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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 2637902" data-attributes="member: 8447">My biggest problem with alignments in D20 (which I dropped quite some time ago) was, and remains, the fact that the system tries to play both sides of the fence.Alignments are absolute.Alignments are relative.On the one hand you have Outsiders and the Planes, along with certain spells, magical items, as assumptions about creatures.  In these cases alignment is Absolute -- Evil is Evil, Good is Good, etc.  The spells, planes, Outsiders are not supposed to deviate in any way from this pure path of alignment.  Based on this Absolute definition, spells such as Detect Evil work very well, in that they are not looking for tendencies, but rather specific, identifiable criteria.On the other hand you have PCs, nations, and "alignment requirements" for classes.  In these cases alignment is Relative.  As long as you are more or less Good and more or less Lawful you are able to remain a Paladin.  A nation has an alignment, but it doesn't really describe most of the people in that land or even how the government is going to act the majority of the time.  And certainly characters are given vague guidelines; please don't colour outside the lines, but you can have gaps.  In this case, what the heck does Detect Evil actually do?  Detect General Tendency Towards Doing Things That I Do Not Consider Nice At The Moment?  Is slavery Evil, Lawful, or just Not A Nice Idea Where I Come From?  Are different governmental structures inherently more or less good, lawful, evil, neutral, etc.?  Since the system is not set up to map in either direction consistently, I was quite happy to drop it.  Yes, this required some adjustments, but I found the adjustments were better for the game than dealing with the vagueness that is the D&D alignment system.</blockquote>

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