[i]This[/i] is my problem with alignment

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

This is not always the case.

as i said, a bad gm can ruin any rule.

I know a number of people, myself included who have had problems in the past, losing paladins to DM whose interpretation of evil was different than our own.

so, the problem is with the instant one evil whammy feature in the PALADIN class. thats a lot easier to fix and MORE DISCREETLY fixed in the paladin class. if you change the alignment system wholesale in order to fix this whammy you change a whole lot more. thats usually a sign of bad problem solving.

however, in truth, your problem was poor communication. Both player and Gm were not on the same page. With a one hit whammy over my head, i know i talk with the GM BEFORE i get into trouble. it just makes sense.

It seems to me that Fusangite and I simply believe that such things would be reduced somewhat if the alignment system were more formalized and internally consistent.

not a belief i share. i think the problem would go away with average communication between Gm and player.

Part and parcel of this is the notion that political idealogy and personal conduct in pursuit of goals are not inhyerently the same, and that adherence to both sets of guidelines for alignment can be at times mutually exclusive, exacerbating the dilemma.

yeah i know, thats the boogeyman. i just ain't never had a reason to be scared of it. Even now, it seems not to be a problem... certainly not "the problem". its merely easily described and waxed on about.

For example...two different friends of mine, both of whom know me very well have described me as, respectively, Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Good...and they cited many similar reasons for their dissimilar choices. That suggests to me that the system may have a bit too much wiggle room to be a valuable descriptor.

in my experience, that wiggle room is necessary to leave it to the GM to define the specifics so as to best fit his setting.

but then, thats where we disagree.

 

[JackGiantkiller]

I'll admit that to actually play out the fall and redemption of a paladin would be very cool. But all I've ever gotten to do is fall. And playing a hopeless character for the rest of an entire campaign is no fun at all.

 

[swrushing]

[/QUOTE]

This is undeniably true...but I was speaking of games I played in. Unless the DM specifically plays to you, you get left out, because you can do less. And you don't always get the chance to atone, because the DM has other plans, or just runs modules.

like i said, a poor gm can ruin anything. i have never seen more complex rules make poor GMs perform better. So, if thr goal here is to rewrite the alignment system to reduce "poor gm problems" AGAIN i think the answer is to focus on the classes and mitigating their alingment dependence for those GMs who have a problem and that hardwiring the alignment to be more of a script than a guideline is the exact opposite way to go.

Could you be a little less insulting than "kewl powerz" please? i realize I asked for it by saying neato, but still.

oh, for the love of... you say specifically neato things and i say kewl powerz and now i am being insulting?

sorry, but the truthful answer is "no." i cannot be "less insulting" because i was not being insulting in the first place!

if you were insulted by that turn of phrase after your own comments, i got no answer for ya'.

***insert utterly flabbergasted expression***

In games I run, i tend to give paladins a bit more latitude, and as you say, i discuss expectations with them ahead of time.

and no whammies, no shocked paladins, no problems!

bam!

This has not been my experience with other DM's. Nor has it been my experience that the fallen paladin gets any measurable increase in screen time, as several DM's in the past have just said, oh well, now you aren't a paladin, have fun being a fighter...and went on with their campaign as usual.

see comments above on poor gms.

But that's not the point. The point is, the alignment system, AS WRITTEN, not as tweaked, is inherently self-contradicting, and proscriptive. You cannot assume optimum conditions of play when you write rules.

Except for the last sentence, we totally disagree.

While you cannot expect optimal conditions you can expect a minimal degree of competence. You have to expect a degree of latitude from setting to setting.

thats what the current system does IMo and IMX, no matter how many times "self-contradicting and proscriptive" is repeated.

Again, we wont agree, that much is obvious.

enjoy your game.

 

[billd91]

So, making murder a criminal offence and giving it the death penalty, in your model, does not proscribe it. After all, people can still commit murder -- making it illegal doesn't stop it -- they just get tried, convicted and killed. But they can still do it.

In D&D, you have a choice: you can be lawful good and continue to be a paladin or you can stop being lawful good and cease to be a paladin. In other words, you cannot both be not lawful good and a paladin -- the rules do not permit this. You can be non-lawful/non-good OR you can be a paladin. The rules make it impossible to be both non-lawful/non-good and a paladin at the same time -- how else could the rules possibly express that paladins are proscribed from not being lawful good.

If not to proscribe evil acts, how would you describe the mechanical interaction between alignment and the paladin class? What is its instrumental function other than to proscribe certain behaviours?

In fact the paladins ARE proscribed from not being lawful good. Sure. Note that it's because the paladin class comes with that restriction and not the alignment itself. LG characters can stray into making an evil act from time to time as long as they remain generally true to being LG. The alignments themselves are not proscriptive because they can't prevent a character from behaving in certain ways. Rather, they describe how they generally behave and believe. The mechanical relationship between the paladin and alignment is entirely from and within the paladin class.

With respect to your 'vectors' questions, I don't think alignment lends itself well to being mapped with that kind of quantitative focus and that's because there are very few actions that I would consider unambiguously either lawful or chaotic. There may be actions that are done for reasons more consistent with a lawful outlook on life than a chaotic one, but in many cases these actions could easily fit in more than one camp. You have to take a step back and look at the whole enchilada

 

[fusangite]

The mechanical relationship between the paladin and alignment is entirely from and within the paladin class.

Remember, I'm talking about the operational function of alignment. This is back to swrushing's idea that alignment's in-game effects have nothing to do with alignment but all come from whatever mechanic it is interacting with. This is technically true but meaningless at an operational level. The rules are an integrated whole. I suppose you can argue that alignment isn't proscriptive that it's just the rules for the cleric, barbarian, monk and paladin classes, that it's just the rules for intelligent and aligned magic weapons. Yes, alignment ceases to be proscriptive when it produces no in-game effects but the in-game effects alignment produces are part of the integrated whole of rules that apply to alignment.

I don't think you appreciate the absurdity of arguing that alignment does not function proscriptively as long as you waive all the rules where it does. If you waive all these rules, then what is its function?

With respect to your 'vectors' questions, I don't think alignment lends itself well to being mapped with that kind of quantitative focus and that's because there are very few actions that I would consider unambiguously either lawful or chaotic.

Does this not suggest there may be a problem with the law-chaos axis? There are many unambiguous good or evil actions, after all.

There may be actions that are done for reasons more consistent with a lawful outlook on life than a chaotic one, but in many cases these actions could easily fit in more than one camp. You have to take a step back and look at the whole enchilada

And when I take a step back, I see a self-contradictory pile of chaos (that may be lawfully aligned ).

 

[fusangite]

Trickstergod,

As far as I can tell from your extended metaphor, you're doing a retread of swrushing's argument that because alignment is an aggregate of cumulative actions and no single isolated action can change it, that it is no proscriptive.

I'm sorry but that is still proscriptive. It's like being priest in the Middle Ages; sure, one sodomy trial probably won't get you de-frocked. But twenty will. But your argument says that because one sodomy trial probably won't get you defrocked, sodomy is not proscribed. This is simply not the case.

Thresholds of evil/chaotic acts continue to exist even if the threshold is greater than one.

As you yourself credit, there is some threshold for how many times you leave your cubicle. Yes you can leave it but you are not free to be wherever you want whenever you want. Your behaviour must conform to certain standards. Sets of behaviour are therefore proscribed.

So alignment isn't quite so confining, for most, anyway.

But you grant that for classes like barbarians, druids and paladins who lose some or all of their class abilities for changing alignment, it does function to proscribe certain courses of action -- that if they consistently behave in a particular way, the rules will punish them.

 

[drnuncheon]

So, making murder a criminal offence and giving it the death penalty, in your model, does not proscribe it. After all, people can still commit murder -- making it illegal doesn't stop it -- they just get tried, convicted and killed. But they can still do it.

I think we're talking on two different levels - the world level and the rules level.

A paladin committing evil acts is proscribed in the game world by his church or whatever, but not by the game rules. The game rules allow him to do whatever he wants and detail the consequences - proscription on the game rule level would be something like 'only elves and half-elves may become arcane archers' or previous editions' 'a dwarf cannot be a wizard'.

In the real world, that would equate to 'drnuncheon cannot cause a soda to come to him by sheer force of will, even if he pops a vein trying'.

Because really, we're talking about the game rules level, aren't we? 'You can't act this way because you're chaotic' is a rules issue, not a world issue, so when you're talking about something being proscribed - that is to say forbidden - you need to look and talk about what is actually forbidden by the rules, not what is allowed as a (generally) suboptimal choice.

J

 

[hong]

In the real world, that would equate to 'drnuncheon cannot cause a soda to come to him by sheer force of will, even if he pops a vein trying'.

post pix pls, kthx

 

[JackGiantkiller]

oh, for the love of... you say specifically neato things and i say kewl powerz and now i am being insulting?

sorry, but the truthful answer is "no." i cannot be "less insulting" because i was not being insulting in the first place!

if you were insulted by that turn of phrase after your own comments, i got no answer for ya'.

***insert utterly flabbergasted expression***



thats what the current system does IMo and IMX, no matter how many times "self-contradicting and proscriptive" is repeated.

Again, we wont agree, that much is obvious.

enjoy your game.[/QUOTE]


Sorry. I was feeling touchy, for no apparent reason, and I have no idea why that bothered me, in the grey light of morning. Forgive me for kneejerk reactions most likely based on fatigue.

As to agreement...we actually seem to agree on many points, it's just a couple sticking points...which shouldn't cause friction.

Point:The current system does, in fact, do precisely what you claim for it in the hands of a good DM. I agree.

Fusangite's point: Because different alignments can be applied to the same action or individual equally well, alignment is less useful as a descriptor *outside* of any particular gaming group. Inside the gaming group, see above. So, I agree.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I don't think you appreciate the absurdity of arguing that alignment does not function proscriptively as long as you waive all the rules where it does. If you waive all these rules, then what is its function?

Then it becomes purely descriptive. Right now, it's

a) a bi-partite descriptor for the general behaviour of the character in question, in a long-term context, taking his motivations as well as his actions into account

b) a game mechanic that takes care of the interactions of Good, Evil, Law, Chaos and Neutrality as tangible manifstations with the rest of the game world.

It is not proscriptive in it's implementation, as it doesn't command what a character has to do and has to avoid to do if he has a certain alignment, but descriptive, as it is derived from what the character did and did not. It's a cause/consequence thing. It's not "You're evil, so you have to kill mercilessly and for fun", it's "You kill mercilessly and for fun, so you're evil". Which is kinda important in this context.

As a game mechanic, it does not limit a character's actions in a direct, forbidding way, but in an indirect way, by enforcing consequences. A nice example was already given through a comparison with an AD&D 2E rule, namely wizards and swords. A proscriptive rule is "Wizards are not allowed to use swords in combat." A consequential rule is the new "Wizards are not proficient with swords per se, so if they use them in combat, they suffer a -4 on their attack rolls. If they want to be proficient with swords, they have to take the Martial Weapon feat."

Of course, it can always be viewed as a "limit" to a character's actions...if the character is played from the rules point of view, meaning if someone doesn't play the character himself, but the numbers and stats on the sheet, because then you can start arguing that "a character is forbidden to act in an evil way because he is a paladin and will lose his class features if he does." If you act from the character's point of view, you'll get something like "to act in an evil or chaotic manner is completely anathema to Cedric the Paladin, because he believes in the righteousness of good and order, and as such would never stoop to tactics that smack of evil, or anarchy. Should he ever willingly partake in an evil act, the base for his powers is corroded, and he'll lose them to self-loathing and despair." The one is a proscriptive way to handle alignment rules, the other a descriptive and consequential way.