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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imagicka" data-source="post: 3202460" data-attributes="member: 4621">Greetings...I find the alignment system to be simplistic and deficient.  I believe that alignment should be, at the very least be a reflection of what is expected of a practitioner of a particular belief-system or religion, and have those beliefs outlined.  Then on top of this, you have a measure of a character's morality.  How well does someone adhere to their own religion?  Then you can reward this person in regards to their own belief system and morality.  I tend to do this by adopting the Palladium alignment system, and calling it 'morality', where each religion has it’s own alignment.  It's fine, I believe, to talk about supernatural good and evil, so that you don't have to do away with related abilities and spells.  Of course, this system tends to make things quite convoluted and complicated.  But then, real-world morality is a complicated thing.  This of course is not to say that a character won't be judged on their piety, devotion and actions.  But I take the view that there can't be any atheists in a world where there is direct evidence that gods exist.  If you want to rebut the fact that a god exists, go right ahead.  I still allow it in my game.  But divine powers won’t work on them… ie. healing.  They tend not be protected from the evils of the world, or just outright smote by the gods who are feeling vindictive and petty.  Thor, ”So, I don’t exist eh? Disbelieve this!” *Smote!*  Save versus reflex.  Did you beat a 45? How many hitpoints did you have? What do you do when someone doesn’t want to join a church?  Well, take that as a reflection of the world.  That everyone is apathetic about religion in general.  So, what happens then?  Clerics start losing their powers… or they become fervent zealots.   Healing doesn’t work on heathens who don’t believe in getting involved.  Have a celestial stand by and watch as a daemon chokes the life out of one of the PCs asking, “How lame do you think it is now?”Also, applying your own morality and beliefs to a religion is not, if anything, dangerous.  You may want ‘distant cosmic arbiters’ to be distant and alien.  But that doesn’t mean that they are.  But hey, that’s up to you and your sense of the dramatic to decide if you want gods to be omniscient or not.  For me, the gods are very active in my world.  They aren’t all-knowing, all-seeing.  But they do have their minions.  I think it make things much more interesting that way.  That is not to say that they are watching you right now though.  ”You are traveling with a cleric of who?    The cleric did say he was on a spiritual quest right?  What makes you think his god isn’t watching right now?”As such, alignment shouldn't be based on character perceptions, not when you have entities such as the gods, clerics, and whatever powerful entities are there to clearly lay out in front of you their wants for their religion.  The whole question and concept of believing that alignment is based solely on character perceptions comes from the belief that the gods, powers-that-be, clerics and whoever else who believes that they have power and sway over your piety isn't going to be proactive.  I do find it an interesting character concept to play/run; where you have people doing very evil things in the name of their ‘good’ god.  ”Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eiu”  But it’s not something I can do all the time.  It’s a trick that loses it’s novelty pretty quickly.Now it's fine if the powers-that-be are absentee landlords.  Who don't care about their worshippers.  But personally, I don't believe that.  Especially when you have you have deities granting powers to their clerics.   -- Now, if you want to run with the idea that gods really don't care what their clerics do; that they don't manage their own religions.  That's fine.  Then you can run with the idea that their parishioners are free to do whatever they please, and even claim it's for the good of their religion/god.  It’s your game.  Ahh… but who is arbitrator of that centurion, or barbarian’s actions?  The perpetrator?  I think not.  I would imagine that it would be the god/goddess of either of those two persons who is the final judge of what is ‘good’ or ‘evil’.  Now, that may not be looking at a third… all encompassing party that may judge both of those people to be evil.  But as GM, you have to decide who/what is the final arbiter of alignment.  Should good and evil be metaphysical absolutes?  I'll go out on a limb here and say... no.  Good and evil in a fantasy paradigm such as what D&D allows are very much real entities.  These things can be detected (if not measured), protected against and utilized for whatever purposes the mortals, the gods and the outsiders can think or dream of.I feel too many people want to apply their own modern ambivalence if not disdain towards anything remotely approaching religions, even if they are imaginary.  To avoid making targets of themselves, D&D doesn’t really concentrate on the effects and ramifications of religions in a fictitious world.  I think this sacred cow was added to the game without any thought to it. So... someone tell me, how does this Allegiance system work?  Does Arcana Evolved have no alignment?  Is there anything there to replace it?  I have limited access to the internet.  It's a complete miracle that I can even get to EnWorld.  (I can't get to the store section though)  Most forum websites are all firewalled against here.So, if the alignment system is like tarragon, then religions are like hollandaise?  Believed to be hard to make, yet relatively easy, but slightly labourious and time-consuming, and prone to separate if not observed closely?What’s the point of having Big Brother… well… Big Daddy if they aren’t going to be watching?</blockquote>

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