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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 3610501" data-attributes="member: 30001">ALIGNMENTS AND CREATURES"Good" is an ideal - and because DnD is a fantasy game it seems reasonable that Good exists and is tangible in the world in some way.  What I'm saying is that mortals are not typically capable of embodying good to such a degree that it would count as their alignment.  Mortals in one type of classical mythology are made up of each of the four elements - Earth, Air, Fire, Water.  An imbalance in these energies results in disease.  Similarly, a mortal is made up of good, evil, lawful, and chaotic energy.  Unlike the elements though, these moral energies are not typically in balance.  Perhaps this imbalance in alignments is the "disease" of the world - but that's a question for philosophers.The way this works in my game is this:>  player character races, like humans and dwarves, don't have an alignment by default.  They have whatever personality their player envisions for them.>  Some creatures have alignment descriptors [lawful], [good], for example.  Typically any creature that has an "always" alignment has an alignment descriptor.  There is no [neutral] descriptor, so a slaad, for example, is just [chaotic].ALIGNMENTS AND CLERICSCreatures who channel divine magic (ex. cast divine spells) gain the alignment descriptor that corresponds to their deity.  This is not a mandate for behavior, it is simply just a characteristic.  However, a cleric must behave in ways that are consistent with the ethos of the deity.  If not, they lose their divine abilities as well as the alignment descriptor.  Take for example a cleric of a war god of "chivarly and combat", a lawful good deity.  A cleric of that deity would gain a [lawful] and a [good] descriptor.  Were a cleric to violate the ethos of the deity (running away in a just battle, for instance) then he loses his spell-casting ability, as well as the [lawful] and [good] descriptors.  But an important point:  the cleric gets these descriptors by virtue of his association with the deity, not directly by his behavior.  Thus the DM has only to judge whether the cleric's actions are in line with the ethos of the deity - not whether or not the deities ethos is entirely consistent with definitions of the word "law" and "good".  So as far as the players know, channeling the power of the deity simply bestows those alignment descriptors on the cleric.  There is some correlation between the deities ethos and the traditional alignment definitions, but there's no real mandate that this be the case.  Thus, in this system, a "lawful good" (ie. [lawful], [good]) cleric of a LG god of chivalry would probably lose his powers for refusing an order to engage in just combat from a Lawful ruler, while a cleric of a LG god of pacifism would get a promotion.  Either party could argue (as we do on the internet) whether or not one or the other behavior is "lawful good", but such arguments stand as unresolved philosophical debates within the campaign and do not need to be resolved in order for the DM to effectively manage alignment.OTHER WAYS OF GAINING AN ALIGNMENT DESCRIPTOR>  living on an outerplane for some extended period of time (ex. a saytr who lives in Limbo)>  using a magic item with a powerful descriptor (ex. a magic sword that is a bane weapon against evil)ALIGNMENT AND DIVINE SPELLSThis is where the most significant changes occur.  I can't guarrantee that the system is perfectly balanced, but given the history of nerfed spells and items in the game, IMO the sky won't fall if "Magic Circle against Evil" is less useful.  IME the advantages are worth it.  I also can't make promises about how this system interacts with the zillions of other rules supplements, prestige classes, and so forth that are out there.That being said, some changes need to be made to clarify things - because most creatures now don't have alignments or alignment descriptors.The first thing is that terms like "non-good" have a modified, but obvious meaning.  For example the Holy Word spell has an effect vs. "non-good".  In the new system, a creature with no alignment is "non-good", and so suffers the effect of the spell.A second set of options is to modify the spells to use the "non-good" terminology.  Protection from Evil would be changed to "Projection of Good" - whereby the protected creature would gain the save/AC bonus against any non-good creature.  This might not be as much of a power-up as it sounds because AFAICT the typical situation is good PCs battling evil monsters, so I consider it only a moderate broadening of the power of the spell.  And of course you can just leave spells like Protection from Evil alone, ruling that it applies only to creatures with an [evil] descriptor.  I use fairly liberal rules for spontaneous casting, so this is the option that I went with.A third option is to increase the bonuses - protection from evil gives a +3 bonus instead of +2 because of the more limited set of creatures that it affects.ALIGNMENT AND ARCANE SPELLSSince there's no "deity ethos" to use, it's based off of the alignment descriptor (if any) of the spell.  Also, the caster gains the alignment descriptor after they cast the given spell.  Once they cast such a spell, they retain the alignment descriptor for some period of time (typically a month in my campaign) after which the slate is wiped clean.  Subsequent casting of such spells though, has a way of extending the duration of the descriptor.Casting an arcane spell with a diametrically opposite descriptor to the one you currently have can have harmful consequences - typically a temporary negative energy level that lasts one day.  The caster is intuitively but well aware of such effects before the spell is cast.</blockquote>

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