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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Azlan" data-source="post: 822760" data-attributes="member: 2340">Here's why I place restrictions and penalties on alignment changes...I've been DM'ing for 20 years now, and I've had dozens of campaigns and scores of players; players from their mid teens to their mid 40s, all of various levels of maturity and mental capacities (which wasn't always related to their physical ages); players from all walks of life, with various religions and philosophies, morals and ethics; and players who themselves had previously played under different DMs, each with his/her own style and handling of the rules.And through all this, I learned that players interpret the meanings, boundaries, and importance of alignments differently.So, to avoid confusion and heated debates in the game, I've come up with some hard and fast (yet, IMHO, not heavy-handed) rules for keeping player characters in check when it comes to changing alignments.This is important to me because, as DM, I often present my player characters with moral dilemmas. It is up to the players to solve these dilemmas while roleplaying their respective alignments and staying within them -- that is the dilemma, the challenge. If alignments are defined too broadly or too loosely, or if player characters are allowed to wantonly switch from one alignment to another, without penalty, then where is the challenge, what is the dilemma... ?So, with my rules, there is a further incentive for players to roleplay the alignments of their characters, keeping within their boundaries. I'll reiterate my rules...A player character is allowed to make only one alignment shift in a single game session. (Note: This is not the same as saying a player character is allowed to make one alignment shift per game session.) Thus, a character could go from chaotic good to chaotic neutral in a single game session, but not from chaotic good to chaotic evil.Furthermore, a player character who voluntarily shifts alignments gets no XPs for that game session. If the alignment shift "makes sense" in both the character's concept and the campaign's storyline, then the DM might give the player character up to half XPs for that game session, but no more than that. But this exception is only for a player character's first alignment shift in his lifetime. Any alignment shifts after the first, and the player character will get no XPs for that game session, no matter how much it "makes sense".</blockquote>

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