Changing Alignment

[clark411]

Erm.. a DM changing a player's alignment is about as "Gestapo-lite" as the guy doing banker duty in Monopoly requiring people fork over the appropriate money when buying houses and hotels. It's no more wrong to alter it than it is to require someone lose a level after dying, or to have them gain experience after a fight.

If you follow the usual DnD cosmology, where player character intent / philosophy / action directly impacts their alignment with the cosmos, then it is not oppressive in any manner to have their sheet accurately reflect their campaign history just like almost everything else (stats/skills/feats/inventory). Alignment, as has been said countless times, is descriptive rather than prescriptive, so putting a LE where an LN once was doesn't force the former LN player to act all villainous. If anything it's more of a wakey wakey call for metagame purposes, or an appropriate note for future Protection from Alignment and Smite Alignment spells. There's no "Aw poop, I'm evil- time to start burning good churches. I don't want to be evil but gotta." needed.

Personally, I dislike alignment because it is underdeveloped and pretty ugly when moved from the mechanics to the campaign world itself. However, I can see the benefit in it when you have players who always have characters like themselves. Things like these (and WW demeanors/natures) are excellent to help players get out of roleplaying ruts and things. Nevermind the quality of dynamic heroes and how it can be translated to the game in a pseudo-literary sense. Necromancers who find faith, paladins who lose it, orderly folk becoming free-spirits in their travel...

It's only oppressive if a DM allows it to be or a player mindset instantly pigeonholes it into such. Character development, if it is interesting to the player, should be a cooperative venture by DM and player... so yes, it's bad if a forceful DM just scribbles out the LG and puts "LN - you suck" down. But if its something that can be a spotlight for a player character, or bring a new experience to the table.. it's good.

rambling done

 

[Pillars of Hercules]

Ominous warnings

You might consider some ominous warnings, particularly for the NG paladin. I figure his god or goddess would probably disapprove of some of the actions he's been taking, and might perhaps send signs of warning before he is finally made LG and loses his PrC abilities.

Perhaps he can't get spells one morning. Perhaps a creepy old man stops him and hassles him about his devotion to order over good. Maybe the old man presents him with a Law vs. Good dilemma, and when the paladin chooses, the man reveals himself to be an angel and either chastises or praises the paladin based on his choice.

I think the lawful stupid thing comes from the fact that our pop culture presently thinks rules are stupid and chaos is good. Think of commercials - "No rules. Just right." "Treat yourself," etc. Our heroes - usually renegades from a system that gets in the way of true justice - "I'll have your badge, [insert name of cop here]!"

In some respects, the essence of law is the willingness to delay or deny oneself gratification for some better result in the future, whether for ourselves or society as a whole. Most players reject rules and thus can't see the point of being lawful. You'll have to present some situation where the chaotic choice leads to suffering in order to show law in a good light. Think along the lines of the old saying "your rights end at the point where your arm hits my nose." Still, I find it's very hard for most players to get this.

That said, I agree with the posters that find alignment to be one of the big problems in D&D. Morality is just too slippery to fit into simple boxes. I think when we try to boil morality down into 9 discrete boxes in the game, we end up with cardboard caricatures of the 9 archetypes, and lawful stupid is the caricature for LG. Going much deeper than the cutouts usually just exposes the weaknesses of the alignment system itself.

 

[Anubus]

I think I agree with clark411, I think I do.... To me alignment isn't something that should restrict a player, though certain prestige classes, and core classes for that matter, do present it that way. I have no problem with my players evolving as things happen to them, but I want to try and avoid them feeling like I'm punishing them for it. It's been my experience that any time a DM trys to change something about the players character, the player instantly springs to the defensive, when really there is no reason too. They've just built up a strong idea of who their character is, and unfortuantly sometimes they use alignment to define their character. Just because I'm lawful evil, doesn't mean I won't occasionally do something nice, but if I do nice things all the time because of some life altering experience of some such thing, I probably shouldn't be considered lawful evil anymore. That's not a bad thing, it's just progress, and a static world is a boring world.