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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9739680" data-attributes="member: 4937">I also allow in my games alignment detection to be resisted by a bluff check (where the strength of your piety is a penalty on the check) which means that if you are good enough at lying you can pass even magical scrutiny about your intentions and character.And yes, it matters most for Clerics and Champions (my homebrew generic "Paladin" class) since they are actively serving or embodying as a representative some strongly aligned incarnation or personification of an idea that demands you don't stray too far from their own beliefs.  And consequently, normally only Clerics and Champions strongly radiate alignment.Shamans are my generic version of Druids, and their alignment doesn't matter as much as their vows.  They are more like warlocks with several patrons and each patron requires a different vow.  One of the reasons that Shamanic magic is against the law and shamans are feared in many regions is that you can't tell from a shaman what you are going to get in the way you can a cleric.  They are always suspected of witchcraft and black magic, and to be frank often for good reasons. Everyone else, I just care whether what's written down on their character sheet at least roughly matches what I'm seeing from the character in play.  If the play feels CE to me and what's written down is CN, or it feels CN but what's written down is CG then I usually don't bother until it becomes persistent from like six months or a year of play, at which point I start using the bribery strategy I talked about earlier.  If the player doesn't have a strong idea what they want to believe I always suggest neutral and leave it up to personality and backstory why they are risking their lives on fool's errands or crusades.  Chaotic Neutral is the most common alignment I see in play, roughly equivalent to various beliefs in Individualism, Objectivism, Libertarianism, etc.  Most players broadly seem to accept things like, "As long as I'm not hurting someone else, I can do what I want." and "I must to my own self be true" and "I have a right to determine for myself what is right or wrong according to the dictates of my conscious", etc.   Chaotic Good is probably the next most common, followed by either Neutral or Chaotic Evil.  Rarely are players or their character really paragons of piety or strongly motivated by ideology though, and if the player isn't I tend to discourage them from playing a Champion because that almost invariably results in such a caricature of zeal and faith that you can append the 'Stupid' to the alignment.  I do find though you can get there sometimes by saying things like, "What would Steve Rogers do?"  In general though, I'm skeptical from long experience of most players personifying anything but themselves either in personality or beliefs, or even that most players are really interested in doing so.</blockquote>

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