Overall, I would like some insight into how alignment is treated in Pathfinder when it comes to a character's actions, and the viewpoints of what that means whether it be the viewpoint of the character, or the viewpoints of onlookers, as far as case-by-case goes, if anyone is plenty familiar with the Dragon Ball Super character Zamasu, that's basically the example that started this topic; a character who for all intents and purposes does *truly* believe in a racial superiority and disposition for justice, partially belongs to that race, but does go to great, sometimes violent lengths when this "justice" is defied or overlooked.
In this particular case, I know a future player who wants to emulate Zamasu's overall M.O. as a character who does what casual society would deem "wrong" to change the world into a proper, "just" one, and honestly full-heartedly believes that the new status quo would be the right one, and that the ends would justify the means. As the campaign he'll be playing in has a very religious bend, I've houseruled for this one that unless your class, feats, etc specifically specify you must be 1 step away from your deity's alignment, then instead, you must have an identical alignment with your deity *on one axis* and the other axis may be whichever. This player will emulate the inspiration, but substituting "gods are holy, righteous, and superior to the hubris-bearing mortals who.must be eliminated for the world to return to its previous beauty". out for "dragons are the superior lifeform throughout the multiverse, they should reign supreme, as they are the descendants of the first gods, and it is only right that dragonkind be nearly all that remains on Golarion." and may stick up for a dragon (or dragon-blooded creature) before someone else, and will put a plan into motion to set dragonkind on the path to having it all.
So in this case, is this character Lawful Good like they probably think, Chaotic Good as clearly there is no real precedent for draconic rulership over sentient races but they believe it to be "Good" still, Lawful Evil as steps in their plan may be heinous to a non-dragon, or even good-aligned dragons but draconic behavior is being followed overall, or do they count as Chaotic Evil because in reality, they're simply extremely delusional?
Tons of bloodshed and bedlam? Lol I'm trying to take it as objectively as possible.
Honestly, I would say that they are Lawful because they are trying to establish a new world ORDER with dragons controlling everything. He is not trying to tear down a system simply to tear it down which is something a Chaotic Evil/Neutral person might do, nor he is not trying to liberate people or promote freedom, so he is not Chaotic Good.
Now wither or not he is Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral, or Lawful Good depends on HOW he goes about setting up this new dragon controlled empire. My if I were to play this character I would probably be Lawful Neutral, but that is just me.
I'll get in on this before it combusts.
A lot of people really like alignment, but the more I play, the less I seem to need it or even mention it at the table. Last campaign I dropped it entirely and didn't miss it one bit. I'd try doing the same as an experiment and just letting things play out. After all, moral ambiguity is interesting and it sounds like that's what your group is shooting for.
A few ideas: Instead of confining divine classes to alignment categories, just tell them to research their respective god and adhere to more concrete things like codes or build their own interpretation of that's god's will. Does it disrespect the canon in some cases? Yes, but as long as they stay relatively close, it saves the table a headache of policing super ambiguous concepts like good and evil. Plus, it creates fun flips on traditional fantasy morality with supposedly-pure-good paladins and angels becoming tyrants or supposedly-pure-evil demons having sympathetic sides. Many people consider this a form of "badwrongfun" pathfinder, but forget them. I would argue the best feature of tabletops like these is that you get unmatched creative control over the setting. Use it to its full advantage.
Zamasu is definitely evil.
Probably Chaotic Evil, since Zamasu is an utterly self-absorbed, self-proclaimed messiah figure who wants to save the universe by killing all mortals and all gods who would disagree with him, resulting ultimately in a universe where he (and however many duplicates of him he should create) is the only living intelligent creature. And he's sincerely enjoying the extermination effort. Zamasu's acts are pretty much always touched with some level of cruelty.
A mortal who has decided that some god is the rightful ruler of everything and who will commit any atrocity to bring that about is probably chaotic evil.
A mortal who has decided that a god is the rightful ruler of everything and whose atrocities are reigned in by the god's code is probably lawful evil.
A mortal who has decides that a god is the rightful ruler of everything, and commits atrocities in that god's name with the expectation of a reward from said god once the dust has settled is probably neutral evil.
(Your dragon supremacist's methods would pretty much determine if he's lawful evil or chaotic evil. Even most evil dragons would view the outright extermination of all non-dragons as incredibly wasteful.)
I would say that the character is going to be lawful since he has a specific goal in mind: Putting his dragon god in charge.
How he accomplishes will determine whether he is good, evil, or neutral. I would probably tell the character to start of LN, but based on what you're saying about how he intends to behave he will probably quickly fall to LE.
As for the being light on alignment suggestion, I generally enjoy the discussions and labeling that come with alignment, but interesting point, since another player is essentially unknowingly (as only myself and one other on-off GM-player are even barely familiar with iconics or much lore) making a reverse Valeros, theologically. His character is a Rageborn (Wereboar-kin) Skinwalker Fighter who worships Urgathoa, but mostly as he is smelly, putrid (draws flies) who most likely will indulge in excess eating and vying for nightly pleasures of the flesh, but not embrace her necromantic aspects of her portfolio, thus my recommendation allows freedom to still be N or NG and take up a NE deity as a chosen patron deity.
I am still swayed that Zamasu is Lawful if he's not Good in the slightest (or at the very least, a 4 on the 9-point scale between Law & Chaos and a 7 on the 9-point scale between Good & Evil) but anyway, as for the character, I'm told enough to get the vibe that she does revere divinity and dragonhood about the same, and is an Aasimar thus Celestial in nature, thus the closest I could suggest for him (the player) wanting to be god-like in *some* flavorful way, (heck, even got Zamasu's overall appearance down by being an elf-born aasimar) and choosing the draconic bloodline for his bloodrager, but more relevantly, believes in draconic legend/myth far enough to agree Apsu, Tiamat, Dahak, and by extension, all of their kin have a superior placement in the hierarchy of reality, so her worship of Tiamat (through her worship of Dahak) leads her to (if in-game progression allows him to succeed; I love the concept he/we stumbled on, but not helping him get away with it) go to such lengths as tracking down any form of an Orb of Dragonkind to orchestrate their takeover (perhaps being the first big step towards "The Final Flight") As it stands at the beginnings of the campaign in question, his character will merely behave with an utmost respect of all true dragons, with an underlying bloodrage response to "blaspheming" the beasts she puts her faith in.
Again, I know, I know, general opinion of alignment's mechanical applications is poor to say the least, but as a Bloodrager can be any alignment, isn't it fair to assume any presumptions of a Chaotic lean could be the result of actions taken while bloodraging?
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Since this is the campaign section of the boards, I'll offer the following.
There are three entire books dedicated to the gods of Golarian. Each one details various gods of good, evil and neutral alignment.
I would read the descriptions of these gods which talks of their general beliefs and approaches to the world.
From those descriptions I would find the one that most resembles the characters, and that will give you the alignment as far as Golarian is concerned.
This skips the entire premise of moral compass and argument of right and wrong and shades of grey. The gods are literally the embodiments of certain ideals and beliefs in this setting. So if your character is pretty much acting in the same manner as a gods way of thinking, then you pretty much match that alignment.
That's how I've always settled debates at my table about alignment and right and wrong etc. for this setting.
Edge lord is edgy!
No, my reason overall was to get some kind of answer about if the character's own inner reasoning gives any weight to the decision of alignment or not, such as the "I stole something to feed my starving child" vs "I stole something because I'm not interested in finding a job" contextual differences.
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Sure, intentions count. "I slew the demon lord to save the world," is more a indicative of a good person than, "I slew the demon lord for the cash reward."
"I'm exterminating all the halflings because I think the world would be a better, happier place without them," is (in my opinion) less evil than, "I'm exterminating all the halflings because one of them looked at me funny."
The first person could perhaps be convinced that halflings are all right when you get to know them, while the second wouldn't care.
99.9% evil is less evil than 100%.
Still evil, though.
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No, my reason overall was to get some kind of answer about if the character's own inner reasoning gives any weight to the decision of alignment or not, such as the "I stole something to feed my starving child" vs "I stole something because I'm not interested in finding a job" contextual differences.
I'd say the inner reasoning only matters if it's honest.
Self-delusion does not excuse evil.
The character understanding that they're doing something fundamentally wrong for an otherwise worthy goal might get them to neutral, though.
If they actually enjoy what they're doing though? Yeah, evil it is.
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This is what Alignment actually is : it gives the probability of what the character's future actions will be
A Good character is more likely to do Good actions in the future. An Evil character is more likely to do Evil actions in the future. A Neutral character is as likely to do Good or Evil actions in the future
Now, the GM still needs to clarify what constitutes Good actions and Evil actions at their table.
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Ultimately, alignment and evil vs good purely comes down to the DM. There's no real fixed concept of it in human history, especially since our history is written by the victors of any conflict and our social concepts of good and evil change so very frequently.
Slavery as an example - it's gone in and out of fashion for the length of human society. We currently consider it completely evil. Go back a few hundred years and that's probably not the case. It was more likely a natural consequence of failure to pay debts or the misfortune of being on the losing side of a war.
However, Golarian is a different ball game. The gods of Golarian have clearly defined alignments and agendas. They are the embodiments of the beliefs that make them that specific alignment. So if you find a God of slavery is evil, then that pretty much tells you slavery is evil in Golarion.
So, in short, you don't get to argue your point to Pharasma when you die. If you've done something the gods consider evil, it doesn't matter your intentions.
Now this will bring in to pay all the Paladin folks and the moral quandaries of what is right and wrong. None of that matters. For a Paladin, it comes down to what Their Specific God deems suitable. After all, it's that god who gives the power. Torag, as an example, will punish a Paladin who doesn't destroy all goblins (babies or not) because they are deemed the enemies of Torags people and it's written in the code.
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Torag, as an example, will punish a Paladin who doesn't destroy all goblins (babies or not) because they are deemed the enemies of Torags people and it's written in the code.
Killing babies (even goblin ones) does not honor Torag, and thus does not conform to his Paladins' code
Hmm, while I don't wanna completely bring *that* up again, it could be considered that Zamasu has a Lawful lean, as at least his general motivation and guidelines were simply what gods viewed as taboo and what gods accepted (albeit he did not follow his own role in the scheme of things, as he was not the right kind of god to enforce the things he deemed needed enforcing)
However, is there any sort of agreed upon or common enough ideaologies amongst true dragons, or even of one sept of true dragons? There's of course territorialism, rivalry between septs, greed, hunger, and of course just personal conflicts between one dragon and another, not to mention religious/alignment type stuff with Apsu vs Dahak, but there has to be some sort of creed or code that most dragons respect, and attempt to adhere to, right?
No matter if the character's inspiration can be argued as Lawful Evil b/c there is a set of 'laws' in place that said inspiring character was determined to enforce at any means necessary, the actual PC's feelings that "what I'm doing is right, according to ___", where ___ pertains to the authority, superiority, pseudo-divinity, etc of dragonkind, which may not be shared by most dragons.
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@ Werefoowolf
1) Going to say "no" again to Zamasu being lawful. While he originally tried to follow the divine laws, he resented them and ultimately rejected and breached them. He didn't try to change the system; he tore the system down to the foundation.
2) Short answer is no. Longer answer - dragons have prescriptive alignment, like outsiders, and so are fairly hardwired to follow their alignment, and tend to have common personality quirks within any given breed. A dragon hatches fully aware and with a moral code already in place. Most dragons never later adopt an ideology, because they already know what they want to do, and are pretty much locked into it. Getting a dragon to diverge from its hardwiring is a pretty big deal.
Aside to that: Most dragons aren't religious. I think it has to do with even lawful dragons being reluctant to recognize someone as the boss of them. Those dragons who do find religion tend to be extremely zealous (like Kazavon, the blue dragon champion of Zon-Kuthon). A dragon that actually recognizes a master goes whole hog for it, I suppose.
3) The existence of a code guiding a character doesn't make a character lawful. It just means the character's following the rules of the club. Whatever the hell the club is actually doing matters much more. (I.e., following all of the rules of Fight Club does not make you lawful =P)
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Torag, as an example, will punish a Paladin who doesn't destroy all goblins (babies or not) because they are deemed the enemies of Torags people and it's written in the code.Killing babies (even goblin ones) does not honor Torag, and thus does not conform to his Paladins' code
Can you back that up with anything other than what's true at your table?
I haven't seen anything in the code for Torags Paladins that says that. The code is in the book for good deities. (Faiths of purity).| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
@ Wrath - It's in the same clause as the "show no mercy" part of the code. (Though it's worth noting that the Code got updated with Inner Sea Gods; I don't remember the Faiths of Purity wording.)
Against my people’s enemies, I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except when strategy warrants. I will defeat them, yet even in the direst struggle, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag.
Bolded for emphasis.
Baby murder generally isn't accepted as honorable conduct.
It's also worth noting that Torag's code calls for defeat, not extermination.
I'd suggest looking at Sherman's March to the Sea for a guide to the sort of tactics Torag would probably approve of. (Sherman didn't kill civilians, but he didn't bat an eye at destroying infrastructure and forcing civilians to either relocate or be reliant on his own army for supplies.)
Yeah, isn't there specifically a comical piece of art of a character (presumably Harsk, iirc) surrounded by crying, baby goblins, with an unamused expression?
Hmm, so what sort of alignment would a Draconic Supremacist presumably have? Lol I was even trying to come to an average based on chromatic dragons, chromatic + metallic dragons, and even all true dragons so far.
Yeah, isn't there specifically a comical piece of art of a character (presumably Harsk, iirc) surrounded by crying, baby goblins, with an unamused expression?
Hmm, so what sort of alignment would a Draconic Supremacist presumably have? Lol I was even trying to come to an average based on chromatic dragons, chromatic + metallic dragons, and even all true dragons so far.
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Faiths of Purity stated : "Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."
Note : scatter their families, not exterminate them. Also there is a clear difference between the enemies and their families, presumably between combatants (ie, who are actively trying to destroy your people) and non-combatants (those who do not, for example, goblin babies)
And finally, act in a way that brings honor to Torag.
tldr : Torag is NOT the LG god of genocide ;-)
Faiths of Purity stated : "Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."
Note : scatter their families, not exterminate them. Also there is a clear difference between the enemies and their families, presumably between combatants (ie, who are actively trying to destroy your people) and non-combatants (those who do not, for example, goblin babies)
And finally, act in a way that brings honor to Torag.
tldr : Torag is NOT the LG god of genocide ;-)
No, that would be Ragathiel.
Depends on how he does it. Exterminating/enslaving all the lesser races puts him well and firmly in the Evil half of the spectrum. Walking around with a sandwich board and proclaiming to kneel before our reptilian overlords is neutral probably, while the Paladin of Apsu who goes around to prove the superiority of dragons by defending those too weak to save themselves and making things better thanks to his draconic patron is a Good person.
Hmm, well the character primarily worships Tiamat through worship of Dahak (worship as proxy, I guess) for the sole purpose of their hand in the beginnings of dragonkind. The character chooses to deem true dragons as the divine beings they began as, and that they ultimately deserve a place at the top, etc so will likely take talking ill of dragons or slaying a dragon as a blasphemy or outright sin, and will take any action necessary to glorify a dragon(s) and/or raise them to a higher status (or convince anyone that they belong in a subservient role to a dragon, or worse)
I don't think they'd steal, murder, etc just because someone's not a dragon, but if there's a bonified dragon slayer running around, probably deserves to get slain him/herself, if a dragon covets your stuff and this character becomes aware, probably getting stolen lol
Hmm, the player hasn't really swayed on the orderly hierarchy or cattle for the dragonlords sides just yet, still picking his brain about what sort of behavior could be expected, but I would have to guess "kill dragonslayers if they cannot be convinced to pick up a different profession" is probably a for-sure, and "steal the shinies" might only be if the character has a draconic patron/superior with specific needs/desires the character aims to fulfill. Otherwise, "keep any shinies fairly acquired for the next true dragon I encounter to barter some form of understanding of non-hostile intentions and respect." is expected.
Also, I know no alignment requirements exist for being a non-caster worshipper, but with the campaign having a religious theme, I would expect the character to be at least EITHER Chaotic OR Evil if they worship Dahak and/or Tiamat.
One other alignment nitpick: for a Bloodrager, who is able to Rage (Blood Rage) without necessarily being Chaotic like a Barbarian, when roleplaying such a character while bloodraging, what can be said of the characters alignment where their actions during bloodrage is concerned? Essentially, what effect do crimes (or general sleights) of passion have on alignment?
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One other alignment nitpick: for a Bloodrager, who is able to Rage (Blood Rage) without necessarily being Chaotic like a Barbarian, when roleplaying such a character while bloodraging, what can be said of the characters alignment where their actions during bloodrage is concerned? Essentially, what effect do crimes (or general sleights) of passion have on alignment?
Nothing. A Bloodrager/Barbarian in their Rage is completely within control of themselves. Rage doesn't activate by it's own, it's a concious decision. And it can be conciously ended. Therefore, Alignment wise, entering Rage is no different than issuing a Challenge, beginning a Bardic Performance, and so on.
The only exception is the Wild Rager, who can in fact lose control during their rages. But, again, they are not forced to enter their Rage state, they do so of their own volition. The fact that they can do things they wouldn't want to (attacking innocents/friends/a house/whatever) isn't lessened by them not being in control: they chose to enter a state where their decision-making would be impaired and then acted in that state. Sort of like driving under the influence, in a way.
Oh, I always sort of felt like the having the option to Rage was for fair gameplay, but that if roleplayed correctly, the raging could be portrayed as an involuntary response to certain stimuli.
Oh, I always sort of felt like the having the option to Rage was for fair gameplay, but that if roleplayed correctly, the raging could be portrayed as an involuntary response to certain stimuli.
As Rysky said, you can roleplay anything, and I certainly hope you do if it's what you prefer, but within the game a Barbarian's Rage is not treated as such, in gameplay or in the fiction.
A better, gameplay supported example of what you think of as the Barbarian Rage is the Brute Vigilante Archetype. There, the transformation can in fact be involuntary, and it's even worse off than the poor Wild Rager, since he will attack innocents and bystanders when all the baddies are down (instead of the Wild Rager, who rolls in the Confusion table and thus most likely does nothing) unless they manage to pass a hefty Will save (or their buddies calm them down).
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Faiths of Purity stated : "Against my people's enemies I will show no mercy. I will not allow their surrender, except to extract information. I will defeat them, and I will scatter their families. Yet even in the struggle against our enemies, I will act in a way that brings honor to Torag."
Note : scatter their families, not exterminate them. Also there is a clear difference between the enemies and their families, presumably between combatants (ie, who are actively trying to destroy your people) and non-combatants (those who do not, for example, goblin babies)
And finally, act in a way that brings honor to Torag.
tldr : Torag is NOT the LG god of genocide ;-)
Again, that's different to the copy I have as my original. Seems it may have been updated?