Alignment in Eberron: Yay or nay?

[JPL]

the availability of magic too will take some getting used to... i like low magic settings.
.

Y'know, the more I read of it, the less I'm seeing Eberron as a "high magic" setting. Magewrights and adepts are plentiful, but the PC classes seem to be fairly rare, and high-level magic users are rarer still.

Of course, I'm accustomed to Forgotten Realms, where archmagi are plentiful.

 

[dravot]

Y'know, the more I read of it, the less I'm seeing Eberron as a "high magic" setting. Magewrights and adepts are plentiful, but the PC classes seem to be fairly rare, and high-level magic users are rarer still.

Of course, I'm accustomed to Forgotten Realms, where archmagi are plentiful.

I think you're right. Dragonmarked Houses make some magic more available to the public, but it does come at a price. I think that many people mistake the widespread effect of magic on the populace (through the trains, etc.) with the notion of a wand of magic missiles in every box of Lucky Charms.

There is a subtle, yet distinct difference.

 

[Goobermunch]

i'm just saying that was one of the detractors for me. along with it tho is the changes in the divine/deities.

i'm not a big matrix fan either. so the sentinent constructs... although i like the new idea... don't do it for me as a player race.

the availability of magic too will take some getting used to... i like low magic settings.

i don't like action points. nor am i a big fan of pulp action movies/comics/novels.

i do like the introduction of a favor class psion. and many of the other new ideas. overall i actually like Eberron.

I'd just like to point out that we should be very nice to Diaglo. I mean, after all, he just said something nice about a 3ed product. He's probably not feeling well, maybe a fever . . . .



I'm glad to see that the place of alignment in Eberron has been considered and matches up with my general take on the whole axis.

--G

 

[cerberus2112]

Just as an aside, I house-ruled the D20 modern allegiance rules into my game with a few twists. Allegiances can have an alignment descriptor. So a samurai dedicated to Bushido [Lawful] has a faint lawfulness to him, but he is guided specifically by the tenets of bushido. A cleric must have an allegiance to his patron deity, so his aura registers as matching the alignments of his deity though he only must follow the dictates of his god. And yes, I do allow someone to have conflicting allegiances if they have a good reason for it; so you could have someone who detects as both good and evil.

 

[Henry]

I'd just like to point out that we should be very nice to Diaglo. I mean, after all, he just said something nice about a 3ed product. He's probably not feeling well, maybe a fever . . . .

I wouldn't call that exceptional - knowing Diaglo, he may own more 3e/3.5e products than you and I combined. I already know from his fellow players that he owns at least TWO more 3.5 player's handbooks than I do!

 

[diaglo]

I wouldn't call that exceptional - knowing Diaglo, he may own more 3e/3.5e products than you and I combined. I already know from his fellow players that he owns at least TWO more 3.5 player's handbooks than I do!

JoeBlank ratted on me...didn't he.

i just gave him my Eberron CS to read for the weekend.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

JoeBlank ratted on me...didn't he.

i just gave him my Eberron CS to read for the weekend.

The secret's out, everyone knows...we must be exterminated.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I think for Eberron's "murky" alignment scheme to work, you'd have to broaden Neutral more, not turn more people into Evil. My main problem with Eberron is that a lot of folks are listed as evil in the book when they don't have to be. Someone wanting Breland to do away with their aristocracy doesn't have to be a self-serving evil man.

For a setting that portrays itself as shades-of-gray, it actually seems more defined alignment wise. All the guys that are opposed to the Good Guys are Evil.

 

[Funksaw]

Now you've got me thinking more about The Maltese Falcon. Again, in my view, there's no question that Gutman and Cairo were "evil" (in D&D terms) and Sam knew it; it's not like someone was going to say "Psst! Sam! That Cairo guy's not such a good guy!" He catches on pretty quickly about the other players in the scenario. And he himself has had an affair with his partner's wife, so he's not exactly Dudley Do-Right. On the other hand, I'm now struck by the scene where he asks Effie "What's your woman's intuition tell you about [Brigid]?"

Which raises the question -- is Effie a paladin?

While I'm joking, I do see the paladin's detect evil working more in this way when dealing with humans. Obviously if there's a big undead creature around, it's the early warning system. But for people, I see as more of a "I've got a bad feeling about this guy -- keep your eyes on him" than "Die, blackhearted fiend!"

Not so much to disagree with the maker of the setting, but you can still have plenty of use for a "detect evil" spell in a setting where alignment is downplayed.

See, in fantasy, there's "evil" people who are oppertunistic, callous, mad, greedy - and in D&D terms, they might be "evil" aligned.

But that is not to be confused with demons, certain monsters, certain artifacts that are beyond the pale.

The way I see it, even "normal" evil people - the tyrannical king, the power-mad wizard in the tower - they wouldn't show up on Eberron's "Detect Evil" scale? Why? Becuase they, at some point, chose to be evil, and so long as they continue to have free will, they can choose to redeem.

What Detect Evil in a "lax Alignment" setting means to me is that it works on those things which have no purpose other than to BE evil. That cannot help but BE evil - That wizard in the tower might not show up, but the cursed bracers that he makes *would,* or even, if he were to make a monster with no capacity for goodness in it - it would show up on the Pala-dar.

Specifically, I'm reminded of an Angel episode where a boy was possessed by a demon... The twist was that the demon was *trapped* inside the boy's body and couldn't do a thing, and the boy was doing all the evil stuff... however, that demon was still evil. It seems to me that the Demon - even when inside the boy - would show up as detect evil - but the boy wouldn't, even though his actions were *more* evil than the Demon's.

When you move from evil being defined by predestination rather than action, then Detect Evil itself requires remarkably few changes and could indeed still be useful even in an Eberron campaign.