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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 957280" data-attributes="member: 7240">Well, alignment is a fundamentally broken idea. I have worked very hard to make it work in my games so as not to sacrifice the game mechanics which rely on it but I cannot even conceive of how one could actually measure whether one's characters were living up to the conduct requirements of an alignment.I cannot see a strong link between alignment and conduct. Other variables can simply overwhelm alignment in such theories. For instance, would a Lawful Good Protestant make the same ethical calculations a Lawful Good Catholic would? How about a Lawful Good Taoist? Or a Lawful Good Stoic?If there exists a duly constituted government that is doing something bad to a minority, how useful can alignment be in determining whether or how to oppose such behaviour? I'm afraid I just don't see it. If your characters actually have philosophies of life or are part of religions or other organizations in your world, these things are far more important than alignment in determining what course of action would be congruent with a character's ethics.While there are always cases of parties doing clearly, objectively evil things, for which there should be consequences, I would have difficulty in making any judgements about which of the 6 non-evil alignments a character is following at any given moment.Also, I have a mechanical concern with DMs changing alignments after characters do something. This ends up sapping free will because it posits that a character is good at the moment that he does a thing that makes him evil and evil at the moment he does a thing that makes him good.</blockquote>

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