Help with Alignment Bookkeeping

[clark411]

I'm planning to start up a campaign, and am setting up a house rule for Alignment that has me plotting character behavior on a simple grid behind the screen. The reason for this is that I've seen, and have myself been, quite a few characters who shape their actions based on their alignments (I do this because i'm LG, CN, etc) rather than saying I'm CE/N/LE because of all this I've done.

What I'm seeing is pretty much similar to the NWN method. X Axis with Lawful and Chaos, Y Axis being Good and Evil. Each axis is 100 units across (50 in the positives, 50 in the negatives), with the far half of each axis symbolizing that axis' alignment, and the inner half acting as neutrality.

Hope that made sense. Anyway- on to the help.

What's a good amount of alignment shift, in units, for common PC actions?

Would a 5 point shift towards evil be good for killing an innocent? (keep in mind under the system, it'd only take five such deaths to move a 100 Good to a 75 Neutral, and another 10 deaths to a 25 Evil).
Is a 1 point shift away from Law good for theft, or is that more a shift away from Evil? (you break the law, but you also possibly hurt the person you're stealing from) Perhaps both.
Is there something wrong with a system where 5 thefts equates to 1 murder? Any ideas on how to balance this?

 

[Melkor Lord Of ALL!]

Uhm, criminals can be lawful, think about Sicilian Mafia.

 

[Anabstercorian]

Go for it. Another good system is the Hackmaster GMG system. Yours is similar... Make sure that your players understand that the values of all good deeds/bad deeds are provisional and subject to change as you continue to tweak the system.

 

[Grazzt]

What about the Allegiance system from Elric?

 

[Tiberius]

What I'm seeing is pretty much similar to the NWN method. X Axis with Lawful and Chaos, Y Axis being Good and Evil. Each axis is 100 units across (50 in the positives, 50 in the negatives), with the far half of each axis symbolizing that axis' alignment, and the inner half acting as neutrality.

Hmmm.... that would make (roughly) 25 units of good from coordinates (x,50) to (x,25), 50 units of neutrality from (x,24) to (x,-24), and 25 units of evil from (x,-25) to (x,-50). That is, IMO, too much neutrality. Walking the path of neutrality is exceedingly difficult, as it is tricky to balance the acts of good and evil or law and chaos. If I were using a grid system like this, I would give the poles 37 or 38 grid sections apiece (since 75/2 is 37.5) and give the remainder to neutrality.

What's a good amount of alignment shift, in units, for common PC actions?

Would a 5 point shift towards evil be good for killing an innocent? (keep in mind under the system, it'd only take five such deaths to move a 100 Good to a 75 Neutral, and another 10 deaths to a 25 Evil). Is a 1 point shift away from Law good for theft, or is that more a shift away from Evil? (you break the law, but you also possibly hurt the person you're stealing from) Perhaps both.
Is there something wrong with a system where 5 thefts equates to 1 murder? Any ideas on how to balance this?

This is where it gets tricky. 5 points seems a bit low for the murder of an innocent As you say, it would take five such murders to go from being a paragon of good to borderline neutrality. I don't see how someone who has murdered four innocent people could be considered good. It would take an additional 10 murders (15 in all) to become borderline evil. I would make the murder of an innocent worth something on the order of 45-50 points. Thus, on either your scale or the one I mentioned above, murdering one innocent would drop anyone into neutrality at the very least, and two would certainly make them evil.

I would also make the shifts toward evil greater than the corresponding shifts towards good. The aforementioned murder of an innocent might be worth, say, 50 steps towards evil, while saving an innocent life might be worth 10-20 steps towards good. IMO, one must REALLY work at being good, whereas slipping into evil is easy and requires little effort.

As for other penalites/boni, you need to take the characters' motivations into account. Stealing the mayor's silverware for personal gain would be both chaotic and evil, since the gain comes at the expense of another in violation of the laws. Stealing a Book of Vile Darkness from the local Hextorian temple in order to help end a devastating war might well be a lawful and good act, as you are acting to reduce chaos and suffering. In the end, matters of alignment are entirely subjective and resist codification for easy graphing.

-Tiberius

 

[Lela]

I agree with Tiberius on the murder thing. Killing one innocent person would (normally) pull someone toward evil VERY quickly. But, remember that it does depend on the circimstances. Consider the folloing example.

A police officer who is returning fire at a terrorist accidentally hits the (aparently solid) brick wall behind the bad guy. The stray bullet that went through a crack in the wall accidentally hits a child.

Is the man now evil? I don't think so, though he is likely to have a personal emotional crissis as he tries to figure out that same question.

Really, under this system, you can't necisarrally set down exact numbers. You just have to go with your gut. If you feel like it should be a big shift, make it one. If you don't think it should be that bad, then it isn't. This is prolly one of the big reasons this was never proposed in the DMG (as a vairant rule).

 

[Happiest_Sadist]

Someone else posted a nice system based on checks.

You use a 20X20 grid. Whenever you do an action approporate to an alignment you roll a number of dice based on the gravity.

Ex. Killing an innocent deliberatly might be 5 or more dice twards evil. Forgiving a petty criminal might be 1 die for chaos if you are not an officer.

You roll a dice and if it is greater/lesser than your current score, and the die is of the right kind, your score changes 1 step.

Say you score on good/evil is 10 (true neutral). If you roll a d20 on evil and get a 2, you drop to a nine. If you roll an 18 it stays the same. If the die was for a good act, it would be the opposite.

Evil is 1-5, neutral 6-15, Good 16-20. The same with law/chaos.

Some classes with allingnment restrictions may have numbers associated with them. Ex. A palidin must be 18+ on both good/evil and law/chaos. If he drops out of this he loses his palidinhood temporarily. If his total score ever drops below 30, it is permanent.

 

[dren]

Drop Alignment

The Alignment system is pretty arbitrary. A CG will do exactly the same in an evil society (i.e. fight injustice) as a LG will do in a good one.

Remember KISS - Keep it simple, sarge!

Use a vow system, LG characters keep their own vows. A CG will break laws and have vows that do good but run contrary to society's norms. NG doesn't care about either, they do what they feel is best.

Everytime a PC does something agaisnt their vows, they swing +/-5 or 10% away from their vows. At a pre-set range (60%), the DM penalizes them in game terms (can't sleep, indecisive, loses focus on tasks at hand, etc) due to ethical issues. At this point the DM explains what is happening, and the character has to either shape up or change their vows.

If their class is alignment based, they will have to be very careful or else lose acces to growth in that class or losing all class abilities.

Hope this alternative alignment system helps or gives you a few ideas.

Dren

 

[Thorvald Kviksverd]

Here's a little something that mmadsen, myself, and others cooked up a few months ago--unfortunately, the original thread was lost in the changeover, so this is only dimly remembered...

(Those familiar with Pendragon will recognize much of this.)

The alignments are recorded in diametrically opposed pairs Lawful/Chaotic and Good/Evil.

The sum of these pairs totals 20. For example, a character with a score of 12 in Lawful would have a score of 8 in Chaotic.

A score of 13+ in one of these aspects gives the player the relevant alignment. For example, a character with 3 Lawful/Chaotic 17 would be considered Chaotic.

--If neither value is greater than 12, the character is considered Neutral with respect to that aspect.

--Each time a character performs a Lawful/Chaotic or Good/Evil act, he receives one or more checks by the relevant aspect, depending upon the magnitude of the act.

--Roll one d20 (one at a time) for each check by an aspect, if the roll is greater than the current value increase the value by one (and decrease the opposed aspect by a similar amount).

I would suggest starting characters off with scores of 15 if they choose Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and/or Evil as their starting alignment aspects, while assigning a score of 10 if they choose to be Neutral.

For example, I want my Ranger to begin as Neutral Good. His starting values will be as follows...

10 Lawful/Chaotic 10 (Neutral)

15 Good/Evil 5 (Good)

Note: The closer you get to "perfection" with regard to a certain aspect, the harder it becomes to attain, and the easier it becomes to fall away from. I think this is a nice touch.

In addition to using this as an alignment tracking system, you could also use it as a means of influencing N/PCs behavior, ala Pendragon (but that's another topic).

Hope this provides some ideas

 

[mmadsen]

What about the Allegiance system from Elric?

Could someone give a brief rundown on the Allegiance system from Elric?