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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 1919672" data-attributes="member: 14140"></blockquote>Beats me! Ask them.But, it is more reasonable for me to think the answer is a choice to repeat and not that it was an unspoken total voiding of the previous qualifier specifically applied to this list. you asked a very broad question... did it have predictive quality, and the answer is YES for broad focus over time and no for narrow focus over short time. if my giving you a complete answer is troublesome, ask a more specific question.cool. but you have noticed that, using terms like proscriptive and "forced" and "diallow" sound a lor more like they are applying to scenario level focus rather than "choices over a long time". At least, you should have gotten that impression by now. Thats why i encouraged you earlier to move away from the more strict sounding terms and move towards more broad-over-time sounding terms like "encourage" and "discourage". But so far, thats not a direction you choose to go.right, but of course, people's reactions to the rule is something that will vary from player to player and game to game. In my game, they "play the character" and not the alignment, so alignment is not having the same  "operational effects" it seems to have in your games, where apparently, people play "their characters alignment" and we are not sure where "their character" actually comes into it.The rule is something we can discuss. "how the rule causes people to operate" is a far more variable and nebulous and "localized" thing. I think we could both agree on this part, or are you saying that, in your mind, everyone operates the same way as regards to alignment, so ther is a "true way" of "how people operate with regards to alignment"?See, here you go. Thats specifically WHY i made two distinct answers, one for specific case and one for long term patterns... which you groused about I might add.if a characters alignment is ACCURATELY pegged as so-n-so, then you can expect they will over time show various tendencies, not necessarily ALL the tendencies. This prediction will be more or less accurate over the long term.It will NOT be necessarily accurate over the short term. That remains to me an important distinction.Now, on the even larger scale, remember it is predictive, not ABSOLUTE. Past performance gives you good predictive data to go on for future tendencies but things can change. The character can change his outlook. A character pegged as LE today (due to past actions) might undergo a change and begin as of midnight tonight doing LN or even LG things. As a result of that change, your precitions which are based on past performance will lose accuracy.A guy who has smoked for 20 years and tried to stop three times and failed... you can predict he will be smoking a month from now and usually be right. His past perfromance says this is a good bet" but he can stop smoking tomorrow, go on the patch, for any number of reasons. Same for overweight gluttons.Same for the mercilous SOB who kills for sport, or the pious guy who tends to the sick. Their past actions and choices (reflected by alignment) tell you what type of person they have been and give you predictive info, but they might just up and change.no, i did NOT say that.I said previous actions, previous traits, previous tendencies give you predictive data. The characters has normally acted so-n-so and people usually keep to their patterns. It isn't "predisposed to act CE, but predisposed to torture and maim for fun" or whatever other traits are applicable.Being CE dosn't predispose you to kill and torture. How refute? you asked a question. Did i miss you taking a position?If by this you mean, some classes have alignment restrictions, sure. The paladin restriction is as much a part of the class structure and design as BAB is or armor restrictions are and so forth.if a Gm is uncomfortable with alignment restrictions in his classes, its easy to remove them from the classes.Sorry but NO. For most every PC i have ever seen, their "past actions and choices" (their past behavior) was predictive, but not absolute. Dain the dwarf i could predict would never move ahead and leave an unexplored door behind him, because thats how he had acted all the times before. "predictive" does not mean "directive", does not mean 100% accurate. So, PCs and NPCs, unless the Gm is playing his NPCs oddly, are both predictive by their past behavior, just not scripted, not directed. Either's behavior can change at any time, but isn't as likely to.   Well, first off, creatures with "always" ARE different. Their alignment is a matter of nature, not choice, so, yeah, they will be different. if they weren't different, there wouldn't need to be a separate category, i reckon.But, in fact, the difference amounts to little more than "how often the change occurs in the population" which is just a setting thing.you go on about "operational differences" but in fact there are no operational differences between an "always" guy changing alignment in the rules. in the outside the norm case of an always outsider PC who decides to change alignment, there are no differences "operationally" between that and a normal rogue human moving from CN to CG, right?i consider the rules to be quite clear and yes, fairly obvious, that alignment is guideline, not script, that alignment reflects character choices, not directs character choices, or as my favorite phrase runs...alignment is derived from character choices and it does not drive character choices.I agree with the notion that it is bad, unpalatable, and even potentially broken to, as a GM, try to make alignment DIRECTIVE or DRIVING as opposed to its current DERIVITIVE or REFLECTIVE role as covered in the rules.[/QUOTE]

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