippery slope. That would have saved lives IRL.
I'm going to hide this topic before things turn ugly, or even uglier.
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I'm confused. I thought the point of this was to divorce morality from alignment and reduce alignments to only mean a planar affiliation? To remove the concept of a multiverse with creatures and planes of existence that embody philosophy and belief? Because that's what 4th Edition did. It divorced philosophy and morality from game mechanics and simply labeled creatures based on planar affiliation.
I'm also not a big fan of creating a bunch of energy damage types for some world building reasons that are complicated to explain.
They also got rid of the CG and LE planes. They are worse and not getting better.
I don't like your idea because an expert who starts to vivisect children to satisfy their curiosity would not radiate evil. As soon as they die they would rise as an undead or get nabbed by a night hag, maybe both. One of the cool things about this game is detect evil will tell you if someone is starting down that slippery slope. That would have saved lives IRL.
I'm going to hide this topic before things turn ugly, or even uglier.
I actually dislike the intent thing for the same reasons as alignment itself. So I count that as a bonus, actually. Sure, it might save lives, but it can also end them (party radiating an aura of good as they go to rescue the slaves, anti-paladin picks up on it and gathers the guards before they can get there). Most people forget that alignment is a two-way street. If it can be used for you, it can be used against you.
Shame that they got rid of the CG/LE planes. Those are my favorite ones!
I've tried to do something similar in my games. My main motivation was an attempt to eliminate the Paladin-as-traffic-cop mentality that was developing among my players. I found that in the standard rules, at-will detect evil eliminated many role-play opportunities and removed a lot of mysterious elements from the game.
"Sir So-and-so wants us to go rescue the Princess? Nah, don't trust him, he's evil. I just checked."
When the Paladin's default social response is Detect Evil, I get annoyed fast.
Tying these to cosmic affiliations removes this mentality while still letting the Paladin sense the presence of demons and the like.
I've tried to do something similar in my games. My main motivation was an attempt to eliminate the Paladin-as-traffic-cop mentality that was developing among my players. I found that in the standard rules, at-will detect evil eliminated many role-play opportunities and removed a lot of mysterious elements from the game.
"Sir So-and-so wants us to go rescue the Princess? Nah, don't trust him, he's evil. I just checked."
When the Paladin's default social response is Detect Evil, I get annoyed fast.
And then the princess doesn't get rescued. The paladin later finds out that the princess was brutally killed, the Evil guy who he didn't trust was really just trying to help, perhaps he'll learn his lesson about discrimating based solely on alignment.
While paladins can detect evil at-will, I would think, much like us, there should be some reason for him to check a person's alignment.
Consider - A NG person is angry at someone, and wants to kill some one who wronged him. Paladin detects evil for no reason, he'd read as evil at that moment (IMO). Said NG person takes time to cool off, and is back to his NG median alignment. Paladins who just detect evil randomly can cause some real issues. Like Barathos said, its a form of discrimination, AND a form of invasion of privacy. Which would be deemed a chaotic act. So, for a paladin to do so, it should be provoked, or there should be some reason/clue/feeling that a detect evil is warranted.
That should go with any of the detect alignment spells too.
Consider - A NG person is angry at someone, and wants to kill some one who wronged him. Paladin detects evil for no reason, he'd read as evil at that moment (IMO).
Not how it works mechanically, though. The mechanics for what Detect Evil senses are fairly explicit.
I like the concept of changing what reads as good and evil to be more limited in scope. In fact, I liked the old Law vs. Chaos system of alignment. It made no moral judgements of characters; it left good and evil out of the picture, and it was a lot clearer. I've been tempted to homebrew that back into my games.
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Like Barathos said, its a form of discrimination, AND a form of invasion of privacy. Which would be deemed a chaotic act.
Not all things that are illegal in modern Western countries are chaotic in other contexts. The lawful alignment does not inherently respect privacy and dislike discrimination. Dwarves are usually LG, and also usually racist. EDIT: If anything, the problem would be with the good axis, not the lawful one - most LE totalitarian states couldn't care less about the common citizen's privacy.
Now, a paladin who fails to rescue some innocent because they discounted the plea of an individual who happens to be evil will fall. But the problem is not so much the use of Detect Evil as the over reliance on it. An evil alignment should be a red flag, not a clear sign someone needs to die or can't be trusted.