D&D 4E Alignment, 4e, you, and your paladins.

[ToreadorVampire]

What you wrote does not seem to relate to the Path of Humanity or any other Path. Should you perhaps change your screen name?

Nah, I've had this nick for years now, and I doubt I'd ever change it, even though I haven't actually played Vampire in over 7 years (nor am I interested in playing anymore). This nickname has grown on me over the last 10 years ... I couldn't change it if I wanted!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I've never had an argument at my table over alignment, in many years of gaming. So I would file this under "not broken, don't fix."

If I saw something that I didn't like, I usually kept quit. If someone prefers to play his Paladin as a more or less obnoxious guy that will kill Orc babies for the Greater Good, so be it, as long as I am not required to do it the same way. (Which in my group, I am not.) But the alignment discussions are common on ... well... discussion boards.

 

[Imban]

*shrug* I have immense problems with DND's objective ideas of a good-evil axis. On top of that, what level of foresight is somebody supposed to have? Does the *actually crazy* protaganist of the original Postal, who believes he is doing the *right and good* thing, in killing cops, then a school full of children, good, because he things he is?

No, neither in D&D's alignment system nor my preferred alignment system. In my personal system, he would definitely not be able to be Good. Willingly doing overtly evil things, barring a grave mistake as to the nature of things you are doing, makes you evil. Even if you think what you're doing is Good. So going around killing cops and children makes you Evil, even if you're hallucinating that you are on a holy mission from Pelor, or you really believe that a society without children is the most beneficial society for humans.

Yes, this does mean that I take the tack that unlike 3e, a Paladin can be Dominated into murdering children without counting as a black mark against his alignment. We can possibly establish a scenario wherein someone Good is constantly gravely mistaken as to the nature of things he is doing and murdering children all the time, but the fact remains that he is still a Good person and only doing bad things because someone or something has acted to deceive him, not because he is Evil, amoral, or ax-crazy.

If not.. does that apply to he person who does good things that end badly, because he didn't think them through?

As I said above, not in my system. According to the Book of Exalted Deeds, not in the official system either, unless the potential harm was clearly presented and willfully ignored.

Yes, this does mean that we can establish a scenario wherein someone Good is like Don Quixote, only worse, and constantly does things that are good on the surface but which inadvertently result in suffering because he is just plain stupid. I would suggest that outside of parody purposes, this mostly does not exist, whereas people who make mistakes occasionally do.

Liberating all those slaves after killing all the masters, who knew how to operate the machinery, to give food and light and power to the slaves?

That sounds like something a Chaotic person would want to do in my system, yes.

IMO, to be actually good requires wisdom, forethought AND intelligence. Most of those simply to do not work well with Chaos.

To actually succeed at doing Good requires a lot of things. Same with doing Evil, establishing Order, or dissolving society into Chaos.

Alignments: yes

Detect alignment spells as in 3.5: no

A ritual which can reveal the alignment of an aware target: ok... but it should be considered very very rude...

Well, as long as spells like Holy Word exist, you can "reveal" the alignment of a target. Of course, that's also attempted murder at the very least.

 

[EATherrian]

Personally I like the old alignment system, but I notice too many people use it as a strait-jacket. For people that aren't connected in some way to the other planes alignment should mostly be a guide. Only for those who are connected to the other planes does alignment become a real force, since in those realms alignment means something real. I voted for the old system, but I'll wait to see the new system to decide.

 

[Darkthorne]

The problem I have with Alignments is not everyone is on the same page. I seen lawful good played lawful stupid WAY TOO often or having most people play CG or CN all the time. Also since Paladins not have the same alignment (rumored?) as their diety for the first time I am interested in playing a paladin.

 

[Wolfwood2]

I've never had an argument at my table over alignment, in many years of gaming. So I would file this under "not broken, don't fix."

If you've never had an argument over it, that suggests it wasn't important enough to argue about, which suggests it didn't make much difference to your game. So if they fix it by making alignment have no mechanical effect, is that a problem?

 

[Cirex]

There problem there is that Barbarian isn't a class, it's a culture. None of the other classes in the game are a specific culture (although some are tied to one, like samurai or ninja).
If you want to make a classic barbarian, go with ranger. If you want to make Conan, go with... fighter, rogue, ranger, or some combination. The 'I get angry in battle' is a roleplay schtick, not a class feature.
That said, someone from a barbarian culture becoming a monk works fine if you define monk as unarmed warrior and disregard the rest of the fluff. Why being good at unarmed fighting gives you all kinds of quasi-mystical abilities is beyond me.

Edit: I voted to free Tibet because none of the other options fit, because I'll have to see the full implementation of the new system to see what I think of it.

--Penn

I know. My barbarian tribes got a mix of experts and warriors, with an adept (classic witch) and some NPCs with 1-2 Barbarian levels. I always thought that terms like "barbarian" or "assassin" are misleading for a class name.