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With the Remaster doing away with alignment, has anyone else read through the creatures in Rage of Elements or the Remaster Preview documentation and thought "Everything is dangerous, everything is deadly, and everything could be an enemy" or have something similar cross your mind?
No? Just me? Sure. Sure. ;)
It seems so strange not having any guidance whatsoever. There's no telling if that angel atop the hill is truly a benevolent being from on high, or a fallen angel turned fiend waiting for you to approach to rip out your soul. Or if the dragon that moved into yonder cave is planning on robbing your kingdom, razing it to the ground, or elevating it into prosperity.
Nothing can be taken for granted anymore. If you want to survive in this strange new world, you best keep your head on a swivel and always, always have a plan.
I'm curious to read your own thoughts on the subject and how you expect the absence of alignment (on creatures and NPCs specifically) will impact your perceptions (in-game and out) and your games.
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Just to be safe, murder anyone that isn't a human.
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Yeah. I don't see how removing alignment from the game affects diagetic perception of creatures in a meaningful way. Sure that angel up on the hill could be a fallen angel, but so what? That was always the case. It's not like my character was ever able to see the two-letter code next to the creature's statblock.
That last sentence really sums it up. From a player perspective this is a non issue; you couldn't tell what alignment something was without using very specific spells or feats. And those could be fooled by other spells or feats, so I don't know that anyone ever actually took those. And it isn't like alignment was incredibly reliable for answering the question of "will this try to kill me." A gelatinous cube has a 100% chance of trying to consume you, where a devil may very well not care about you or when be willing to cut a deal to help you.
The best way to tell if a creature will kill you besides interacting with was and still is Recall Knowledge. The flavor text above the creature's statblock is what actually determines a creature's behavior and is IMO where you should start with Recall Knowledge checks as a GM; just start reading it out loud until you hit something actionable for your players. The only other thing driving the creature's behavior is what was written into the adventure .
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I don't see why I can't make friends with the entire bestiary now.
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It's almost as if labels such as "all X hate us" or "every Y is a gangster, they grew up in ghettos, no respect for law or order there" were now as meaningless as they are in real life, uncanny.
Imagine now having to navigate the world around you without relying on centuries of generational prejudice and fear distilling into your grandpa telling you "those crooked noses, they're after your money, never trust them" now that you discovered that it's bullshit. Can your mind handle that?
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Yep, I’m not getting the point of this thread in the slightest. As far as adventurers should be concerned, everything is, was, and always will be suspect. It has ever been the way. Alignment really doesn’t have anything to do with it.
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Just to be safe, murder anyone that isn't a human.
Because humans are…ok? What if you have a party of elves, or leshies or orcs?
Just to be safe, murder anyone that isn't a human.Because humans are…ok? What if you have a party of elves, or leshies or orcs?
You mean you have parties that aren't 100% humans?
While personally I play almost only humans as I get older and find anything else faintly ridiculous I’m sure I am in a tiny, vanishingly small minority. I don’t think I’ve seen an all human party (outside of a historical Earth game)….almost ever.
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Humans are token diversity hires.
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...
I'm curious to read your own thoughts on the subject and how you expect the absence of alignment (on creatures and NPCs specifically) will impact your perceptions (in-game and out) and your games.
I actually find many of the deities in RoE somewhat hard to parse. I know that each of the elemental planes had a bad deity who was active and a good deity who was imprisoned (until recently). But boy if it doesn't sometimes take a bit of reading to figure out which is which.
Plus as a GM alignment was a great shorthand answer to the question of "how does this creature likely interact with the party?"
I find myself missing it as a tool more than I'd have guessed I would.
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I like holy and unholy. I especially love spirit damage being broadly applicable to most things. Much better in terms of gameplay. In terms of story, as others have noted alignment was by and large meta knowledge. I know that bandit jumping out of the bushes is evil bc he's trying to stab me in the gut while snatching at my gold pouch, not bc of an alignment block I can't rightfully see
You mean you have parties that aren't 100% humans?Just to be safe, murder anyone that isn't a human.Because humans are…ok? What if you have a party of elves, or leshies or orcs?
It would be rare for me to have a Party with any human at all
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LOVE the change. The celestial big baddie behind everything is a theme I put in one of my homebrewed campaigns and I was going to do it anyway, BUT now I can do it without the fear of my dear everloving friends releasing the crows of judgement upon me.
With the passing of the years I've came to appreciate the richness of the roleplay oportunities the vast lands of grey morality has to offer.
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Just to be safe, murder anyone that isn't a human.Because humans are…ok? What if you have a party of elves, or leshies or orcs?
He said what he said.
Fixed that for you
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Fixed that for you
But then it'll feel lonely :( What's the point of murdering all the orcs and goblins if it's not a group activity?
More on topic though, I will personally miss alignment as a tooltip more than a clearly cut personality system.
Like, if I interact with someone that has "Elf" written on their character sheet I will probably expect to be talking to really old smug people that think they are better than me, or really old angry people that will absolutely murder me if I so much as bump into the wrong tree.
Same thing with alignment, if I interact with a NE character I'm probably gonna expect at least three attempted murders by the end of the conversation.
And if I am proven wrong? Well then great! Foils! Unexpected developments!
Also it's very easy to sort a bunch of monster sheets by a two letter acronym than by reading all of them trying to get a feel for their morals.
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Fixed that for you
Some players really play like this.
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Fixed that for youBut then it'll feel lonely :( What's the point of murdering all the orcs and goblins if it's not a group activity?
More on topic though, I will personally miss alignment as a tooltip more than a clearly cut personality system.
Like, if I interact with someone that has "Elf" written on their character sheet I will probably expect to be talking to really old smug people that think they are better than me, or really old angry people that will absolutely murder me if I so much as bump into the wrong tree.
I don't think that's ever been the intended vibe for Pathfinder elves, that's just applying the token Tolkien assumptions. According to James Jacobs, Pathfinder elves are supposed to be more like friendly old hippies who want to do the magical and cultural equivalent of passing the dutchie to the left hand side.
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This is the part where I admit I never really paid attention to what elves on Golarion were generally like, because I don't really like elves. At the very least I got the nature loving part down.
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Many of Paizo's newer creature creations are rather scant on descriptions. And now that alignment is gone I look at the hideous monster and have no idea if it's hideous because it was cursed for its evilness, or if it's just a product of evolution (or magic) and its actually very benign. I don't know if the beautiful maiden pictured in on the pages is a potential ally to the PCs, or going to use her beauty to lure them to their deaths.
I as a reader and GM oftentimes have little to no guidance outside of alignment. Without alignment, I sure hope Paizo steps up with their descriptions. Otherwise, there's going to be something of a (small) problem.
Sure I can make the creature as benevolent or dastardly as I want, but generally knowing a creature's typical role or inclinations is rather helpful to encounter building and story writing. After all, whether you're an artist trying to stand out or a tradition breaking rebel, you can't easily break the rules of what's normal if you don't know what the standards are in the first place.
I'm certain I'm not alone in this concern.
In-game, the absence of detect alignment options also means that the game will likely slow way down with with additional exploratory roleplay. Undoubtedly a boon for some, while equally as certain to be a bog for others.
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In-game, the absence of detect alignment options also means that the game will likely slow way down with with additional exploratory roleplay. Undoubtedly a boon for some, while equally as certain to be a bog for others.
I'm really surprised to hear how often detect alignment options have been at your table - I've not seen them come up in PF2 at all, at least that I can remember.
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That's a good point, Easl. Even where creature entries might be barebones, adventure descriptions typically aren't, even where such creatures are involved.
Still, it makes perusing the creature listing quite boring. Here's hoping Monster Core (or whatever it's called) will be both interesting and informative.
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Let's also keep in mind that the holy and unholy traits will do a lot of this "heavy" lifting still. They will be applied to a smaller subset of the bestiary, but frankly beyond celestials, fiends, and undead alignment was kind of arbitrary. Elementals, animals, oozes, plants, and fungi will still kill and eat you. They just don't have the ability to understand why they shouldn't.
Many of Paizo's newer creature creations are rather scant on descriptions.
Pretty much all monsters get multi-paragraph flavor text descriptions. The biggest exceptions are in APs, particularly when a creature has multiple forms with its family and the page space is spread between them, or the creature has extensive PF1 lore that can be referenced over google. Even then, they often get a reprint in a bestiary eventually.
And now that alignment is gone I look at the hideous monster and have no idea if it's hideous because it was cursed for its evilness, or if it's just a product of evolution (or magic) and its actually very benign.
You wouldn't have known that level of detail anyway from alignment alone. (Also, frankly, you can usually use the picture to take a pretty good guess because monstrous looking beasts are USUALLY monstrous. If they aren't, you'll quickly discover they are an exception from the flavor text, which you'll need to read before using it anyway.)
I don't know if the beautiful maiden pictured in on the pages is a potential ally to the PCs, or going to use her beauty to lure them to their deaths.
You wouldn't know that from alignment anyway. Plenty of evil creatures want to make deals with good ones. That's the iconic role of the entire devil family, among others.
In-game, the absence of detect alignment options also means that the game will likely slow way down with with additional exploratory roleplay. Undoubtedly a boon for some, while equally as certain to be a bog for others.
Again, was anyone actually using these in your games? Because I have never once seen them.
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You mean you have parties that aren't 100% humans?Just to be safe, murder anyone that isn't a human.Because humans are…ok? What if you have a party of elves, or leshies or orcs?
You have me laughing again at the running joke in my Ironfang Invasion campaign. Hobgoblin General Azaersi, commander of the Ironfang Legion, absolutely hates humans, who have exterminated her people in wars and betrayed her personally. The party consists of an elf, two gnomes, a catfolk, a leshy, a goblin, and a chergl (the chergl is a halfling who pretending to be a fey until he truly became a fey with the Fey Life feat). Zero humans, which confuses Azaersi.
It's almost as if labels such as "all X hate us" or "every Y is a gangster, they grew up in ghettos, no respect for law or order there" were now as meaningless as they are in real life, uncanny.
Imagine now having to navigate the world around you without relying on centuries of generational prejudice and fear distilling into your grandpa telling you "those crooked noses, they're after your money, never trust them" now that you discovered that it's bullshit. Can your mind handle that?
I actually find many of the deities in RoE somewhat hard to parse. I know that each of the elemental planes had a bad deity who was active and a good deity who was imprisoned (until recently). But boy if it doesn't sometimes take a bit of reading to figure out which is which.
Plus as a GM alignment was a great shorthand answer to the question of "how does this creature likely interact with the party?"
I find myself missing it as a tool more than I'd have guessed I would.
A non-human party is unusual, but not outlandish. But in my campaign, the gods and their religions have been taking strange roles, too. The clerics of the barghest hero-god Hadregash, a Lawful Evil god of slavery worshipped by many hobgoblins, has been advocating the invasion, which has been enslaving the humans, elves, and dwarves in the conquered territory. But I added two clerics of Lamashtu to the NPCs, and they ended up friendly to the PCs.
Chaotic Evil Lamashtu, known as the Mother on Monsters, is often the god worshipped by the nastiest cultists in Pathfinder modules. She wants to corrupt the world and turn everyone into monsters. Many people angry at the world can request power from Lamashtu and receive it, making them an ample source of enemies for good-aligned adventuring parties.
Since General Azaersi plans to build a nation of monstrous humanoids (see "Oprak" om page 44 of the Lost Omens World Guide), a hobgoblin cleric of Lamashtu joined her army. This cleric trained the monstrous war beasts used in the invasion and was also given the task of training some captured humans as slaves. But she loved monsters and had no interest in slaves, so she readily surrendered to the party and released the captive humans to them. I also added Krov Thirdmother, orc warpriest of Lamashtu mentioned in the gazetteer about the area, to the campaign. The Ironfang Legion wanted to absorb her orc village voluntarily rather than conquer it, but she did not want to give up their autonomy. The party killed the Ironfang soldiers and emissaries near her village at her secret request, so that she could stall the Ironfang Legion for another month.
Gendowyn, Lady of Fangwood, had a major personal role written into the campaign. Grandmother Spider, Chaldira, and Alseta have made appearances due to my modifications. Their actions were more in line with their areas of concern rather than their alignment.
And to top it all off, we have the godling Honey. The PC leshy sorceress Twining Gold-Flame Honeysuckle had been a plant, was awakened as a familiar, and became an independent leshy when her master died. She was interested in becoming the god of familiars, so I created a Godhood archetype for her. Now that she is 20th level with the capstone Godhood feat, she is a minor god just like her friend Gendowyn (Gendowyn thinks of Honey as a granddaughter since she started as a Fangwood plant). Honey's domains are change, confidence, family, and toil. When I asked her player to chose an outer plane as an afterlife for Honey's followers, she said that she wanted familiars and their partners to be able to stay together in the afterlife, so Honey would have enclaves in all the afterlife planes.
In conclusion, the vast possibilities of Pathfinder roleplaying had already outgrown the alignment system.
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Many of Paizo's newer creature creations are rather scant on descriptions. And now that alignment is gone I look at the hideous monster and have no idea if it's hideous because it was cursed for its evilness, or if it's just a product of evolution (or magic) and its actually very benign. I don't know if the beautiful maiden pictured in on the pages is a potential ally to the PCs, or going to use her beauty to lure them to their deaths.
... good.
I have always disliked the gameplay style of "As you are trudging along through the cavern, you see a group of <X creatures>. Roll initiative."
Kill-on-sight creatures really aren't that good for role playing. If removing alignment helps to alleviate that for your group, all the better.
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Many of Paizo's newer creature creations are rather scant on descriptions. And now that alignment is gone I look at the hideous monster and have no idea if it's hideous because it was cursed for its evilness, or if it's just a product of evolution (or magic) and its actually very benign. I don't know if the beautiful maiden pictured in on the pages is a potential ally to the PCs, or going to use her beauty to lure them to their deaths.... good.
I have always disliked the gameplay style of "As you are trudging along through the cavern, you see a group of <X creatures>. Roll initiative."
Kill-on-sight creatures really aren't that good for role playing. If removing alignment helps to alleviate that for your group, all the better.
Removing alignment will not remove the kill-on-sight mentality.
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LOVE the change. The celestial big baddie behind everything is a theme I put in one of my homebrewed campaigns and I was going to do it anyway, BUT now I can do it without the fear of my dear everloving friends releasing the crows of judgement upon me.
With the passing of the years I've came to appreciate the richness of the roleplay oportunities the vast lands of grey morality has to offer.
We had redeemed fiends and fallen celestials and Monitors already. So, nothing changed.
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Removing alignment will not remove the kill-on-sight mentality.
Of course not. Not for a lot of people anyway.
But maybe removing the metagame knowledge that 'this creature is listed as CE in the Besitary' will help.
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Removing alignment will not remove the kill-on-sight mentality.Many of Paizo's newer creature creations are rather scant on descriptions. And now that alignment is gone I look at the hideous monster and have no idea if it's hideous because it was cursed for its evilness, or if it's just a product of evolution (or magic) and its actually very benign. I don't know if the beautiful maiden pictured in on the pages is a potential ally to the PCs, or going to use her beauty to lure them to their deaths.... good.
I have always disliked the gameplay style of "As you are trudging along through the cavern, you see a group of <X creatures>. Roll initiative."
Kill-on-sight creatures really aren't that good for role playing. If removing alignment helps to alleviate that for your group, all the better.
My games haven't been that simple for many years, but this argument looks like calling badwrongfun what others may like.
If nothing else, Recall Knowledge will still let you know if the big fiery thing is a neutral fire elemental that wants to burninate you because FIRE or an unholy balor who wants to burninate you because it'd be funny.
...or a Wheel Archon who wants to burninate you because You Have Sinned And Must Be Punished. There's all sorts of possibilities, really.
It's important info, too, because of the aforementioned diplomacy thing. In this case, diplomacy might work with the fire elemental, and is a distinct possibility with the unholy balor.
Even as a GM, if you just run creatures based off of two letters in their stat block then those creatures might as well be nothing more then a stat block the PCs are fighting. Real creatures have lives, motivations and moods based not just on what they are but where they are, what their day has been like and how they encounter the PCs.
Other than animals/unintelligent things and planer creatures I could easily make situations for most creatures that make them feel like any of the old alignments.
If you want to make interesting encounters then just find art that jumps out at you and make a reason why such a creature would be antagonistic or not to the PCs. Otherwise just use low intelligence creatures that are defending their territory, nice and simple.
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Even as a GM, if you just run creatures based off of two letters in their stat block then those creatures might as well be nothing more then a stat block the PCs are fighting. Real creatures have lives, motivations and moods based not just on what they are but where they are, what their day has been like and how they encounter the PCs.
Other than animals/unintelligent things and planer creatures I could easily make situations for most creatures that make them feel like any of the old alignments.
If you want to make interesting encounters then just find art that jumps out at you and make a reason why such a creature would be antagonistic or not to the PCs. Otherwise just use low intelligence creatures that are defending their territory, nice and simple.
TBH I do not need complete backstories for every NPC the PCs meet. Having 2 letters that gave a quick overview of their likely behaviour was pretty useful then.
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TBH I do not need complete backstories for every NPC the PCs meet. Having 2 letters that gave a quick overview of their likely behaviour was pretty useful then.
"Those mooks had families, dammit! They had families and loves and aspirations. They had hobbies and concerns and opinions about theology."
"They had 17 AC and 17 HP."
"...and rich inner lives!"
Yeah I thought about Achaekek too, but unfortunately he explicitly can't actually undo the wish for divinity, he can only try to stop you from getting it in the first place.
...or just kill you. I mean, that seems like the obvious solution. it's not like he hasn't performed deicide before, at least according to his own church, and "I just ascended, courtesy of a Jann" isn't likely to instantly make you the most powerful or divinely well-protected of deities.
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If I were Jann I'd enter defense pacts with friendly mortals and a few other Jann. Give the mortals wishes periodically, in return they will stand ready to use a Jann wish to free and/or retaliate against anyone who controls or threatens a Jann in the group.
"My cousin has been stolen away, and forced to turn an evil wizard into a demigod! I offer you two wishes now to undue this in return for one tomorrow for yourself."
Wish for time travel to before this happened, reversing/nullifying the problematic wishes, locking away the god from Golarian for a year (repeat annually), etc.
My headcannon in PF1 was that the City of Brass had a government department who did a perodic census of all Efreeti citizens to see if any had been bound or enslaved in a way that required some counter wish action via slaves to punish or otherwise disincentivize the guilty. Snag one Efreeti of little importance for a couple of minor wishes and they'll probably let you get away with it if you're dangerous enough. Dominate half a dozen long term rather than paying market prices for the wishes and you won't like what happens.
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Quite true. Of course. The last time a god died there were...consequences. Rather big ones.
The fact that a universe with janni has spontaneous deicide every fifteen minutes or so is extremely funny (janni aren't even uncommon or rare! Think how many wizards had this bright idea!), but presumably not the intent.
The last time you know of.
Let's be real here. Those consequences weren't as a result of "a God died". It was "that God died, and he was a really big deal, and it also utterly shattered prophecy as a thing." I mean, someone who's cranked their way up to divinity by dominating a Jann wouldn't have any followers to start out with. By comparison....
Yeah, part of what made Aroden's death a big deal is that he has a specific prophecy that he'd manifest in Cheliax and usher in an age of glory. It was his death on the cusp of a big, widely known and consequential prophecy that caused problems.