Hello good day,
I have been a dungeon master for some years now, and for a while these days my players ask me a question, and I would certainly like to know if you could give me an official answer in this regard.
The different races, dwarves, orcs, giants ... even the gods or the peoples within them may have different moralities regarding good, evil, the law ... so my question is, is it possible to adapt the alignments? to the different moralities that may exist within a race (or faction, religion ... etc)?
I give an example so that my question can be better understood: "In a society like the Drow, where slavery is something normal, where murder among members of the same family is something within the common and that does not look bad to be able to ascend socially, an LG character who follows those rules, laws and customs of his people, could be considered LE or CE for humans because in morality or human customs these practices are reprehensible and aberrant? Could a character be LG and LE depending Where are you from? "
Thank you very much for your help
P.D. Excuse for my English
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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path Subscriber
You can do whatever you want as a DM, but the game mechanics assume that alignment is objective, not subjective. Meaning that what is "evil" is universally evil, not variable based on viewpoint.
From the perspective of a sociopath, there's nothing wrong with murder. So in the land of all sociopaths, is murder okay? Not according to the rules of this game.
But you're always free to adjust as you see fit.
Personally I think it makes most sense to leave things as-is. It doesn't make sense to me to create a NPC in drow society who strongly enforces a you-must-commit-slavery policy and call that NPC a paladin. I'd just use the anti-paladin class instead since the work has already been done to create mechanics for a class that advocates "nasty" acts.
Also, what happens when an "inverted" society and people from a "normal" society interact. A drow paladin and a surface-dweller paladin meet... but they're both LG according to "adaptation". So neither can smite each other? How do protection from spells work?
Officially, the rules work as they are written and there isn't any provision for changing alignment this way. That's the "official" answer. But once again, you can do what you want. Sounds like you might have some chaotic evil players. <Grin>
I think the distinction between morality and alignment should be kept, even if they share the same core language. Morality is relative, and alignment is absolute. You can be a NG slave owner receiving spells from Sarenrae as long as you treat them well; slavery, after all, makes raising the dead unnecessary, and that's a greater evil. You can be a zealot of Ragathiel - or even Sarenrae - advocating for the erradication of an entire civilization just because you don't like the gods they worship. By our (modern, western) standards that's genocide and it's evil, but both deities are prone to crusades without an alignment change. On the other hand, Dahak fought the beast Rovagug and he's still CE, and there are quite a few acts of charity from the LE churches: small, visible acts of goodness that make great PR to hide the monstrosity beneath. There are quite a few adventures in organized play of evil agents playing good and fooling smart people, saying that good is evil and evil is good, so...
Morality is relative and a character can be regarded as evil or good depending on the culture. Torag is a force for good for the dwarves, and an evil oppressor and a murderer for the goblins. But alignment is fixed, only for Pharasma to change - maybe not even that -, so Torag is still LG (even if he allows the murder of baby goblins), and their clerics won't start channeling negative energy just because they were made POWs by the duergar.
And that's about all I can make of alignment without getting a headache. I just hope no one brings up Dammerich...
I don’t think you can be a NG slave-owner, Paizo’s line is that slavery is evil.
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