Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1867957" data-attributes="member: 7240">I have a million objections to the alignment system but keep it around as a mechanic to deal with alignment-affecting spells. Rather than launch into my complete diatribe against it, I'll come forward with just two criticisms/question for now:According to the PHB, all evil people self-identify as evil. In the real world, evil people almost never self-identify as evil. How can I use the alignment system to model NPCs who are evil but do not believe themselves to be so?In one of my campaigns, a city was ruled by an Chaotic Evil dark elvish duke who was preparing the city over a period of more than a century to function as the gateway to hell. In order to achieve this objective, he governed the city justly, efficiently and even-handedly because he was willing to do whatever it took to stay in power and execute his grand design of turning the city into the nexus of the apocalypse. (Shades of the mayor of Sunnydale from season 3 of Buffy.) Is he allowed to exercise this much self-control and long-term planning under the D&amp;D alignment system? Or do his chaos/evilness force him to act against his own interests and goals? Is law/chaos or good/evil what you want to achieve or how you live?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="fusangite, post: 1867957, member: 7240"] I have a million objections to the alignment system but keep it around as a mechanic to deal with alignment-affecting spells. Rather than launch into my complete diatribe against it, I'll come forward with just two criticisms/question for now: According to the PHB, all evil people self-identify as evil. In the real world, evil people almost never self-identify as evil. How can I use the alignment system to model NPCs who are evil but do not believe themselves to be so? In one of my campaigns, a city was ruled by an Chaotic Evil dark elvish duke who was preparing the city over a period of more than a century to function as the gateway to hell. In order to achieve this objective, he governed the city justly, efficiently and even-handedly because he was willing to do whatever it took to stay in power and execute his grand design of turning the city into the nexus of the apocalypse. (Shades of the mayor of Sunnydale from season 3 of [i]Buffy[/i].) Is he allowed to exercise this much self-control and long-term planning under the D&D alignment system? Or do his chaos/evilness force him to act against his own interests and goals? Is law/chaos or good/evil what you want to achieve or how you live? [/QUOTE]

Verification