Yeah, I'd go with certain creatures having prescriptive alignments - like true dragons (which literally hatch as intelligent, combat-capable creatures with certain hard-coded behaviors based on their breed), outer-planar outsiders (who are pure essence of an alignment made manifest), and the undead (whose souls have been contaminated or replaced with pure negative energy, with generally detrimental results).
Weirdly enough, a non-evil undead is probably still locked into the alignment they formed with. A chaotic good ghost is probably stuck being chaotic good with no real capacity to change, because ghosts are basically broken records. (Like poor Mrs. V from Carrion Crown, if provoked to violence, will actually "reset" and completely forget she fought the party once they're out of sight.)
I.e., it's not a printing error that mindless undead like skeletons and zombies are evil despite being mindless, or that creatures who gain the vampire or lich templates become evil.
Rysky pretty much nailed it up above - by and large, undead are evil unless the story calls for one to be different.
Heh. The fact that there are more non-evil undead than non-evil orcs pretty much just points at Paizo being far more interested in undead in general than in a specific humanoid race. I'm trying to think of where orcs have even shown up in published adventures besides a single encounter in Skeletons of Scarwall and the Giantslayer AP and am coming up blank. (I don't play PFS, though.)
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If alignment was prescriptive instead of descriptive than it would be impossible to ever change your alignment non-magically. -.-
It would just happen differently from how you're imagining it. First, something would cause you to change your outlook and alignment; maybe a friend tells you, "Hey, stop being so evil. It's really annoying." This causes you to re-evaluate your life and find redemption inside your heart. Then you'd start acting on those changes.
By this interpretation, it's not performing the evil act that turns you evil; rather, the decision to carry out that evil act indicates that you have already turned evil.
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Yeah, I'd go with certain creatures having prescriptive alignments - like true dragons (which literally hatch as intelligent, combat-capable creatures with certain hard-coded behaviors based on their breed), outer-planar outsiders (who are pure essence of an alignment made manifest), and the undead (whose souls have been contaminated or replaced with pure negative energy, with generally detrimental results).
Weirdly enough, a non-evil undead is probably still locked into the alignment they formed with. A chaotic good ghost is probably stuck being chaotic good with no real capacity to change, because ghosts are basically broken records. (Like poor Mrs. V from Carrion Crown, if provoked to violence, will actually "reset" and completely forget she fought the party once they're out of sight.)
I.e., it's not a printing error that mindless undead like skeletons and zombies are evil despite being mindless, or that creatures who gain the vampire or lich templates become evil.
Rysky pretty much nailed it up above - by and large, undead are evil unless the story calls for one to be different.
Heh. The fact that there are more non-evil undead than non-evil orcs pretty much just points at Paizo being far more interested in undead in general than in a specific humanoid race. I'm trying to think of where orcs have even shown up in published adventures besides a single encounter in Skeletons of Scarwall and the Giantslayer AP and am coming up blank. (I don't play PFS, though.)
Another way to talk about this would be to consider which creatures have "free will" and which ones do not. Outsiders and undead are typically presented as being created by certain cosmic forces, and so their nature is determined by cosmic force that creates them.
Most fantasy worlds present humanoids in a very Christian light of being the primary creature type that has specifically been made with the concept of "free will" in that they are allowed to choose their own alignment. Angels and demons that change alignments are exceptions that prove the rule. It requires extraordinary circumstances for one of them to alter their nature, while mortal humanoids can shift more than once in their lifetime with surprising frequency.
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From the bestiary entry, ghosts are not locked into alignment - it goes so far as to say they become evil over time. Similarly, there was a thing written somewhere about liches that indicated they could start out non-evil, but decayed over time to lack empathy for <various reasons that mostly boil down to being lonely and/or irritated>.
Why is this? Because it's easier on a world builder to have readily-identifiable villains. The storm troopers didn't wear helms for protection (any amount of watching the films will prove it neither improved their aims nor protected them from anything except a head hit they probably would have happene if they'd been able to see) but in order to mark them as "bad guys" - this is the reasoning for having proscriptive alignments.
So why provide counter examples? It makes for a compelling story. Finn is a storm trooper in rebellion to the evil he was a willing part of. You can still explode storm troopers with impunity, though.
And that's the trick with proscriptive v. descriptive alignment.
It's both, but it's both for the reason DMW mentioned: it's easier. And don't be fooled - "easier" isn't "easy."
Imagine this: you have been told all your life that killing is wrong. This is what society believes. There is another society right over there that believes that killing is necessary. Who are you going to believe? PrCs have the opposite problem. Then, of course, is the fact that they have all this emotion they just can't reasonably hold back, which they've been trained to channel into violence and predation. Not only this, but if they do start respecting other people, they sudden my have to contend with... shame. How horrifying. It's awful, and many normal people result to awful acts - either against others or against self - just to escape that horrifying nibbling, nauseating and nasty feeling... which builds ever-more rage... and you know how to handle rage, don't you?
Now look at this. Let's say you have an addiction that the world tells you you shouldn't. Now you are dropped into a location that offers no support, no aid... and every opportunity in the world to endulge, plus abilities that explicitly help in making it easier to indulge in that thing. Just look at the success rate of those who are addicted to life-threatening drugs. These drugs are not mind control, but they are proscriptive... because you feel compelled to act on them, even when they aren't necessary and aren't healthy and actively hurt you... instead of actively helping you... because it feels so good.
And, you know, it's kind of insanity to expect undead to treat humanity as equals and friends. Sure they come from us, but we are now a food source, and, frankly, only the least credible of extremists in modern real life (or those who have worked for years following questionably healthy religious practices) can say they respect all life equally (unless it's a sociopath who doesn't respect life at all) - we treat our food as inferior because it's not as smart as us, and we need to eat to live. Now layer a nice addiction on top of that.
It's not going to force you into specific behavior, but only extraordinarily rare (and possibly insane) people are going to really ignore or limit that kind of extraordinarily strong compulsion.
Dragons are born knowing their superior. They just know. That's... a powerful drug. But they can certainly change - silver are especially likely to go rogue. But that superiority is always there. It's obvious. They'd are stronger and smarter and togher and wiser and more persuasive than most immortals, much less mortals. And anything they'd accept as an equal generally agrees with this assessment and can demonstrably back it up. Also detect thoughts give an explicit metric for seeing just how mentally superior a dragon is.
Again. Nothing forces them to do or be what they are, but it's going to be a heck'v'a thing to buck.
Keep going for the rest. This is part of cognitive thinking and rather comprehensible psychology.
And then demons are literally evil. They are the sins of mortal souls applied to extraplanar evil essence and turned into a living thing by a refinement process that produces and actively and aggressively evil thing. Same thing with Devils and daemons. Plus the culture. Plus the addiction. Plus the impulses.
... and yet it's still possible. Even for them. Extraordinary circumstances and all.
Because alignment is mutable. It is prescriptive. It is descriptive. It is compelling. It is not all-encompassing. It can be violated. And it can be changed. By will or by magic or by divine intervention - and the will of the individual. The question, as always, is only what is expended in the effort and if that is "worth" what is acquired in the end. And evil creature have to ask that of themselves, as do good - and all do whether or not they think about it or even realize they are doing so. It is a process that Happens all the time for all people. And it will continue to do so as long as there is sentience.
Can creatures with sentience change alignment? Yes. Will they? Eh. Depends. On what? Everything.
But most undead (not all) will be evil as will most orcs and most dragons will wear their racial alignment with pride because thats what I am and anything else needs to respect my cultural identity (which, for most metallic dragons, is a very good thing to do). And so on.
Of course there is more to it. I'm not pointing out why dragons are evil. I'm pointing out why dragons aren't swayed by by mortal viewpoints.
Also, not sure if this is still canon, but aren't dragons born with inherited memories? I'll have to look that up at some point, but I thought they were born with vague impressions of memories from their parents. Not to mention the ability to pick up and internalize anything their parents share with them befor they hatch - even when it's in the egg, they still have the ability to absorb that information.
That you're saying "there has to be more" misses the fact that there is more - there is always more, which is what I was saying. But that "more" isn't always easily quantifiable. Dragons not only don't have an alignment tag, they have explicit in-canon General tendencies to be able to change that alignment. There is just no need and that same superiority grants them a confidence and arrogance to presume they are always correct. Add in cultural identity - a hecka powerful thing in the real world - and there is a powerful compulsion.
There is nothing more needed: a potent personal and cultural identity steeped in personal superiority and born understanding their abilities and place in the world. They only get better at being that thing over time. This is how alignment works: it's proscriptive because it's a powerful recurring self-identity: even if not explored, or contemplated, it's natural to stay who you are barring an event of a magnitude that mandates that you change it.
Mortals are weak enough that it can happen all the time.
Dragons are not.
EDIT: weird autocorrect thing. XD
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Yeah, I'd go with certain creatures having prescriptive alignments - like true dragons (which literally hatch as intelligent, combat-capable creatures with certain hard-coded behaviors based on their breed), outer-planar outsiders (who are pure essence of an alignment made manifest), and the undead (whose souls have been contaminated or replaced with pure negative energy, with generally detrimental results).
This is not supported by the rules for either Dragons or Undead. Nor does the setting really support it for undead (I'd have to do research to see about dragons).
You can do this, and it makes a fine setting, but it's a House Rule. Pretty much nothing in the actual rules (or world) supports it.
An older thread with a post from Mr. Jacobs where I got the idea about ooc alignments - might be some good stuff in there for other things. I can't find the inheretence memory thing - it may well be a part of 4e or something else (or fabricated entirely by me) - I don't think it's memories in the vein of Aboleths, but just a host of assumptions and ideas and relationships. But, again, I'm not finding it now, so that could be wrong. And as one other poster pointed out: dragons have a particular exception in paladin's smite that is t included in others (an exceptionally good point I've overlooked) which might hint at alignment, or just at their slightly-extraplanar nature (as most other "this only hits evil - especially outsiders and undead" things seem to ignore dragons - could be a flaw or design bug or feature of the smite instead of alignment or dragons or could go the other way).
And now that this is a general alignment thread (my apologies for my part), unless there's particularly good evidence, it's likely that I should step out of it.
No, we are in agreement in broad strokes, but "compulsion" isn't the term I'd use in a system where there is an actual (compulsion) tag when standard psychological traits would explain it just fine. Also there is always a culture - it's just not a very well developed culture, because there is no need, dragons are superior and that's all that's needed.
All that said, there's a more reason why good dragons be good and evil be evil: dragons were made as good, and never had an "original sin" - then Dahak went all murder rampage and wounded many, so his father, Apsu decided to whup a fool, until to save their son, Tiamat "healed" many wounded - and corrupted them to evil/chromatic. This does not explain either imperial or primal, but it's a point in the favor of inherited (which is different from inherent) alignment - akin to tieflings.
The main problem with their expected divergence is that divergence happens when it's is demonstrable that something isn't "good enough" for current whatever - but a dragon's sense of superiority, self, and "us pride" is more than enough to explain the maintenance of alignment. Heck, it's even borne out in NPC psychology in Giant Slayer.
Also, though now dubiously canon, dragons were known to trace their ancestry and history and more for all sorts of lore about themselves. This requires excellent records, memories, or both.
That's the difference. I agree it's a compulsion, but one borne of a sense of self and superiority and inheritance, not one of cumpulsion beyond the very compulsions we, as people, have. It's not a mystical force that channels through them (that's outsiders), it's just them.