I am kind of curious.
In your games how has the remaster's removal of alignment as a game mechanic and character morality ruler affected how your players actually play?
That was a slightly loaded question. Maybe the change has had no affect, maybe you never saw it as a character morality ruler. Either way do your players play differently post alignment or as a player is anything different for you?
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Not really, no. But, to me, it was never really used like "pick alignment, act accordingly" anyway. It was more "picture character and how they'd act, pick alignment that seems like the closest fit, write that on character sheet".
So I didn't expect a change... but I haven't noticed a change that I didn't expect, either.
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After talking it over when the Remaster hit in my group we decided to keep Alignment around as a purely flavor system to help stratify and make more understandable certain personality and morality patterns plus a somewhat helpful set of guidelines for helping to define a character's personality and priorities.
We ditched most of the various mechanical rules that went along with them in general except for the sense/detect/hide Alignment stuff as it is still a useful yardstick to sus out the disposition and true nature of characters and it hasn't broken anything at all. Of course, these types of things still only apply and function in the extremely limited scope that they worked from the CRB version of PF2 but that's working as intended, checking every NPC shopkeep or guard with these things to see if they're "worthy" or perhaps corruptable wasn't a thing anyhow unless they were secretly a magically endowed cultist or perhaps undead in disguise (who failed to properly shield themselves aginst properly armed threats.
Protection X and various attacks/spells that did specific things differently based on Alignment are gone because the new system to handle things is, IMO, far better made to deal with personally motivated individuals and the reality of how morality/ethics is entirely subjective.
It might be baggage so far as the OGL is concerned and much of it was inelegant and kinda pointless but that doesn't mean the entire suitcase full of stuff was worthy of being tossed in the trash. Keep the stuff that serves a purpose and helps guide your game down the path, abandon the excess.
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I'm in one game where my character still has their alignment written on their character sheet. But like Hammerjack, the alignment was chosen after the character's personality out of mechanical necessity - rather than as a choice made in a vacuum that then determines behavior of the character. So it hasn't ever been something that I put much conscious thought into while playing the character even before Remaster.
It is nice to not have to worry about alignment when determining damage types and whether a character is affected or not. That part was updated to use Spirit damage instead of alignment damage.
Not a jot other than maybe opening up a few mechanical options. Back when it was at all relevant for mechanical reasons, I usually penciled in 'True Neutral' and let my GM decide my alignment from my character's actions as whatever system of ethics or morality my characters held to was just about orthogonal to the classically defined alignments. For my players I was already wholesale ignoring the system well before it was officially axed.
Alignment was already unwieldy and poorly thought out years ago and only retained as a simple tool or out of nostalgia and a desire to ape D&D's vibe. Getting rid of it only helps challenge players in a good way and further define Pathfinder as something distinct from D&D.
The only thing that got changed with alignment is that some of my players are happy with the extended roster of gods since some were really alignment restricted before (not many lawful players)
and some formerly evil gods allow for non-unholy santification and have rather reasonable edicts and anathema
in actual play - everything stayed the same
Nope. Alignment long ago stopped being particularly meaningful to my players. They role-play the character personality and alignment had become mostly a mechanic for the DM. That's why I couldn't care less about its removal.
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I primarily found alignment useful for running monsters, not so much roleplaying characters. It was a quick and dirty way to feel out the kind of tactics a monster might employ or how they'd approach any goals they had.
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I mostly feel it in the stat blocks, tbh.
Alignment was always an easy shortcut for how a monster might respond to some stimuli or the kinds of worshipers a deity might attract.
I have found the Edicts and Anathema to be somewhat more cumbersome in determining those things regarding the latter, and descriptive text woefully inadequate for the former.
On the one hand, alignment's removal theoretically gives a GM more leeway to use a creature in a wider variety of scenarios, by the other hand requires the GM to select monsters from a larger pool with less guidance.
Besides, WRT monster alignment I always considered the listed one as "typical", not absolute (except for fiends and celestials) . So I don't actually buy in to my own point about using a given monster in a wide variety of situations.
I just find the removal irksome as pertains to the shorthand of monster and deity temperaments.
Regarding player character alignment, I see no significance since the removal.
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I haven't noticed much difference with players, except that its less info up font. Getting people to pick an alignment wasn't generally that difficult, and it told me a bit about how they might behave. Without that, I find I'm running blind with some new characters until I see how they get played and the player discovers them. (Most players in my experience are not coming up with edicts up front, though a couple of very well realized characters have.)
But people are largely playing the same, except now you don't see them worrying about how you have to be X alignment for some spells (looking at you, Divine spell list) to actually work against the things you're fighting. It's been a net positive change IMO.
I miss it more as a GM on the NPC side, where an NPC stat block with an alignment is a very quick reference to how this NPC might behave if I don't have something else to go on for the situation. There isn't a good equivalent for that given that it said a fair bit in a very compact way.
One player in a game I was in was worried about the alignment removal because they were a hallowed necromancer, which they thought was highly alignment involved. It only had one alignment related prerequisite which was easily translated to the new holy/unholy system. Turns out, they were actually more concerned about the presence of edicts and anathemas, which all remained intact.
That's about it in my experience. Most people were relieved about the removal for one reason or another. The rest seemed indifferent.
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Oh, alright….
….
Post.
I played a necromancer witch whose familiar is their reanimated mother's head, but played her as a really pleasant and nice person. She inherited the magic from her (now undead) mother. Removing alignment removes the undead spells constantly nudging this character to 'Evil' when she really isn't that.
Most people here agree that alignment was more useful as a loose guideline for monsters and NPCs behavior than the PCs' one.
An idea could be having a set of general behavioral traits intended to be associated with creatures; stuff like 'honorable', 'liar', 'cruel', etc..
Keeping the number relatively low, say around 20 keywords, could help sorting creatures by them if you are looking for a specific kind. Anything more complex goes into the extended description.
What do you think?
I am kind of curious.
In your games how has the remaster's removal of alignment as a game mechanic and character morality ruler affected how your players actually play?That was a slightly loaded question. Maybe the change has had no affect, maybe you never saw it as a character morality ruler. Either way do your players play differently post alignment or as a player is anything different for you?
It just changed the fact that I can play evil characters in PFS, as long as they are not Unholy.
Most people here agree that alignment was more useful as a loose guideline for monsters and NPCs behavior than the PCs' one.
An idea could be having a set of general behavioral traits intended to be associated with creatures; stuff like 'honorable', 'liar', 'cruel', etc..
Keeping the number relatively low, say around 20 keywords, could help sorting creatures by them if you are looking for a specific kind. Anything more complex goes into the extended description.
What do you think?
Honestly, I like mechanical traits more than such type of traits. Also, saying that "Red dragons are liars." is a bit weird. It looks like essentialism dialed up to 11.
If you intend on using creatures without reading the extended description then chances are high you don't really expect to roleplay them.
If you intend on using creatures without reading the extended description then chances are high you don't really expect to roleplay them.
I agree with this. Traits as Megistone describes aren't so much a useful shorthand for GMs as they are a page count saver. They "better than nothing" when a GM has little to go on. They could be useful as roleplay prompts in NPC Core, where the creatures are mostly generic humanoid stat blocks without interesting lore attached. But if you have the interesting lore, you should just read it all. Monster Core and Bestiaries always provide that lore. APs don't always, though. Could be useful there?
I don't hate the idea of such traits being used as a filter for searching creatures though.
For individuals (or a spokes-creature for a group) I like having a quote that epitomizes their nature. Its RP impact outstrips its word count, and beats Anathema/Edicts value. Having a set of quotes, like say for a settlement, would also help capture the atmosphere (and help the GM transmit that atmosphere!) better than an alignment or many descriptions.
As for alignment, in PFS it hardly came up except for effects and in my home games I'd always have the players play to the alignment they want the universe (me) to judge them as, not assume that marking it made it so. Even then it hardly served a non-effect purpose except for a perhaps unnecessary tribalism. There's often enough friction one doesn't need more friction proscribed.
Yeah, a little text for specific people or communities can certainly be helpful. I just don't know if it is helpful or healthy when talking about an entire species. But I think alignment has limited utility there as well. It was never super well thought out.
Yeah, a little text for specific people or communities can certainly be helpful. I just don't know if it is helpful or healthy when talking about an entire species. But I think alignment has limited utility there as well. It was never super well thought out.
I agree w/ that. Temperament and organization say more, as well as other species that they associated with or fought.
I'm reminded of a Greyhawk Castle module where over several large levels the dungeon organizers had lumped clusters of mostly humanoid monsters together by alignment (LE, NE, CE) so the factions could fight (and the organizers meant to learn something about the essence/strength of the alignments themselves). Except one finding/hiccup was that many of the species got along fine with species outside their faction while disliking those they'd been placed with. So even DnD 2.0 recognized that alignment was a poor indicator of actual practical interactions. So alignment said little about who one would align with. And these weren't arbitrary relationships, as most grognard DMs would've recognized who would prefer or despise whom before reading.
That said, there are some extreme cases, i.e. fiends, where "They all be liars!" would be fine. Essentialism for creations of metaphysical essence makes sense IMO, albeit with room for experiences/"nurture" to alter individuals too. Where the line goes proves rough, as Trolls & Harpies used to be as irredeemably evil as any fiends. (That was on a 1st ed. DnD chart that showed how much each of many popular monsters embodied their alignment. Some were kinda wobbly, something one wouldn't know from the Monster Manual itself.)
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I'm very happy to be beyond it. At the moment my biggest challenges come from the fact that one of my players just made a character who is sanctified and I'm running a pre-remaster adventure so I need to keep either finding remastered versions of the creatures or something equivalent so I can determine if they will have any holy/unholy effects.
From the RP perspective, I think edicts and anathema are so much better at establishing character motivations.
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I always viewed alignment as a challenge.
How can I make a LN monk that lies, cheats, and steals?
How can I make a NE druid without it just being a captain planet villain?
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How can I make a NE druid without it just being a captain planet villain?
I figured Poison Ivy would be more the model for "NE Druid".
I always viewed alignment as a challenge.
How can I make a LN monk that lies, cheats, and steals?
How can I make a NE druid without it just being a captain planet villain?
The Druid is “Nature red in tooth and claw’
The Druid is “Nature red in tooth and claw’
My take was that selfishness and acting in self interest is not antithetical to nature.
The "balance of nature" is just every single creature acting in its self interest. The rabbit eats the weeds, which stops the weeds from growing too much. The wolf eats the rabbit, which stops the rabbits from eating all the plants. Balance is born from many actors each trying to play their role.
So denying your instincts and desires is going against nature. No need for a grand cause when you are just following your instincts. Kill what you want to kill. It is your fault if you cannot stop me.
Most people here agree that alignment was more useful as a loose guideline for monsters and NPCs behavior than the PCs' one.
An idea could be having a set of general behavioral traits intended to be associated with creatures; stuff like 'honorable', 'liar', 'cruel', etc..
Keeping the number relatively low, say around 20 keywords, could help sorting creatures by them if you are looking for a specific kind. Anything more complex goes into the extended description.
What do you think?Honestly, I like mechanical traits more than such type of traits. Also, saying that "Red dragons are liars." is a bit weird. It looks like essentialism dialed up to 11.
If you intend on using creatures without reading the extended description then chances are high you don't really expect to roleplay them.
I mean, red dragons were tagged as Chaotic Evil beofre the remaster, which was always a guideline and never meant that one of them couldn't have a different behavior. If we extrapolate the behavioral traits "Arrogant", "Brutal" and "Greedy" from their description, we get quick suggestions about their typical behavior that could be useful to a GM to roleplay them, especially in case of a random encounter with "generic red dragon #14" or something like that.
Besides, such a system of non-mechanical traits could also be used for other things. Terrains, for example: I have seen people asking for a way to sort creatures by habitat multiple times.
The Druid is “Nature red in tooth and claw’My take was that selfishness and acting in self interest is not antithetical to nature.
The "balance of nature" is just every single creature acting in its self interest. The rabbit eats the weeds, which stops the weeds from growing too much. The wolf eats the rabbit, which stops the rabbits from eating all the plants. Balance is born from many actors each trying to play their role.
So denying your instincts and desires is going against nature. No need for a grand cause when you are just following your instincts. Kill what you want to kill. It is your fault if you cannot stop me.
Mine was the lawful neutral Druid.
The Druid is “Nature red in tooth and claw’My take was that selfishness and acting in self interest is not antithetical to nature.
The "balance of nature" is just every single creature acting in its self interest. The rabbit eats the weeds, which stops the weeds from growing too much. The wolf eats the rabbit, which stops the rabbits from eating all the plants. Balance is born from many actors each trying to play their role.
So denying your instincts and desires is going against nature. No need for a grand cause when you are just following your instincts. Kill what you want to kill. It is your fault if you cannot stop me.
Thats is the thing about evil characters, they never think they are evil.
Thats is the thing about evil characters, they never think they are evil.Not exactly. Some know in one way or another. Just don't care or consider it normal.
Theres that too. It was just more dramatic to say it this way.
Thats is the thing about evil characters, they never think they are evil.Not exactly. Some know in one way or another. Just don't care or consider it normal.
At the very least, well written evil characters usually don't think they are evil.
At the very least, well written evil characters usually don't think they are evil.
Like this is a basic problem with an "evil campaign". Some people are going to see that and think "great, this is a chance for me to lean into mustache twirling villainy" and some people are going to see that and think "well, I guess I have to be a deeply selfish misanthrope" and those two things don't really mix.
Like our Hell's Vengeance party consisted of "a Halfling who hates humans", "An actually insane solipsist", "a druid whose promotes the death and rot part of the cycle", and "the world's most mercenary mercenary"- it was not a surprise when we didn't finish the campaign as intended.
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That said, there are some extreme cases, i.e. fiends, where "They all be liars!" would be fine. Essentialism for creations of metaphysical essence makes sense IMO, albeit with room for experiences/"nurture" to alter individuals too.
Even that is too broad a brush. You can say "all fiends are evil" but plenty of fiends aren't liars. Devils are dishonest and misleading but get off on not technically lying-- you can in fact negotiate with one if you're a good enough lawyer, but it's very dangerous. Lots of other fiends wouldn't lie because they aren't smart enough too, don't care enough too, or have a more compelling reason to tell the truth. (Like being interrogated at sword point, for example.) I'm sure there is a fiend that gets off on always lying, but it sounds more like something a specific species of fey would do.
And that's the thing. Evil comes up in too many varieties for a three letters (L, N, C) to meaningfully cover. Velstrecs and devils are both lawful evil. But devils connive and vie for power, where velstrecs all just won't want to play their role in promoting suffering. I don't think most veltrecs would lie.
This makes me thing of Abomination Vaults, which is full of evil monsters that don't pose an active threat, don't need to be fought, and could even be helpful... If you're ok with them maybe having eaten a halfling or two.
Certainly. I liked the dramatic statement earlier but,
The methods could be cruel to achieve what they believe are good goals.
The methods could be kind on the surface to trick but the goals are horribly evil or selfish
The character could believe they are virtuous but horribly misguided into believing harming particular others is the right thing to do.
The character can be filled with spite against one, many, or all, know they are acting horribly and revel in it.
The character could feel might makes right so the weak deserve ill treatment servitude or death.
Then there is the good character that does evils bidding because they want to protect someone they care about, and after doing it enough doesn't feel they deserve redemption.
Evil takes many forms and it doesn't matter if they feel entitled, feel they have no choice, or believe they are in the right or if they hold something more straight forward like greed or cruelty.
Ofcourse we could write out a longer list of evils reasons. Actually these are all pretty good villain reasons to use for a game for villians big and small.
Certainly. I liked the dramatic statement earlier but,
The methods could be cruel to achieve what they believe are good goals.
The methods could be kind on the surface to trick but the goals are horribly evil or selfish
The character could believe they are virtuous but horribly misguided into believing harming particular others is the right thing to do.
The character can be filled with spite against one, many, or all, know they are acting horribly and revel in it.
The character could feel might makes right so the weak deserve ill treatment servitude or death.
Then there is the good character that does evils bidding because they want to protect someone they care about, and after doing it enough doesn't feel they deserve redemption.
Evil takes many forms and it doesn't matter if they feel entitled, feel they have no choice, or believe they are in the right or if they hold something more straight forward like greed or cruelty.
Ofcourse we could write out a longer list of evils reasons. Actually these are all pretty good villain reasons to use for a game for villians big and small.
Perhaps a defining feature of evil is that they have settled on harming others whatever their reasons to achieve their goals or worse their goals are to harm.
Harm in a broad sense.If we were to rate edicts for evil qualities they would likely be ones that call for harming others or creating conditions that lead to it.
The exception we generally make in TTRPGs is in defining evil such that harming evil is considered good.
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The biggest thing for my group is that it suits our setting better, so it's a weird little bit of pressure off my creative shoulders, and it smoothed things out in favor of world-building I was already doing to make things more about creation and destruction as forces to replace good and evil, and the fact that in the end I didn't have much use for the law/chaos axis.
Perhaps more importantly, spirit damage-- the implications are still sort of trickling in, but its just a much stronger concept than previous iterations of alignment damage, and keys into the meta much better-- you still have very specialized spells that only effect certain targets, but the generic spirit damage, and the ability to make it holy or unholy via sanctification feels way better.
It makes most builds that previously would have used alignment damage, makes them way less niche to the types of enemy they face. My favorite example of this is Its a very strong spell, and it'll largely pierce resistance/immunity to fire, which is a strong conceptual archetype for like, holy and unholy flame attacks in media.
The Champion is similarly way less curtailed in their actual play, partially because of the shift toward neutral causes, but also because they rely more heavily on god selection for their morality-- it becomes very easy to to tilt things to accommodate your desired play-style by interpreting the base cause edicts/anathema in light of the deity ones, what they value, what they object to.
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At the very least, well written evil characters usually don't think they are evil.Thats is the thing about evil characters, they never think they are evil.Not exactly. Some know in one way or another. Just don't care or consider it normal.
This was always a problem in older versions of the game because "Detect Evil" exists. Holy weapons exist that do bad things to Evil beings that pick them up. It was straightforward enough to determine if someone is Evil or not in a way that simply works.
This wasn't subjective "evil is in the eye of the beholder" evil. The game used objective "Evil is an active force in the universe that can be detected and quantified, and if you do X you are evil" morality.
No one could credibly say "well my acts aren't evil because X" when at any time someone could cast Detect Evil and they'd light up like a Christmas Tree. This just requires massive amounts of cognitive dissonance to rationalize away or ignore because its effectively ignoring a fundamental law of how the universe works.
Getting rid of all of that is a major improvement in the ability to tell these kinds of stories.
I’m sad. But I get it. I was always….conflicted.
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I make a clear distinction between what I call the acceptable evil and the pure evil. And I must admit the Unholy trait helps a lot for that.
What I call the acceptable evil are people who are definitely toxic for everyone around them and the society in general but not to the point of being rejected. The local drug dealer, the ruthless cop, the greedy banker, many characters can be considered evil without causing major issues in the society (besides the fact that you'd prefer them not to exist).
The pure evil, which is in line with the Unholy trait, would be the mass murderer, the human trafficker, the demon worshipper, etc... These ones are rejected by all societies but the most depraved ones.
The old alignment system was not making a real difference between these two types of evil when the new system does. And I think it's a real gain.
Ever since Paizo made the decision to get rid of the guiding force that was alignment, my players have absolutely run rampant. It's like they just got out of Arkham Asylum. Absolutely ruined years of campaign building and character development in one feel swoop.
Thanks Paizo!
It actually hasn't really come up. I suppose some of my own characters are a bit edgier, but that's all in my head cannon and rarely even comes up during play.
I’m sad. But I get it. I was always….conflicted.
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*Reads thread title.*
Posts are natural objects, usually made out of wood. I expect that they would always be Neutral.
Have you read some of the posts on these forums?
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posting is never a neutral act.
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*Reads thread title.*
Posts are natural objects, usually made out of wood. I expect that they would always be Neutral.
I have a story here.
I had elder scrolls Oblivion on PC and modded my game to make my character godlike and able to fly and do pretty much anything.My character was defeated by a post. I flew into it and got stuck, game over.
Posts are evil, don't underestimate them.