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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9736835" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I like alignment...when it is used judiciously: with great care, deployed only when it is truly warranted.In this paradigm, 99.9% of non-adventurer humanoid-equivalent beings are Unaligned. They aren't True Neutral, they have no alignment. Because True Neutral involves a commitment to something, just a something that takes a particular nuanced/third-way approach to the two alignment axes, while Unaligned is either (a) literally not having an alignment whatsoever, or (b) "aligned" with something that is outside of or orthogonal to the two axes.Outside of things like the factions in Planescape, almost nobody is aligned. The very, very few aligned humanoids are those who have a deep, personal, "philosophical" commitment. Quotes because it may not be carefully thought out, but it is genuinely a philosophy, just not necessarily one expressed in words. (The Xaositects would be a good example there.)Under these lights, it is reasonable that alignment grants certain powers, but also certain fetters. Your commitment means something--it both gives and takes. Evil loves to think of itself as unfettered, but the closer you draw to Evil, the more you bind yourself to it...and there is much that unadulterated Evil cannot do. Chaos is somewhat the wiser, as it recognizes there are things it cannot do that Law can--it just has a bad habit of dismissing those things as unworthy of being done. Good and Law both know they bring fetters, they just think the fetters are a worthy price to pay.I see this as an expression of an otherwise often neglected element of magic: promises.For this is the secret doctrine of the Lionsmith: for there to be power in a promise broken, there must be power in a promise kept.</blockquote>

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