Storm Raven
First Post
I'm seriously considering a significant overhaul of the alignment system. I'm not going to get into whether the standard D&D alignment system is "unrealistic" or anything like that, because I think it works fine for what it was intended for (an ethical system for dungeon delving adventurers accompanied by generic clerics of a non-specific deity engaged in fights with monsters and other evil-doers). It just doesn't mesh well with some of the stuff I want to have as campaign elements. For those of you who have been around a while, you may recognize some of the ideas I'm thinking of trying out as being drawn from the article "For King and Country" from Dragon 101. I may have also pulled in some ideas from other sources without realizing it, since this whole idea has been percolating in my head for quite some time now.
Among the elements I want to include in the campaign is a healthy dose of religious strife. I've seen the attempt to implement this using the standard D&D alignment system, and it always seems to work out clumsily. You see attempts to create tension between, say, the Church of St. Owen and the Mother-Goddess worshippers, and even though lip service is given to it, the end result is usually that everyone recognizes all the worshippers from the other faith as "good guys" and all differences are dropped in favor of fighting the bad guys. So, instead of quibbles between various religious traditions fueling campaign material, you get everyone pitching in like good soldiers to squish orcs.
To use an example drawn from "For King and Country": suppose I wanted to develop an Arthurian type game. In it, I want to have an Arthur-type king adhering to some sort of medieval Catholic inspired Saxon church, druids allied with elves in the hills of the Wales/Ireland analogue, raiding vikings from the Scandanavia analogue across the sea, and so on. We can have a Scotland analogue with dwarves, orcs, and goblinoids in the mountains and even a France analogue with Charlemange and his court as a rival nation. Arthur and his knights seek to unite the Brisith Isles, fend off the Viking raids, and keep the pesky French land-hungry nobles at bay. Seems ripe for adventure at first. Then you apply the D&D alignments.
Of course, the pseudo-Vikings would worship the various Norse deities, or something similar. Looking around for a D&D type pantheon for Arthur and his knights to follow, the Norse deities seem like a good fit, unless you go with my first thought and come up with a Christian-inspired Saxon church. The "French" would probably have similar religious beliefs to Arthur and his knights. Standard dwarves follow Moradin and the dwarven pantheon. Orcs and goblins also follow their racial pantheons. Druids would probably worship some sort of generic "Mother-Goddess" or the Celtic pantheon. But this is the problem – D&D alignments seem to suck out a lot of the possible conflicts in the campaign.
Obviously, we want to classify Arthur and his knights as LG, so they can be noble knights and such. The "French" are probably of the same faith, and alignment. But the "Viking" worshippers of the Norse deities follow gods that are LG (Tyr), LG (Heimdall), NG (Odin) or CG (Thor) and so on; a number of Norse followers of these gods could be paladins (or the equivalent) themselves. The dwarven and Celtic pantheons are similarly good-aligned – the dwarven pantheon is headed up by LG Moradin (more paladin-types), the Celtic pantheon by the NG Dagda. The orcs would follow CE Gruumsh and the goblinoids LE Maglubiyet. It looks like any paladin that wants to smite evil is going to be doing a lot of orc and goblin hunting and not a whole lot else. Under D&D assumptions, the "French", dwarves, druids and Vikings should be joining up with Arthur on his grand crusade to unite the British Isles and rid them of . . . a handful of pesky orc and goblinoid tribes. Then they all go back home and live in relative peace and sing kum-ba-ya. You could have some sort of attempt at a LG Saxon church vs. CG Thor worshipping cult conflict, but in my experience, almost no one takes the L/C conflict very seriously. I suppose you could redefine all the Celtic and Norse deities as evil for D&D purposes, but that seems wrong, and cuts off a lot of PC possibilities. You could assume that all the druids worship NE Arawn and all the Vikings worship CE Loki, but that seems pretty silly to me.
Think of a similar campaign involving Crusaders and Saracens battling over the holy land and apply D&D alignments to the situation. Unless you make the assumption that (for example) all of the Saracens or all of the Crusaders are followers of an evil god, it gets pretty silly, doesn't it?
So, how do I think this should be changed?
I'm starting from the assumption that most (if not all) of the effects of alignment result from the application of magic. Mostly, they derive from the following spells: blasphemy, bless/curse water, bless weapon, chaos hammer, cloak of chaos, consecrate/desecrate, detect chaos/evil/good/law, dictum, dispel chaos/evil/good/law, hallow/unhallow, holy aura, holy smite, holy sword, holy word, magic circle against chaos/evil/good/law, order's wrath, protection from chaos/evil/good/law, shield of law, summon monster I-IX, undetectable alignment, unholy aura, unholy blight, and word of chaos. As a sundry issue, you have a number of spells that are labeled with the descriptor of chaotic, evil, good, or lawful (mostly evil) but don't depend upon the alignment of the target – such as animate dead, contagion, and eyebite. And, of course, you have issues like the various alignment based cleric domains, many of the paladin's powers (detect evil, smite evil and so on), and the monk's ki strike (lawful) ability. Any proposed change to how alignments work either has to do away with this type of magical effect, which I think would detract from the fun of the game, or radically rework these game elements to fit the new alignment system.
So, here's what I propose – alignment, for game purposes, will be primarily defined by a character's religious background, and their attitude towards that religion. For each religion, a character can be defined as a "devout follower", an "unbeliever", an "infidel/heretic", or (for things like demons and devils) an "enemy of the faith". For obvious reasons, a character can usually only be a devout follower of one faith. However, the character can be defined as an unbeliever or an infidel/heretic for several faiths, usually depending on the attitude of that faith towards the character's own faith. Using this system, most of the various spells affecting alignments would be redefined to primarily affect infidels/heretics. So, each faith that has clerics would have a holy word type spell that would affect those defined as infidels and heretics as if they were evil, those defined as unbelievers as if they were neutral, and those defined as being of the same faith as if they were good. Detect evil and smite evil would become detect infidel/heretic and smite infidel/heretic or smite enemy of the faith. Rather than defining some spells with the evil or good descriptor, there would simply be spells for each faith that are sinful or taboo to cast. Note that this could be expended to include spells that are not tagged with an alignment descriptor in standard D&D, such as a nature worshipping sect of druids defining blight and diminish plants as taboo. Conversely, I would like to implement a system where those who are not worshippers cannot gain certain benefits of the faith – an unbeliever may not gain the benefits (or gain reduced benefits) or a cure spell cast by a cleric of a faith they don't adhere to, or may not benefit from being in an area under the effect of a hallow spell (for purposes of curing vile damage for example).
So, to get back to the hypothetical Arthur campaign we get this:
• Arthur's Saxon church defines members of all other faiths as infidels.
• The Viking gods define the Saxon church as infidels, but define the dwarven, orcish, goblin, and Celtic pantheons as merely unbelievers.
• The Celtic pantheon defines the orcish and goblin pantheon as infidels, and for fun (since they have lots of elves following the Celtic gods) the dwarven pantheon too. They define the Viking pantheon and the Saxon church as unbelievers (note the asymmetry here).
• The dwarven pantheon defines the orcish, goblinoid and returning the favor, the Celtic pantheon as infidels. They define the Viking pantheon and the Saxon church as unbelievers.
• The orcish and goblinoid pantheons define everyone else as infidels, and each other as unbelievers (or perhaps heretics).
Unmoored from the D&D definitions of absolute alignments, each faith can define actions and beliefs as "good" and "evil" based upon their own precepts. Using this system you could have a religious schism, where priests who are ostensibly of the same faith but different sects (and with different definitions of "sin" or "taboo" can regard each other as heretics and gain their various spell benefits against one another, think of, for example, the strife between the Cathars and Catholic church. You could have an irreligious character – simply defined as an unbeliever (or infidel) by all faiths. For example, the Celtic pantheon would likely consider an irreligious person as an unbeliever, but the Saxon church might regard them as an infidel. A character can also be defined as coming from a certain faith, but an unbeliever – think of Jack Sparrow for example, based on his language and attitudes, he's clearly from a Christian background, but also just as clearly, an unbeliever. So, for example, in the hypothetical Arthur campaign, you could have lots of people living in Arthur's Britain who are members of the Saxon church, but not devout. Someone in that position might be able to get some benefits from the magical powers of the church, but not all (and since most commoners would likely see little actual magical benefits from the church in any event, this might explain their ambivalence). You could have obscure, splinter cults that define everyone who is not a devout member of their faith to be infidels, and have their abilities work accordingly. And so on.
From a practical standpoint, this likely means that the various "alignment" domains for clerics will simply be condensed into one, called something like the Holy domain or the Divine domain or something similar. The detect, dispel, magic circle against, and protection from spells will likely be simply redefined as saying infidel/heretic or enemy of the faith at the end, and work the same for all faiths, the mechanics of what they affect depending on how the faith defines infidel, heretic, and enemy of the faith. Bless water makes holy water of your faith, its affects once again defined by your faith's teachings – Saxon church holy water probably damages undead, Viking holy water probably does not, but might damage giant-type creatures. I am uncertain at the moment what to do about the summon monster spells. For nonreligious casters (i.e. wizards and sorcerers) I will probably limit their summoned monster options to the various elemental templates found in the MANUAL OF THE PLANES. I think I will have to look at the various anarchic, axiomatic, celestial, and fiendish templates and come up with some sort of universal "divine creature" template. I'll probably have to specifically define the list of summonable creatures for each clerical faith to figure out which of the off-beat non-templated creatures fit each faith.
It won't matter much, since I am folding the barbarian and monk classes into the fighter class and redefining the bard as a prestige class, but class limitations based upon alignment will be redefined by faith (probably for most religious based prestige classes and the like), or dropped entirely (like the alignment restriction for the warlock class, for example).
I think this covers most of the issues that are embedded in the D&D alignment system; if I missed anything, let me know. I think this will create a more flexible system, with more potential for religious conflicts without the silliness of having conflicts only work along a good/evil axis defined by a particular version of modern western morality. It also removes the oddity of having what should be rival faction and faiths working together shoulder to shoulder to defeat their enemies because they share alignments and oppose the alignments of the other side.
Among the elements I want to include in the campaign is a healthy dose of religious strife. I've seen the attempt to implement this using the standard D&D alignment system, and it always seems to work out clumsily. You see attempts to create tension between, say, the Church of St. Owen and the Mother-Goddess worshippers, and even though lip service is given to it, the end result is usually that everyone recognizes all the worshippers from the other faith as "good guys" and all differences are dropped in favor of fighting the bad guys. So, instead of quibbles between various religious traditions fueling campaign material, you get everyone pitching in like good soldiers to squish orcs.
To use an example drawn from "For King and Country": suppose I wanted to develop an Arthurian type game. In it, I want to have an Arthur-type king adhering to some sort of medieval Catholic inspired Saxon church, druids allied with elves in the hills of the Wales/Ireland analogue, raiding vikings from the Scandanavia analogue across the sea, and so on. We can have a Scotland analogue with dwarves, orcs, and goblinoids in the mountains and even a France analogue with Charlemange and his court as a rival nation. Arthur and his knights seek to unite the Brisith Isles, fend off the Viking raids, and keep the pesky French land-hungry nobles at bay. Seems ripe for adventure at first. Then you apply the D&D alignments.
Of course, the pseudo-Vikings would worship the various Norse deities, or something similar. Looking around for a D&D type pantheon for Arthur and his knights to follow, the Norse deities seem like a good fit, unless you go with my first thought and come up with a Christian-inspired Saxon church. The "French" would probably have similar religious beliefs to Arthur and his knights. Standard dwarves follow Moradin and the dwarven pantheon. Orcs and goblins also follow their racial pantheons. Druids would probably worship some sort of generic "Mother-Goddess" or the Celtic pantheon. But this is the problem – D&D alignments seem to suck out a lot of the possible conflicts in the campaign.
Obviously, we want to classify Arthur and his knights as LG, so they can be noble knights and such. The "French" are probably of the same faith, and alignment. But the "Viking" worshippers of the Norse deities follow gods that are LG (Tyr), LG (Heimdall), NG (Odin) or CG (Thor) and so on; a number of Norse followers of these gods could be paladins (or the equivalent) themselves. The dwarven and Celtic pantheons are similarly good-aligned – the dwarven pantheon is headed up by LG Moradin (more paladin-types), the Celtic pantheon by the NG Dagda. The orcs would follow CE Gruumsh and the goblinoids LE Maglubiyet. It looks like any paladin that wants to smite evil is going to be doing a lot of orc and goblin hunting and not a whole lot else. Under D&D assumptions, the "French", dwarves, druids and Vikings should be joining up with Arthur on his grand crusade to unite the British Isles and rid them of . . . a handful of pesky orc and goblinoid tribes. Then they all go back home and live in relative peace and sing kum-ba-ya. You could have some sort of attempt at a LG Saxon church vs. CG Thor worshipping cult conflict, but in my experience, almost no one takes the L/C conflict very seriously. I suppose you could redefine all the Celtic and Norse deities as evil for D&D purposes, but that seems wrong, and cuts off a lot of PC possibilities. You could assume that all the druids worship NE Arawn and all the Vikings worship CE Loki, but that seems pretty silly to me.
Think of a similar campaign involving Crusaders and Saracens battling over the holy land and apply D&D alignments to the situation. Unless you make the assumption that (for example) all of the Saracens or all of the Crusaders are followers of an evil god, it gets pretty silly, doesn't it?
So, how do I think this should be changed?
I'm starting from the assumption that most (if not all) of the effects of alignment result from the application of magic. Mostly, they derive from the following spells: blasphemy, bless/curse water, bless weapon, chaos hammer, cloak of chaos, consecrate/desecrate, detect chaos/evil/good/law, dictum, dispel chaos/evil/good/law, hallow/unhallow, holy aura, holy smite, holy sword, holy word, magic circle against chaos/evil/good/law, order's wrath, protection from chaos/evil/good/law, shield of law, summon monster I-IX, undetectable alignment, unholy aura, unholy blight, and word of chaos. As a sundry issue, you have a number of spells that are labeled with the descriptor of chaotic, evil, good, or lawful (mostly evil) but don't depend upon the alignment of the target – such as animate dead, contagion, and eyebite. And, of course, you have issues like the various alignment based cleric domains, many of the paladin's powers (detect evil, smite evil and so on), and the monk's ki strike (lawful) ability. Any proposed change to how alignments work either has to do away with this type of magical effect, which I think would detract from the fun of the game, or radically rework these game elements to fit the new alignment system.
So, here's what I propose – alignment, for game purposes, will be primarily defined by a character's religious background, and their attitude towards that religion. For each religion, a character can be defined as a "devout follower", an "unbeliever", an "infidel/heretic", or (for things like demons and devils) an "enemy of the faith". For obvious reasons, a character can usually only be a devout follower of one faith. However, the character can be defined as an unbeliever or an infidel/heretic for several faiths, usually depending on the attitude of that faith towards the character's own faith. Using this system, most of the various spells affecting alignments would be redefined to primarily affect infidels/heretics. So, each faith that has clerics would have a holy word type spell that would affect those defined as infidels and heretics as if they were evil, those defined as unbelievers as if they were neutral, and those defined as being of the same faith as if they were good. Detect evil and smite evil would become detect infidel/heretic and smite infidel/heretic or smite enemy of the faith. Rather than defining some spells with the evil or good descriptor, there would simply be spells for each faith that are sinful or taboo to cast. Note that this could be expended to include spells that are not tagged with an alignment descriptor in standard D&D, such as a nature worshipping sect of druids defining blight and diminish plants as taboo. Conversely, I would like to implement a system where those who are not worshippers cannot gain certain benefits of the faith – an unbeliever may not gain the benefits (or gain reduced benefits) or a cure spell cast by a cleric of a faith they don't adhere to, or may not benefit from being in an area under the effect of a hallow spell (for purposes of curing vile damage for example).
So, to get back to the hypothetical Arthur campaign we get this:
• Arthur's Saxon church defines members of all other faiths as infidels.
• The Viking gods define the Saxon church as infidels, but define the dwarven, orcish, goblin, and Celtic pantheons as merely unbelievers.
• The Celtic pantheon defines the orcish and goblin pantheon as infidels, and for fun (since they have lots of elves following the Celtic gods) the dwarven pantheon too. They define the Viking pantheon and the Saxon church as unbelievers (note the asymmetry here).
• The dwarven pantheon defines the orcish, goblinoid and returning the favor, the Celtic pantheon as infidels. They define the Viking pantheon and the Saxon church as unbelievers.
• The orcish and goblinoid pantheons define everyone else as infidels, and each other as unbelievers (or perhaps heretics).
Unmoored from the D&D definitions of absolute alignments, each faith can define actions and beliefs as "good" and "evil" based upon their own precepts. Using this system you could have a religious schism, where priests who are ostensibly of the same faith but different sects (and with different definitions of "sin" or "taboo" can regard each other as heretics and gain their various spell benefits against one another, think of, for example, the strife between the Cathars and Catholic church. You could have an irreligious character – simply defined as an unbeliever (or infidel) by all faiths. For example, the Celtic pantheon would likely consider an irreligious person as an unbeliever, but the Saxon church might regard them as an infidel. A character can also be defined as coming from a certain faith, but an unbeliever – think of Jack Sparrow for example, based on his language and attitudes, he's clearly from a Christian background, but also just as clearly, an unbeliever. So, for example, in the hypothetical Arthur campaign, you could have lots of people living in Arthur's Britain who are members of the Saxon church, but not devout. Someone in that position might be able to get some benefits from the magical powers of the church, but not all (and since most commoners would likely see little actual magical benefits from the church in any event, this might explain their ambivalence). You could have obscure, splinter cults that define everyone who is not a devout member of their faith to be infidels, and have their abilities work accordingly. And so on.
From a practical standpoint, this likely means that the various "alignment" domains for clerics will simply be condensed into one, called something like the Holy domain or the Divine domain or something similar. The detect, dispel, magic circle against, and protection from spells will likely be simply redefined as saying infidel/heretic or enemy of the faith at the end, and work the same for all faiths, the mechanics of what they affect depending on how the faith defines infidel, heretic, and enemy of the faith. Bless water makes holy water of your faith, its affects once again defined by your faith's teachings – Saxon church holy water probably damages undead, Viking holy water probably does not, but might damage giant-type creatures. I am uncertain at the moment what to do about the summon monster spells. For nonreligious casters (i.e. wizards and sorcerers) I will probably limit their summoned monster options to the various elemental templates found in the MANUAL OF THE PLANES. I think I will have to look at the various anarchic, axiomatic, celestial, and fiendish templates and come up with some sort of universal "divine creature" template. I'll probably have to specifically define the list of summonable creatures for each clerical faith to figure out which of the off-beat non-templated creatures fit each faith.
It won't matter much, since I am folding the barbarian and monk classes into the fighter class and redefining the bard as a prestige class, but class limitations based upon alignment will be redefined by faith (probably for most religious based prestige classes and the like), or dropped entirely (like the alignment restriction for the warlock class, for example).
I think this covers most of the issues that are embedded in the D&D alignment system; if I missed anything, let me know. I think this will create a more flexible system, with more potential for religious conflicts without the silliness of having conflicts only work along a good/evil axis defined by a particular version of modern western morality. It also removes the oddity of having what should be rival faction and faiths working together shoulder to shoulder to defeat their enemies because they share alignments and oppose the alignments of the other side.
