Is there any mechanical benefit to being Good or Evil?

[The Rot Grub]

My players are creating their characters. After a one-shot that we did, they noticed that good and evil damage only do damage to creatures of the opposite alignment.

There is this language in the Core Rulebook, on page 452:

Quote:

Alignment Damage

Weapons and effects keyed to a particular alignment can deal chaotic, evil, good, or lawful damage. These damage types apply only to creatures that have the opposing alignment trait. Chaotic damage harms only lawful creatures, evil damage harms only good creatures, good damage harms only evil creatures, and lawful damage harms only chaotic creatures.

So nearly all of them are making True Neutral characters.

I'm not trying to debate the merits of roleplay vs. optimization -- some of them are quite invested in their character backgrounds. I just want to know whether there's something I can say to allay their concern that not being True Neutral might be suboptimal.

What can I say?

[Temperans]

All I can say is that alignment damage is rare and mostly a tool of PCs.

There is little reason to pick any alignment outside things like religion, Clerics, Champions, etc. besides wanting to RP.

[Castilliano]

Being True Neutral protects you from nearly all alignment effects, but also cuts you off from doing most alignment offense as well. So for less magical classes, TN makes one safe (and you can still use Holy weapons), yet for somebody wanting to take advantage of enemy Weaknesses (especially Fiends to Good damage) being Good opens up more options w/ spells or a Champion's class abilities. Look at "Aura of Faith" which only empowers Good allies. Yet you don't have such a Weakness, so this may favor you.

Plus there are RPing aspects that have mechanical consequences. Diplomacy gets a bit harder when the Paladins recognize you have no Good members.

Lastly, actions determine alignment more than ink on a character sheet.

[lemeres]

Well, first, let us ignore clerics and champion for this discussion. They are DEEPLY tied to alignment, so the effects of that are obvious already- choice in gods, alignment damage targeting enemy weaknesses, etc. If you are going for this, you obviously have something planned, and there is not much need to defend these options.

For other classes... I believe some of them get benefits from certain alignments.

I know that monks have the sacred ki feat, which makes it so that they have their god's alignments as options for ki strike. This means a good monk can punch demons and undead extra hard. While this is the only immediate one that comes to mind, it isn't hard to imagine some other classes might get similar tricks later on.

We might also later see options seen in PFe1. I remember that CG seemed like the best general alignment back then, because it would both let you grab offensive options like the holy weapon property, or let you pick DR/lawful for defensive options (which is great, since you usually aren't going to get assaulted by archons or inevitables, so the only thing that got past that would be devils).

Honestly though? I am pretty sure most evil spells go for negative energy rather than alignment damage. Even when you try to use alignment damage offensively, they aren't very good for blasting unless the spell is hitting a very particular type of specialized target (such as searing light getting an entire extra set of hit dice to double damage when hitting undead/fiends.) For humanoid characters, it is usually not a very big concern.

[Stephan Taylor]

Honestly, I echo what others have said... alignment damage is rather rare to begin with and prevents PCs from using alignment damage themselves for the most part.

Also, it is rather metagamey to pick character alignment in that fashion.

[BretI]

Divine Lance will always damage the Neutral character.

Quote:

You unleash a beam of divine energy. Choose an alignment your deity has (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful). You can't cast this spell if you don't have a deity or if your deity is true neutral. Make a ranged spell attack roll against the target's AC. On a hit, the target takes damage of the chosen alignment type equal to 1d4 + your spellcasting ability modifier (double damage on a critical hit). The spell gains the trait of the alignment you chose.

So yes, there is a disadvantage to not taking sides.

[Temperans]

Wait were does it say that Neutral creatures are damaged by Divine Lance? Was it part of the erata from a while ago?

[Ascalaphus]

BretI wrote:

Divine Lance will always damage the Neutral character.

Quote:

You unleash a beam of divine energy. Choose an alignment your deity has (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful). You can't cast this spell if you don't have a deity or if your deity is true neutral. Make a ranged spell attack roll against the target's AC. On a hit, the target takes damage of the chosen alignment type equal to 1d4 + your spellcasting ability modifier (double damage on a critical hit). The spell gains the trait of the alignment you chose.

So yes, there is a disadvantage to not taking sides.

It doesn't contain any exception to the general rules for alignment damage, so those should just remain in force:

CRB p. 452 wrote:

Alignment Damage

Weapons and effects keyed to a particular alignment
can deal chaotic, evil, good, or lawful damage. These
damage types apply only to creatures that have the
opposing alignment trait. Chaotic damage harms only
lawful creatures, evil damage harms only good creatures,
good damage harms only evil creatures, and lawful damage
harms only chaotic creatures.

Lack of reminder text in Divine Lance doesn't mean the rule disappears.

[Ascalaphus]

@The Rot Grub:

Much of the time, there is not actually a lot of mechanical advantage to having an alignment. Champions and clerics are main exceptions. Champions get a huge disadvantage from not being Good :P

For clerics, spells like Divine Lance can do more for you if you have a "corner" alignment deity, because if you have for example a CG deity you can do either Chaotic or Good damage, which can be handy against different enemies. But those gods are often not going to want followers who are too ethically different, so not True Neutral followers.

Finally there are also some divine-related benefits for other characters, such as this champion feat:

CRB p. 113, level 12 Champion feats wrote:

AURA OF FAITH - CHAMPION FEAT 12

Prerequisites tenets of good
You radiate an aura of pure belief that imbues your attacks
and those of nearby allies with holy power. Your Strikes deal
an extra 1 good damage against evil creatures. Also, each
good-aligned ally within 15 feet gains this benefit on their first
Strike that hits an evil creature each round.

[citricking]

I think alignment damage only damaging the opposite alignment is bad for the game.

You lose things like fiends damaging neutral characters with evil damage. If they want to be resistant to evil damage they should get resist evil damage.

You also lose out on fighting, darkness with darkness, evil with evil. So I think it's best if evil damage still damages evil creatures.

I'd make everyone take alignment damage. Fiends should get resistance to evil damage equal to their weakness to good damage. You can also drop holy to 1d4 if you think it's too much with this change.

[BretI]

I had missed that alignment damage only harmed the opposite alignment.

That makes Divine Lance a lot less useful.

[Zapp]

Temperans wrote:

All I can say is that alignment damage is rare and mostly a tool of PCs.

Not really, most (all?) fiends deal extra damage to Good heroes.

(all my EC players chose to be chaotic neutral except one who chose true neutral)

There does not seem to be any reason to be good except for the few classes that actually benefit from that (=dealing good damage).

In other words, it's a problem since it effectively amounts to a tax on roleplaying. There are all sorts of valid reasons for a Fighter or Wizard to be Good, but you simply take more damage with no upside.

That's not balanced.

[Zapp]

Stephan Taylor wrote:

Honestly, I echo what others have said... alignment damage is rather rare to begin with and prevents PCs from using alignment damage themselves for the most part.

Also, it is rather metagamey to pick character alignment in that fashion.

Yes, it's absolutely metagamey.

But PF2 is a game asking you to make dozens of little choices where each time you need to weigh a +1 to this against a -1 to something else.

Being immune to evil damage is, in comparison, a large advantage. Maybe not a huge one, but not a small one either. Lots of monsters deal evil damage.

But the kicker is this: Since there is no downside (unless you're a Champion) it becomes a no-brainer.

That seems incongruent with the overall design ethos of the game. Which is the reason we're having this discussion. We're just surprised a game as tight as PF2 offers such an easy out, that's all.

If choosing a neutral alignment meant, say, a slight resistance to both positive and negative damage, that would counterbalance the choice to avoid Good alignment - even a very small resistance to healing would be viewed as a huge cost by most players I gather.

(Please understand I'm not saying this because I'm proposing that as a rule errata. Saying it to exemplify what I believe is missing in order to make the alignment choice less of a no-brainer: a cost to picking Neutral)

[Kendaan]

There is contradiction in the rule, Divine Wrath states that it does damage to creature with opposite alignment,none to creatures of same alignment, and creature that re neither treat the result of their save as one degree better.

As it is alignment damage, that wouldn't do much.

[Ubertron_X]

Kendaan wrote:

There is contradiction in the rule, Divine Wrath states that it does damage to creature with opposite alignment,none to creatures of same alignment, and creature that re neither treat the result of their save as one degree better.

As it is alignment damage, that wouldn't do much.

Or another case of specific trumps general.

[Zapp]

Ubertron_X wrote:

Kendaan wrote:

There is contradiction in the rule, Divine Wrath states that it does damage to creature with opposite alignment,none to creatures of same alignment, and creature that re neither treat the result of their save as one degree better.

As it is alignment damage, that wouldn't do much.

Or another case of specific trumps general.

Well, there are two ways to resolve the issue:

Either simply remove the sentence "Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better." Maybe it's a leftover from an earlier iteration of the rules, where alignment damage did do something to neutral creatures?

Or, reason like this: The general rule says neutral creatures are unaffected. The specific spell says they *are* affected, but treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better. In which case there's no real contradiction here, just like Ubertron suggests. Even if you rule taking half damage amounts to zero damage, the spell can still make neutral creatures sickened 1 (on a critfailure upgraded to a regular failure).

Of course, explicit clarification would be appreciated.

PS. Yes, this is off-topic for this thread.

[citricking]

Kendaan wrote:

There is contradiction in the rule, Divine Wrath states that it does damage to creature with opposite alignment,none to creatures of same alignment, and creature that re neither treat the result of their save as one degree better.

As it is alignment damage, that wouldn't do much.

Divine wrath

"You can channel the fury of your deity against foes of opposed alignment. Choose an alignment your deity has (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful). You can't cast this spell if you don't have a deity or your deity is true neutral. This spell gains the trait of the alignment you chose. You deal 4d10 damage of the alignment you chose; each creature in the area must attempt a Fortitude save. Creatures that match the alignment you chose are unaffected. Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better.

Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The creature takes half damage.
Failure The creature takes full damage and is sickened 1.
Critical Failure The creature takes full damage and is sickened 2; while it is sickened, it is also slowed 1."

Treating the result better is just for sickened.
Since it's alignment damage is doesn't apply anyway.

Divine decree is what you're thinking of:
"You utter a potent litany from your faith, a mandate that harms those who oppose your ideals. Choose an alignment your deity has (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful). You can't cast this spell if you don't have a deity or your deity is true neutral. This spell gains the trait of the alignment you chose. You deal 7d10 damage to creatures in the area; each creature must attempt a Fortitude save. Creatures with an alignment that matches the one you chose are unaffected by the spell. Those that neither match nor oppose it treat the result of their saving throw as one degree better and don't suffer effects other than damage.

Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The creature takes half damage.
Failure The creature takes full damage and is enfeebled 2 for 1 minute."

That spell is really weird because it just says "damage" without a type… So I guess it should apply, but no type just seems really weird.

[The Rot Grub]

Zapp wrote:

If choosing a neutral alignment meant, say, a slight resistance to both positive and negative damage, that would counterbalance the choice to avoid Good alignment - even a very small resistance to healing would be viewed as a huge cost by most players I gather.

For a second there I thought of maybe making a Neutral character reduce Good or Evil damage by one-half. But then I realized that in the typical campaign where more adversaries are Evil than Good, this would in fact make a metagamey incentive to take the Evil alignment unfortunately.

[The Rot Grub]

Zapp wrote:

Temperans wrote:

All I can say is that alignment damage is rare and mostly a tool of PCs.

Not really, most (all?) fiends deal extra damage to Good heroes.

(all my EC players chose to be chaotic neutral except one who chose true neutral)

There does not seem to be any reason to be good except for the few classes that actually benefit from that (=dealing good damage).

In other words, it's a problem since it effectively amounts to a tax on roleplaying. There are all sorts of valid reasons for a Fighter or Wizard to be Good, but you simply take more damage with no upside.

That's not balanced.

I'd like to propose a house-rule for discussion:

Remove the sentence under Alignment Damage saying that it only damages creatures of opposite alignment

So neutral and evil characters can still be damaged by fiends that do Evil damage. While I can see the flavor justification for Good characters being more vulnerable to Evil damage, but it also makes them less able to confront an evil creature if they don't do Good damage themselves, which has its own drawback on flavor.

[Zapp]

The Rot Grub wrote:

For a second there I thought of maybe making a Neutral character reduce Good or Evil damage by one-half. But then I realized that in the typical campaign where more adversaries are Evil than Good, this would in fact make a metagamey incentive to take the Evil alignment unfortunately.

Well, the metagamey incentive for Evil is easily sorted: "no evil characters" :-)

The metagamey incentive to not choose Good is much more disruptive in actual play, I've found. (Since it basically means players avoid good unless they play a Champion)

Paizo really needed to think this through. Being open to evil damage is a drawback, and almost every drawback in the game comes with an equally interesting advantage.

[Zapp]

The Rot Grub wrote:

I'd like to propose a house-rule for discussion:

Remove the sentence under Alignment Damage saying that it only damages creatures of opposite alignment

So neutral and evil characters can still be damaged by fiends that do Evil damage. While I can see the flavor justification for Good characters being more vulnerable to Evil damage, but it also makes them less able to confront an evil creature if they don't do Good damage themselves, which has its own drawback on flavor.

Unfortunately I think we're stuck with the current rules unless Paizo surprises us with errata.

(Making houserules is, with respect, a poor substitute for the RAW not disincentivizing Good characters)

[Ascalaphus]

I don't think letting evil damage work on neutrals too is really the best way to fix it. If alignment damage works on everyone then it quickly turns into "just damage".

Right now champions and clerics have a fairly big incentive to be aligned, and they can pull other classes along a little bit (aura of faith). There's a few class-agnostic feats like Battle Prayer too that are harder to use if you don't follow a "corner" aligned deity, and those deities don't tend to accept totally neutral followers.

On the other hand, the current setup does make it relatively easy to play a campaign where alignment isn't such a topic. There was a noticeable segment of the player base in the playtest who hoped alignment might go away altogether.

I think I'd like to see more things that reward characters for having an alignment. That makes it a choice - be neutral and safe, or take a stand and have better powers against the other side.

[Squiggit]

Ascalaphus wrote:

If alignment damage works on everyone then it quickly turns into "just damage".

Is that really a bad thing though? I mean, Slashing, Piercing, Fire, Sonic, Electric and Cold are all 'just damage' too and it doesn't seem like much of a problem.

As written, the function of Aligned damage and spells like Divine Wrath give players a perverse incentive to game their alignment when that should be one of the most personal and story-focused aspects of chargen.

A fighter shouldn't have to think about things like "well if I make my character less altruistic, bearded devils will do 40% less damage to me."

A cleric shouldn't have to worry about the fact that an LN Cleric of an LG deity is better offensively than an LN Cleric of an LN deity and safer defensively than an LG cleric of an LG deity.

Are these mechanics the end of the world? Well, no although 2d6 damage per attack at level 5 is a lot and most players probably won't even think about this when designing their characters and just make what they want.

But that doesn't mean the incentive should exist in the first place. You shouldn't ever have to make the choice when it comes to such a personal aspect of the character.

On the flip side, I don't like the in-universe implications of Demon Lords and Angels being actively incentivized to subcontract out to neutral mercenaries and monsters either.

[Krugus]

Well being True Neutral would still allow you to use the Alignment aligned RUNEs for full effect. Thus a TN character could use a Holy runed weapon vs evil creatures.

Certain spells and feats they couldn't take but most of those are locked behind those classes that are vested in Alignments.

In the spells description where it states you can't cast this spell if your Deity's is True Neutral so the only way a True Neutral Character could cast spells like Divine Decree (7th), Divine Lance (cantrip 1), Divine Vessel (7th) and Divine Wrath (4th) if they are followers of Norgorber(NE) and following the Reaper of Reputation (N) only. The other deities that allow followers of TN alignments are TN themselves.

They really wont miss out on a lot of things in game unless the GM has his world set up in a way for them to do so.

[Voss]

Squiggit wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

If alignment damage works on everyone then it quickly turns into "just damage".

Is that really a bad thing though? I mean, Slashing, Piercing, Fire, Sonic, Electric and Cold are all 'just damage' too and it doesn't seem like much of a problem.

As written, the function of Aligned damage and spells like Divine Wrath give players a perverse incentive to game their alignment when that should be one of the most personal and story-focused aspects of chargen.

I don't really agree. Alignment is, and has always been, just a tag.

The personal and story focused parts of chargen depend on the player creating a story, motivations and background and the DM doing something with it.

Alignment mostly exists to create arguments about what a character 'should' do when bereft of actual motivations, habits and preferences.

---
As the game doesn't really bother to explain what 'good' and 'evil' damage actually do or how they hurt people, immunity to it seems fine. I'd assume a character is equally immune to 'blueberry' or 'truth' damage types.

[Aratorin]

How many Adventurers are truly "Good" anyway? At best most of them are mercenaries, and at worst, they are essentially murderers for hire. It's not like all those "Good" adventurers are turning down rewards. True Neutral is probably more authentic for most PCs, even if players don't want to admit it.

[lemeres]

Voss wrote:

I don't really agree. Alignment is, and has always been, just a tag.

The personal and story focused parts of chargen depend on the player creating a story, motivations and background and the DM doing something with it.

Alignment mostly exists to create arguments about what a character 'should' do when bereft of actual motivations, habits and preferences.

While some might use alignment like that, I find that working with- and around- the restriction can be highly useful for flushing out the central thought processes of a character.

I've done LN monks who focus heavily on lying, cheating, and stealing. You don't have to tie yourself to a central 'commonly understood' version of concepts like 'lawful'. Trying to justify these actions using a 'lawful' mindset allows me to get a feel for how the character would perceive, interpret, and justify a number of situations.

[Reziburno25]

Gods and Magic opened up alot of deitys for TN to worship Tsukiyo for example allows TN worshiper to use both Lawful or Good damage with divine lance.

[Squiggit]

Voss wrote:

I don't really agree. Alignment is, and has always been, just a tag.
The personal and story focused parts of chargen depend on the player creating a story, motivations and background and the DM doing something with it.

Alignment mostly exists to create arguments about what a character 'should' do when bereft of actual motivations, habits and preferences.

I guess if you consider alignment and a character's personality and motivations to be completely distinct concepts, yeah. I think that's a weird way to approach it though since the former is just a shorthand for the latter within a specific framework.

[CrystalSeas]

Voss wrote:

Alignment is, and has always been, just a tag.

...
Alignment mostly exists to create arguments about what a character 'should' do when bereft of actual motivations, habits and preferences.

Lot of opinions you're having there, but that's not how alignment is used in the games I play in.

It might be helpful to your arguments if you didn't start with broad, sweeping statements that simply aren't true. It makes it sound like you don't have much experience with different kinds of gamers.

Yours is a valid viewpoint, but it's not the only valid viewpoint.

[thenobledrake]

It may be helpful to remember that the word "mostly" is not a synonym for "always."

[Ascalaphus]

Squiggit wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

If alignment damage works on everyone then it quickly turns into "just damage".

Is that really a bad thing though? I mean, Slashing, Piercing, Fire, Sonic, Electric and Cold are all 'just damage' too and it doesn't seem like much of a problem.

Yeah, I do think it would be a bad thing. If a devil's 1d8+5 slashing + 1d6 evil is actually just 1d8+1d6+7 unsorted damage, that would make the devil less distinct from the next monster.

Squiggit wrote:

As written, the function of Aligned damage and spells like Divine Wrath give players a perverse incentive to game their alignment when that should be one of the most personal and story-focused aspects of chargen.

A fighter shouldn't have to think about things like "well if I make my character less altruistic, bearded devils will do 40% less damage to me."

Yeah I do agree about that. I think we need more stick against neutral and more carrot for non-neutral.

* Abilities that use your own alignment, so if you're true neutral they don't do anything for you.
* Monster abilities that work more against neutral characters. PF1 started to experiment with this towards the end, Ardor's Onslaught for example. That's actually an interesting blast because it might hit a broader range of enemies than a blast against a single alignment descriptor. And for corner-aligned foes, it's something they can safely spam point-blank.

So I would like it that being neutral is sometimes better but sometimes worse too.

[Zapp]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I don't think letting evil damage work on neutrals too is really the best way to fix it. If alignment damage works on everyone then it quickly turns into "just damage".

Right now champions and clerics have a fairly big incentive to be aligned, and they can pull other classes along a little bit (aura of faith).

Yes, I believe the problem Paizo forgot to incentivize non-Champions/Cleric to be good (and suffer Evil damage).

If there was a thing your random Rogue or Ranger or Alchemist could take, that
1) was powerful for its level (among the strongest options)
2) only was available to good characters

Then the problem would go away.

This "thing" does not need to be outright overpowered. It just needs to be something that can be argued evens up the "evil vulnerability".

It does need to be something that comes online fairly quickly, so it is visible already at level 1 (when characters are created). By this I mean that something like "there's this rune dealing good damage at level 11" doesn't really work - who makes a charbuild choice based on something that might happen eleven levels later?

This example is actually quite instructive. A Holy Rune only requires the creator to be good, not the wielder. The wielder only has to not be evil.

Again, Paizo lets "neutral" come on top. With zero disadvantage. This is a gap in the rules balance.

Even if it isn't exactly a showstopper, it would be best if Paizo plugged it with official errata.

[Ascalaphus]

Well let's keep some perspective. If you're going to have some kind of gritty urban campaign then alignment damage is probably not going to be so common. You might run into the occasional evil cleric using divine lance, but that's not all that much damage and if the enemy's best plan is using cantrips, you're already winning this fight.

You're more likely to run into evil damage as a rider on the attacks of fiends. But fiends quite often have weakness to Good damage. And many of the efficient ways to deal good damage are harder to get if you're not Good.

But it could be opened up a bit beyond clerics and champions. For example, an alchemist feat to brew holy water bombs (and higher-level versions of those) that you can only take if you're Good.

[Ubertron_X]

Another option would be to completely revamp the alignment system. At the moment we have a system where both extremes are vulnerable to each other and we have a sweet spot in the middle.

How about a system where extremes can't hurt each other, but both can hurt any neutrals? A kind of "take a side unless you like to end up as an innocent bystander" scenario.

At the moment a cleric of Sarenrae and a devil can hurt each other on the good versus evil axis, sparing neutrals. If the devil would deal axiomatic damage that would usually do nothing extra.

If you reverse the system the cleric and the devil could not hurt each other on the good versus evil axis, simply because they are too fortified in their respective believes, but if the devil could somehow deal lawful damage he would be able to put some extra hurt on the cleric, because he has a firm grip on of principles of law whereas the cleric can still be swayed to either side.

So while being neutral would provide a lot of freedom on the roleplaying side it probably would incur some definite penalties on the metagaming side.

[Rysky]

Why would they do that though?

[Ubertron_X]

Rysky wrote:

Why would they do that though?

Because the old system, however venerated it may be, encourages you to stay neutral as long as you do not gain mechanical ingame benefits.

They basic question is if it is better (in game of narrative mechanics) to stay neutral to avoid negative consequences or if it is better to avoid being neutral to avoid negative consequences.

[Sporkedup]

All this discussion, but as best as I can tell, there are barely any monsters that even deal evil damage. And those that do it's just a small rider for... I'm struggling to see how it's throwing a serious metagaming wrench into alignment.

I feel like a sight tweak to Divine Lance solves the whole concern. Most things that do alignment damage do so as a rider, so instead of d4 + mod alignment, make it d4 align + d4 force, no modifier, and every other spell level a different one heightens? Net nerf maybe, but able to do damage to anything, trigger alignment weaknesses, and avoid using it as a holiness test?

[Rysky]

Ubertron_X wrote:

Rysky wrote:

Why would they do that though?

Because the old system, however venerated it may be, encourages you to stay neutral as long as you do not gain mechanical ingame benefits.

They basic question is if it is better (in game of narrative mechanics) to stay neutral to avoid negative consequences or if it is better to avoid being neutral to avoid negative consequences.

That’s not really a question in this game.

The amount of people who choose to be True Neutral to avoid possible effects from other abilities aka for mechanics only is a very, very small subset compared to people who pick alignments for character reasons.

I.e. it’s not actually encouraged.

[Zapp]

Ascalaphus wrote:

You're more likely to run into evil damage as a rider on the attacks of fiends. But fiends quite often have weakness to Good damage. And many of the efficient ways to deal good damage are harder to get if you're not Good.

But it could be opened up a bit beyond clerics and champions. For example, an alchemist feat to brew holy water bombs (and higher-level versions of those) that you can only take if you're Good.

The problem really is more urgent than that.

If you're a Wizard, or a Rogue, you have zero incentive to choose Good (except for roleplaying purposes, and I'm sure we can all easily see a player rationalizing why her character is selfish enough to be neutral, chaotic neutral or lawful neutral. You can still stand up for the downtrodden or save the world even if you're neutral. Essentially, you lose nothing by avoiding Good unless the campaign is special)

On the other hand, you have a pretty obvious disincentive to choose Good. Even the smallest Imp or Quasit deals extra damage to you.

And almost every source of extra damage you can deal to them is equally available to good and neutral characters. (You don't have to be Good to wield a Holy weapon, for instance. You only need to be Good to create it. So you purchase it at the magic shoppe, or have the party Cleric be the sole Good character AND its crafter)

[graystone]

JUST use the gamemastery guide if you're looking to fix/alter alignment damage.

Aligned Damage
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 185
"If you’re using the no alignment variant, remove or replace aligned damage (chaotic, evil, good, and lawful damage), which requires significant adjustments for creatures like angels and devils that were built with a weakness to aligned damage. One option is to replace them one-for-one with new damage types like “radiant” and “shadow” that don’t have any moral assumptions. Another option is to simply change the damage type needed for creature weaknesses to some other damage type on a case-by-case basis. A third option is to remove the weaknesses, reduce the monsters’ maximum Hit Points, and call it good. No matter what you do with creatures, you’ll also have to replace abilities like the champion’s that deal aligned damage in a similar way, or remove those abilities.

If you’re using the moral intentions variant, you can replace chaotic, evil, good, and lawful damage with a single type of damage called aligned damage, which harms those with intentions directly opposed to those held by the character, as determined by you as GM."

Radiant, Shadow and aligned damages all hurt neutral PC.

[Zapp]

graystone wrote:

JUST use the gamemastery guide if you're looking to fix/alter alignment damage.

I do believe the discussion has been about confirming that yes this is indeed a problem. And discussing whether Paizo will fix it officially.

(Of course we can each fix our home campaigns individually, but that's not really the satisfying solution I think most of us hope for.)

[The Rot Grub]

As to whether this is merely a subset of groups that will steer away from being Good purely for metagame reasons, yes I'm sure that's true. That's why I'm thinking in terms of a house rule/variant rather than proposing an errata. I don't see this as a discussion about what's "better for PF players as a whole" but "what can I do to not limit roleplay options for my mechanically-inclined group?"

graystone wrote:

JUST use the gamemastery guide if you're looking to fix/alter alignment damage.

Aligned Damage
Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 185
"If you’re using the no alignment variant, remove or replace aligned damage (chaotic, evil, good, and lawful damage), which requires significant adjustments for creatures like angels and devils that were built with a weakness to aligned damage. One option is to replace them one-for-one with new damage types like “radiant” and “shadow” that don’t have any moral assumptions. Another option is to simply change the damage type needed for creature weaknesses to some other damage type on a case-by-case basis. A third option is to remove the weaknesses, reduce the monsters’ maximum Hit Points, and call it good. No matter what you do with creatures, you’ll also have to replace abilities like the champion’s that deal aligned damage in a similar way, or remove those abilities.

If you’re using the moral intentions variant, you can replace chaotic, evil, good, and lawful damage with a single type of damage called aligned damage, which harms those with intentions directly opposed to those held by the character, as determined by you as GM."

Radiant, Shadow and aligned damages all hurt neutral PC.

I'm inclined to incorporate the bolded language for my campaign. Yes, for PCs it becomes "just damage." But when fiends and angels battle with each other, that's when sh*t goes down.

Holy property runes still do extra damage only to evil creatures. (A quick search of the Bestiary shows no unholy property runes being used against PCs, so there is no disincentive to creating good-aligned PCs.)

I do wonder though if this gives any unintended nerf/boost to good-aligned clerics and champions?

[graystone]

Zapp wrote:

graystone wrote:

JUST use the gamemastery guide if you're looking to fix/alter alignment damage.

I do believe the discussion has been about confirming that yes this is indeed a problem. And discussing whether Paizo will fix it officially.

Last time I looked, gamemastery guide was an official book with official options so I'm unsure what distinction you're making. So IMO the quoted text from the GMG IS an official fix. Are you asking for errata to the current way alignment works in the game? Because if it is, I don't see that happening.

Myself, I took it to be advice [we ARE in the advice section] on how to deal with neutral alignment and alignment damage and using the variant damage types from the gamemastery guide instead seems to be right in line with that. IMO, errata is outside any advice we can give so really isn't a pertinent topic for the thread. We could give advice on what houserules to make but it's not possible to advise on theoretical errata being put into the game: unless a dev comes in and talks about errata we don't have a basis to advise on it.

Zapp wrote:

(Of course we can each fix our home campaigns individually, but that's not really the satisfying solution I think most of us hope for.)

How can this thread do anything to officially errata the game? None that I can see, so we're down to talking about individual games and how we can houserule/use variant rules if we do indeed see an issue and feel it's significant enough to enact a fix.

[Ascalaphus]

Zapp wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

You're more likely to run into evil damage as a rider on the attacks of fiends. But fiends quite often have weakness to Good damage. And many of the efficient ways to deal good damage are harder to get if you're not Good.

But it could be opened up a bit beyond clerics and champions. For example, an alchemist feat to brew holy water bombs (and higher-level versions of those) that you can only take if you're Good.

The problem really is more urgent than that.

If you're a Wizard, or a Rogue, you have zero incentive to choose Good (except for roleplaying purposes, and I'm sure we can all easily see a player rationalizing why her character is selfish enough to be neutral, chaotic neutral or lawful neutral. You can still stand up for the downtrodden or save the world even if you're neutral. Essentially, you lose nothing by avoiding Good unless the campaign is special)

On the other hand, you have a pretty obvious disincentive to choose Good. Even the smallest Imp or Quasit deals extra damage to you.

And almost every source of extra damage you can deal to them is equally available to good and neutral characters. (You don't have to be Good to wield a Holy weapon, for instance. You only need to be Good to create it. So you purchase it at the magic shoppe, or have the party Cleric be the sole Good character AND its crafter)

The urgency is really very relative.

In the Iron Gods campaign I'm running I can count the number of evil outsiders the players fought on one hand, and that's because I added in a few sidequests to remind them that Numeria is adjacent to the Worldwound. They're in book four now. If I ported the campaign to 2E then the aligned damage rules might come into effect another handful of times. Probably more in the Law hates Chaos side of things.

On the other hand, a paladin in this campaign would have been a bit disappointed too, because smite evil doesn't really do much against hardness or robots. It'd slice through some of the evil humans, but the barbarian and rogue slice through everything.

---

I suppose one view you could take in 2E is that being an alignment is actually fairly extreme, and that 90% of the population is true neutral. That doesn't mean they don't wish their neighbors well, but that being Good is a whole lot more than that, much more like saints than just nice neighbors. So it's perfectly alright that most classes aren't going to be strongly aligned. Most of the strongly aligned characters have a direct tie to a deity that gives them power. And that power allows them to smite the embodiment of the opposite alignment.

[Zapp]

Sure.

Just that if you come from just about any other edition of D&D/PF, it comes as a nasty surprise that selecting pretty much the default adventurer alignment (i.e. Good) comes with a noticeable drawback, but no comparable upside.

It's wonky that's all. It comes across as an oversight. Something you think is a mistake.

[graystone]

Zapp wrote:

Sure.

Just that if you come from just about any other edition of D&D/PF, it comes as a nasty surprise that selecting pretty much the default adventurer alignment (i.e. Good) comes with a noticeable drawback, but no comparable upside.

LOL Original D&D didn't even have good as an alignment. ;)

As to "pretty much the default adventurer alignment", I'd disagree: I've seen plenty of neutrals and even more that wrote good but played neutral. If anything, this change incentives people to put down what they actual play as.

Ascalaphus wrote:

I suppose one view you could take in 2E is that being an alignment is actually fairly extreme, and that 90% of the population is true neutral. That doesn't mean they don't wish their neighbors well, but that being Good is a whole lot more than that, much more like saints than just nice neighbors. So it's perfectly alright that most classes aren't going to be strongly aligned. Most of the strongly aligned characters have a direct tie to a deity that gives them power. And that power allows them to smite the embodiment of the opposite alignment.

This makes sense to me. This makes people that take alignments to an extreme [usually for divine reasons] an exception. Most 'murder hobo's' don't fit any neat/clean definition of good as they happily cut swathes through sentient creatures that think differently than them [say bandits, orcs, lizard men, ect] and have done so since the 80's.

[Ascalaphus]

Zapp wrote:

Sure.

Just that if you come from just about any other edition of D&D/PF, it comes as a nasty surprise that selecting pretty much the default adventurer alignment (i.e. Good) comes with a noticeable drawback, but no comparable upside.

It's wonky that's all. It comes across as an oversight. Something you think is a mistake.

Huh? There weren't that many mechanical incentives to be Good in 3.x or PF1 that I remember either. Neutral characters took less damage from most aligned blasts than wrongly-aligned characters. Neutral casters' summoned creatures got to have nice alignment templates without actually getting that alignment, so bypassing a lot of protections.

[Sapient]

First, I find this discussion interesting, if only because it is so contrary to my own experiences. I don't think I've ever played with anyone concerned enough with alignment damage that they moderated their character's behavior in an attempt to maintain an immune alignment. To me personally, that seems like a whole lot of not fun.

But, I also don't see a problem with it. If people want to make character choices that increase their fun in one way (avoiding alignment damage) while avoiding choices they don't care much about (their character being Good or Evil in the world), then I see that as fine. If I want to play a Druid because I like animal companions, does Paizo need to fix the game to make other classes more appealing to me?

And beyond that, do alignments really need to be balanced in terms of metagame optimization? Is it wrong, in universe, for a Good path to be a little harder than one without moral consideration?

If players are concerned, I would suggest the solution is in the GM making life easier for characters who are genuinely liked by the communities they exist in. Maybe it should be harder to gather information in a town where you let that kid get trampled by that horse a few months ago. Maybe PC's who chose to save the kid have more and better access.

I guess that is where I would come down if a player asked me, as GM, about this imbalance. If you want to be a Good or Evil character, than do that and take the consequences. If you want the advantages of being Neutral, the game will respond to your in-game behaviors. Whichever you choose, my job as GM is to keep things fun and challenging.

[Squiggit]

Sapient wrote:

If I want to play a Druid because I like animal companions, does Paizo need to fix the game to make other classes more appealing to me?

A better analogy would be that you want to play a Druid because you like animal companions, but there's some feature of the game that actively discourages you from using animal companions and will punish you for playing a character that uses one and on some level you have to weigh whether the tax the game is levying against you is worth it or not. Mind you this isn't some game balance feature, it's just something that's going to make your day worse every now and then because you wanted to use an animal companion.

Or you can ask "does this tax really make the game better?"