An Alignment Thread

[Bandw2]

So I was thinking a bit and I was wondering about people opinions on a certain aspect of alignment.

So, say your character has had particularly bad/good experiences with goblins or orcs or some other place holder race. Is it okay to act out of alignment in regards to these cases.

Like to be less racist say you have a fascination with knights and people who've been knighted, but you're chaotic whatever, but you will almost always respect the commands of a knight.

Now, the question isn't if this is okay at your table, but more along the lines does the alignment system allow for this complexity or do they fundamentally break down at this point?

[phantom1592]

Sure.

Alignment is vague at best, and it's REALLY hard to change alignment. It's also based on an 'overall' personality, not trying to cram everything you are into one little box.

Lawful is about having a set of ideals or code that you live by... Chaotic is... not. It's about the personal freedom. Even Chaotic people can have a few rules... as long as overall they fight for freedoms, then they'd still be chaotic.

Joker is textbook CE... but has a steadfast rule that he won't unmask Batman. Doesn't make him Lawful.

You can be the most sadistic evil person in the world... and have code that says you don't kill children or the elderly... doesn't make you good.

Paladins are the corner cases of course... They fall for actions. They may have deep rooted Hatred with XXXXXX race, but that doesn't give them leave to commit evil acts on them. They can still glare at them, insult them, watch them suspiciously all day long... ready to smite at a moments notice, but if the XXXXX is behaving in decent manner, he can't just racially kill it.

[10' Pole]

nope

[Ammon Knight of Ragathiel]

first i'll start by saying Alignments are all based off opinion no one person's answer on this board is correct.

in Pathfinder and most rpg's there are absolute good and evil. Orc's and Goblins are typically evil but not Absolute. these absolutes are corner cases and really don't belong in discussions about alignment and decisions because they are designed more as an extreme .

as for your question in my opinion a good character is required to offer things that aren't absolute evil a chance. in my opinion treating everyone of the race regardless of experience with one particular person badly would be enough with me as a gm to bump a pc away from good. Racism is never cool.

Continuing, the alignment system in pathfinder specifically is designed to generalize and be open though many people forget that. it's designed with moral grey area's in mind and allows for gm and player decision toward things. Hence why chaotic characters can have codes or certain laws they do follow, and lawful characters can be accepting of certain things like stealing survive. those part's come down to personality though can affect alignment

[Bandw2]

to get off of the racial stuff let's instead focus on a group, let's say of thugs or thieves who threaten people for extortion, etc, you know they get money by offering "protection".

Let's say the PC is Lawful Good. Is it within alignment for them to kill members of this gang after having put under their abuses for years, provided normal/other people she would prefer be captured and tried.

[Bandw2]

10' Pole wrote:

nope

what about a 22 ft pole from behind bulletproof glass?

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

If you're acting out of alignment, it makes no difference why you're doing so... you are.

[Nohwear]

If you want to deal with complex morality, ignore alignment or replace it with a different system.

[Kaladin_Stormblessed]

I think the alignment system absolutely allows things like that. Being a specific alignment does not mean your every action is required by RAW to be within it. RAW clearly condones acting out of alignment at times, in fact. And there's no reason there can't be a pattern or some logic to out-of-alignment acts. Respecting knights doesn't outweigh being strongly Chaotic otherwise, none of these things seem like they would necessitate an alignment change.

[Bandw2]

Kaladin_Stormblessed wrote:

I think the alignment system absolutely allows things like that. Being a specific alignment does not mean your every action is required by RAW to be within it. RAW clearly condones acting out of alignment at times, in fact. And there's no reason there can't be a pattern or some logic to out-of-alignment acts. Respecting knights doesn't outweigh being strongly Chaotic otherwise, none of these things seem like they would necessitate an alignment change.

I kinda feel like clarifying what made this idea come into my head.

Basically, I was thinking about someone using some form of detect alignment, and the character at the time was acting out of alignment and specifically in a habitual way. What happens? Does the character read as their current attitude or their overall character. Can someone be hit with a smite evil while rescuing orphans...

that sort of thing.

[phantom1592]

I don't believe that full alignment would swing drastically at a moment's notice. I think it would read your soul... not your current actions.

If you are Evil and rescuing orphans... you would read as Evil, and everyone would just be wondering why Mr McEvil is rescuing orphans.

If there is ENOUGH habitual out of character stuff going on.... it may be time for the DM to switch the alignment, but if it's just the occasional lapse in judgement or decisions? Then their core 'soul' would be the same.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Bandw2 wrote:

I kinda feel like clarifying what made this idea come into my head.

Basically, I was thinking about someone using some form of detect alignment, and the character at the time was acting out of alignment and specifically in a habitual way. What happens? Does the character read as their current attitude or their overall character. Can someone be hit with a smite evil while rescuing orphans...

that sort of thing.

Hilariously, Sir Murder Deathlord rescuing orphans because he's genuinely concerned about their well-being and not as part of some plot, detects as both Evil (assuming he's high enough level) and Good using Detect <Alignment> spells. That's because Detect Evil includes "Creatures with actively evil intents count as evil creatures for the purpose of this spell." and all the other spells are based on that (specifically Detect Good). So if he's doing something nice, he detects as Good.

He's not though, and unless his alignment has suddenly changed from that one act (unlikely) then he still gets smote with the full fury the paladin can muster.

Alignment isn't set in stone, but it's not "I feel CN this minute, I'll try LN next minute". Changes really only make sense over a long term or as a result of specific, uplifting/traumatic experiences. Generally anyone who's "one thing, except in a few exceptions" is neutral. Pretty much everyone in the world is neutral in both aspects for that very reason. Almost everyone's broken the speed limit, almost nobody drives on the wrong side of the road. Almost everyone's pirated something (might only be under 30), almost nobody's running a bootleg DVD ring.

If your character is otherwise a paragon of virtue but attempts to kill all orcs/goblins/whatever on sight, that's no different than a devout upstanding pillar of the community who screams racial slurs every time they see <some race/ethnicity>. They're not evil, per se, but it's real hard to call them good.

[Rub-Eta]

10' Pole wrote:

nope

Surely, you don't think I'll touch this without you between me and it?

[Envall]

Alignment is a fun system if you put the cart in front of the horse.
It is like energy. You create it with actions and it shapes the world.
Instead of it shaping how people act.

[Derek Dalton]

The issue of alignment isn't a problem in most cases because most times I know how the players think. A friend almost always ends up playing Lawful neutral to Lawful evil. His son Neutral greedy even when playing a Paladin. I let a lot of his greedier aspects slide when he plays a paladin.
It's the player using alignment to excuse his behavior that is my issue. The player who slaughters helpless prisoners because he's chaotic Neutral and that's what he'd do. He does something that screws the party over and then says I'm chaotic neutral it's what my character would do.

[Maneuvermoose]

Here's everything you need to know about alignment, in 10 words or less 1033 words!

More seriously, I think the issue is that most characters that aren't intentionally crafted to fit one particular alignment don't actually fit any alignment very well. People take a wide variety of different actions for a wide variety of reasons, and not all of them fit on the list of four or nine alignment categories.

One of the most interesting alignment house rules I saw was as follows:
instead of having two alignment axis (good/neutral/evil and lawful/neutral/chaotic), you have four: Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos, all independent of each other. For each of the four alignment descriptors, you have a value between 0 (not that alignment at all) and 2 (very much that alignment.) Hence, you can be both very good and very evil (good 2 and evil 2), or you can be neither good nor evil (good 0 and evil 0), and those are separate alignments in the 81-alignment system.

The system can distinguish between different forms of "neutrality." Someone who does both Lawful and Chaotic things is very different from someone who does neither, and this alternate alignment system captures it, while the Pathfinder alignment system doesn't.