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My stance is that we've gone through why your interpretation is explicitly incorrect multiple times in this thread. We can talk about other things and cover new ground instead of wasting time repeating the same things in the vain hope that you'll actually read it this time.
I could say the same for you.
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Considering that you haven't given any logical explanation or citations during this entire exchange, I doubt it.
Considering that you haven't given any logical explanation or citations during this entire exchange, I doubt it.
Okay sure.
If my Neutral Good character fails a save against the Mace of Blood i change my alignment to Chaotic Evil.
Neutral Good: A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them.
Neutral good means doing what is good and right without bias for or against order.
versus
Chaotic Evil: A chaotic evil character does what his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are likely to be poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him.
Chaotic evil represents the destruction not only of beauty and life, but also of the order on which beauty and life depend.
How do you not see the difference?
Contributor
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If that was how it was intended to work, it would have similar text to the helm of opposite alignment to make it actually function that way. It doesn't, so it wasn't.
Have you considered the possibility that:
-the writers of the Third Edition Player's Handbook didn't think they needed to fully explain every detail, and may have been relying on shorthand and/or a different understanding of how alignment changes work?
-those same writers may have been trying to save page space and word count, rather than wasting it on redundant explanations?
This is why I miss Sean K. Reynolds. It was nice having someone from that era around the place.
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Considering that you haven't given any logical explanation or citations during this entire exchange, I doubt it.Okay sure.
If my Neutral Good character fails a save against the Mace of Blood i change my alignment to Chaotic Evil.
Neutral Good: A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them.
Neutral good means doing what is good and right without bias for or against order.
versus
Chaotic Evil: A chaotic evil character does what his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are likely to be poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him.
Chaotic evil represents the destruction not only of beauty and life, but also of the order on which beauty and life depend.
How do you not see the difference?
Because according to him and the others, nothing has changed and alignment doesn't exist?
Last time. We've already gone over why alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. Those are ways people who end up with those alignments act.
If alignment was prescriptive it would be in-born and utterly impossible to change through actions- someone with a particular alignment simply would never act in a way opposing their starting alignment, and no change would ever occur.
Off topic, still...
I honestly thought we were past this discussion considering the JJ quote and I ceded the point that cannibalism isn't evil all the time, its just chaotic all the time and evil some of the time.It's not innately chaotic either.
Chaos implies freedom, adaptability, and flexibility.The act of eating a corpse is none of these things. One could argue that the adaptability and flexibility could manifest in doing so when it's socially unacceptable or something but it's not innately any of these things.
Except word of god says otherwise.
So agree to disagree here?
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Has this been linked yet?
It has, but anything in the rules is a conspiracy by ROLLPLAYERS who don't know what alignment really means, so all of that is wrong. Clearly you cannot change alignment without magic, and that entire section is just a bunch of treasonous lies!
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Last time. We've already gone over why alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. Those are ways people who end up with those alignments act.
If alignment was prescriptive it would be in-born and utterly impossible to change through actions- someone with a particular alignment simply would never act in a way opposing their starting alignment, and no change would ever occur.
Have you considered the possibility that magic items, even those that don't consider it necessary to write out the specific effects of their alignment change, may have been written with the prescriptive approach in mind?
These rules didn't come off a mountain on stone tablets*. They were written by humans, some of whom may have been working under various assumptions or specific constraints. The same could be said of their editors.
Maybe they shaved that text off of the mace of blood because it was a choice between that or cutting something else out of the book. Back then, the editor or writer may have thought, "Well, it's a magical alignment change. They'll know what it means." Or "Well, it's the Dungeon Master's Guide** - the DM can decide for himself what it means".
*I don't think so, anyway.
**Magic items used to be in the DMG, not the Player's Handbook.
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Last time. We've already gone over why alignment is descriptive, not prescriptive. Those are ways people who end up with those alignments act.
If alignment was prescriptive it would be in-born and utterly impossible to change through actions- someone with a particular alignment simply would never act in a way opposing their starting alignment, and no change would ever occur.
It's both.
Your alignment both describes your general attitude and how you act.
If you act different from your alignment it changes.
If your alignment is different than how you act it changes.
I fail to see why it can't be used both ways.
It has, but anything in the rules is a conspiracy by ROLLPLAYERS who don't know what alignment really means, so all of that is wrong. Clearly you cannot change alignment without magic, and that entire section is just a bunch of treasonous lies!
It is well within the rights and the rules for a GM to do the following.
"It's best to let players play their characters as they want. If a player is roleplaying in a way that you, as the GM, think doesn't fit his alignment, let him know that he's acting out of alignment and tell him why—but do so in a friendly manner. If a character wants to change his alignment, let him—in most cases, this should amount to little more than a change of personality, or in some cases, no change at all if the alignment change was more of an adjustment to more accurately summarize how a player, in your opinion, is portraying his character. In some cases, changing alignments can impact a character's abilities—see the class write-ups in Classes for details. An atonement spell may be necessary to repair damage done by alignment changes arising from involuntary sources or momentary lapses in personality."
If a Neutral Good character is forced to be Chaotic Evil by a cursed item(Mace of Blood) their Alignment is now Chaotic Evil for all intents and purposes. Not just some of them. That character is now Chaotic Evil and should act as such.
I'm not saying it can't be reversed. But it damn well should affect how the character is played.
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It is very hard to have a rational discussion about evil and evil acts because the concept of evil quite possibly does not exist. In the real world when someone does something we consider evil it is almost always triggered by some trauma that occurred to them, usually in childhood. This doesn't excuse acts but it does remove some of the agency away from that person. In stories we are able to create villains that are evil and look at what they do on a much more black and white level.
For canibalism there is a strong societal interest in not eating your dead. Not least because society shouldn't benefit so immediately and viscerally from the death of its members. There are questions over consent of what happens to your remains and how such actions effect your bereaved relatives. In most societies bodies are treated reverentially, In a world where their are gods and an afterlife desecration of a tomb or corpse is a real thing.
In the real world cannibalism is a taboo. We consider the German fellow who found someone willing to be eaten depraved. But In Golarion this is powerful enough to cause a person to animate as a hideous, stinking, filth encrusted ghoul whose body is wracked and riddled with mutations - claws, sharpened teeth, tongue. You may somehow see this as some form of benign transformation as the result of an ecological process i however see it as a powerful curse because of the archetypal wrongness of the act.
Eating the dead in an extreme survival situation like that described in Alive while morally justifiable is still a traumatising experience and the survivors suffered extreme psychological repercussions from the act. The shame of surviving at their colleagues expense was extremely difficult and many were horrified that the truth was revealed.
Can't argue about people's feelings but I can prove that this is purely cultural baggage. What we do to corpses right now sure ain't respectful, but we THINK it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGqbALhpUmM
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Heh, that's right. It's a mace that's clearly intended to turn the wielder into a psychopath, which is a pretty common thing with cursed items and evil artifacts since 1st edition. (And further back in actual literature and folklore. Think of how the One Ring screwed up Smeagol and was screwing up Frodo.)
I don't see why alignment can't be descriptive AND prescriptive.
Most mortal creatures develop an alignment based on their conduct over many years, and sometimes some sort of epiphany or trauma causes a radical change in conduct that would in turn cause a radical alteration in alignment as the person seeks redemption or embraces damnation. The alignment is descriptive.
Other creatures, like true dragons, outsiders, and the vast, vast majority of undead, are actually hardwired into certain behaviors, and often require enormous effort and force of will to stop carrying out those behaviors. The alignment is prescriptive, yet through enormous effort may change and become descriptive instead.
(For example, a freshly hatched red dragon wyrmling might only be a minute old, but it's Int 10 and knows in its heart of hearts that every valuable in the world belongs to it, that every living creature in the world is its future slave, and that unmated humanoid adolescents are delicious. Only through a staggering amount of effort could one get that wyrmling red dragon to abandon such desires.)
And so, in a world full of magic and general screwed-upness, it's completely possible to run across magic items or effects that meant to rewire a mortal's mind and how that mortal views the world.
I'd already commented upthread that undeath reformats your soul and installs a new operating system.
Undeath isn't the only thing that do that - things that can screw you up so badly it changes who you actually are. I.e., a thing that changes a descriptive alignment into a prescriptive alignment.
Also, traditionally, getting turned into an undead abomination meant your character was gone -- you were turning over your character sheet to the GM, and you were then rolling up a new character.
The GM actually being expected to let you continue playing as a vampire or whatever is a relatively recent development.
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Actually, I think the npc route is the only feasible one if alignment determines action. In fact, all players are essentially npc characters in this scenario.What is roleplaying tossed out the window?
Alignment determines actions just as much as actions determine Alignment.
If your character is forced into a new alignment either by magical means or undeath why wouldn't their new alignment factor into how they act?
You can roleplay an automaton just as well as anything else I suppose.
A forced alignment shift without any causal link with the person in questions actual actions is a colossal misunderstanding of the ideas of good and evil. The fact that it's a legacy of the system is unfortunate, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to ignore the reality that it's pure nonsense.
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If I were to experiment by playing an undead character (as I did in the later stage of Carrion Crown) or allowed a player to do the same I would expect them to roleplay the state of death based on the type. There would be certain traits and experiences that would naturally lead to evil that I would expect them to portray in exchange for having the benefits of that template.
As a lich I would expect them to consider the ultimate fatalistic outlook of a creature that was immortal and effectively invulnerable, the megalomania that would lead to, ramifications of the evil acts that were required to forge a link to the negative plane. The obsession with negation and entropy that would come from such a link. The lack of respect for life and beauty caused by being a decaying walking corpse and the ultimate futility of attempting to prevent this for eternity. The sense of loss caused by an inability to appreciate food, drink, sex, intimacy etc. The distancing from humanity that would come from normal people feeling terrified in your presence. The Ravenloft van Richten's guides for AD&D have substantial sections on the psychology of undead.
As a vampire I would expect them to roleplay similar senses of loss from their undead state and immortality - but adding to that a sense of unquenchable thirst for the lifeblood of those around you. The fact that you touch saps the souls of the living, that normal animals fear you, that you are separated from grace as the good gods turn their back on you. That you would be hunted by most normal people as slayer of innocents irrespective of your personal actions. The psychological ramifications of being able to tell people what to do with a command (watch jessica Jones if you think this wouldn't f you up). Uncontrollable rages and emotions caused by your hunger.
For ghouls an overwhelming desire to endlessly feast on the flesh of living and dead around you.
For ghosts a hatred of the trauma that prevented you passing on to your afterlife in a state of eternal limbo.
For mohrgs a hatred for the living that caught and punished you for your previous evil acts.
Etc etc etc.
You can play sparkling vampires in the game with a few tweaks of the rules but the default creatures as written are evil. I would expect players to simulate that. Roleplaying a creatures state doesn't make them automatons. It does mean that state should inform their actions.
In my opinion a PC shouldn't get to become undead without doing some pretty evil acts.
if you read The Redemption Engine there is a vampire in the city that has found a way to feed without taking the blood by force, he has hired a harem and when the women want to leave he makes sure they are able to provide for themselves(a bribe to make sure they don't tell anyone he's a vamp)
Actually, I think the npc route is the only feasible one if alignment determines action. In fact, all players are essentially npc characters in this scenario.What is roleplaying tossed out the window?
Alignment determines actions just as much as actions determine Alignment.
If your character is forced into a new alignment either by magical means or undeath why wouldn't their new alignment factor into how they act?
You can roleplay an automaton just as well as anything else I suppose.
A forced alignment shift without any causal link with the person in questions actual actions is a colossal misunderstanding of the ideas of good and evil. The fact that it's a legacy of the system is unfortunate, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to ignore the reality that it's pure nonsense.
Do you even understand what forced means?
Denying that a Mace of Blood changes a players actions is the same thing as denying any other rule that imposes a penalty upon a player.
Alignment gets changed. Deny it.
Fireball got you down. Deny it.
That sword hitting you. Just Deny it.
Wow this game sure got alot easier once i started saying no to forced effects upon my character.
if you read The Redemption Engine there is a vampire in the city that has found a way to feed without taking the blood by force, he has hired a harem and when the women want to leave he makes sure they are able to provide for themselves(a bribe to make sure they don't tell anyone he's a vamp)
Sounds like a good plot reason to keep a vampire adventuring. If you care going to play a non-evil undead you need to have some justification like this to justify he character. It should be rare though.
Forced Alignment Change
When a forced alignment change is purely arbitrary (such as from a curse or magic item), some players look upon this change as a chance explore the character acting in a different way, but most players prefer the character's original concept and want it to return to normal as soon as possible. GMs should avoid overusing forced alignment changes or make them only temporary (such as a scenario where the characters are dominated by an evil entity and are freed once the entity has accomplished a particular goal). Remember that if players wanted to play characters of other alignments, they would have asked to play them, and radical shifts ruin many character concepts.
Here is a quote from Ultimate Campaign touching on forced alignment.\
You'll notice its written assuming that when you alignment is changed by force, it changes how the character acts.
Which would be a strange way to word it if the base rules didn't also assume the same.
:)
Actually, I think the npc route is the only feasible one if alignment determines action. In fact, all players are essentially npc characters in this scenario.What is roleplaying tossed out the window?
Alignment determines actions just as much as actions determine Alignment.
If your character is forced into a new alignment either by magical means or undeath why wouldn't their new alignment factor into how they act?
You can roleplay an automaton just as well as anything else I suppose.
A forced alignment shift without any causal link with the person in questions actual actions is a colossal misunderstanding of the ideas of good and evil. The fact that it's a legacy of the system is unfortunate, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to ignore the reality that it's pure nonsense.
Do you even understand what forced means?
Denying that a Mace of Blood changes a players actions is the same thing as denying any other rule that imposes a penalty upon a player.
Alignment gets changed. Deny it.
Fireball got you down. Deny it.
That sword hitting you. Just Deny it.
Wow this game sure got alot easier once i started saying no to forced effects upon my character.
Yes. It means if you die, you're going to hell. It means if someone casts protection from evil, it protects them from you. It means that holy smite hurts a lot more than it used to. It means you may lose some class features if it throws your alignment out of whack.
It does not mean it forces you to take any actions.
Actually, I think the npc route is the only feasible one if alignment determines action. In fact, all players are essentially npc characters in this scenario.What is roleplaying tossed out the window?
Alignment determines actions just as much as actions determine Alignment.
If your character is forced into a new alignment either by magical means or undeath why wouldn't their new alignment factor into how they act?
You can roleplay an automaton just as well as anything else I suppose.
A forced alignment shift without any causal link with the person in questions actual actions is a colossal misunderstanding of the ideas of good and evil. The fact that it's a legacy of the system is unfortunate, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to ignore the reality that it's pure nonsense.
Do you even understand what forced means?
Denying that a Mace of Blood changes a players actions is the same thing as denying any other rule that imposes a penalty upon a player.
Alignment gets changed. Deny it.
Fireball got you down. Deny it.
That sword hitting you. Just Deny it.
Wow this game sure got alot easier once i started saying no to forced effects upon my character.
Yes. It means if you die, you're going to hell. It means if someone casts protection from evil, it protects them from you. It means that holy smite hurts a lot more than it used to. It means you may lose some class features if it throws your alignment out of whack.
It does not mean it forces you to take any actions.
Wrong again.
" Forced Alignment Change
When a forced alignment change is purely arbitrary (such as from a curse or magic item), some players look upon this change as a chance explore the character acting in a different way, but most players prefer the character's original concept and want it to return to normal as soon as possible. GMs should avoid overusing forced alignment changes or make them only temporary (such as a scenario where the characters are dominated by an evil entity and are freed once the entity has accomplished a particular goal). Remember that if players wanted to play characters of other alignments, they would have asked to play them, and radical shifts ruin many character concepts."
It can be changed eventually. But forced alignment effects do change the characters view points and morality. Thankfully the core book has a neat section describing each alignment and how they act.
If your character is forced from Neutral Good to Chaotic Evil you go look up that alignment. It's called role-playing.
Actually, I think the npc route is the only feasible one if alignment determines action. In fact, all players are essentially npc characters in this scenario.What is roleplaying tossed out the window?
Alignment determines actions just as much as actions determine Alignment.
If your character is forced into a new alignment either by magical means or undeath why wouldn't their new alignment factor into how they act?
You can roleplay an automaton just as well as anything else I suppose.
A forced alignment shift without any causal link with the person in questions actual actions is a colossal misunderstanding of the ideas of good and evil. The fact that it's a legacy of the system is unfortunate, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to ignore the reality that it's pure nonsense.
Do you even understand what forced means?
Denying that a Mace of Blood changes a players actions is the same thing as denying any other rule that imposes a penalty upon a player.
Alignment gets changed. Deny it.
Fireball got you down. Deny it.
That sword hitting you. Just Deny it.
Wow this game sure got alot easier once i started saying no to forced effects upon my character.
If you don't understand what I'm talking about, ask for clarification instead of talking about stuff that has nothing to do with what I said please.
At this point, mechanically, forced alignment shift better models prejudice than good or evil.
The issue with saying you have to act your alignment is that basically makes it impossible to ever change alignment without magical aid. We all know that isn't true.
As far as I'm concerned alignment both describes how you act and how you should act. It does not say anything about how you actually will act. It has historical and predictive value but doesn't necessarily impact on how one acts in the now.
That does not mean one can simply ignore something like the aforementioned cursed mace. It should impact you. You get the mechanical effects of the CE alignment, as all seem to agree on, and it also messes with your character's mind. It very strongly pushes them towards a specific type of behaviour but that does not mean one can't resist or avoid behaving like that. It does not wipe their memories or their personalities but only tries to direct their behaviour. It would give a normally kind person the sudden urge to kick puppies and drown kittens. It doesn't mean he will.
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My stance is that we've gone through why your interpretation is explicitly incorrect multiple times in this thread. We can talk about other things and cover new ground instead of wasting time repeating the same things in the vain hope that you'll actually read it this time.
You've said it - but you haven't actually proved it.
I suspect we can agree that alignment is related to behavior. If not, we have a fundamental disagreement and should leave it at that. If we were smart, we'd probably leave it at that anyway. :-)
If alignment drives action, this is also simple. I think most people don't feel this way, but I'm bringing this up out of completeness.
If action drives alignment, it's a little more complicated. In this case, changing alignment without changing action has no meaning. We can either assume the person writing these items doesn't understand how the game works (in which case we shouldn't use them anyway) or that all of these effects change behavior like the helm of opposite alignment. The latter is simpler.
This doesn't mean we need to see vampirism the same way since the rules only state that they tend to be evil, not that each example must be. For example, when a human is reincarnated into a bugbear, there's no alignment shift even though bugbears are evil in the Bestiary and the spell doesn't call it out.
I believe the undead transformation is more extreme. The template doesn't call out what happens when you gain it, but the notion that it changes your alignment isn't unreasonable in the rules. Personally, I think that better fits what vampires are as an element of fiction and folklore.
I say all of this to point out that I'm not being dismissive when I say that the idea that items like the Mace of Blood don't lead to a change in personality is deliberately reading the item in a nonsensical way.
The first claim you need to establish evidence for is that alignment affects your actions, rather than the inverse (because they are mutually exclusive). You haven't done that, and it's contradictory to actual game text.
Then you need to deal with the fallout of that, including players no longer being able to make decisions for their characters after character generation, and most of the text on Alignment being vestigial and useless.
Actually what you need to do is establish that your moral and ethical outlook does not affect your actions. Particularly as regards selfish/altruistic behavior. No one has established that they're somehow seperate, but ive pointed out multiple times that alignment is an abstraction representing the characters personal moral and ethical outlooks.
, Arueshalae didn't just decide to switch sides. I recommend reading Demon's Heresy. Are there any other good demons or devils in Pathfinder canon?
Ragathiel?
I still don't understand why people think that undead wouldn't ever want to become good. I haven't seen a single explanation for this that doesn't imply that no one can ever change their alignment without magic.
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I still don't understand why people think that undead wouldn't ever want to become good. I haven't seen a single explanation for this that doesn't imply that no one can ever change their alignment without magic.
Is anyone saying this?
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Alignment is descriptive and prescriptive.
It describes general tendencies of action and motivation. This general description of tendency holds true right up until a creature decides to change their actions.
The fact that creatures can actually change their aligrmt over time is proof that alignment does not actually force a character to behave a certain way. They might want to, but the rules for changing alignment are clear. It starts with a purposeful change in behavior.
Roleplaying the discrepancy between desire and action is great drama. I can't imagine why anyone would be against it.
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I still don't understand why people think that undead wouldn't ever want to become good. I haven't seen a single explanation for this that doesn't imply that no one can ever change their alignment without magic.Is anyone saying this?
I don't recall anyone claiming that.
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Alignment is descriptive and prescriptive.
It describes general tendencies of action and motivation. This general description of tendency holds true right up until a creature decides to change their actions.
The fact that creatures can actually change their aligrmt over time is proof that alignment does not actually force a character to behave a certain way. They might want to, but the rules for changing alignment are clear. It starts with a purposeful change in behavior.
Roleplaying the discrepancy between desire and action is great drama. I can't imagine why anyone would be against it.
Because undead templates are near impossible to balance for a PC vs a monster intended to be used in just a few sessions and probably killed.
Being navel gazey towards monsters is generally pointless too as usually there is at least 1 pc whose religion requires them to put down the abomination.
Because even the ones who WANT to be good are going to be met with pitchfork wielding mobs and pharasman assassins. The idea that they'll be able to remain good in face of the imposed attitudes from conversion + raw hostility from 99% of the people they meet moves so far into special snowflake syndrome you might as well write a trope and name it that specific character.
Because those types of stories absorb more than their share of GM time when a single pc has them and are generally unfair to the other players at the table. Either via adventuring only at night, extra precautions to protect (often light vulnerable) SSS party member, or just monopolizing GM attention with their personal story.
It is a poor fit for Pathfinder, and a solid fit for World of Darkness.
The discrepancy between desire and action CAN make for great drama, its like 90% of good paladin rp. Undeath has too many problems associated with it in general to make it a worthwhile angle to explore, and frankly I feel requires ignoring a lot of rp requirements. Maybe the people who are easily going to handwave the urges that drive undead could try not eating anything for a week then try to imagine desires usually described as many times stronger than that, but somehow their average wisdomed whatever has the willpower to resist them.
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Roleplaying the discrepancy between desire and action is great drama. I can't imagine why anyone would be against it.
Think of something you like to eat. Now imagine your mouth forced open and that thing shoved down your throat without your consent.
Maybe the people who are easily going to handwave the urges that drive undead could try not eating anything for a week then try to imagine desires usually described as many times stronger than that, but somehow their average wisdomed whatever has the willpower to resist them.
The most common undead that have urges aren't really a moral issue. Ghouls eat dead things and they prefer them well dead and rotting. Vampires need kill no one. Wights and mummies have no hungers.
This debate is over:
James Jacobs:
There's nothing recent about alignment being the subject of a heated debate on the internet, and nothing I can say will end that debate.
That said, my opinion (which as Creative Director of Paizo is what strongly sets the in-print philosophy of books we publish for Pathfinder) is that alignment is a result, not a cause of actions. Alignment is reactionary and not the cause of actions and decisions. UNLESS YOU ARE A NON-NATIVE OUTSIDER, in which case it's reversed. In the case of fey and undead, things are in a weird middle zone between the two.
If a PC is changed into undead, and their alignment becomes evil, they act evil. If they weren't evil in life, they now act differently. Becoming undead is not something that someone who wants to retain a non-evil personality should ever want.-----
You do not act as you did. If turned evil, you're evil.
Debate. Over.
In before...
That's just like James Jacobs's opinion man. Not a rules guy. Blah blah blah.
This debate is over:
James Jacobs:
There's nothing recent about alignment being the subject of a heated debate on the internet, and nothing I can say will end that debate.
That said, my opinion (which as Creative Director of Paizo is what strongly sets the in-print philosophy of books we publish for Pathfinder) is that alignment is a result, not a cause of actions. Alignment is reactionary and not the cause of actions and decisions. UNLESS YOU ARE A NON-NATIVE OUTSIDER, in which case it's reversed. In the case of fey and undead, things are in a weird middle zone between the two.
If a PC is changed into undead, and their alignment becomes evil, they act evil. If they weren't evil in life, they now act differently. Becoming undead is not something that someone who wants to retain a non-evil personality should ever want.-----
You do not act as you did. If turned evil, you're evil.
Debate. Over.
In before...
That's just like James Jacobs's opinion man. Not a rules guy. Blah blah blah.
Well if the shoe fits, wear it.
Well if the shoe fits, wear it.In before...
That's just like James Jacobs's opinion man. Not a rules guy. Blah blah blah.
Not really. It's not a rule that you can change alignment willy nilly, just a suggestion. I proved that.
Thus there are no rules for this.
So, in this case, we go with system intent which Jacobs can supply.
Intent is, if you get turned, you are evil, end of the tale.
James Jacobs literally just said it was merely an opinion, not grounded in the way the game actually works, but is played upon by the general theme of Pathfinder products. Except when it's not, such as with the non-evil undead that do exist in Paizo published material, and Paizo material like the Blood of Night.
James Jacobs has repeatedly said that he's not the rules guy and everything in that thread is just his opinion and isn't supposed to be conflated or confused with what the rules of the game actually are.
You are, in essence, just telling us that J.J. has some house rules.
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Heya, HWalsh and Ashiel, you both got your quote tags mixed up and have the stuff you are quoting out of the quote box.
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People point out logical contradictions in the raw. I don't know how that isn't clear by way of the posts thus far.BTW, I love people using the RAW as gospels when they believe it strengthens their case and casually disregarding it when it does not. Such as the Bestiary entries on most undead saying that they are Evil.
I just cannot fathom how one can use part of the RAW to try and disprove another part of the RAW.
Are there real contradictions in the RAW here or contradictions between what people read there aka RAI ?
Alignment is the topic that inspires the most frequent debates. Not because of what is written but because different people take it as meaning different things. From there it drifts into "you did not read the RAW territory" which is dismissive rather than respectful IMO.
This thread is the very first I wish to ignore. Because it has turned into fruitless reiterations of what has already been stated
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This debate is over:
James Jacobs:
There's nothing recent about alignment being the subject of a heated debate on the internet, and nothing I can say will end that debate.
That said, my opinion (which as Creative Director of Paizo is what strongly sets the in-print philosophy of books we publish for Pathfinder) is that alignment is a result, not a cause of actions. Alignment is reactionary and not the cause of actions and decisions. UNLESS YOU ARE A NON-NATIVE OUTSIDER, in which case it's reversed. In the case of fey and undead, things are in a weird middle zone between the two.
If a PC is changed into undead, and their alignment becomes evil, they act evil. If they weren't evil in life, they now act differently. Becoming undead is not something that someone who wants to retain a non-evil personality should ever want.-----
You do not act as you did. If turned evil, you're evil.
Debate. Over.
There's a step you missed.
If you turned evil, you're evil.
Until you decide to try to change.
Then, after a lot of hard work, you're not evil anymore.
Is anyone saying this?
Yes, it was claimed that because their alignments are changed to evil, they wouldn't be able to change their alignments to good without metagaming, because the character wouldn't see any reason to purposefully commit good acts and not do evil acts to redeem themselves with their now evil alignment.
Is anyone saying this?Yes, it was claimed that because their alignments are changed to evil, they wouldn't be able to change their alignments to good without metagaming, because they wouldn't see any reason to commit good acts and not do evil acts with their now evil alignment.
Quote it.
Quote it.Is anyone saying this?Yes, it was claimed that because their alignments are changed to evil, they wouldn't be able to change their alignments to good without metagaming, because they wouldn't see any reason to commit good acts and not do evil acts with their now evil alignment.
Actually what I said was (over the course of several posts) that the things that drive good people to be good (their values, etc) ACTUALLY CHANGE once there is an alignment shift (i probably should have specified magical/curse but parsing this game like a lawyer is kind of tiring) Therefore the reasons that drove you to good acts while you are Lawful Good, are not likely to be there once you become say NE and that behaving in the same way you always had to switch your alignment back was basically metagaming and ignoring the change.
Actually what I said was (over the course of several posts) that the things that drive good people to be good (their values, etc) ACTUALLY CHANGE once there is an alignment shift (i probably should have specified magical/curse but parsing this game like a lawyer is kind of tiring) Therefore the reasons that drove you to good acts while you are Lawful Good, are not likely to be there once you become say NE and that behaving in the same way you always had to switch your alignment back was basically metagaming and ignoring the change.
Except what you were arguing against wasn't me saying "Act the same as you always do", it was "Commit good acts and not do evil ones", and you said "What reason other than metagaming as a pc would undead hungry for the living have to commit no evil and do good actions?".
Roleplaying the discrepancy between desire and action is great drama. I can't imagine why anyone would be against it.Think of something you like to eat. Now imagine your mouth forced open and that thing shoved down your throat without your consent.
Maybe the people who are easily going to handwave the urges that drive undead could try not eating anything for a week then try to imagine desires usually described as many times stronger than that, but somehow their average wisdomed whatever has the willpower to resist them.The most common undead that have urges aren't really a moral issue. Ghouls eat dead things and they prefer them well dead and rotting. Vampires need kill no one. Wights and mummies have no hungers.
No body is forcing anyone to play an undead character - if a player is killed and turned then they are still dead and welcome to be raised or roll up a new character. If a player chooses to play an undead character then they need to take the whole package not just the significant mechanical advantages.
Not sure where you get the impression that ghouls prefer to eat the dead? They seem to attack my living party all the time - for more food. They also like to paralyse people and eat them while still alive. It seems to me that you are ignoring the huge body of lore, custom and convention that has built up around the game for three decades and specifically in pathfinder. If you are doing this to try and get a mechanical advantage that's your call. Don't be surprised if your DM calls foul.
In your home games you can do what ever you like. In PFS you can't play undead. What more is there to discuss other than effective ways of roleplaying the undead impact on alignment.
For the record, forced alignment change is by definition removing control over your actions. The suggestion that you could change your alignment back at will, while cursed in this way is fairly laughable and should get short shrift.