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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6189688" data-attributes="member: 1165">If PCs get "punished", it should be for foolish or unheroic behavior. Admittedly this tends to punish chaotic stupid PCs more than good-aligned PCs, but being heroic and stupid leads to being Ned Starked.Punishment simply means facing consequences. Outright evil actions will probably result in being hunted by paladins. Foolishly (but not deliberately) getting people killed tends to upset their families and local governments, who might send police or hire mercenaries. Desecrating a church will likely get you hunted down by CoDzillas (clerics), paladins and angels. These encounters need not be balanced in the CR system.Attempting to hide crimes will likely fail due to various divinations, and the general difficulty in killing all witnesses. Very good descriptions (a requirement in a world where many NPCs are barely literate, if at all) can get passed around by birds, possibly magical pigeons.I don't think any edition of D&D has written alignments properly. It's always vague, and while there's changes, they're minimal. Maybe 4e alignments are better; I run 4e but I have hardly looked at the "rules". I instead write up a document before a campaign starts letting players know what I'm expecting.Palladium, a system whose rules I can't stand, has far better alignment rules than D&D IMO. You can find a link here, and note that the alignments correspond to D&D alignments. (Aberrant, for instance, is lawful evil.) Link: <a href="http://therpgtable.proboards.com/thread/40" target="_blank">http://therpgtable.proboards.com/thread/40</a>One of the things I like about that alignment system, beyond the clarity, is you can say "you only need to follow 9 or 10 of those 11 or 12 rules". In other words, if you're lawful good (called principled in Palladium), you can drop the rule about never lying without suffering from an "alignment infraction". A lawful good dwarf can still be greedy, as that's a flaw, and having issues with telling the truth is okay too.TVTropes, a wiki, also has better alignment rules than D&D. You can find each of the alignments off of this link: <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterAlignment" target="_blank">http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CharacterAlignment</a>On another note, I don't like the idea of "alignment infraction". If a player shifts their alignment or doesn't match what's on the sheet, there could be a miscommunication or disagreement. There's probably one definition of each alignment per player anyway, so you will disagree. Even getting together and trying to make sense of alignments (at least if it's D&D's unclear alignments) doesn't work, as we haven't developed a telepathy technology yet.If someone says they're neutral good, but you think they're lawful good, ignore what's on their sheet and treat them as if they're lawful good. A change in behavior could mean character development, or someone is just having a bad day. That probably won't have much impact on the game though. I don't think there's any need to cut XP and so forth. Maybe someone will be surprised that they can no longer summon celestial creatures (if their XP shifted from neutral to evil) or they can now be harmed by Order's Wrath (because they shifted from lawful to neutral) but that's not a big part of the game.I also think a lot of alignment restrictions are silly. I don't have a problem with a chaotic monk or a lawful barbarian. Alignments aren't really a part of the rules, and I'd rather avoid that kind of conflict if possible.</blockquote>

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