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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bullgrit" data-source="post: 4941589" data-attributes="member: 31216">Yes, of course. There’s also room for a good character to fall to evil.Maybe. Depends on the situation.Can a fighter become a wizard in your campaign? If so, is it like flipping a switch?I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking, here. “Judgment” of an NPC? Do you meaning figuring out their character or discerning their alignment?Do the PCs in your campaign have a way of determining whether someone is telling the truth? Whether someone is under magical control? How about whether one of them is a doppelganger? Just like with learning someone’s alignment, there are mundane and spell ways –- and all can be faulty.Good one day, evil the next, then good again, and so on? This sounds like insanity. So you’re asking me what alignment a split personality would be?This is starting to sound like an argument against “The human species has two genders: male and female. Males tend to have X traits, females tend to have Y traits.”“But what about hermaphrodites? Or transgender?” so on and so forth. How would you handle judging the gender of a PC that the player wanted to be a hermaphrodite?How about an NPC who greatly desires to help, protect, and respect innocent life, but is only kept from doing so because of fear of retribution (say he’s in a really bad city). Is an evil person still evil if they are locked in prison? They can’t actually perform evil while imprisoned.Is a vicious, rabid dog not dangerous because it is chained up?All the above stuff is intentionally coming up with hypothetical situations to test the limits of alignment. It’s like coming up with arguments over what a long sword is. Or what an elf is.“My elf was raised by dwarves and drank a potion that let him grow a beard. Is he still an elf?”” very kind, considerate, willing to make sacrifices, altruistic” sounds like the game definition of good to me. “That barbarian has never engaged in an evil act in their life” sounds like not evil to me (so good isn’t disqualified).“What alignment would a barbarian from that tribe be if they never met someone from outside the tribe?” Sounds Good to me, under the game definition. What has their never having met someone from outside got to do with it? Unless you’re saying their morals/personality completely changes in the presence of non-tribesmen?The main flaw I see in all the arguments over “what alignment is X” is that no one actually brings in the book definitions of the alignments. Everyone argues from their own real-world world view. They argue a game definition without actually using the game definition. It’s like arguing over what a halfling is but never looking in the race section of the book. “He’s a dwarf.” “He’s a gnome.” “He’s a fairy.” “He’s a human under the effect of reduce person.”Most of these hypothetical situations can be solved by realizing that alignment is something “applied” by the DM/universal powers. Taking the earlier mentioned barkeep:1. Does the DM need to give him an alignment? Will it ever come up? 2. Does the DM need to even go so deep into the barkeep’s personality to determine the details and levels of his goodness/badness? Can’t the DM just give him an alignment and be done? Can’t the DM just give him Neutral (or Unaligned) and be done?3. If the DM feels the need to delve deeply into the barkeep’s personality, why make him a borderline case? And if a borderline case is needed, can’t the DM just say “Neutral” (or “Unaligned”) or “Evil” and be done with it. The old AD&D1 “Neutral (with Evil tendencies)” was a bad thing, and was dropped in the early 80s.The only reason I can think for giving an NPC a borderline character and then labeling him as an extreme is to intentionally trap a PC. “Ha! You killed the barkeep, but he wasn’t actually evil. No more paladin powers for you!”It’s like playing a . . . what was that prestige class in D&D3.0 that had to destroy magic items? You find an item that detects as magic, destroy it, and then the DM says, “Sorry, that wasn’t a magic item. The magic aura was because it isn’t a truly natural thing, not because it had been enhanced.”It’s like AD&D1 adamantite and mithral – were they magical or not? They gave bonuses to items made with them.Bullgrit</blockquote>

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