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Alignment has gone the way of the Dodo! It's decided, and this isn't the thread for debating it - please, feel free to make your own.
The cosmology is intact as we're familiar with, but mortals with strong beliefs now express that through Edicts and Anathema, and the potential to be either Holy or Unholy-aligned. I love all that! It's an easy swap out in either direction for the Good/Evil classics.
What was significantly quieter in today's streams was talk about Chaos and Law. Both are thorny subjects (again, not something I want to fight about here!), but enough people have specifically asked after it that I figured it deserved a thread to itself. Do folks expect a pretty simple trade for Anarchic/Axiomatic (or a different pairing that's functionally the same), like we've seen with Holy/Unholy? Presumably the Aeons and Proteans haven't gone anywhere - if anything, they're better-defined than their OGL equivalents by miles!
Pathfinder's famous for its Hellknights and all manner of Chaotic rebels... I'm super curious to see how this bit of the Remaster is treated.
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I'd like to see them tagged and still used. They are distinct and add another dimension. They also will help mitigate pain for people who wanted alignment retained.
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Alignment has gone the way of the Dodo! It's decided, and this isn't the thread for debating it - please, feel free to make your own.
Seconded. And at the same time, lol.
Anyway, to the topic - I am hoping to have another paired set of damage types and creature traits to parallel the 'holy'/'unholy' set.
I am also very curious if those damage types will have any effect on regular characters, or if they only work on extraplanar or other such special creatures.
I think it would be better if they did work on some of the PCs and mortal enemies. Otherwise those options that help with fighting these special enemies will lose a lot of their value. Currently alignment damage does at least work on some of the PCs and enemies. Lawful damage would be a good choice to have on a villain or their mooks apparently.
I like that back in the early days of the cosmos, the forces of chaos waged war on Axis. I would fully expect law and chaos to continue to exist within the cosmology as important concepts... but as far as mechanics are concerned...
I suppose it depends. If the story with holy and unholy is, "divine essence too pure for mortals to withstand, no mortal is sufficiently innocent to be immune to harm from holy radiance" then I'd say sure why not put chaos and law as divine essences, too. The interaction with lawful and chaotic outsiders would be worth it. If on the other end of the spectrum, holy and unholy energy only harm unholy or holy creatures, I'm not sure there's enough value to add two even more niche types, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
As an aside, I have always wished for better adjectives than 'anarchic' and 'axiomatic' for the law/chaos items but I've never found any I liked better than, well 'chaotic' which before now was a clear no-sell because it was the name of the alignment... perhaps now is the time to embrace terminology?
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I've never found any I liked better than, well 'chaotic' which before now was a clear no-sell because it was the name of the alignment.
"Entropic"?
I'm still trying to come up with options for Lawful.
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I've never found any I liked better than, well 'chaotic' which before now was a clear no-sell because it was the name of the alignment."Entropic"?
I'm still trying to come up with options for Lawful.
Currently there's a LN deity of entropy, a CN deity of entropy, and the nightgaunt type guys who are NE entropy based. Chaos doesn't have ownership of entropy, it seems.
Also suspect that it'll be axiomatic/anarchic, but really hope they pick a better name than anarchic, given anarchy does not mean "disorder".
They could go Greek and have them be chaotic and cosmic.
Oh, I really like cosmic... it's an adjective that might be held in reserve for it's other utilities, but I wouldn't complain very loudly if it so happened to be an orderly descriptor.
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Holy/Unholy damage seems fitting for the two groups being diabolically opposed, especially on the planer level of the conflict or between devout followers of gods.
For Chaos and Law or Anarchic/Axiomatic, whatever it ends up being called, physical damage doesn't seem very fitting. Some kind of mental damage or effect that forces the opposite behavior, or perhaps confusion or stupefied, seems more fitting. Make the damage or effect fit the conflict.
I'd love to see two sides of some diabolically opposed conflict, instead of doing extra damage to each other, being completely immune to each other's attacks and abilities, forcing them to use others to fight their battles for them.
Never played a character or GMed a game that used alignment damage, so won't miss it one way or another. If they replace it with something more interesting I might give it a try.
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It is incredibly unlikely that they will use Virtue/Sin.
It sounds neat on the surface, but some of us can still remember the Satanic Panic and Mothers Against Dungeons and Dragons and being targeted for playing that one game that the OGL came from.
Use those two terms and they *will* come back, and in the current political climate they will come back with a vengeance.
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I've never found any I liked better than, well 'chaotic' which before now was a clear no-sell because it was the name of the alignment."Entropic"?
I'm still trying to come up with options for Lawful.
Currently there's a LN deity of entropy, a CN deity of entropy, and the nightgaunt type guys who are NE entropy based. Chaos doesn't have ownership of entropy, it seems.
Also suspect that it'll be axiomatic/anarchic, but really hope they pick a better name than anarchic, given anarchy does not mean "disorder".
Perhaps that's true, but in the case of the lawful deity, I would say that's bad writing.
Entropy (by definition) is a measure of disorder.
I view lawful alignment better named as Order and chaos better named as Entropy (because Disorder sounds....off).
So if I got to choose, I would rename them Order and Entropy.
First of all, I do not imagine or regard order and chaos with the same antagonism that good and evil have. So much so that in the mythology of the game and in the deities of Gods and Magic you rarely see a dispute of this type.
That is, you don't normally see axiomites at war with creatures of anarchy. You don't see conflicts between archons and azathas, except for differences in views. And even between demons and devils, the thing is more for the devils considering the demons as dumb and incompetent who only want destruction and therefore are incapable of properly organizing themselves for a greater evil and the demons see the devils as too much bound by their own rules that simply delay the inevitable destruction. They end up conflicting more because they're both evil and have little reason not to escalate it than anything else.
Even the most neutral deities in relation to good and evil ended up being aligned with order or chaos much more because their visions, edicts and personal anathemas were closer to these axes than really because they defended order or chaos as the good and evil deities usually defend.
Also, now with the alignment axes removed, I believe that even good and bad deities would be able to have gray areas much more easily. Even deities like Sarenrae have events that call into question the purity of her alignment.
So I see little reason to implement a lot of similar or alignment-related mechanics. At most, maybe divine damage to be used against extraplanars or if Paizo wants to be broader, start to treat this damage against all infidels (which would open up a whole range of complex stories about radical religious groups and etc).
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It seems the future alignment system will be a more explicit form of what's occurred in the current meta: it hurts to be Good, so why be good?
Well, to participate in doing Good damage, except that left a loophole of being Neutral and serving a Good deity (or using Holy weapons, etc). Which is to say there were definite mechanical benefits to being Neutral, and eating one's Good cake too. So that mechanical state will likely be the default for PF2R, whether the creature's good/bad/indifferent/etc. will not matter so much, though perhaps w/ Tenets & Anathema (which in many ways are mirrored in many RPG systems, albeit more piecemeal).
Then, if one wishes to participate in the Holy/Unholy warfare and mechanics, one will be able to opt in (though also I imagine some classes & deities might require that to a degree). I'd find it fitting if it were also only those creatures who could make use of Holy weapons, etc.
With Chaos/Law already secondary in Golarion cosmology, I can't help but think "opt in only" would sideline those alignments even more. :-(
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As for names, I like Chaos/Order, though "Orderly" as an adjective leaves much to be desired and frankly Chaos/Order sounds like a rebranding of Evil/Good though that's always been kind of the case. So maybe we need to start from scratch, draw clearer lines between Chaos & Evil and Lawful & Good? I think exploring Lawful Evil & Chaotic Good might help here. Asmodeus certainly thinks his way is "good", and in some pragmatic ways, it's kinda better than Chaotic Good, depending a lot on context...and rank.
When it comes to creatures' ethics, Ctc./Law seem more about individualism vs. community, self vs. group, the fundamental parts vs. the system as a whole. It seems not so much about the straight vs. wiggly lines, building vs. morphing that we often see, or as if all lawful people must be neat freaks while chaotic ones are slobs.
So maybe a renaming along those lines, though I can't yet think of philosophical terms that encapsulate "focusing on the whole" vs. "focusing on the parts", though that might be because I lean neutral. :-)
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I personally don't see much point in the Chaos/Law axis. It exists for ages and I still haven't played a single story about it. In my opinion, it's better to just remove it. Neutral forces like Axis and the Maelstrom would just be part of the universe, they don't really need to be in opposition.
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I'd prefer that Law/Chaos be treated, mechanically, exactly the same as good/evil. They don't need to be anything like as much of a focus, but I like the feel of "this struggle is still just as structurally fundamental to the universe... it's just that most folks are more chill about it these days."
In general I like what I'm hearing about how they're treating things, though. "Opt-in, and it's important if you do" works well.
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First of all, I do not imagine or regard order and chaos with the same antagonism that good and evil have. So much so that in the mythology of the game and in the deities of Gods and Magic you rarely see a dispute of this type.
You may not view it that way, but in the lore of the cosmos of Golarion law and chaos hate one another as much as good and evil. Our cultural views make law and chaos not seem as big of deal, but it's usually because we conflate orderliness with good. Unless you throw out the word Freedom specifically (which is something associated with Chaos). But Western societies generally prefer orderliness to chaos and so we often turn law vs chaos into good vs evil.
Most stories where I've seen things like "forces of order versus forces of chaos" usually boil down to a rebranded version of good versus evil, with one side being considered good (like the rebels in Star Wars) and the other evil (like the empire in Star Wars) with the right or wrong side depending on the political conditions of the whole thing.
Or on the axis freedom vs tyranny or nobles vs revolutionaries and so on.
In other words, it is almost always a mixture of different concepts where one ends up being called order and the other side chaos. It is not as well defined as is good versus evil Manichaeism.
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Most stories where I've seen things like "forces of order versus forces of chaos" usually boil down to a rebranded version of good versus evil, with one side being considered good (like the rebels in Star Wars) and the other evil (like the empire in Star Wars) with the right or wrong side depending on the political conditions of the whole thing.
Or on the axis freedom vs tyranny or nobles vs revolutionaries and so on.
In other words, it is almost always a mixture of different concepts where one ends up being called order and the other side chaos. It is not as well defined as is good versus evil Manichaeism.
I mean most of stuff with Order vs Chaos I've seen are SMT take where the "right" answer is "neutral, screw over them both extremes" :'D
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I'm not sure that losing "Order vs. Chaos" in this kind of game is really a huge loss. You can still have "this person needs to be super law-abiding" (or the opposite) for select individuals, but in practice there honestly wasn't a big difference between any the less principled versions of LG/CG and NG.
Cosmically sure, but we still have that. It's just not a thing that necessarily needs to apply to people all that often.
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I'm not sure that losing "Order vs. Chaos" in this kind of game is really a huge loss. You can still have "this person needs to be super law-abiding" (or the opposite) for select individuals, but in practice there honestly wasn't a big difference between any the less principled versions of LG/CG and NG.
Cosmically sure, but we still have that. It's just not a thing that necessarily needs to apply to people all that often.
I think it lets you tell more interesting stories.
Like, good vs evil - we get that one. You have people who want to devote themselves to a good god or whatever, who naturally fold in on that side of the alignment war. You have people who allow themselves to be tempted by the power of the dark side. Pretty standard stuff... but what about the person who devotes themselves to Order or Chaos? If you leave it open as an option (which just means having an appropriate set of cosmic hooks and available patrons and whatever) then people are going to buy into it at least some of the time. Who is that going to be? What kind of person is going to devote themselves to Chaos? You answer that question, and suddenly you start getting all sorts of interesting stories spooling out of it.
As for "all that often"? No, I agree. Signing up for the armies of Good and Evil also doesn't have to happen all that often. That's why I'm kind of excited about this. Having it just be a Thing That Is left alignment in this weird place where it didn't necessarily interact with normal people in their lives until suddenly it did because some priest was throwing around Good damage Just In Case. Once it becomes a Choice, though, it gets interesting. Who's making that choice and why? What are the social implications of making that choice in various places? Are some choices illegal in some places? (I could certainly imagine that there might be places that would outlaw devoting yourself to chaos, or at bare minimum discriminate against those who had. I expect that Geb might not be too happy with people who devoted themselves to Good.)
I feel like bringing in Order nad Chaos under the same umbrella increases the number of interesting stories that can be told while not really costing us... anything. So why not? Why carve that out when it's a net loss to do so?
I'd push back against anarchic being used again. Anarchy isn't the absence of order, it's the absence of overarching authority, and those are two different things. Tying anarchy to chaos ties both law and chaos to the idea that authority equals order, and that's limiting to both concepts.
Agreed. That is the same problem that I have with the alignment name "Lawful" except in the opposite direction.
A lawful alignment doesn't mean that you obey the laws of the government you happen to be in.
And a chaotic personality doesn't mean that you don't obey the government - which is what anarchy means.
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Anarchy doesn't even mean 'without order', it means "without a ruler". Either way, etymology is a bit too deep on the weeds, I just want a cool sounding term which flows more naturally in the vein of holy and unholy powers
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Most stories where I've seen things like "forces of order versus forces of chaos" usually boil down to a rebranded version of good versus evil, with one side being considered good (like the rebels in Star Wars) and the other evil (like the empire in Star Wars) with the right or wrong side depending on the political conditions of the whole thing.
Or on the axis freedom vs tyranny or nobles vs revolutionaries and so on.
In other words, it is almost always a mixture of different concepts where one ends up being called order and the other side chaos. It is not as well defined as is good versus evil Manichaeism.
Good versus Evil is often not well defined. Because we do disagree about what good and evil are.
Law versus Chaos is much greyer. It can mean society verus the wilderness, or the rightful king versus the revolution, or authoritarian state versus free choice. It often has good and bad on both sides. For that reason it needs to stay in some form. Yes it is still two sides a right one and a wrong one depending on the details. It is quite a different dichotomy.
A recent case would be that latest season of Shadow and Bone which keeps dropping hints that the dark side is bad but maybe they have a point.
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I think the thing is that there's no getting around "Good vs. Evil" in a kind of heroic fantasy like this, but there's lots of different opposed dichotomies that can pit against each other that lead to as many interesting stories as "Law vs. Chaos" does.
Like Progress vs. Tradition, Civilization vs. the Frontier, Safety vs. the Unknown, Humanity vs. Nature, etc. are all stories you can kind of map onto Law vs. Chaos, but these are also stories that make sense without invoking something more metaphysical in nature.
Plus, without having Law and Chaos be important on the level of Good and Evil it's easier to make sense of someone who is, say, deeply honorable, never lies, and lives a very structured life, but believes deeply in personal freedom, eschews civilization, and fights to liberate people from oppression. We can make sense of this person without having to come down on whether they're "Lawful" or "Chaotic" since they're kind of both.
Like Progress vs. Tradition, Civilization vs. the Frontier, Safety vs. the Unknown, Humanity vs. Nature, etc. are all stories you can kind of map onto Law vs. Chaos, but these are also stories that make sense without invoking something more metaphysical in nature.
Isn't that the point though with the fantasy genre? There is always another foe, and forces behind the story.
Again not requiring you to get metaphysical, but it is available if your GM wants to do that.
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It is incredibly unlikely that they will use Virtue/Sin.It sounds neat on the surface, but some of us can still remember the Satanic Panic and Mothers Against Dungeons and Dragons and being targeted for playing that one game that the OGL came from.
Use those two terms and they *will* come back, and in the current political climate they will come back with a vengeance.
Considering rune lords and sin fueled magic are some of the founding text of the setting I do not think this is a concern of paizo's.
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I think the thing is that there's no getting around "Good vs. Evil" in a kind of heroic fantasy like this, but there's lots of different opposed dichotomies that can pit against each other that lead to as many interesting stories as "Law vs. Chaos" does.
Like Progress vs. Tradition, Civilization vs. the Frontier, Safety vs. the Unknown, Humanity vs. Nature, etc. are all stories you can kind of map onto Law vs. Chaos, but these are also stories that make sense without invoking something more metaphysical in nature.
So, leaving aside how true that might or might not be, it's also not actually important. Order/Law vs Chaos is one that we already have. We literally already have planes devoted to them and extradimensional entities that champion them in wars against one another and so forth, already built into the game world. Adding any of these other things at the same level would require significant mucking about with the cosmology. Having it for Order/Chaos just requires that we not throw anything away.
Plus, without having Law and Chaos be important on the level of Good and Evil it's easier to make sense of someone who is, say, deeply honorable, never lies, and lives a very structured life, but believes deeply in personal freedom, eschews civilization, and fights to liberate people from oppression. We can make sense of this person without having to come down on whether they're "Lawful" or "Chaotic" since they're kind of both.
...except we already have that with the change that they're making already where all of this is opt-in. So you have someone "who is, say, deeply honorable, never lies, and lives a very structured life, but believes deeply in personal freedom, eschews civilization, and fights to liberate people from oppression". Cool. Have they consciously and deliberately signed up with Great Powers of Order, Chaos, Good, or Evil? No? Then none of this stuff applies to them. If they have, then their alignment effects are based on who they signed up with.
Like, yeah, that sort of character would be confusing under the old system... and the old system is largely going away and being replaced with a system where it's not confusing.
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As a tangent to something stated above, I agree that making Holy/Unholy into energy types could work well, much like Positive/Negative energy except you have to opt in. Then maybe instead of fiends/angels/etc. having Weakness to their opposites, we could simply be susceptible to those energy types when mundane creatures aren't. That leaves space for Holy actually healing those who've opted into the Holy/Unholy battle/mechanics.
For example, Divine Lance might heal Good while hurting Evil (though that'd alter the balance so it might not work as a Cantrip, unless perhaps as temporary hit points).
But yeah, Law/Chaos is so much messier. Look at Robin Hood, the iconic example of Chaotic Good, except he's actually working on behalf of Richard who's away at war, a greater Law. And Robin serves the greater community, relies heavily on teamwork, and generally likes Good Law. Meanwhile his enemies are the divisive "chaotic" ones.
Good tends to respect/appreciate its Good rivals, Evil tends to respect/hate its Evil rivals, but on the other axis how do we lump authoritarianism alongside communal well-being alongside hive-minds? Or lovers of freedom alongside sowers of chaos? What elements do they share in practice, principle, or purpose that we can point to?
They seem to reduce to operating in terms of a system vs. the components, yet how does that translate into game/fantasy terms when stripped of Good & Evil elements? Can Asmodeus and Iomedae agree on much of anything except wanting a strong government?
Looking back towards the ancient Greek roots of the word "chaos" the term void might work. Extending from there the terms lacuna and nihility come up. Perhaps something like Lacunic or Nihilitic might work for Chaos.
This avenue does make finding a different word for Lawful or Axiomatic more difficult.
Although, upon reflection perhaps Axiomatic still works fine, especially if one replaces Anarchic with Nihilitic. (Although Lacunic is even better vs. Axiomatic from the perspective academics who use fancy $1.25 words instead of ordinary 25¢ words.)
The word 'void' is already being use for two other major locale descriptors. The Void ie Negative Energy Plane is already the realm of emptiness and entropy and nihilism, while the great empty regions of the material plane often lend the descriptor 'void to creatures that live and work there.
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Ah, if chaos isn't leaning into it's void roots then it does seem to be leaning into its unordered ones. And so again, Anarchic works rather well.
The concern there is that "anarchic" has, at minimum, strong connotations of being associated with lack of government specifically, rather than general lack of order. That (and the associate use of "Law" rather than "Order") are what people have been complaining about.
The use of "axiomatic" to mean "order-based" is also a bit weird, but it doesn't have direct dissonance with the ideologies of any of the posters, so it's getting a lot less attention.
Unfortunately it's opposite being Law implies that there is some authority through whose will order is fashioned.
Well, yes. As I said, that was one fo the other points of concern.
This is probably why the authors of 3.5 selected it to represent lawful damage (much as they selected anarchic to represent chaotic damage). The holy/unholy that have already been announced were also used in 3.5 to represent the same (good/evil) damage types/traits that the revision is deploying. These trait terms all have a lineage in TTRPGs for these specific kinds of aligned damage types and the creatures/entities that care about them.
Oooh. Good point. I hadn't realized that the anarchic/axiomatic thing came from 3.5. So... not an issue. They'll be ditching those two terms anyway. Even if they were good terms, they wouldn't be worth the legal cost to save.
Holy and unholy have been around for a lot longer.
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To +1 what you're saying Claxon, there are actually entire series of novels that focus on the order/chaos metaphysical conflict. And yes, there is definitely a reductive order=good, chaos=evil vibe going on in Western civilizations.First of all, I do not imagine or regard order and chaos with the same antagonism that good and evil have. So much so that in the mythology of the game and in the deities of Gods and Magic you rarely see a dispute of this type.You may not view it that way, but in the lore of the cosmos of Golarion law and chaos hate one another as much as good and evil. Our cultural views make law and chaos not seem as big of deal, but it's usually because we conflate orderliness with good. Unless you throw out the word Freedom specifically (which is something associated with Chaos). But Western societies generally prefer orderliness to chaos and so we often turn law vs chaos into good vs evil.
I'm with you both here. Say what you will about alignment being outdated, I'm all about some good ol' cosmic struggle in the way of Moorcock's Elric books; that's how I've always understood the Law/Chaos axis in DnD since it was taken from the books directly.
It seems perfectly viable to have an axis of 'some' name between Law and Chaos, and leave the mechanics of special opposition (damage and such) similarly Opt-in related, so clerics and champions and such would have the ability to choose to opt into 'sanctifying' themselves to that particular cause, enabling them to presumably utilize abilities that would allow them to do special damage to their arch-foes, but also enabling them to be hurt by the opposing force's special sanctified damage.
I do worry a little bit that 'enabling' alignment option will 'require an already spoken for feat' in translating/updating characters. I feel like it would be disappointing for a cleric to have to wait till later levels when they have a free feet to be able to dedicate themselves to bein holy. I suspect there will be advantages and disadvantages of the choice, so I'm inclined to ask that it not have to 'fill' a Feat slot, but be another choice that a player can make. Otherwise. you have to design these choices to fit a net 1 feat benefit, rather than sort of an intended net 0-ish target. And worse, characters have to time their making this sort of decision to be timely with the getting of a free feat they don't need for something else. If need a name for them, they could be called something like Planar Faction feats, somewhat like Architype feats, but with prerequisites, and no feat cost. But introducing things like Anaghema which can cause them to temporarily lose its benefits, but it also imparts some other drawbacks. They might also trigger the ability to get Class feats which might be dependent on their membership. (thins like a champion-like smite, a barbarian raged triggered ability not unlike-smite, and there is a part of me that could imagine Divine Lance potentially becoming a focus cantrip depending on being a part of a planar faction.
I'm all for some deities requiring their 'clerics' (i.e. caster representatives) sanctifying themselves as part of getting full caster status. Perhaps another thing that might be notable would be perhaps multi-class clerics might not have to commit to sanctification like that in many cases to at least get some 'divine' connection. (but otherwise requiring to adopt general anathema and such)
Perhaps by 'default' Good deities might require sanctification (or at least ones in the books that require their clerics to be good). Then the default assumption might be less stringent on the Law / Chaos front, simply making Lawful and Chaotic deities 'enabling' their priesthood/champions/etc. to chaos to be sanctified to Law or Chaos, but don't presume that it requires it unless other factors given.
Future information might give more explicit options for specific deities. Where a LG deity might offer options of being sanctified to both axis, or needing to pick one of the two, or may only offer sanctification to one, and may or may not allow an adherent to bypass any sanctification as an option. (and of note, people don't have to be spell casters of fit any particular alignment to worship a deity, just to get any benefits from it)
This even creates potential framework that if you want a world where there are even more specific elemental 'wars' going on where specific elements are fighting one another, this framework of becoming sanctified to a 'faction' and enabling another avenue of delivering and taking damage is an excellent example that can be followed for such a story-telling. So if in the great elemental wars, the earth and the air were diametrically opposed, as were fire and water.... well you could have sanctified air/earth/fire/water adherents battling each other.
The base rules would of course define whatever will be the baseline for Golarion. (maybe only Holy/Unholy, but perhaps also axiomatic/anarchic as uncommon) and have Variant rules mentioned that could shift which potential Axis might exist and be most active and combative.
Hmm.. the mention of Axiomatic and Anarchic being from 3.5 specifically does make me wonder if they might try to find another pair of words.
I'm actually wondering about (Manifest/Inevitable/Orthodox/Ordered) vs. (Indeterminate/Erratic/Free/Disordered) I dislike that fact that many of the words that you can think of that might fit on the Chaotic side seems to have distinct tugs to be viewed potentially on the Good/Evil side. People wouldn't think about Demons being concerned about 'Freedom' and advocating for raw 'Anarchy' has a certain threat of Evil to it. Being Erratic seems to be at least a certain degree 'un-good' and not dependable, as many VALUE the ability for them to make CHOICES, but do tend to makes ones that reflect their personality and internal goals/desires/values vs determining based on external rules/traditions applied to them.
I agree it would be nice to move away from Law and Authority as seeming to be the key for determining what will become of the Law/Chaos axis. The whole aspect of people being torn to think that a lawful individual might be compelled to follow evil laws due to their alignment when they were good for instance. I don't remember ever feeling like I'd have made such a call, but I can understand why someone might think that was intended.
I guess another term for Sanctification and 'making the choice to adopt a planar 'faction' such as Holy could I suppose be referred to Aligning yourself with that faction. But if they are trying to get away from the Word Alignment, Sanctification could imply the making your self ready to have that faction's power live in and flow through themselves.