Alignment mechanics replacement - Divine and Heretic

[Almarane]

Hi everyone ! :)

One of my players suggested me a workaround I will probably use to remove alignment from my games: Divine and Heretic. So I will expose it here in case it could be of help for another GM :)

"Divine" is related to your patron god's / concept's values. For exemple, showing mercy to your ennemy will be Divine for a follower of Sarenrae, and a spell raising an undead will be Divine for a follower of Urgatoah. Divine targets are targets that follow your values, such as an angel for Iomedae. Divine damages deal damages to targets that are Heretic to you, such as fiends for Iomedae.

"Heretic" is related to your patron god's / concept's anathemas and ennemies. Showing mercy to your ennemy will be Heretic for a follower of Asmodeus, and a spell raising an undead is Heretic for a follower of Pharasma. Heretic damages deal damages to targets that are Divine to you, such as psychopomps for Pharasma. (Heretic damages would be quiet rare, since attacking a Divine target would be an Heretic act unless special circumstances).

Replace all occurences of alignment by either "Divine" or "Heretic", depending on the context. For exemple, the Champion's Divine Smite, Holy Cascade and Hellfire Plume will now deal Divine damages (so a Champion of Pharasma will deal damages to undeads but not to psychopomps, and an undead casting Hellfire Plume will deal Divine damages to said Champion of Pharasma while a psychopomp casting the same Hellfire Plume on this Champion will deal no damages).

It is somewhat of a redux Loyalty system mixed with the Anathema system that only impacts divine characters and outsiders (since they seem to be the only characters with alignment-based mechanics). You will have to make judgment calls on what is considered Divine and Heretic on a per-character basis, but IMHO this can be improvised quickly when the situation presents itself and at character creation if you have a solid comprehension of your setting's gods'/concepts' values.

Hope this helps :)

Note: Please do not debate here about if removing alignment from the game is a good idea / a bad idea / necessary / not necessary as it is not the point of this thread. If you like alignment and want to keep it in your game, or if you don't like it and want to remove it, that's neither good nor bad, that's your decision and nobody should judge you on this. But you can debate about the Divine and Heretic rules or other ways to replace alignment here if you'd like.
Let's stay civic folks :)

[NemoNoName]

Love the idea, simple and elegant! :)

[MaxAstro]

Might I suggest something like "Devout" instead of "Divine", to avoid confusion with divine being the name of a spell list?

[UnArcaneElection]

I had actually been toying with superimposing something like this on top of alignments, so that an absolute alignmetn grid would exist, but with the view of it very strongly warped by relative alignments. So that, you know, things like the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea could be technically of the same alignment, but still able to smite each other . . . .

[Staffan Johansson]

I'm a bit uncertain about the "Heretic" term. Usually, it applies to someone who has the same belief system as you, but is wrong (from your perspective) about key concepts.

For example, a Catholic would consider a Lutheran a heretic (though nowadays they're generally more polite about it). They believe in the same deity, and share the same religious texts (more or less), but the Lutheran rejects many concepts the Catholic consider to be True.

But the same Catholic wouldn't consider a Buddhist a heretic, but instead an infidel. They don't believe in the same god (the Buddhist may not even believe in any god, depending on what sort of Buddhist they are), they share no religious texts, or anything of the sort.

I'm not sure what a good term would be - anathema would perhaps be good, except it's already taken. Or perhaps Holy and Unholy?

[UnArcaneElection]

^Devout and Infidel should work.

[Almarane]

You can change the words, sure, it doesn't really change the core mechanic :) Take the words you are the most confortable with !

Just, for the "heretic" term : the "you are wrong" aspect of the "Heretic" term could well work (since as a cleric you will think something that is against your beliefs to be wrong). As I see this, a Pharasmin cleric that casts a spell that deals damage to Heretic targets deals damages to a cleric of Urgatoah (because they have ideas directly clashing) but not to a cleric of Gozreh (they don't have a subject in common). But you could say such effects also englobes "infidels" in the category opposing divine/devout. I would let the GM determine who are "your religion's allies" and who are "your religion's ennemies" :)

[UnArcaneElection]

Add Heathen for people that are neither with you nor against you. These receive the reduced damage from spells (such as Holy Smite and its relatives) that do reduced damage to creatures that are neither of your alignment nor opposed to it.